News Bureau

Climate change contributes to gradually warming Aprils in southern Illinois, and at least one migratory bird species, the prothonotary warbler, is taking advantage of the heat. A new study analyzing 20 years of data found that the warblers start their egg-laying in southern Illinois significantly earlier in warmer springs. This increases the chances that the birds can raise two broods of offspring during the nesting season, researchers found.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Sticking with an exercise routine means being able to overcome the obstacles that invariably arise. A key to success is having the confidence that you can do it, researchers report. A new study explores how some cognitive strategies and abilities influence this "situation-specific self-confidence," a quality the researchers call "self-efficacy."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Honey bee colonies are in decline in many states, but little is known about their wild cousins, the bumble bees, or, for that matter, honey bees living on their own in the wild without beekeepers. A new initiative from the University of Illinois seeks to build a better record of honey bee and bumble bee abundance and distribution in Illinois by recruiting citizen scientists to report on wild bees seen anywhere in the state.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - 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.

You may not win friends, but a new study finds that you can influence people simply by lowering the pitch of your voice in the first moments of a conversation.

Honey bees that guard hive entrances are twice as likely to allow in trespassers from other hives if the intruders are infected with the Israeli acute paralysis virus, a deadly pathogen of bees, researchers report.

Their new study, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, strongly suggests that IAPV infection alters honey bees’ behavior and physiology in ways that boost the virus’s ability to spread, the researchers say.

Scientists report in the journal eNeuro that they’ve built an artificially intelligent ocean predator that behaves a lot like the original flesh-and-blood organism on which it was modeled. The virtual creature, “Cyberslug,” reacts to food and responds to members of its own kind much like the actual animal, the sea slug Pleurobranchaea californica, does.

A new study finds that some people routinely monitor the behavior of others and are eager to punish those who violate laws or societal norms, especially when they believe authorities have failed to do so. These self-appointed enforcers willingly embrace the job of keeping order, aren’t particularly concerned about accidentally punishing innocent people, and consider themselves kind and moral actors, the researchers found.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Researchers can predict your performance on a video game simply by measuring the volume of specific structures in your brain, a multi-institutional team reports this week.

Influenza, SARS and COVID-19 are all zoonotic diseases, readily transmitted from animals to humans. The viruses that cause these diseases also share traits that allow them to quickly mutate, infect widely and spread around the world.

In a new podcast, a veterinarian and expert in zoonotic diseases offers insights into the special characteristics of the new coronavirus that make it more like influenza and less like SARS or the virus that causes the especially lethal Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome.

The popularity of bulldogs and other flat-faced pets is at an all-time high. According to the American Kennel Club, from 2006-2016, the number of registered bulldogs and French bulldogs in the U.S. increased by 60% and 476%, respectively. In 2023, the French bulldog topped the AKC’s most popular breeds list. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign veterinary surgeon Dr. Heidi Phillips devotes much of her practice to treating the respiratory problems of flat-faced breeds like bulldogs. She argues for better breeding practices to avoid perpetuating the many health problems these breeds experience.

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.

Just like humans, dogs are sometimes born with impaired hearing or experience hearing loss as a result of disease, inflammation, aging or exposure to noise. Dog owners and K-9 handlers ought to keep this in mind when adopting or caring for dogs, and when bringing them into noisy environments, researchers say.

A six-week training program designed to strengthen resilience against emotional distress in military veterans was associated with positive changes in brain function and increased confidence in their ability to regulate emotions, researchers report.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - "Centipede Cinema" is the theme of this year's Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois, even though everybody - with the possible exception of horror movie writers, directors and actors - knows that centipedes aren't insects.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Dietary supplements containing vanadium are used by body builders to help beef up muscles and by some diabetic people to control blood sugar. New research now suggests the naturally occurring but easily toxic element may help prepare the body to recover speedily from infections from gram-negative organisms such as E. coli.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - For decades, scientists assumed that the ovary alone produced steroid hormones during pregnancy. In a new study in mice, however, researchers demonstrate that once an embryo attaches to the uterine wall, the uterus itself actually synthesizes the estrogen needed to sustain the pregnancy.

Using a laptop negates the benefits that nature offers in recovering from mental fatigue, according to research from the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - According to a new study, American, but not Chinese, children's sense of responsibility to their parents tends to decline in the seventh and eighth grades, a trend that coincides with declines in their academic performance.

Seven Urbana campus faculty members have been named University Scholars and will be honored at a campus reception Sept. 28 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the ballroom of the Alice Campbell Alumni Center, 601 S. Lincoln Ave., Urbana.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Six Urbana campus faculty members have been named University Scholars. The program recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. The faculty members will be honored at a campus reception Sept. 29 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the ballroom of the Alice Campbell Alumni Center, 601 S. Lincoln Ave., Urbana.

