LAS News Archive

2005-10-01 -     How do you extend a warm welcome to 4,200 freshmen? In the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences it was by providing them the opportunity to meet and learn more about each other. On August 22, an estimated 90 percent of the Class of 2009 streamed into the U. of I. Armory for the...

2005-10-01 - Todd Martinez showed up at his University of Illinois office expecting to participate in an ordinary conference call. But the conference call turned out to be a ruse. It was just a way to get him into his office for a phone call informing him that he was one of 25 recipients of the prestigious "...

2005-10-01 - Growing up in Egypt, Mohamed El-Ashry (MS, '63, PhD, '66, geology) cultivated a passion for geology following dramatic discoveries of oil in the Gulf of Suez and along the Red Sea. But it wasn't until he came to the University of Illinois in the early 1960s that El-Ashry discovered that his...

2005-10-01 - When some people retire, they head to golf courses and warmer climates. But when George W. Parshall (PhD, '54, organic chemistry) retired from DuPont in 1992, he took a slightly different course. He joined the effort to destroy chemical weapon stockpiles in the United States and across the world....

2005-10-01 - Susan Avery (MS, '74, physics; PhD, '78, atmospheric sciences) still remembers the weather contests in the 1970s in which University of Illinois atmospheric science students competed to see who could forecast a particular city's weather most accurately for an entire semester. At that time, however...

2005-10-01 - Robert Stuart (BS, '43, chemical engineering) heard the bombs coming. Instantly, he rolled out of his army bunk just seconds before an explosion ripped the roof off of his bamboo barracks. Stuart vividly remembers this experience from his service time in the Philippines, where his company arrived...

2005-10-01 - Turkey and Iran had been trying to connect their capitals by railroad since 1936, but the task was continually interrupted by war and other strife. As a result, the 1,500-mile railroad was still 350 miles short of being connected, even in the late 1950s. That's when Secretary of State John Dulles...

2005-09-01 -   Exercise invigorates and enlivens all the facilities of body and of mind... It spreads a gladness and satisfaction over our minds and qualifies us for every sort of business, and every sort of pleasure. John Adams Although John Adams lacked the research capabilities of...

2005-09-01 -   Four professors from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences were among the seven U. of I. professors recently appointed to the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS). The professors from LAS are Peter Beak, chemistry; Stephen Jaeger,...

2005-09-01 - Every year come August, Champaign-Urbana experiences a population explosion when University of Illinois students return for the fall semester. Add a record number of freshmen to that mix, and the campus was hopping as classes started. Roughly 7,600 freshmen enrolled in the University this fall, the...

2005-06-01 - Every year the Quad takes on a new look. Not because of all the chalking, but due to the ever-changing student fashion. Gone are the days of bobby socks and big hair. Now students make it to class with messenger bags containing laptops, cell phones, and iPods. Their jeans are distressed; their...

2005-06-01 - For Tayari Jones, the recent reopening of the 20-year-old case against convicted child murderer Wayne Williams is not so much a revisiting of ancient wounds but rather like agitating "a bone poorly set-painful, crooked, and gimpy." The LAS assistant professor of...

2005-06-01 - The year was 1937 when strikers at the Republic Steel Mill on the southeast side of Chicago met at a neighborhood bar. After deciding to picket, the crowd began to move across a field next to the factory, many carrying signs and U.S. flags. Violence was not expected, which was why some workers had...

2005-06-01 - Vaccines and medicines delivered by shots may someday be timed to release the drugs with unprecedented precision, thanks to a unique collaboration among University of Illinois scientists. Daniel Pack, a chemical engineer in LAS, has teamed with Kevin Kim in...

2005-06-01 - Over a span of eight years, from 1935 to 1943, a cadre of 13 government-sponsored photographers captured the fabric of rural America by exposing the profound poverty experienced by migrant workers and tenant farmers, who were some of the nation's most invisible citizens during the Great Depression....

2005-06-01 - In Room 140 of U. of I.'s Admissions and Records building there sits a filing cabinet that serves as a glorified lost and found. It contains manila envelopes stuffed with standard-sized pieces of paper that are infused with meaning, but have been forgotten over the course of time. The several...

2005-06-01 - Don't try to hoodwink that baby. In contrast to conventional wisdom, infants grasp sophisticated psychological reasoning at a much earlier age than previously believed. LAS psychology professor Renée Baillargeon studied several dozen 15-month-olds...

2005-06-01 - Last year in the Midwest, the dog days of summer more resembled the first days of autumn. Newspapers throughout Illinois reported on the record cool summer. On August 12, 2004, for example, Chicago had a high of 58; the day before it was 62. Record lows in the 40s were reported throughout the state...

2005-05-01 - Entomologist Gene Robinson was among the 72 scientists elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of distinguished research and continuing achievements. Election to membership in the academy is considered one of the...

2005-04-01 - Research begun at LAS has determined the long-mysterious mechanism of an internal compass that helps migratory birds navigate north each spring and south each fall. In the 1970s, Klaus Schulten, now a Swanlund Professor of Physics and a professor of ...

2005-04-01 -   FLATFILEgalleries, Chicago, IL Thursday, May 19, 2005   7 p.m. f you love to discover new voices in literature, treat yourself to an evening of dazzling readings in one of Chicago's most exciting art galleries. Join the staff of Ninth...

2005-04-01 - On April 19, 1996, when a tornado struck southeast Urbana, David Wojtowicz, a senior research programmer in LAS's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, was reminded of how vital his online weather page had become to the campus community....

2005-04-01 - Consequences of the second largest volcanic eruption ever to besiege this planet continue to guide human behavior today. The way we cooperate, share resources, and reciprocate those exchanges are part of our genome and may have been accentuated by the disastrous Toba eruption 73,000 years ago on...

2005-04-01 - Geology graduate student Chris Mah's discovery of a new species of starfish reads like an old-fashioned detective story.The mystery began eight years ago off the coast of Palau in the 400-feet depths of the central Pacific, a place only "dive nuts"...

2005-04-01 - The rich variety of English language expression goes well beyond the British or American versions. A group of University of Illinois graduate students set out this year to explore the diverse ethnic ways of speaking English, and how the language can overcome barriers set up by native and non-native...