News Bureau

Our biases, conscious and unconscious, influence how we process news of events like the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, and the media plays an important part in forming and reinforcing those biases, says Travis Dixon, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A Minute With™... Ronald Bailey  the head of the African American studies department at the University of Illinois

A historian looks at the Vietnam War herbicide Agent Orange and how it changed ideas about war wounds and the cause of birth defects.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Group homes are generally the placement of last resort for children in foster care, and also one of the most expensive options for state child-welfare agencies.

There’s a long history of scapegoating marginalized people in epidemics, and of seeing difference in the way those of different races respond to disease, says Rana Hogarth, a U. of I. professor who studies the history of both medicine and race, and the connections between.

The British Empire was not the model of peace and stability, the “Pax Britannica,” as it’s often portrayed. Dissent and disruption were the rule, not the exception, according to Antoinette Burton, in her new book "The Trouble With Empire."

In a new study of more than 480,800 families, psychologists at the University of Illinois found that the more involved parents were in their children’s schooling, the better the children’s adjustment.

A review of 207 studies involving more than 20,000 people found that those who engaged in therapeutic interventions were, on average, significantly less neurotic and a bit more extraverted after the interventions than they were beforehand.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Our personalities play a role in every aspect of our lives, from friendships to hobbies, from whom we marry to what we do for a living.

The current tax bill fits with a 30-year trend that doesn’t favor income from work, says sociologist Kevin Leicht

Some of the same brain systems known to play a role in learning from trial and error also are engaged when people conform to social norms, scientists report in a new study. The findings are important, the researchers said, because changing one’s behavior to align with one’s peers can contribute to community-building or – depending on the goals and values of the group – societal breakdown.

New research shows that a person’s own behavior is the primary driver of how they treat others during brief, zero-sum-game competitions. Generous people tend to reward generous behavior and selfish individuals often punish generosity and reward selfishness – even when it costs them personally. The study found that an individual’s own generous or selfish deeds carry more weight than the attitudes and behaviors of others.

By the time boys who are dubbed class clowns reach third grade, they plummet to the bottom of the social circle -- and view themselves as social failures -- as classmates’ disapproval of their behavior grows, a new study found.

Pandemics have changed our physical spaces throughout history, but changes made as a result of COVID-19 may not be long-lasting, says Illinois architecture professor Benjamin Bross.

In the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, 16-year-old students in middle-track schools decide whether to stay in school to pursue an academic career or enroll in a vocational training program. A new study offers evidence that the path they choose influences their personality years later.

A new study by University of Illinois researchers suggests that gang membership and criminality serve as deviant leisure activities, fulfilling youths' needs for excitement, belonging and social support.

Mention traditional marriage and family and it’s easy to think you’re talking about age-old customs. Those “traditional” ideals and practices, however, are more likely a product of the last two centuries, says a University of Illinois history professor.

A new study links anxiety, a brain structure called the orbitofrontal cortex, and optimism, finding that healthy adults who have larger OFCs tend to be more optimistic and less anxious.

A study of ancient mound builders who lived hundreds of years ago on the Mississippi River Delta near present-day New Orleans offers new insights into how Native peoples selected the landforms that supported their villages and earthen mounds – and why these sites were later abandoned.

Mass killings may have increasing news coverage, but the events themselves have happened at a steady rate for more than a decade, according to a new study by University of Illinois researchers.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The Soviet Union had its Gulag. It also had its seaside resorts.

Preschoolers may express awareness about body-image issues – but their parents may miss opportunities to promote positive body-image formation in their children because parents believe them to be too young to have these concerns, new research suggests.

Experts say media multitasking negatively impacts learning, but many students believe they're immune to these effects because they're good multitaskers, according to a review paper by U. of I. professor Shelly J. Schmidt.

The ancient North American city of Cahokia had as its focal point a feature now known as Monks Mound, a giant earthwork surrounded on its north, south, east and west by large rectangular open areas. These flat zones, called plazas by archaeologists since the early 1960s, were thought to serve as communal areas that served the many mounds and structures of the city.

New paleoenvironmental analyses of the north plaza suggest it was almost always underwater, calling into question earlier interpretations of the north plaza’s role in Cahokian society. The study is reported in the journal World Archaeology.

College students considering careers in fields like archaeology or geology that require extensive work at remote field sites might want to find out how potential supervisors and advisers conduct themselves in the field. Do they establish clear ground rules for the behavior of everyone on the team? Are the rules consistently enforced? According to a new report, such factors likely influence whether students will witness or experience harassment while working far from home.

