LAS News Archive

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 - 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 - 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 - 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...

2005-05-01 - 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 - 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 - When Marc Perry was growing up in New York City in the 1970s, he remembers his babysitter taking him to outdoor street jams where people plugged turntables into outlets at the base of streetlamps. What he witnessed was the beginning of the hip-hop phenomenon, which has now spread across the globe,...

2005-04-01 - The orange (and blue) that appeared to be everywhere during basketball season only seem as if they have been Illinois' colors forever. During the University's first quarter-century, a loyal Illini may have donned gold and black or green and white.Patrick Hayes, a development officer in LAS who once...

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 - They're just the stuff to wire tomorrow's molecule-sized computer chips, make fibers tougher than Kevlar, even create cables for an elevator to space. Now LAS researchers have taken a giant step toward those ambitions by developing a method to separate different types of carbon nanotubes. Just one...

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...

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 - Spend an hour with the first five students designated as Civic Leadership Fellows at Illinois and any fears about the future-who's taking us into it and how-are doused. For example, Kasey Umland, a graduate student from Monee, Illinois, wants to have a hand in restructuring the International...

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 - 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 ...

2005-02-01 - Feminism needs to end its 150-year obsession with the politics of personal appearance, and get past its dim view of beauty, says Linda Scott, an associate professor of gender and women's studies and advertising. She says beauty is an issue that has divided women much more than it has aided their...

2005-02-01 - On the first days of the Iraq War, as Marines battled to secure their position in an-Nasiriyah, U.S. Marine Corporal Daniel Rhodes, 23, spotted a live landmine lodged below a pipeline in the desert dirt. The pipeline carried essential fuel to frontline troops, and an explosion threatened the entire...

2005-02-01 - Adolescents who think little of themselves tend to shy away from interactions with peers. This uncertainty and withdrawal then draws negative feedback from other students, prompting even more withdrawal and leaving them as targets for teasing or bullying and with few chances to have close friends....

2005-02-01 -   The cliché, "it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks," applies to humans, too. A recent study conducted in part by LAS psychology graduate research assistant Alex Konkel explains how behaviors developed over a lifetime remain automatic while newly learning behaviors require the kind of...

2005-02-01 - Chemists in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have found a new way to outwit resistance to antibiotics.By inserting a naturally occurring molecule into an antibiotic-resistant bacterium, the team was able to gradually destroy the machinery responsible for the resistance."Multidrug-resistant...

2005-02-01 - When it comes to making calls from a moving vehicle, the hands-off technique of operating cell phones is just as distracting as the hands-on approach. Experiments conducted in a virtual reality suite at U of I's Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and...

2005-02-01 - As computers get faster, chips get smaller, and the transistors that make up chips get harder and harder to build. But a new chemical trick developed by LAS chemical and biomolecular engineers could allow manufacturers to build next-generation transistors without resorting to costly and unproven...

2005-01-01 - 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 Staff Awards Shari L. French, Anthropology Bob Taylor, School of Chemical Sciences...

2004-12-01 - Considering the overwhelming amount of time South Korean mothers devote to their children's academic endeavors, for some, it is as though they have never left school.Education traditionally has been valued by South Koreans, but a new generation of mothers have taken this dedication to a whole new...

2004-12-01 - When LAS English assistant professor Audrey Petty was asked to prepare a paper for a panel titled "Edible Icons in Black (and White)" she knew she had to write about chitlins. The result of her efforts is the essay "The Sacred and The Profane: Late Night Chitlins With Momma." "Chitlins' are a...