2007-04-01
- Thomas Jefferson believed that a country's constitution should be rewritten every 19 years. Instead, the U.S. Constitution, which Jefferson did not help to write (he was in Paris serving as U.S. minister to France when the Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia), has prevailed since 1789.
"Jefferson thought the dead should not rule the living, thus constitutions should expire...
2007-04-01 - Sam Clemens led a rich and complex life-sometimes as Mark Twain, sometimes not. He usually is remembered as a journalist, stand-up comic, world traveler, philosopher, and literary giant.But even a resume like that doesn't tell the whole story or catch the most interesting dimension for our moment in time: Sam Clemens was obsessed with media technology, exhilarated by it, and boggled by it, says...
2007-03-01 - Paul Cziko drops through a hole, drilled through 20 feet of ice-a portal into the cold, dark world of the Antarctic Ocean. It takes only a little bit of snow on top of the ice above to cut off sunlight, plunging Cziko and his diving partner Kevin Hoefling into darkness. The water is so cold that Cziko's lips, the only exposed parts of his body, quickly go numb. The water is...
2007-03-01 - The mystery of how chromosomes move within the nucleus of a cell is a step closer to being solved, report cell biologists in LAS. Over the last 10 years, labs across the country have found that chromosomes, which carry genes, tend to be found near certain structures within the nucleus before the genes can be activated. As a result, considerable attention has been given to where things are located...
2007-03-01 - Point and click your TV remote at random and chances are you might spot an LAS alum on the small screen. Within the span of a single month, an LAS graduate tested her business know-how on Donald Trump's reality show, The Apprentice, a second alumnus landed on Fiji as a Survivor contestant, and yet another grad saw her Doritos commercial unveiled in front of a Super Bowl...
2007-03-01 - Just about any minute of any day someone is using a chemical reaction named after John F. Hartwig, who recently came to the University of Illinois chemistry department from Yale University. The Buchwald-Hartwig reaction has become a key chemical reaction in the development of new drugs by pharmaceutical companies around the world. And it all came out...
2007-02-01 - LAS alum Kristin Dehnert reached her dream of seeing her commercial aired on what she calls the "Mack Daddy" of all stages-the Super Bowl. But unlike her favorite team, the Chicago Bears, who struggled to compete, she fell just short of winning the top prize. Dehnert, a 1991 graduate in speech communication, was one of five finalists in Doritos' "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, in which over 1,...
2007-02-01 - A "hormone challenge" test developed by researchers at the University of Illinois and Washington University could tell women, potentially with 90-percent accuracy, whether they will respond to hormone therapy to fight breast cancer. Hormone therapy poses considerably fewer side effects than chemotherapy or radiation; but it has long been difficult to predict who would respond favorably to this...
2007-02-01 - Over the years, Super Bowl ads have brought us talking frogs, cat roundups, and chimps bouncing around in office cubicles-big-budget productions from top advertising agencies. This year, working on a near-nothing budget, an LAS alum might just crash the Super Bowl with a commercial featuring an eccentric check-out girl and plenty of Doritos. Kristin Dehnert, a 1991 graduate in...
2007-02-01 - Mookie Lee knows what it's like to survive in the hyper-competitive business world of Chicago. But come February, the question in millions of television viewers' minds will be: Does he also have what it takes to compete in the cutthroat world of the popular show Survivor? Lee, an LAS alum who received his bachelor's degree in actuarial science in 2003, is one of the players on ...
2007-02-01 - Fifty years after graduating from U of I, and 50 years since marrying his wife, Carole, who also attended U of I, Richard Cline will receive a Chicago Illini of the Year Award. Cline graduated with highest honors from Illinois, majoring in political science in LAS and minoring in history and philosophy. He went on to make his mark in the business world, but he also left a lasting impression on...
2007-02-01 - A young professor of Germanic languages and literatures in LAS, who grew up reading Strindberg in her native Sweden, has taken on the alternately venerated and vilified Swedish playwright (1849-1912) as her intellectual challenge.In fact, Anna Stenport has devoted seven years to deconstructing and deciphering the brilliant, prolific, and controversial...