Ancient animal herders added to the ecological richness and diversity of the African savanna thousands of years ago – an effect that persists to the present day, a new study finds. The herders’ practice of penning their cattle, goats and sheep at night created nutrient-rich grassy glades, called hotspots, that still attract wildlife and have increased habitat diversity in the region, researchers report in the journal Nature.

By peering at the brains of study subjects prompted to suppress negative emotions, scientists have gained new insights into how emotional regulation influences negative feelings and memories. They hope the findings will lead to new methods to combat depression.

Six professors at the University of Illinois have been named 2016 Guggenheim Fellows, bringing to 13 the number of U. of I. faculty members who have been honored with the fellowship over the last three years. This year’s fellows are Dennis Baron, Karin A. Dahmen, Craig Koslofsky, Mei-Po Kwan, Ralph W. Mathisen and Rebecca Stumpf.

The Midwest has a new national park at Indiana Dunes, and a University of Illinois professor explains how it happened and why the park is valuable.

Before they can get started at their field site – a giant cave studded with stalactites, stalagmites and human artifacts – 15 undergraduate students must figure out how to use their virtual hands and tools. They also must learn to teleport. This is ANTH 399, a course designed to bring the archaeological field school experience to undergraduate students who never leave campus.

A Minute With...™ Christopher Benson, author and professor of journalism

Gratitude may be a powerful tool for couples, increasing relationship satisfaction and protecting against common stressors, says research by human development and family studies professor Allen W. Barton.

Calls for defunding or even abolishing the police in the wake of George Floyd’s death may sound radical to many, but the idea is not new, says A. Naomi Paik, a professor of Asian American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A Minute With™... Sundiata Cha-Jua, a professor of history and of African American Studies

People who viewed sex as a leisure activity used their pandemic downtime to engage in more  frequent, creative and satisfying sex, U. of I. professor Liza Berdychevsky found in a recent survey. 

World War II in Europe was an assault on civilians even more than a clash of arms. Civilians were uprooted, enslaved and massacred under a long Nazi occupation. So how did these civilians come to grips with the cruelty and violence all around them? University of Illinois history professor Peter Fritzsche “listened in” on their wartime talk by way of diaries, letters and other first-person accounts and describes what he found in a new book.

Most historical accounts describe the Illinois Indians of the late 1600s as a weak and beleaguered people, taking refuge in a settlement 80 miles southwest of present-day Chicago. The reality, however, is quite different, argues University of Illinois history professor Robert Morrissey, in the December issue of the Journal of American History. The Illinois, he says, were making “perhaps the most remarkable bid for power in 17th century native North America.”

Notre Dame Cathedral, severely damaged by fire this week, is widely understood as “the beating heart of France,” with global significance beyond that, says one University of Illinois historian in a Q&A. Another notes how a key aspect of music as we know it today was invented for the cathedral’s unique resonant space, a soundscape lost in the fire.

Pressures to maintain a facade of a perfect family and other values associated with the “culture of affluence” discourage some affluent women from leaving violent spouses or disclosing that they are being abused, a new study suggests.

Schools have a limited ability to challenge cyberbullies, but an Illinois professor has made a legal study on how to change that.

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.

In a study reported in the journal Physical Review Physics Education Research, nearly 75% of 471 undergraduate women in physics who responded to a survey offered during a professional conference reported having experienced at least one type of sexual harassment – mostly gender harassment – in their field. U. of I. anthropology professor Kathryn Clancy, a co-author of the report, talked to News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about the study, which also examined the respondents’ feelings of belonging and legitimacy as scientists and scholars.

Low-income undergraduate students at the U. of I. who need assistance juggling the demands of parenthood and college will be able to get assistance through programs and services offered by the Child Development Laboratory.

A new study offers evidence that one’s motivation is just as important for sustained attention to a task as is the ease with which the task is done.

As many as 61% of hourly workers in Illinois are underemployed, underscoring the need for the state to adopt a fair-workweek law, says Alison Dickson, a senior instructor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

An expert on the growing role of drones in warfare and terrorism discusses the implications of the recent killing of Iranian general Qassim Suleimani in a Q&A.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - People who have upbeat outlooks on life have significantly better cardiovascular health, suggests a new study that examined associations between optimism and heart health in more than 5,100 adults.

Gender differences in vocational interests increase drastically during puberty but tend to decrease across the lifespan, researchers at the University of Illinois found in a new study.

Illinois sociologist Rebecca Sandefur has been named the recipient of a 2018 MacArthur fellowship, or “genius grant.”

An Illinois historian tells a new story about England’s famous “Domesday Book” and what it tells us about the trauma of the Norman conquest.