2008-04-01
- Here's a pop quiz: Name one link between sedimentary rock, oil exploration, and potential indicators of extraterrestrial life. You guessed it—microbes.If that one slipped past you, don't worry. It eluded scientists for years until researchers from the University of Illinois determined that microbes increase the growth rate of calcium carbonate, a widely used, ever-forming chemical compound that...
2008-04-01 - Perhaps the most curious thing about Charles Biro's jump from studying religion to practicing commercial law is that people find the conversion surprising. Consider the fact that until recently, another College of Liberal Arts and Sciences graduate worked just a couple doors down from him at the same law firm. His major? Religious studies. Nonetheless, it's true that Biro's decision to enter law...
2008-03-01 - Sometimes it takes a little 18th-century inspiration to carry a Fortune 500 company into the 21st century. Taking his cue from the revolutionary spirit of 1776, Steven Miller helped to foster an entrepreneurial revolution in one of the oldest and largest companies in America. Miller, a retired CEO of the Shell Oil Company and a 1967 chemical engineering graduate in LAS, has a deep fascination...
2008-03-01 - Catherine Kenney doesn't claim to have the answers to the age-old question of how couples should manage and control their money. But this sociologist's research into how various systems of money management affect family life shows that the outcomes can be serious.Kenney's research is somewhat novel, since data has been scarce. While a graduate student at...
2008-03-01 - It's possible that the famed Mayan temples didn't always get the royal treatment. In other words, kings may not have been the only ones who built or sponsored the temples, says an LAS anthropologist, overturning long-standing assumptions about the distinctive, stepped pyramids of Latin America.Based on grueling work in the jungles of central Belize, any number of groups—nobles, priests, and even...
2008-03-01 - Who says you need oceans to be one of the most internationally influential academic institutions in the nation? Not NAFSA: Association of International Educators, which recently named the University of Illinois one of the best at enacting policies and practices that prepare students for an increasingly interconnected world.The U of I has emphasized international studies for years—for decades, in...
2008-03-01 - God may not be a Democrat or a Republican, but he's still highly visible on this year's campaign trail. References to God and faith have been widespread among all of the candidates in both parties—a trend that took off with Ronald Reagan and continues to grow, says Kevin Coe, an LAS doctoral student in speech communication and co-author of ...
2008-02-01 - Chris Folkens began to dream of directing and producing films as a boy, after a brush with Hollywood. When he pursued that goal in earnest as a student at the University of Illinois, the Naperville, Ill., native saw the film industry's decidedly unglamorous, nitty-gritty side—and he still loved it.It's an attitude that's helped the 2005 graduate of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (...
2008-02-01 - Samuel Clemens had Mark Twain. Charles Dodgson used Lewis Carroll. And as was revealed recently by the online literary magazine McSweeney's, U of I English lecturer John Griswold has Oronte Churm. On its website, McSweeney's noted Griswold as the real person behind its periodic "Dispatches from Adjunct Faculty at a Large State University." The news is expected to create a buzz...
2008-02-01 - The U.S. economy is sputtering amid a lingering housing slump and growing jitters on Wall Street, but whether a recession lies ahead is still anyone's guess, a trio of University of Illinois economic experts say. Economists J. Fred Giertz and Anne Villamil in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, along with Jeffrey R. Brown, a finance...
2008-02-01 - Peace has ended for the parsnips of New Zealand.After enjoying more than 100 years with few deadly threats, New Zealand parsnips are under attack. But while the party may be over for this root crop, the feast is just beginning for their arch-nemesis, the webworm, which is wreaking havoc on the parsnip population. The battle between parsnips and webworms offers University of Illinois entomologists...
2008-02-01 - The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences along with the College of Veterinary Medicine is home to a new $7.5 million Center for Reproduction and Infertility Research that, over the next five years, will support research on human infertility—a disease that affects 6.1 million men and women of child-bearing age.The new center is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development...
