News Bureau

Chemists at the University of Illinois have successfully produced fuels using water, carbon dioxide and visible light through artificial photosynthesis. By converting carbon dioxide into more complex molecules like propane, green energy technology is now one step closer to using excess CO2 to store solar energy – in the form of chemical bonds – for use when the sun is not shining and in times of peak demand.

I slowly turn each page of Florence Lee’s large paper scrapbook, making sure not to wrinkle any of the items she placed inside. Its contents offer a snapshot of student life in the early 20th century at the University of Illinois: a laminated orange and blue button from a homecoming football game, a brochure from the Anti-Cigarette League of America, ribbons and tickets from Dad’s Day events and dozens of photographs of scenes around campus, including personal photographs of Florence Lee with her family and friends. All of these items were either glued or, in the case of some of the flat paper items, had their corners tucked into angled slots cut into the pages. The items that Florence Lee placed in this scrapbook come from her undergraduate years at the University of Illinois – 1917-20. This memento offers a window into that time.

A 10-week muscle-building and dietary program involving 50 middle-aged adults found no evidence that eating a high-protein diet increased strength or muscle mass more than consuming a moderate amount of protein while training. The intervention involved a standard strength-training protocol with sessions three times per week. None of the participants had previous weightlifting experience.

Five faculty members have been named to the 2017 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list (previously known as the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers list). The list recognizes “leading researchers in the sciences and social sciences from around the world."

A Minute With...™ U. of I. anthropology professor Ripan Malhi

When given the choice, honey bee foragers prefer to collect sugar syrup laced with the fungicide chlorothalonil over sugar syrup alone, researchers report in the journal Scientific Reports.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - After the precipitous drop in crude oil prices over the past nine months, some policymakers in Illinois have advocated raising the state's excise tax on gasoline, which has remained unchanged at 19 cents per gallon since 1990.

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.

The Carle Illinois College of Medicine, the first engineering-based medical school, has received preliminary acreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and is recruiting students for its first class.

When the Marching Illini perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, they’ll march and play for 2 1/2 miles, in front of 3 million people lining the parade route.

A U. of I. professor discusses drones and the implications of their use in terrorism and warfare.

A new lightweight, low-cost agricultural robot, developed by a team of scientists at the University of Illinois, could transform data collection and field scouting for agronomists, seed companies and farmers.

This is the story of three bird species and how they interact. The brown-headed cowbird plays the role of outlaw: It lays its eggs in other birds’ nests and lets them raise its young – often at the expense of the host’s nestlings. To combat this threat, yellow warblers have developed a special “seet” call that means, “Look out! Cowbird!”

In a new study, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report that red-winged blackbirds respond to the seet call as if they know what it means.

In early 2014, months before the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and shortly after the Black Lives Matter movement got its start, Michael Schlosser, the director of the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, began offering police recruits classes that challenged their views about race and racism, introduced them to critical race theory and instructed them in methods to de-escalate potentially volatile encounters with members of minority groups.

A U. of I. journalism alumnus who is now the newsroom attorney for The New York Times got some unexpected online attention last week. The focus of that attention was his response to an open letter from Donald Trump’s attorney, demanding the paper retract and apologize for a story. McCraw’s brief letter to the attorney, published on the Times site, went viral on social media and shot to the top of the paper's most-read content. In an interview, he talks about the letter, his job and what he learned at Illinois.

Technology is a big part of life. In India, for example, street vendors and rickshawallahs use cellphones, the internet and Aadhar cards – 12-digit identification numbers given to every citizen of India based on their biometric and demographic data. However, charismatic gurus and superstition still thrive in India. In the new book "Reluctant Technophiles: India’s Complicated Relationship with Technology,” University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign electrical and computer engineering professor Rakesh Kumar provides an account of India’s often contradictory relationship with technology. News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian spoke with Kumar about these contradictions, and how India’s situation is both unique and universal.

Scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will lead a National Artificial Intelligence Research Institute focused on developing learning technologies that will accelerate youths' STEM learning and broaden diversity in related occupations.

A new Illinois law that expands the eligibility for law enforcement jobs to non-U.S. citizens such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program participants is mostly aspirational since DACA recipients aren’t legally allowed to possess firearms, says Lauren R. Aronson, a clinical professor and the director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Law.

In adopting the 14th Amendment, Congress unambiguously intended that the children of immigrant workers would have birthright citizenship in the U.S., said University of Illinois labor and employment relations professor Michael LeRoy, an expert on immigration and employment law.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Durwood Pickle was shocked to find that the Recording Industry Association of America had sued him because his grandchildren had used his computer to illegally download music during visits to his Texas home.

Simply tasting or consuming sucralose may affect blood glucose and insulin levels on glucose tolerance tests, scientists at the University of Illinois found in a new study.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Despite the increased popularity of geek culture - movies based on comic books, video games, virtual worlds - and the ubiquity of computers, the geek's close cousin, the nerd, still suffers from a negative stereotype in popular culture. This may help explain why women and minorities are increasingly shying away from careers in information technology, says Lori Kendall, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Pandemics of the past are getting new attention, among them the plague of the 14th century. Known as the Black Death, it was medieval, European, bubonic and spread by rats – at least that’s what most of us think. Much of that needs adjustment, however, in large part due to discoveries of the past decade, says Carol Symes, a professor of medieval history at Illinois.

