Research »
ith heavy long-term debt that came due amid the nation’s recent credit crisis slashed investment more than three times as much as companies whose paybacks ducked the meltdown, a new University of Illinois study found.
Researchers at the UI have designed a small molecule that blocks an aberrant pathway associated with myotonic dystrophy type 1, the most common form of muscular dystrophy.
Two new studies of pedestrian safety found that using a cell phone while hoofing it can endanger one’s health. And older pedestrians talking on cell phones are particularly impaired in crossing a busy (simulated) street, the researchers found.
Although comics have been published in newspapers since the 1890s, they still get no respect from some teachers and librarians, despite their current popularity among adults. But according to a UI expert in children’s literature, critics should stop tugging on Superman’s cape and start giving him and his superhero friends their due.
New insight into how nature handles some fundamental processes is guiding researchers in the design of tailor-made proteins for applications such as artificial photosynthetic centers, long-range electron transfers, and fuel-cell catalysts for energy conversion.
Tax increases are the only solution to a widening budget crisis that a new study says has landed Illinois among the nation’s most financially troubled states, a soon-to-be-released report by a team of UI economists warns.
Researchers have found a way to directly convert spermatogonial stem cells, the precursors of sperm cells, into tissues of the prostate, skin and uterus. Their approach, described this month in the journal Stem Cells, may prove to be an effective alternative to the medical use of embryonic stem cells.
Campus »
The UI and representatives of the Graduate Employees Organization reached a tentative contract agreement midday on Nov. 17 during negotiations at the Levis Faculty Center in Urbana.
The UI faces a severe cash flow problem this fiscal year – and severe budgetary constraints in Fiscal Year 2011, which begins July 1 – but it is imperative to provide a salary program next year to retain faculty and staff members, university officials told the UI Board of Trustees when the board met Nov. 12 at the Springfield campus.
Open forums will be held on each of the campuses during December to gather input from constituents about the type of person they would like to see as the university’s 17th president. When the UI Board of Trustees met Nov. 12 in Springfield, the board appointed a 19-member search committee to assist in selecting the next president, and appointed Trustee Pamela Strobel as chair. May Berenbaum, a Swanlund Professor and head of the department of entomology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Urbana, was named vice chair.
At the Nov. 9 meeting of the Urbana-Champaign Senate, senators approved resolutions that paved the way for the elimination of salary-based parking rates, for amending the Senate Constitution to include academic professionals in the senate electorate, and for students to participate in a possible strike by the Graduate Employees’ Organization without fear of reprisal.
The Graduate College has announced eight projects that will receive funding for 2009-2010 through its new initiative, Focal Point.
Between Sept. 1, 2008, and Aug. 31, 2009, 129 faculty members and academic professionals retired from the UI, according to the Office of Academic Human Resources. The retirees, their positions, units and approximate years of service appear online.
- Peter Kimble, who retired April 30 after a 35-year career at the UI, still teaches software workshops on campus for FAST3. He and his wife, Brenda, a retired schoolteacher, also work seasonally for a local technology company that provides computer support for trade fairs around the country.
- Traveling, tennis and family activities have kept Lois Meerdink busy since she retired at the end of June as assistant dean of Business Career Services in the College of Business. Meerdink helped thousands of students get jobs and internships during her 20-year career at the UI.
Among the newcomers to the Urbana campus are faculty members whose appointments began this summer or fall. Inside Illinois continues its tradition of introducing some of the new faculty members on campus and will feature at least two new colleagues in each fall issue.
- Catherine Blake, associate professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science
- Sidonie Lavergne, assistant professor of pharmacology in the department of veterinary biosciences, College of Veterinary Medicine
- Roberto Galvez, assistant professor of psychology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Honors »
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine, and the writer who exposed both the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq and the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, will be this year’s recipient of the Illinois Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism.
Book corner »
The idea that love – especially the unrequited variety – and the passion associated with it could render one physically ill goes way back on the cultural-historical timeline. According to Valeria Sobol, a UI professor of Slavic languages and literatures, scholars have traced the concept of “lovesickness” all the way back to the Greeks.
As both an idea and an institution, the family has been at the heart of Chicano/a cultural politics since the Mexican American civil rights movement emerged in the late 1960s. In “Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics,” Richard T. Rodríguez, a professor of English and of Latina/Latino Studies at Illinois, explores the competing notions of la familia found in movement-inspired literature, film, video, music, painting and other forms of cultural expression created by Chicano men.