CHAMPAIGN,Ill. - Since the mapping of the human genome about a decade ago, genomic science has emerged as a tool in solving criminal mysteries, the riddles of parentage and human migration, and the puzzles of diseases.

The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture are announcing an investment of more than $140 million to establish seven artificial intelligence institutes in the U.S. Two of the seven will be led by teams at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The USDA-NIFA will fund the AI Institute for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management and Sustainability at the U. of I. Illinois computer science professor Vikram Adve will lead the AIFARMS Institute.

The NSF will fund the AI Institute for Molecular Discovery, Synthetic Strategy and Manufacturing, also known as the Molecule Maker Lab Institute. Huimin Zhao, a U. of I. professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of chemistry, will lead this institute.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Three scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have leading roles in a multi-institution quest funded by the National Science Foundation to determine how life emerged on Earth.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - William T. Greenough, a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, today was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Ed Diener, the Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois, is a 2012 recipient of the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. The award "recognizes distinguished theoretical or empirical contributions to basic research in psychology." The award is typically given to three scientists each year.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A pig used for research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a home in history. Its DNA will provide the first sequence of the swine genome to be completed with the help of a two-year $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced today by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Microbiologist Carl Woese of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society, the world's oldest continuously active scientific academy in the world.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Jake Carpenter-Thompson, of Lake City, Mich., an M.D./Ph.D. student in neuroscience at the University of Illinois, is one of two graduate students nationwide awarded a research grant from the American Tinnitus Association.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - What do entomologists do on autumn weekends? This Sunday the University of Illinois department of entomology is going to see an animated insect film: "Bee Movie," starring Jerry Seinfeld and Renée Zellweger.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The University of Illinois is one of 12 institutions in Illinois to receive funding from the Federal Communications Commission Rural Health Care Pilot Program, an initiative to improve health-related communications infrastructure nationwide. The university will share in the $21 million grant to the state of Illinois. The money will be used to enhance the state's cyber-infrastructure, improving the communications capabilities of health providers all over the state.

Temple Grandin, a University of Illinois alumna and a professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

By enticing away the repressors dampening unexpressed, silent genes in Streptomyces bacteria, researchers at the University of Illinois have unlocked several large gene clusters for new natural products, according to a study published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

The University of Illinois is hosting a Human-Animal Studies Summer Institute -- the first of its kind in the emerging interdisciplinary field.

CHAMPAIGN,Ill. - The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Mayo Clinic are forming a strategic alliance designed to promote a broad spectrum of collaborative research, the development of new technologies and clinical tools, and the design and implementation of novel education programs. Officials from the university and the clinic recently signed an agreement establishing the formal relationship.

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, 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.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Researchers have discovered that a frog that lives near noisy springs in central China can tune its ears to different sound frequencies, much like the tuner on a radio can shift from one frequency to another. It is the only known example of an animal that can actively select what frequencies it hears, the researchers say.

UI scientist Tim Garrow, in collaboration with Jiri Jiracek of the Czech Academy of Sciences, has applied for a provisional patent on a class of chemicals that has future therapeutic uses in medicine, specifically cancer treatment.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. University of Illinois researchers have major roles in a newly announced $43.8 million National Science Foundation-funded initiative to define the function of the genes in a plant considered a model for understanding all plants. Eventually, their findings could have dramatic implications for all agricultural crops.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Researchers report this month that red colobus monkeys in a park in western Uganda have been exposed to an unknown orthopoxvirus, a pathogen related to the viruses that cause smallpox, monkeypox and cowpox. Most of the monkeys screened harbor antibodies to a virus that is similar - but not identical - to known orthopoxviruses.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Researchers report that study subjects sometimes read meaning into the words "nice" and "act," in ways that can influence the subjects' willingness to cooperate with others on simple tasks.

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.

In the summer of 2012, two undergraduate students tackled a problem that plant ecology experts had overlooked for 30 years. The students demonstrated that different plant species vary in how they take in carbon dioxide and emit water through stomata, the pores in their leaves. The data boosted the accuracy of mathematical models of carbon and water fluxes through plant leaves by 30 to 60 percent.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Scientists Nick Holonyak Jr. and Susan E. Fahrbach of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are among 291 people selected as 2002 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Two University of Illinois professors have been elected fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology. Steven Blanke and Bryan White are among the 79 microbiologists chosen by their peers for this honor.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Two University of Illinois professors have been elected fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology. James Slauch and Wilfred van der Donk are among the 78 microbiologists chosen by their peers for significant contributions to their field.

Two University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors have been awarded 2024 Guggenheim Fellowships.

Two faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been elected 2017 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fellows are chosen for their outstanding contributions to their field of study.

Two brain-signaling molecules control how anemonefish dads care for their young and respond to nest intruders, researchers report in a new study. Because there are many similarities in brain structure between fish and humans, the findings offer insight into the fundamental nature of parental care, the scientists say.