News Bureau

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Phillip A. Newmark, a researcher in the department of cell and structural biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is one of five recipients nationwide of a 2003 Damon Runyon Scholar Award.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a new model of global carbon and nitrogen cycling that will fundamentally transform the understanding of how plants and soils interact with a changing atmosphere and climate.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - University of Illinois researchers report this week that chronic exposure to estradiol, the main estrogen in the body, diminishes some cognitive functions. Rats exposed to a steady dose of estradiol were impaired on tasks involving working memory and response inhibition, the researchers found.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - An analysis of the remains of ancient midges - tiny non-biting insects closely related to mosquitoes - opens a new window on the past with a detailed view of the surprising regional variability that accompanied climate warming during the early Holocene epoch, 10,000 to 5,500 years ago.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Herbert E. Whiteley, the head of the department of pathobiology and veterinary science at the University of Connecticut, will return to the University of Illinois as the dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, pending approval of the UI Board of Trustees at its meeting May 23-24 in Springfield.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - University of Illinois professor Huimin Zhao has received a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The western corn rootworm beetle, a pest that feasts on corn roots and corn silk and costs growers more than $1 billion annually in the U.S., also can survive on the perennial grass Miscanthus x giganteus, a potential biofuels crop that would likely be grown alongside corn, researchers report.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Cell division is essential to life, but the mechanism by which emerging daughter cells organize and divvy up their genetic endowments is little understood. In a new study, researchers at the University of Illinois and Columbia University report on how a key motor protein orchestrates chromosome movements at a critical stage of cell division.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Using X-ray data and advanced computer simulation and visualization software, researchers at the University of Illinois have painstakingly modeled a critical part of a mechanism by which bacteria take up large molecules. Their findings provide a rare window on the complex interplay of proteins involved in the active transport of materials across cell membranes.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Feel like time is repeating itself and won't move on? It could be your internal clock is backpedaling because your PKG-II is out of whack.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Researchers studying a critical stage of pregnancy - implantation of the embryo in the uterus - have found a protein that is vital to the growth of new blood vessels that sustain the embryo. Without this protein, which is produced in higher quantities in the presence of estrogen, the embryo is unlikely to survive.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Blood clots can save lives, staunching blood loss after injury, but they can also kill. Let loose in the bloodstream, a clot can cause a heart attack, stroke or pulmonary embolism.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Researchers report this week that they are the first to observe the dynamic, ratchet-like movements of single ribosomal molecules in the act of building proteins from genetic blueprints. (View animation.)

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - A new study reveals how enzymes in the honey bee gut detoxify pesticides commonly used to kill mites in the honey bee hive. This is the first study to tease out the precise molecular mechanisms that allow a pollinating insect to tolerate exposure to these potentially deadly compounds.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The National Science Foundation announced this month that it is funding a new Physics Frontiers Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Center for the Physics of Living Cells is one of nine Physics Frontiers Centers in the U.S., and the second to explore the physics of biological systems.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Every time a human or bacterial cell divides it first must copy its DNA. Specialized proteins unzip the intertwined DNA strands while others follow and build new strands, using the originals as templates. Whenever these proteins encounter a break - and there are many - they stop and retreat, allowing a new cast of molecular players to enter the scene.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Ferrets, frogs and finches are becoming more common as pets, but the list of unusual species adopted into human households now includes some of the most exotic creatures on the planet. The trade in exotic pets has become a multi-billion dollar enterprise, but expansion of the industry sometimes outpaces veterinary knowledge of how to treat the maladies that afflict these unusual animals.

A Minute With™... neuroscientist Aron Barbey

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Is it me, or are you a less than ideal partner? For psychologists studying how people manage romantic relationships, that's not an easy question to answer. What if one of the partners is deeply afraid of intimacy? Could she be acting in ways that undermine the relationship? Or is her partner contributing to the problem?

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Richard Herman, the chancellor of the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois, and Jeffrey Moore, the Murchison-Mallory Professor of Chemistry at Illinois, have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced today.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A gene essential to the growth and development of most organ systems in the body also is vital to female - but not male - embryonic sexual development, scientists report this month.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - If farmers talk big about 2004 crops as they get ready to head out into the fields this spring, let them talk. Believe them. Last year's crop season saw record yields in every major crop amid the closest-to-perfect weather conditions of the last century, scientists say.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - A team of 24 researchers from the U.S., Europe, Taiwan and Japan and led by University of Illinois scientists has engineered a new anti-cancer agent that is about 200 times more active in killing tumor cells than similar drugs used in recent clinical trials. The study appears this week in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - African cowpea farmers, Indian street vendors, Peruvian llama farmers and many others will benefit from a new interactive, peer-reviewed information-sharing website now under construction at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - "I request to ban trans fats from the American diet."