2008-02-01 - The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences gratefully acknowledges the following individuals for their outstanding service to the institution. Their contributions are vital to maintaining LAS as a great college. LAS Academic Professional Awards Ann Tandy Lacy, Spurlock Museum Jonathan Manton, Mathematics Penelope A. Soskin, LAS Student Academic Affairs Office LAS Staff Awards Barbara Elmore,...
2008-02-01 - When it comes to being happy, a "perfect 10" is not so perfect after all. Happiness is closely linked to many positive physical, social, and financial benefits. But there are some drawbacks for those who are blissfully off the charts in terms of happiness, according to a recent study authored by Ed Diener, LAS psychology professor. The study, from the U of I, University of Virginia, and...
2008-02-01 - When Pat Jeffries goes to the movies, he can drive people crazy, whispering comments about the film as it plays out on the big screen. However, he's usually not commenting on the plot or the characters. Jeffries is whispering about the color tones.This habit should come as no surprise, for Jeffries was one of the key people who developed the latest line of the world's most popular motion picture...
2008-01-01 - Geography students in LAS have literally mapped the clothes on their backs to examine regional patterns in apparel manufacturing. So, what did they discover about where their jeans, sweatshirts, and socks were made? The top supplier of the students’ clothing was China, a blowout competitor at 16 percent of the items the students considered. Mexico was a...
2008-01-01 - When Donna Korol arrived at the University of Illinois in 2000, the move, she says, hit her "like a breath of fresh air." The spirit of cooperation and support among faculty struck her as unique. The assistant professor of psychology had worked at three universities prior to the U of I, but in Urbana-Champaign she found her fit. It was as if a sense of community had permeated the work space, she...
2008-01-01 - Scientific American magazine recently named two LAS professors among its SciAM 50, which recognizes outstanding technological leadership by 50 individuals, teams, or companies in research, business, or policymaking each year. Jeffrey Moore, the the Murchison-Mallory Professor of Chemistry, and Robert Ghrist, professor of...
2008-01-01 - Apparently the first humans to reach the New World took a while to get there. A geneticist at the University of Illinois believes that migrants from Asia lingered around a former land mass between Siberia and Alaska—called Beringia—for as long as 15,000 years before finally spreading south into the Americas.The standstill provided researchers with clues to understand their migration. The pause...
2008-01-01 - First came punk. Then came goth. Then came decades of goth, even as less enduring cultural phenomena of its period went the way of Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols. Goth, it seems, in all its dark contrast to mainstream society, has a niche.That's the conclusion reached by Lauren Goodlad, a professor of English at the University of Illinois, and...
2008-01-01 - If any ant could be said to have a Napoleon complex, it is the Argentine ant. These tiny, aggressive ants have a ferocious ability to conquer vast territories, devouring the larger native ants in their path. But they don't stop there. In a study in Rice Canyon in southern California, University of Illinois entomologists recently...
2008-01-01 - Margaret Lewis has been kicked by clients, hit over the head with a purse, and in one particularly tense moment had a gun aimed at her. It's certainly not what you would expect to happen to someone working in elder law. But as LAS alumna Lewis explains, "My clients are often suffering from dementia by the time they come to me." Working with clients who have Alzheimer's, Lewis develops a very...
2007-12-01 - One out of every four jobs will be IT-related by the year 2012, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With that trend in mind, the University of Illinois is offering an informatics minor to all of its students, beginning spring semester of 2008.Students from many disciplines report that as they compete in the job market, technical skills often make the difference in landing a position, says Deanna...
2007-12-01 - When people think of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, they usually picture clear-cutting, in which large swaths of trees are cut down in a single area. But LAS researchers have found that cutting down trees in a fishbone pattern has a surprisingly different impact than clear-cutting. Whether this difference is better for the ecosystem or not remains to be seen, says Somnath Baidya Roy, U...
2007-12-01 - Susan Avery has spent years dealing with land and air. Now, she says, it's time to think some more about water. Avery, the first person to receive a doctorate in atmospheric sciences from the University of Illinois, in 1978, has been named the next president and director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), a private, Massachusetts-based...