LAS News Archive

2006-04-01 - The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences gratefully acknowledges the following individuals for their excellence in teaching and advising in 2006. Their contributions are vital to maintaining LAS as a great college. Academic Advising Award Phyllis...

2006-04-01 - Mickey Mouse became a household name, thanks in part to such uncommon names as the "thaumatrope," the "zoetrope," and even the tongue-twisting "phenakistoscope." These nineteenth-century contraptions laid the groundwork for Walt Disney's cartoon creations, as well as the animated films of today,...

2006-04-01 - If we want to understand how wireless networking will expand in the future, a U. of I. professor suggests we need to look in the past at how the telephone became a fixture around the world.The product's ubiquity is not the result of inventor Alexander Graham Bell. Nor is it the work of the phone...

2006-04-01 - Recent evidence from the Cassini Mission's Huygens Probe suggests that the largest moon orbiting Saturn, Titan, features methane rivers that sculpt channels into that moon's continents of ice. Surface images from the probe show gravel-sized pieces of river ice similar to stones found in Earth's dry...

2006-04-01 - For Valeri Werpetinski, community service means more than merely donating time—it's about civic responsibility and public engagement. She credits her parents for instilling in her such a strong commitment to the community. As a young girl, she participated in the Girl Scouts and helped her mom...

2006-04-01 - University of Illinois researchers have discovered that DNA makes an effective tool for changing the shape of molecules-which, in turn, may help change the shape of the rapidly expanding field of nanotechnology.In a recent breakthrough, U. of I. researchers found that by attaching DNA to molecules...

2006-04-01 - Coming to the land of milk and honey can be hazardous to new immigrants' diet and health.So says Ilana Redstone Akresh, a visiting professor of sociology at the University of Illinois who recently analyzed dietary assimilation and immigrant health. In her study...

2006-03-01 - Dianne Pinderhughes, University of Illinois political science professor, was recently nominated to serve as president of the American Political Science Association (APSA) for the 2007-2008 term. If elected, she will also act as president-elect for the 2006-2007 term. Elections will be held during...

2006-03-01 - From paying her own way through college to writing a landmark book addressing Asian American culture, Betty Lee Sung has a habit of taking matters into her own hands. After discovering how little material was available on the Chinese community in America, Sung wrote Mountain of Gold: The Story...

2006-02-01 - September 26, 2005I feel moved to respond to the American Counseling Association's request for therapists to travel to New Orleans to counsel storm victims. Besides having practiced psychology for 25 years, I am a flood victim myself. While vacationing in 1989, a broken pipe sent 173,000 gallons of...

2006-02-01 - They are calling him "the King of Bling" because of his lavish array of gold and jewels. And as he begins his second tour of the United States, he's getting the rock-star treatment. But unlike most aging rock stars, he just happens to be over 3,000 years old. His name: King Tut. Tutankhamun, the...

2006-02-01 - A fit body can increase the chances of a fit mind for women using hormone-replacement therapy to battle the symptoms of menopause. University of Illinois researchers have found that being physically fit can slow the decline in cognitive brain functions associated with the long-term use (11 years...

2006-02-01 - Could vital information about many human diseases be deciphered from genes inside freshwater flatworms?Researchers cannot yet offer a definitive answer, but a recent study at the U. of I. has provided an important advance for pursuing both that idea and the biology of stem cells. After sequencing...

2006-02-01 - Someday, you might just wallpaper your living room with a flat, plastic video display, rather than flower patterns. Or soldiers might cover their tents with an "electronic tarp" that monitors the air for biological and chemical weapons.Traditional electronic devices are solid and rigid, such as the...

2006-02-01 - The decision whether to go with hormone-replacement therapy is complicated and confusing, says Ann Nardulli, professor of molecular and integrative physiology. However, her research has shed new light on how estrogen acts in the body-in...

2006-02-01 - Often in the classrooms, daycare centers, and libraries that Rigoberto Gonzalez visits around the country, the LAS associate professor of English will see in a child's young face his own unlikely journey. After all, the middle-class life Gonzalez now...

2006-02-01 - The hormone estrogen, vital to a woman's reproductive development, has been linked for several years to an increased risk of breast cancer. Now, LAS researchers have uncovered a piece of the puzzle that could help to explain why.After exposing breast cancer cells to estrogen in the laboratory,...

2006-01-01 - On January 19, Sarah C. Mangelsdorf was able to drop "acting" from her title as she officially took the reigns as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."As interim dean, Sarah Mangelsdorf has administered the college with considerable...

2006-01-01 - Oxygen may be necessary for life, but it sure gets in the way of making hydrogen fuel cheaply and abundantly from a family of enzymes present in many microorganisms. Blocking oxygen's path to an enzyme's production machinery could lead to a renewable energy source that would generate only water as...

2006-01-01 - The young and highly experimental literary magazine produced at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has won a prestigious literary award. Ninth Letter, published by the English...

2006-01-01 - Does dark energy exist? Or is Albert Einstein's most famous theory flawed?These are two of the million-dollar questions that an international team of astronomers hopes to answer as they gaze back to the beginning of the universe in search of a mysterious property known as "dark energy."The...

2006-01-01 - LAS student Ashley Mazzola recalls the bewildered look of the young Venezuelan boy whom she was helping with a craft project when she told him she was born in Illinois. "But how do you speak Spanish?" he asked.His assumption that only those from Spanish-language countries speak Spanish made her...

2005-12-01 - With the benefit of computer imaging and macro-photography, a scholar who has spent two years studying six fragmented clay tablets from the ancient Canaanite civilization is proposing some new interpretations of the tablets. Wayne Pitard, an LAS professor in the ...

2005-12-01 - Humor is a morale booster in a war zone. And so, it seems, is school spirit. College rivalries are proving to be a welcome distraction and the reason that some battalion offices in Iraq look like tailgate tents during football season. A rainbow of college logos and mascots are emblazoned on...

2005-12-01 - Measurements of the ion-current through the open state of a membrane-protein's ion channel have allowed scientists at the University of Illinois to obtain a detailed picture of the effect of the protein microenvironment on the affinity of ionizable amino-acid residues for protons.The findings are...