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - We humans have a fairly erratic sense of time. We tend to misjudge the duration of events, particularly when they are emotional in nature. Disturbingly negative experiences, for example, seem to last much longer than they actually do. And highly positive experiences seem to pass more quickly than negative ones.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - When a zebra finch hears a new song from a member of its own species, the experience changes gene expression in its brain in unexpected ways, researchers report. The sequential switching on and off of thousands of genes after a bird hears a new tune offers a new picture of memory in the songbird brain.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - University of Illinois entomologist May R. Berenbaum is the 2009 recipient of the Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the organism that causes tuberculosis in humans, also afflicts Asian (and occasionally other) elephants. Diagnosing and treating elephants with TB is a challenge, however, as little is known about how their immune systems respond to the infection. A new study begins to address this knowledge gap, and offers new tools for detecting and monitoring TB in captive elephants.

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.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Not that long ago in a hot spring in Kamchatka, Russia, two groups of genetically indistinguishable microbes parted ways. They began evolving into different species - despite the fact that they still encountered one another in their acidic, boiling habitat and even exchanged some genes from time to time, researchers report. This is the first example of what the researchers call sympatric speciation in a microorganism.

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 by humans in Uganda.

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.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Bisphenol A, a chemical widely used in plastics and known to cause reproductive problems in the offspring of pregnant mice exposed to it, also has been found to retard the growth of follicles of adult mice and hinder their production of steroid hormones, researchers report.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Inflammation, the body's earliest response to damage or infection, can aid the healing process and trigger an immune response against invading pathogens. But inflammation gone awry can also undermine health, as in diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis or asthma.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Mothers participating in the Special Supplemental Nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, are more likely to discontinue breastfeeding their infants before 6 months of age than non-WIC mothers, especially if they rely upon relatives to provide child care, according to a new study by Juhee Kim, a professor of kinesiology and community health at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Robert A. Easter today was named the dean of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has served as interim dean since August 2001. His appointment was approved by the board of trustees at its meeting in Springfield.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The University of Illinois' Institute for Genomic Biology has been renamed in honor of a microbiology professor who changed the course of science with his discovery of a third major branch of the tree of life. That professor, Carl R. Woese, died in late 2012.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a simple and economical technique for imaging and mapping fruit fly chromosomes. This new approach will enable them to construct the first accurate map of the chromosomes and tease out the secrets hidden in their stripes.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Everything you think you know about the causes of rising obesity in the U.S. might be wrong, researchers say in a new report.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Herons nesting in the wetlands of southeast Chicago are still being exposed to chemicals banned in the U.S. in the 1970s, a research team reports. The chemicals do not appear to be affecting the birds' reproductive success, however.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Does estrogen help cognition? Many women ponder that question as a quality-of-life issue while deciding on estrogen therapy since it has been linked to potential disease complications. Now, a new study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggests that the stress of any given task at least partially determines if hormones will help the mind.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A new technique to fight crop insect pests may affect different insect populations differently, researchers report. They analyzed RNA interference (RNAi), a method that uses genetic material to "silence" specific genes - in this case genes known to give insect pests an advantage. The researchers found that western corn rootworm beetles that are already resistant to crop rotation are in some cases also less vulnerable to RNAi.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - A new study of proteins, the molecular machines that drive all life, also sheds light on the history of living organisms.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - A new study describes how bacteria use a previously unknown means to defeat an antibiotic. The researchers found that the bacteria have modified a common "housekeeping" enzyme in a way that enables the enzyme to recognize and disarm the antibiotic.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Two University of Illinois researchers, Phillip A. Newmark, a professor of cell and developmental biology, and Wilfred A. van der Donk, the William H. and Janet Lycan professor of chemistry, have been named Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The routine use of antibiotics in swine production can have unintended consequences, with antibiotic resistance genes sometimes leaking from waste lagoons into groundwater.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Physical activity is known to reduce depression and fatigue in people struggling with chronic illness. A new study indicates that this effect may stem from an individual's sense of mastery over - or belief in his or her ability to achieve - certain physical goals.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Researchers have isolated two Chinese soybean lines that grow without the primary protein linked to soy allergies in children and adults. The two lines already are adapted to Illinois-like conditions and will be given away to breeders seeking to produce new varieties of allergy-free soybeans without genetic engineering.