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Culture sculpts neural response to visual stimuli, new research indicates
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Researchers in Illinois and Singapore have found that the aging brain reflects cultural differences in the way that it processes visual information. This study appears this month in the journal Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience. This paper and another published by the same group in 2006 are the first to demonstrate that […]
Psychology professor elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Renée Baillargeon, the University of Illinois Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced today. She and the other 226 newly elected fellows will be honored at the annual Induction Ceremony on Oct. 6 at academy headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. Other […]
Research group gets $7 million to pursue new antibiotic agents
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The National Institutes of Health has awarded $7 million to a team of researchers from the University of Illinois 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 standard antibiotics, which are losing […]
Hot flashes: Studies explore the role of genes, obesity and alcohol
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Many women in the menopausal transition experience hot flashes: unpredictable, sometimes disruptive, periods of intense heat in the upper torso, neck and face. Although generations of physicians have prescribed hormones to reduce these symptoms, very little research has focused on the underlying causes of hot flashes. Three new studies explore the role […]
Study of planarians offers insight into germ cell development
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The planarian is not as well known as other, more widely used subjects of scientific study – model creatures such as the fruit fly, nematode or mouse. But University of Illinois cell and developmental biology professor Phillip Newmark thinks it should be. As it turns out, the tiny, seemingly cross-eyed flatworm is […]
Study finds school environment can moderate student aggression
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The culture of a school can dampen – or exacerbate – the violent or disruptive tendencies of aggressive young teens, new research indicates. A large-scale study from the University of Illinois found that while personal traits and peer interactions have the most direct effect on the aggressive behavior of middle school students, […]
On the collapse of North American honey bee populations
Entomology professor and department head May Berenbaum wrote an Op-Ed article published in the New York Times in March about the collapse of honey bee populations across North America. Berenbaum presides over the department that is home to several faculty members who led the sequencing of the honey bee genome, completed in 2006, putting Illinois […]
Prefrontal cortex loses neurons during adolescence, researchers find
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Researchers at the University of Illinois have found that adolescence is a time of remodeling in the prefrontal cortex, a brain structure dedicated to higher functions such as planning and social behaviors. The study of rats found that both males and females lose neurons in the ventral prefrontal cortex between adolescence and […]
Insights into osteosarcoma in cats and dogs may improve palliative care
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Researchers at the University of Illinois have found that a molecular pathway known to have a role in the progression of bone cancer in humans is also critical to the pathology of skeletal tumors in dogs and cats. Their work could lead to advances in the palliative care of companion animals afflicted […]
New study rewrites evolutionary history of vespid wasps
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Scientists at the University of Illinois have conducted a genetic analysis of vespid wasps that revises the vespid family tree and challenges long-held views about how the wasps’ social behaviors evolved. In the study, published in the Feb. 21 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found genetic evidence that […]
E. coli bacteria migrating between humans, chimps in Ugandan park
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Scientists from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana have found that people employed in chimpanzee-focused research and tourism in a park in western Uganda are exchanging gastrointestinal bacteria – specifically Escherichia coli – with local chimpanzee populations. And some of the E. coli strains migrating to chimps are resistant to antibiotics used […]
David H. Baker to be honored for work in animal and nutritional science
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – This spring David H. Baker, professor emeritus of animal sciences and nutritional sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will receive the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology’s Charles A. Black Award. The award is given to an individual who “has demonstrated outstanding achievement in his or her area of expertise […]