News Bureau

A Minute With...™ Mattias Polborn, professor of economics and political science

Professors Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope, who teach only online courses and develop learning technologies, discuss the potential impact of social distancing on postsecondary distance learning.

A Minute With...™ Richard Tempest, professor of Slavic languages and literatures

A Minute With™... Illinois history professor Kevin Mumford

Emily Knox, a professor in the School of Information Sciences and the author of “Book Banning in 21st-Century America,” said societal issues, such as changing racial demographics and disagreements over how to teach the history of race, prompt challenges to certain kinds of books.

A Minute With™... Carolyn Shields, the head of the department of educational organization and leadership

School of Information Sciences instructor Melissa Wong offers suggestions for how professors and college students can adapt to online learning.

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

The changes in the past year in the use of Native American imagery in sports and elsewhere have been unprecedented, said Jay Rosenstein, a Center for Advanced Study professor of media and cinema studies.

A Minute With...™ Lizanne DeStefano, professor emerita of educational psychology

New mutations to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 are emerging, including a more-infectious variant first found in the United Kingdom, even as vaccines containing bits of viral genetic material are beginning distribution. In an interview, crop sciences professor Gustavo Caetano-Anollés discusses viral mutation and what it could mean for vaccinations.

The novel coronavirus that first broke out in Wuhan, China in late 2019 has now spread to 111 countries. As the first case of possible community spread has been reported in the United States, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discusses how the virus spreads and what makes it a public health concern.

Most households struggle financially for two to five years before filing for bankruptcy, making a pandemic-related surge in consumer bankruptcy filings unlikely, said University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign law professor Robert M. Lawless, a leading consumer credit and bankruptcy expert.

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

At least one familiar brand is being retired and others are getting a rethink due to their use of Black images. Illinois advertising professor Jason Chambers explains why.

Very tall buildings are attractive options in cities where land is at a premium, but they come with construction challenges, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign architecture professor Abbas Aminmansour.

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.

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.

According to a new study reported in the journal Science, bird populations in North America have experienced a troubling decline in the past five decades. The scientists estimate the continent has lost close to 3 billion birds, roughly 29% of their total numbers in 1970. Senior wildlife ecologist Thomas J. Benson of the Illinois Natural History Survey discusses the status of birds in Illinois with News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates. Benson leads the Critical Trends Assessment Program, which monitors the biological condition of the state’s forests, wetlands and grasslands, and collects data on plants, birds and arthropods.

A recent study from Wesleyan University found that 48% of ground meat samples made from white-tailed deer killed with lead shotgun slugs in Illinois were contaminated with lead, while meat from deer killed by archers contained no lead. Illinois Natural History Survey human dimensions scientist Craig Miller spoke to News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about the risks associated with lead ammunition in hunting.

A Minute With...™ Illinois Professor Chris Roegge, executive director of the Council on Teacher Education

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

Temperatures may be on the rise, but many motorists and pedestrians remain focused on the ground as they attempt to navigate safely around the many potholes that develop this time of year. Industrial and enterprise systems engineering professor Henrique M. Reis spoke with Illinois News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian about how potholes form and if there are any potential solutions.

Robert Rushing, an Illinois professor of comparative and world literature

According to cicada expert Catherine Dana, 2024 will be an eventful year in Illinois with the emergence of two periodical cicada broods across most parts of the state.

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.

U. of I. anthropology professor Kathryn Clancy supports a federal legislative effort that would require universities to report – and federal funding agencies to consider – findings that any university professor engaged in discrimination on the basis of sex. 

Last month, the Midwest experienced record-breaking cold temperatures and many are wondering how, when the climate is experiencing an unprecedented warming trend, we can still experience such frigid cold. News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian asked University of Illinois atmospheric sciences professor Don Wuebbles to explain.

The proper way to register dissent with speech one finds offensive doesn’t involve blockades or threatening violence. It’s more speech, says lllinois law dean Vikram Amar

Horseshoe bats in China are a natural wildlife reservoir of SARS-like coronaviruses. Some health experts think wildlife markets – specifically in Wuhan, China – led to the spillover of the new coronavirus into human populations. Though not confirmed, the hypothesis has given bats around the world a bad rap, and public fears of exposure to bats are on the rise. Illinois Natural History Survey wildlife biologist Tara Hohoff, the project coordinator of the Illinois Bat Conservation Program, spoke to News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about bat biology and conservation, and the flying mammals’ role in human health.

Dr. Leyi Wang and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory have played a key role in diagnosing coronavirus infection in animal species in zoos across the country. This is important work for understanding the virus’s spread and its broad host range, Wang says.

Global health authorities are frantically pursuing a vaccine against the novel coronavirus in the hope that it will allow everyone to get back to a pre-COVID-19 reality ASAP. Thomas O’Rourke, a professor emeritus of community health, says those expectations are probably overblown.

One year into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the most likely outcome is a stalemate, despite the mounting cost in blood and treasure, said Edward A. Kolodziej, Emeritus Research Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an expert in international relations and global politics.

Chris Roegge, the executive director of the Council on Teacher Education at the University of Illinois, discusses whether new legislation in Illinois will remedy the state's shortage of teachers.

A Minute With™... Fred Kummerow, trans fat expert

David Rosch, a professor of agriculture education and an expert on leadership, spoke recently about popular perceptions of good leadership and how those standards have changed.

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.

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

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

Coaches and educators should work together to help athletes achieve their full potential, U. of I. scholars and former collegiate athletes Joseph L. Cross and Bruce W. Fouke say in a new study.

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.

Scientists recently announced the discovery of a subatomic particle that made its way to Earth from an event that occurred 3.7 billion light-years away. Sensors buried within Antarctic ice detected the ghostly cosmic particle, called a neutrino, and traced its origin to a rapidly spinning galactic nucleus known as a blazar. Physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian spoke with physics professor Liang Yang about the significance of the discovery.

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.

The bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act requires states to recognize same-sex marriages while balancing the interests of religious groups, says Robin Fretwell Wilson, the director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs and the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Educators need to help students understand and use artificial intelligence language tools in appropriate ways to prepare them for a future in which their use is commonplace, says English and information sciences professor Ted Underwood.

Support for reparations for people of African descent to compensate for slavery and racial oppression is growing because U.S. political and corporate leaders have retreated from a commitment to racial justice, says Sundiata Cha-Jua, an Illinois professor of history and of African American studies.

The Jan. 8 insurrection in Brazil’s seat of government was styled after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, says Jerry Dávila, the Lemann Chair in Brazilian History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and executive director of the Illinois Global Institute.

Professor Isabel Molina-Guzman’s new book examines the role of Latinos in TV sitcoms, as well as the changing form of the genre in a “post-racial” television era.

A Minute With™... Kevin Coe, a doctoral student in speech communication

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.