LAS News Archive

2007-05-01 - Mookie Lee never thought that a glass of water, a couch, and a mattress could look so good. But after spending 30 days on a primitive island, licking water off of plants, sleeping on the ground, and fighting an army of mosquitoes and flies, "I really learned to appreciate the small things in life...

2007-05-01 - An early Native American writer who has been a largely forgotten figure is entering the canon and getting the recognition she has long deserved. Research by Robert Dale Parker brings out for the first time the remarkable body of writing of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and the fascinating story of her...

2007-05-01 - What started as a secret society has spread to colleges and universities across the country and has now left its mark at the University of Illinois for 100 years. Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest and most distinguished national honor society for liberal arts students-and the first society to have a Greek...

2007-05-01 - The gross receipts tax proposed by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, while a welcome step in tackling the state's budget shortfall, is a flawed approach to taxation, according to a University of Illinois expert. The proposed tax, which would be levied on transactions between businesses and between...

2007-05-01 - To strengthen the collaboration between the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and its alumni, the LAS Alumni Association Board of Directors has added more members to its traditional dozen. The 2007-08 board is now 15 volunteers strong, including a new student representative position....

2007-05-01 - When a plume of contaminated groundwater from a manufacturing plant near Las Vegas seeped into the Colorado River, the contaminant "perchlorate" spread throughout the Southwest. The cleanup could take decades. To aid with such catastrophic cleanups, LAS researchers from the University of Illinois...

2007-05-01 - In the Boston Marathon, the legendary "Heartbreak Hill" has broken many spirits with its grueling climb. For LAS student Amanda McGrory, however, it was the downhill portion of the race that posed the greatest challenge, as she finished second this April in the women's wheelchair division...

2007-05-01 - Many forms of marine life have developed hard shells to protect themselves from predators. But these shells may be needing protection themselves, for they are under siege by increasing levels of acidity in our oceans, reports a new study by atmospheric scientists in LAS.Ocean acidity is rising as...

2007-05-01 - DNA necklaces were de rigueur at this spring's School of Molecular and Cellular Biology's (MCB) open house. You could get one by swishing a dash of Gatorade around your cheeks for 30 seconds, and then spitting it out into a solution of dish soap and...

2007-05-01 - "Bio-fouling" is a problem that has been recorded as far back as 412 B.C. Even Christopher Columbus described the ways he battled bio-fouling-the growth of microorganisms, plants, algae, and animals on the bottom of ship hulls. Today, bio-fouling is also a nagging problem at water purification and...

2007-05-01 - Renée Baillargeon, the University of Illinois Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She and the other 226 newly elected fellows will be...

2007-04-01 - The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences gratefully acknowledges the following individuals for their excellence in teaching and advising in 2007. Their contributions are vital to maintaining LAS as a great college. Academic Advising Award Deneen DeMarie,...

2007-04-01 - Superbugs beware. LAS researchers have discovered a way of producing more effective "lantibiotics"-naturally occurring antibiotics that may be used to target drug-resistant bacterial "superbugs."The number of bacteria resistant to antibiotics has increased significantly in the last decade, making...

2007-04-01 - Paul C. Lauterbur, Nobel laureate and University of Illinois chemistry professor, will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame next month. But tragically, this pioneering LAS researcher will not be present to receive his honor. Lauterbur passed away March 27 at his home in Urbana at...

2007-04-01 - The National Institutes of Health has awarded $7 million to a team of researchers from the University of Illinois' College of LAS and the University of Wisconsin to discover, engineer and produce a promising-yet little explored-class of antibiotic agents. The research will look for alternatives to...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...