LAS News Archive

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 - 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...

2010-10-01 - 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 - 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,...

2010-09-01 - 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 - 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 - 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 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 - 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 - 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 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 - 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 - You might think that a sports story is near its end when an athlete settles into a wheelchair, but this is not a normal sports story. Cerebral palsy redefines normal. Linda Mastandrea became a world-class athlete only after she started using her arms to move. By the time she retired from...

2010-05-01 -     Researchers report that Helicobacter pylori, the only bacterium known to survive in the harsh environment of the human stomach, directly activates an enzyme in host cells that has been associated with several types of cancer, including gastric cancer. Chronic infection with H....

2010-05-01 - They were illiterate farmers, builders, and servants, but Mayan commoners found a way to record their own history—by burying it within their homes. A new study of the objects embedded in the floors of homes occupied more than 1,000 years ago in central Belize begins to decode their story.The study...

2010-05-01 - The brain, with its many folds and ridges, has the most convoluted surface of any organ in the body. But the implants currently used to monitor brain waves are rigid and only slightly flexible, making them a poor match to the brain’s irregular surface.That is all about to change. John Rogers, a...

2010-05-01 - Andrea Jones had just typed the period at the end of the final sentence of the first draft of her book Hook & Jill—a psychological allegory based on author J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan myth—when she got a phone call informing her that it was the 100th anniversary of Peter Pan.“We can’t get...

2010-05-01 - News travels fast, even among those who prefer travel without the benefit of gasoline. The University of Illinois had only just fenced off Lincoln Hall for renovation when a team of “Green Riders” from California announced plans to stop at the construction site in June during a cross-country...

2010-05-01 - American Indians invented the game of baseball—at least according to Ezol Day, a time-traveling Native American woman. “Base-and-ball” was played by Natives all over North and South America long before white people ever arrived in the New World, says Ezol, a character in the novel Miko Kings...

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...

2010-05-01 - A University of Illinois professor has earned national distinction for his original contributions in the field of microbiology, the American Society of Microbiology has announced. William Metcalf, a microbial geneticist in the ...

2010-04-01 - Robert Warrior, director of LAS’s American Indian Studies program and an English and history professor, will be featured in two of the six episodes that will air...

2010-04-01 - Many of today’s college students hadn’t yet reached elementary school when the Rwandan genocide erupted in April of 1994. Some at the University of Illinois gained an intimate view of its stormy aftermath, however, by participating in a United Nations videoconference that explored the ways that the...