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...
LAS News Archive
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...
2010-11-01 - 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 - 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 - 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...
2010-10-01 - 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 - 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 - 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...
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 - “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 - Keith Westcott (MS, '78; PhD, '80, biochemistry) arrived at Amgen in 1986, just three years before this small, upstart biotechnology company started producing Epogen, a genetically engineered drug that boosts red blood cell counts in patients suffering from anemia. After Epogen hit the market, the...
2010-10-01 - Richard Powers (AB, '78; MA, '80, English) nearly drove off the road, he was so taken aback. As he sped through the flatlands of Nebraska along Interstate 80, he thought at first that he was hallucinating. But what he was seeing turned out to be thousands of sandhill cranes, three feet tall,...
2010-10-01 - Scientific expeditions, both large and small, have had a way of becoming defining moments in the life of Margaret Leinen (BS, '69, geology). A muddy field trip along the Sangamon River during her undergraduate years at Illinois first put her on the path of studying geology. And her coordination of...
2010-10-01 - The infamous blown-out British Petroleum well, which spewed over 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico throughout 2010, has finally been declared “dead.” But Linda Birnbaum’s work on the spill is only just beginning. Birnbaum (MS, '69; PhD, '72, microbiology) is the first woman and...
2010-09-01 - Hurricanes and kangaroos have more in common than you might suppose.Like baby kangaroos, embryonic hurricanes can develop in wave “pouches.” These are regions of closed “Lagrangian circulation” in which storms are nurtured, transforming them from weak tropical waves into intense tropical cyclones,...
2010-09-01 - A caution to nature-loving idealists everywhere: At the intersection of politics and nature, politics usually wins, even over the best intentions, says political scientist Robert Pahre. “Politics screws up outcomes that everybody says they want,” says...
2010-09-01 - Driving while talking on a cell phone is roughly the equivalent of driving while under the influence of alcohol. But perhaps even more surprising, hands-free cell phones do not make you any safer, says Daniel Simons, an LAS psychology professor who...
2010-09-01 - This coming April, the campus will host an All-Campus Career Fair. For the first time, LAS students will enjoy full access to recruiters and the career opportunities that they represent. The fair will mark the beginning of a new, expanded college effort to provide full career training and...
2010-09-01 - The inside of a living cell contains microscopic traffic jams that would rival the Los Angeles interstate system in congestion. And among the busiest cellular highways are the strands of DNA, which contain the blueprints for life.Maria Spies, an LAS...
2010-09-01 - A trip abroad will open your mind to new ideas. But as one University of Illinois class found in Peru, nothing brings you to the root of distant cultures like getting some foreign soil under your fingernails. Two dozen students spent their winter break building stoves and water filters for...
2010-09-01 - You can now own a piece of the building that has schooled the last century of Illini. For only $10, you can bring home a slate tile from Lincoln Hall’s roof—and 100% of your purchase will support student scholarships!Of course it’s a nostalgic souvenir, but what else can you do with an old slate...
2010-09-01 - Dr. Paul Kinsinger’s mind moves a mile a minute. Who else could read about a home remedy for toenail fungus and come up with something called Piggy Paste? Or how about this: When a patient said his carpel tunnel syndrome was making it difficult to operate a buffer at an auto body shop because of...
2010-08-01 - The renovated Lincoln Hall will include a new memorial statue to Abraham Lincoln when it reopens in 2012. In light of coincidence, however, the addition should feel right at home. Earlier this summer, the family of the deceased Albert Triebel Jr. (BS ’37, accountancy) donated his “Seated Lincoln”...
2010-06-01 - Another academic year has ended, and you know what that means: It’s time to be regaled with stories of college graduates so outstanding that, unless you’re their parents or grandparents, you might simply choose not to believe it. How, you might ask, does someone major in mathematics and linguistics...
2010-05-01 - Those who value excellence and hard work generally do better than others on specific tasks when they are reminded of those values. But when a task is presented as fun, researchers report, the same individuals often will do worse than those who say they are less motivated to achieve.The findings...