News Bureau

The state legislative district map that was signed into law earlier this summer by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker was based on population estimates rather than official U.S. Census data, rendering it vulnerable to legal challenges, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign political science professor Brian Gaines.

University of Illinois social work professor Karen Tabb Dina found that multiracial youth who switch racial identities over time report being healthier as young adults than their minority peers who maintain consistent racial identities.

Acquiring new medical knowledge and assessing health are not as objective as people think, said history professor Rana Hogarth, who is the adviser for a new series of podcasts by the Science History Institute in Philadelphia to explore issues of racism in science and medicine.

As the race for the 2016 Democratic and Republican presidential nominations enters the early stages, voters have a large pool of candidates to consider, including 17 declared candidates on the Republican side alone.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The field of African American studies in U.S. higher education "is alive and well, and, in fact, growing and maturing," despite some reports to the contrary, says a new study published online this week by the department of African American studies at the University of Illinois.

A virtual reality program on mindfulness/meditation helped hemodialysis patients alleviate the physical side effects and tedium of their treatments in a new research project led by social work professor Rosalba Hernandez.

Ancient Maya reservoirs, which used aquatic plants to filter and clean the water, “can serve as archetypes for natural, sustainable water systems to address future water needs," writes U. of I. anthropology professor Lisa Lucero in a perspective in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A U. of I. history professor takes a fresh look at the Russian Revolution on its centennial.

Using the term “fake news” does not help audiences distinguish false information or sources and may be doing more harm than good, according to resarch by U. of I. communication professor Emily Van Duyn.

Many mobile apps that track the spread of COVID-19 ask for personal data but don’t indicate the information will be secure.

Many Christian and political conservatives in the U.S. support legislation to deny sexual and gender minorities the rights most Americans enjoy: unfettered access to jobs, housing, services and public facilities; the opportunity to marry as they choose; and the right to adopt a child. A new study published in the American Journal of Community Psychology offers insight into the factors that correlate with support for such laws.

Various studies show that people of color are disproportionately exposed to air pollution in the United States. However, it was unclear whether this unequal exposure is due mainly to a few types of emission sources or whether the causes are more systemic. A new study that models peoples’ exposure to air pollution – resolved by race-ethnicity and income level – shows that exposure disparities among people of color and white people are driven by nearly all, rather than only a few, emission source types.

The number of vegetables in childrens’ home-packed lunches increased if they participated in deciding what foods to include, a University of Illinois researcher found in a new study.

The chronic stress of living in neighborhoods with high rates of violence and poverty alters gene activity in immune cells, according to a new study of low-income single Black mothers on the South Side of Chicago.  

The changes in stress-related gene expression reflect the body’s “hunker down” response to long-term threat. This has implications for health outcomes in communities of color and other marginalized populations, said researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and collaborators.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are part of the Doris Duke Native Oral History Revitalization Project, which aims to make ethnographic materials collected from Native American tribes accessible online and to return materials to those communities.

The role of social media in motivating people to assess their risk and alter their behavior in a disease outbreak is little-understood, but a recently published study of South Koreans during a 2015 MERS outbreak – led by Sang-Hwa Oh at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – suggests emotions might play a key part.

Housing instability threatens to undermine the U.S. public health response to COVID-19, says a new working paper co-written by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

An Illinois professor who has aided in asylum cases talks about the criteria, changes in the process and why Central Americans are seeking this protection.

Adolescent girls who engage in more moderate and vigorous physical activity each day have better attentional control, a new study finds. The study focused on girls and boys aged 15-18.

They traveled to central Illinois from Manitoba, Mexico City, Nova Scotia and 18 U.S. states, bringing expertise in a variety of fields, including anthropology, biomedical engineering, ethics, health and environmental policy, law, neurobiology, and social and behavioral science.

Participants in the 2019 Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics spent a week together in the classroom and the lab, learning not only how to amplify and sequence a fragment of their own DNA, but also discussing the implications of genomics research involving their ancestors and communities.

Culture, civic-mindedness and privacy concerns influence how willing people are to share personal location information to help stem the transmission of COVID-19 in their communities, a new study finds. Such sharing includes giving public health authorities access to their geographic information via data gathered from phone calls, mobile apps, credit card purchases, wristband trackers or other technologies.

Donald Trump may not get everything he wants from Congress, despite its Republican majorities, says Illinois political science professor Tracy Sulkin.

The success of community health interventions targeting Latinos could be hindered by linguistic and cultural gaps unless researchers recognize the diversity that exists among Latino populations and work closely with community members to adapt programming accordingly, a new study led by University of Illinois researchers suggests.

A new study on culture and cognition found that long-term Hispanic immigrants who were less acculturated to the U.S. performed significantly worse on cognitive function tests than their highly acculturated peers.

