2011-02-01
- A nonprofit publishing enterprise once described by its founder as “a hopelessly quixotic venture” has been named recipient of the National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.John O’Brien, the founder of the Dalkey Archive Press, based at the University of Illinois,...
LAS News Archive
2011-02-01 - Hundreds of new and returning representatives arrived on Capitol Hill probably thinking they know their districts well.But the picture in their heads of the constituents they represent is in fact “limited and flawed,” thanks to unconscious mental shortcuts that determine who they see and don’t see...
2011-02-01 - Fans of the Lincoln bust in Lincoln Hall won’t have to wait until the building reopens in 2012 to rub its nose for luck. Beginning on February 20, the restored bust will greet visitors to U of I’s Spurlock Museum. The display will afford visitors a...
2011-01-01 - When it comes to climate change it seems that everyone has an opinion. Few receive a platform as prominent as the New York Times, however, as did University of Illinois sophomore Emily Cross in December after attending climate treaty negotiations in Mexico. Her opportunity came after a...
2011-01-01 - E-books date all of the way back to the 16th century. Only in this case, the “e” is for “emblem.” Emblem books were every bit the rage that today’s e-books have become. They are a unique combination of pictures and words, and they were popular for over 200 years—from 1531 to about 1750. Electronic...
2011-01-01 - Researchers at the University of Illinois who have studied the lives of more than 1,000 children from birth to 18 years old have found that those who spend in excess of 30 hours per week in nonrelative care through the age of 4½ might become more physically aggressive than peers who spend less time...
2011-01-01 - It’s been called the day Chicago “forgot her conscience,” and it all started with the hurling of a rock. It was July 27, 1919, a time when Chicago beaches were segregated. But when an African American youth “strayed across the imaginary line dividing the ‘Negro’ and ‘white’ waters of Lake Michigan...
2011-01-01 - The Quad is regarded as a timeless link between generations of Illinois alumni, but had the late campus cop Peter “Adam” Adams, who officially retired in 1933, appeared today, a lot of sunbathers, Frisbee fans, and free-ranging bicyclists might have an unpleasant lesson in how much the space has...
2011-01-01 - The Spurlock Museum at the University of Illinois has made a major addition to its collections with a gift of more than 1,000 artifacts from Africa, Asia, and Central America.The artifacts in the new Kieffer-Lopez Collection include a number of textiles and ethnographic pieces, according to Amy...
2010-12-01 - They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So is savagery, according to recent research at the University of Illinois. Historically, indigenous peoples have been depicted as everything from peace-loving islanders to murderous brutes, depending on their relationship with colonial powers. Robert...
2010-12-01 - For the second time in three years, a graduate of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has received a prestigious Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in the United Kingdom. With the scholarship, Josephine (Josie) Chambers, of Champaign, plans to pursue master’s degrees in integrated...
2010-12-01 - Researchers have found an association between physical fitness and the brain in 9- and 10-year-old children: Those who are more fit tend to have a bigger hippocampus and perform better on a test of memory than their less-fit peers.“This is the first study I know of that has used MRI measures to...
2010-12-01 - Lee Gurga was taking out his black Labrador, Fay the Wonder Dog, for a walk one winter’s day, when he captured a moment in time and recorded it on the small pad of paper he keeps in his hip pocket. The result was this haiku:fresh scent—the labrador’s muzzledeeper into snow...
2010-12-01 - Congratulations to the 29 anthropology students at University of Illinois who were announced as winners in this year’s Public Anthropology Award program. The students in Professor Aide Acosta’s Anthropology 103 class, “Anthropology in a Changing World...
2010-12-01 - Good news for control freaks! New research confirms that having some authority over how one takes in new information significantly enhances one’s ability to remember it.“Having active control over a learning situation is very powerful and we're beginning to understand why,” said U of I...
2010-11-01 - University of Illinois chemists have developed a simple sensor to detect an explosive used in shoe bombs. It could lead to inexpensive, easy-to-use devices for luggage and passenger screening at airports and elsewhere.Triacetone triperoxide (TATP) is...
2010-11-01 - The University of Illinois has received strong support for its leading international and area studies programs as six campus centers recently acquired $14.7 million in competitive federal grants to continue their curriculum and outreach over the next four years.The six Title VI grants, awarded by...
2010-11-01 - In the aftermath of the campus shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois University in 2008, students turned to therapists, ministers, friends, family...and Facebook.Amanda Vicary, an LAS doctoral student in psychology, along with...
2010-11-01 - It’s select company: a National Book Award-winning writer, one of the leading toxicologists in the nation, a woman who helped spearhead some of the most important studies of the ocean, and a philanthropically-minded researcher who was there at the birth of the biotech revolution. These are the four...
2010-11-01 - A wave of nationalism in 19th-century Europe laid the groundwork for borders and identities that remain today, but the forces that inspired it have not always been understood. The recent work of one professor at the University of Illinois, however, has revealed more precisely how literature became...
2010-10-01 - “It’s going to be twins” can be shocking news for parents, but not so much for astronomers. Binary stars—or twin stars—are much more common than single stars, says Leslie Looney, an LAS astronomer. What’s more, he says they now have the first...
2010-10-01 - It was just another night of homework for one of Susan Davis’ students when he sat down to watch a scary movie with his friends. He got out his school supplies—pizza, pop, and popcorn—and after the movie ended, led a legend-telling session, taking notes on the various campus myths swapped by his...
2010-10-01 - If you thought that things such as population growth, war, natural disasters, and drought were root causes of world hunger, think again. Researchers at the U of I have created a new way of looking at the problem that suggests some old assumptions may be misguided....
2010-10-01 - Serious photographers spend countless waking hours thinking about light. Nancy Crase, however, had one of her more successful ideas during sleeping hours as she stood in her backyard in her pajamas puzzling over how to photograph desert flowers at night. Crase (BS ’69, microbiology), a freelance...
2010-10-01 - A three-spined stickleback, a fish only about one-and-a-quarter inches long, slowly approaches a pike, an aggressive predator several feet in length. The stickleback swims within inches of the pike’s mouth, an audacious move for such a small fish. Meanwhile, in another part of the tank, another...