2007-02-01 - The Art Institute of Chicago and a University of Illinois historian have teamed up to create an unusual exhibition focusing on the idea of "otherness."The exhibition, titled "Foreign Faces in Japanese Prints," is guest-curated by Ronald Toby, a historian of premodern and early modern Japan. The exhibit runs from January 20 to April 8 in Gallery 107 at...-
2007-01-01 - Chemists John Hartwig and Wilfred van der Donk have been named as the recipients of the 2007 Tetrahedron Young Investigator Awards. Hartwig won the award in Organic Synthesis and Wilfred in Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry-only two young investigator awards, and both to Illinois!This international award is sponsored by Tetrahedron Publications (a division of Elsevier) and eligible to anyone...
2007-01-01 - Put food in front of men and women who are insecure about their body image, and how do they respond? The women eat less, while the men eat more, says lead researcher Kristen Harrison, a speech communication professor in LAS. For this experiment, 222 women and 151 men, all of average weight, were told they would be evaluating the appeal of page...
2007-01-01 - If you can fight fire with fire, it should come as no surprise that you can also fight bacteria with bacteria. University of Illinois researchers in the College of LAS recently used a unique cloning method to successfully synthesize a promising natural antibiotic within a bacteria host. This means it might be possible to produce cost-effective amounts of the antibiotic using bacteria as...
2007-01-01 - Six students in LAS are wearing white gloves in class this semester. They're learning to handle issues of age and fragility with aplomb and to make excellent first impressions. No, this isn't a course in business etiquette, but rather, archaeology-and it's a first. The undergraduates are doing original research on a U. of I....
2007-01-01 - In the past, the typical hangout spots for kids were playgrounds and street corners. But today, they're just as likely to be hanging out at castles or on battlegrounds. In this case, the castles and battlegrounds are virtual environments in what are known as "massively multiplayer" online video games, or MMOs. But contrary to the common perception that video games isolate people and stunt...
2006-12-01 - Two internationally known professors in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences were recently named University Scholars, which recognizes excellence in teaching and research. Feng Sheng Hu in plant biology and Nikolaos Sahinidis in chemical and bimolecular engineering will both receive $10,000 to aid in their ongoing work.Hu is known worldwide for his research in global change biology and...-
2006-12-01 - Talbot Honored for Québec Studies Emile Talbot, an emeritus professor of French in the University of Illinois College of LAS, was recently honored with the prestigious Prix du Quebec, awarded jointly by the American Council for Québec Studies and Québec's Ministére des Relations Internationales. The award is given every two years to an American citizen who makes an outstanding...
2006-11-01 - A novelist and writer-in-residence in LAS has won the 2006 National Book Award for fiction.Richard Powers, the author of eight previous novels and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient, has won the literary award for his new novel, The Echo Maker. The award was announced November 15 in New York City.Five authors were in contention for the National Book Award in the fiction category. It was...-
2006-11-01 - A history professor in LAS will receive Morocco's oldest and most prestigious decoration.John A. Lynn, who specializes in French and military history, will receive the Moroccan Order, the Ouissam Al Alaoui, the highest order granted by the Moroccan monarchy, at the rank of commander. The Order was established in 1913 and is given for "exceptional...
2006-11-01 - Wall Street reacted to the 2006 mid-term election with a collective yawn because the outcome-governmental gridlock-was fairly predictable, says William Bernhard, a University of Illinois political science professor in LAS. The election itself was anything but predictable, with the Senate switching to the Democrats by a whisker-thin margin. Even the House results didn't appear all that predictable...-
2006-11-01 - A young poet and professor of poetry at the University of Illinois has won a prestigious literary award.Tyehimba Jess was one of 10 U.S. writers to win the 2006 Whiting Writers' Award. The award, given annually to "emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise," includes a cash prize of $40,000 to each winner. Jess, who joined the English department in 2005, won the 2004 National Poetry...
2006-11-01 - What is the only U.S. state that legally allows its residents to cast absentee ballots from outer space?If you had been at the sixth annual Globe-O-Mania, sponsored by the geography department in LAS, you would have discovered that the right answer to this question was Texas, home of the U.S. space program in Houston. What's more, you might have found yourself regularly exclaiming, "Houston, we...