A new study links doing one’s homework, being interested and behaving responsibly in high school to better academic and career success as many as 50 years later. This effect, reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, holds true even after accounting for parental income, IQ and other factors known to influence achievement, researchers report.

History professor Eugene Avrutin explores the history of racism in Russia over the past 150 years, from a society that was relatively free of racial violence to the elevation of whiteness under President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

Black gay men were largely missing in both black and gay history, so Kevin Mumford, who specializes in both, set out to tell their story. “I wanted to reclaim a history that had been washed over, that had been overlooked,” said Mumford, a University of Illinois history professor. He wanted to show how “black gay lives matter.”

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Babies who are breastfed exclusively for their first six months of life may be less likely to become picky eaters as preschoolers, according to a recent study of 129 mothers and their children.

Japan House has developed a mobile guide to its gardens, which visitors can listen to on their phones for a self-guided tour.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Eight professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been elected 2019 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

According to a new commentary in Disability and Health Journal, people with disabilities who rely on service dogs often are prohibited from bringing their working dogs into teaching and research laboratories. This one barrier can stop them from pursuing careers in science, says Joey Ramp, a researcher in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and lead author of the commentary. Ramp spoke about the issue with News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates.

Spinach and kale are favorites of those looking to stay physically fit, but they also could keep consumers cognitively fit, according to a new study from University of Illinois researchers.

Researchers discovered that the same biomechanical traits that allow the barbed spines of the jumping cholla and other cacti to readily penetrate animal flesh also make the spines more difficult to dislodge.

Bacteria have many methods of adapting to resist antibiotics, but a new class of spiral polypeptides developed at the University of Illinois targets one thing no bacterium can live without: an outer membrane.

A new analysis examines why India has had limited success at bringing the unbanked into the formal economy despite numerous policy initiatives.

A Minute With™... Peggy Doty, who provides educational programs about coexisting with large predators for the University of Illinois Extension.

First, they walked. Then, they saw the light. Now, miniature biological robots have gained a new trick: remote control. The hybrid “eBiobots” are the first to combine soft materials, living muscle and microelectronics, said researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University and collaborating institutions.

“Oppenheimer” examines the process of building an organization of unprecedented scale and wrestles with how to see one individual’s decisions as relevant in the face of such a massive system, says Kevin Hamilton, the dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts and the co-author of a book about the film studio that documented nuclear testing for the U.S. government.

A new review explores how increasing temperatures influence plant growth and viability despite the higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Junk food, video games and a lack of exercise all have received their fair share of blame for the spiraling epidemic of obesity in the U.S. But according to a University of Illinois researcher, public health enemy No. 1 for our supersized nation may very well be the one staple of modern life most Americans can't seem to live without one (or more) of: the automobile.

The Dec. 10 tornado outbreak that devastated parts of the mid-Mississippi Valley has left many wondering if winter tornadoes are a new weather threat to consider in the United States. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign atmospheric sciences professor and department head (Robert) Jeff Trapp spoke with Illinois News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian about this and other details about the timing and geography of tornadoes that we might expect in the future.

A new book, “An Illini Place – Building the University of Illinois Campus,” covers the history of the planning and building of the University of Illinois campus and why the campus looks the way it does.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A number of studies have suggested that religion plays a critical role in black Americans' mental health and life satisfaction, aiding their ability to cope with personal and societal stressors. However, a new study indicates that spirituality, rather than religiosity, may be the element that is essential to black women's psychological well-being.

I am in Govindjee’s office suite and I don’t know where to look. Govindjee, a professor emeritus of plant biology who goes by the one name only, is a collector. There are layers of history here: artifacts and papers, books and photographs. There also are homemade scientific instruments that look like plumbing elbows, tiny satellites or props from vintage sci-fi movies.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - To all Illinois residents: Be on the lookout for kudzu. This high-climbing, fast-growing weed, which is illegal to buy, grow and plant in Illinois, smothers existing vegetation and has been spotted in more than 30 Illinois counties.

The first case of a novel strain of coronavirus has been confirmed in the United States. Virologist Leyi Wang, a professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois, discussed the outbreak of the new strain with News Bureau biomedical sciences editor Liz Ahlberg Touchstone.

With its easy-to-miss symptoms and link to birth defects, the Zika virus is very similar to German measles (rubella), according to history professor Leslie Reagan

Two University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scientists are among 126 recipients of the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This honor is one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early career researchers. 

“Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times,” co-edited by Illinois history professor Antoinette Burton, examines the roles that animals played in the British Empire – both in advancing and in disrupting British imperial power.

The negative repercussions of email incivility extend beyond the workplace, and can even negatively affect a domestic partner’s attitude toward their own work, says a new paper from YoungAh Park, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A new study offers fresh insights into how talking on a cellphone or to a passenger while driving affects one's performance behind the wheel. The study used a driving simulator and videophone to assess how a driver's conversation partner influences safety on the road.