Anger-prone children may benefit most from caregivers who are sensitive to their emotional needs and behavioral cues, University of Illinois researchers Nancy McElwain and  Xi Chen found in a new study.

We don’t have the control we think we do in browsing the internet. Our notion of empowerment to see and find what we choose is “an illusion,” say the authors of a study – including Illinois media professor Harsh Taneja – that analyzed browsing data on a million people over one month of internet use. Corporations are “nudging” the flow of our online attention more than we realize, and often in ways that are hidden or beyond our control.

A study of one state's arrest data in the FBI's NIBRS database found that while the majority of the cases were correct, the timings of arrests and other factors may lead to inaccuracies.

Various economic and political forces are reducing job opportunities for new professionals and discouraging some entering these fields or staying in the U.S. after they earn their degrees, says sociology professor Kevin Leicht.

Black and Latina women had high rates of anxiety and depressive symptoms during the pandemic, but prayer had differing effects, kinesiology and community health professor Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo found in a study.

By comparing geographic patterns of nonhuman primate biodiversity and human land-use, researchers discovered that areas managed or controlled by Indigenous peoples tend to have significantly more primate biodiversity than nearby regions. They also found that lorises, tarsiers, monkeys and apes whose territories overlap with Indigenous areas are less likely to be classified as vulnerable, threatened or endangered than those living fully outside Indigenous lands.

The Supreme Court “punted” this week on the issue of partisan gerrymandering, but left the door open to future action. An Illinois professor hopes her research can be part of the solution.

While many academic institutions are searching for ways to prevent sexual assault and sexual coercion among their faculty members, staff and students, they are failing to address the most common forms of gender-based harassment, say experts who study harassment and discrimination at work and in academic and health care settings. 

In an opinion published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the experts focus on behaviors that communicate derision, disgust or disrespect for members of one sex or gender group.

Journalism professor Stephanie Craft: To be news literate, know how to judge a story’s credibility, and also be intentional in how you consume news and understand the forces that shape it.

When high school freshmen’s teachers give them lower scores on communication skills, the students receive four times as many disciplinary referrals as some of their peers, a new study found.

Infants 17 months of age expect leaders – but not others – to intervene when one member of their group transgresses against another, a new study reveals. The findings add to growing evidence that children in their second year of life have a well-developed understanding of social hierarchies and power dynamics, the researchers say. 

A new genetic study of ancient individuals in the Americas and their contemporary descendants finds that two populations that diverged from one another 18,000 to 15,000 years ago remained apart for millennia before mixing again. This historic “reconvergence” occurred before or during their expansion to the southern continent.

Repeated disasters and environmental changes on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast are rapidly eroding the land, and along with it, the Houma tribe’s ability to sustain its culture, health and livelihoods.

Political science professor Damarys Canache discusses the plight of Venezuela, where nearly three months of protests have resulted in more than 70 deaths

In a study with pandemic-related implications, researchers report that strangers who consume alcohol together may keep their distance initially – but draw physically closer as they become intoxicated. No previous studies have tested the effects of alcohol consumption on social distance, the researchers say. They report the new findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A new study of older adults finds an association between higher blood levels of phosphatidylcholine, a source of the dietary nutrient choline, and the ability to regulate attention to manage competing tasks. The study also identified a brain structure that appears to play a role in this association.

Despite societal perceptions that older adults’ love lives are ancient history, many seniors are anything but retired from sex, a new study suggests.

It’s easier to spot online political “astroturfing,” a type of disinformation campaign, by looking first for digital traces of the human activity that makes it work, say Illinois communication professor JungHwan Yang and his research colleagues, in a new study.

A Minute With...™ Asef Bayat, sociologist and Middle East expert

Male and female rats exposed in the womb and during lactation to plasticizing chemicals known as phthalates had significantly fewer neurons and synapses than those that were not exposed, researchers report in a new study. The phthalate-exposed rats had reductions in the size of their medial prefrontal cortex, a brain region that regulates behavior, and showed deficits in cognitive flexibility.  

Illinois political scientist Brian Gaines, an expert on polling and public opinion, spoke about what might have happened and the challenges of getting it right.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - When John Murphy heard Barack Obama's address to Congress this week, he also heard Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

A University of Illinois professor who lived through the Iranian Revolution, included three years on death row in an infamous prison, reflects on the experience in a new autobiographic novel.

John Lynn, a professor emeritus of history at Illinois, has received a selective NEH Public Scholar award less than six months after receiving the highest career award in the field of military history.

Caregivers Journey of Hope can help social service workers to mitigate the stress and trauma they may experience while helping others recover from disasters, U. of I. researchers found in a new study.

A Minute With...™ Julie Turnock, a professor of media and cinema studies