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News Bureau - Illinois in the News

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  • Alumnus

    by news@illinois.eduJul 22, 2019 12:15 pm1 View

    The Pantagraph (Bloomington, Ill., July 20) – To 9-year-old Scott Altman of Wenona, Illinois, the astronauts of Apollo 11 seemed at once like friends and gods. “It was amazing to go outside, look at the moon and know there were people up there like us,” Altman says, remembering the first moon landing July 20, 1969. Altman would go on to graduate from the U. of I. with a degree in astronautical engineering, serve as a Navy pilot and fly on four Space Shuttle missions.

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  • Media

    by news@illinois.eduJul 11, 2019 11:00 am2  Views

    Variety (Los Angeles, July 10) – CNN will use a “live draw” to select which Democratic candidates appear on two nights of debates, possibly to preempt a point of contention. The current generation of news aficionados is ready to take on mainstream outlets like CNN or The New York Times and argue with them about the way they chose to present an event or the motives they may have in doing so. “The idea of the passive audience has been obliterated and gone for a while,” says Nikki Usher, a professor of media at Illinois who studies changes in news production.

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  • Supercomputing

    by jsteinfe@illinois.eduJul 10, 2019 12:00 pm1 View

    Eos (Washington, D.C., July 10) – In a study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers announced that they finally demonstrated Bardeen-Petterson alignment, in which a spinning black hole causes the inner portion of a tilted accretion disk to align with the black hole’s equatorial plane. To accomplish the most detailed and highest-resolution black hole simulation to date, researchers used the Blue Waters supercomputer at Illinois.

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  • Genetics

    by news@illinois.eduJul 9, 2019 12:15 pm1 View

    Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (New Rochelle, N.Y., July 9) – The results of field trials carried out by scientists at Cornell University and the U. of I. suggest that genetically engineered tobacco plants could be grown as crops for producing pharmaceutical and industrial enzymes and other proteins.

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  • Labor and employment relations

    by news@illinois.eduJun 27, 2019 1:15 pm1 View

    Chicago Sun-Times (June 26) – On June 27, 2018, the Supreme Court delivered what seemed a potential death knell to public-sector unions in the landmark Illinois Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 case. A year later, the government worker unions in Illinois are doing OK. Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois, says if now-former state worker Mark Janus and his allies thought that in Illinois, “this decision would lead to seriously damaging public-sector unions, that doesn’t seem to have occurred.”

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  • Alumnus

    by news@illinois.eduJun 25, 2019 11:30 am1 View

    Las Vegas Review-Journal (June 24) – Moments before playing high-stakes poker for the first time in more than a decade Monday, “Jeopardy!” sensation James Holzhauer, an Illinois alumnus, said his strategy was simply not to embarrass himself at the World Series of Poker. The Las Vegas professional sports bettor certainly accomplished his mission, but he went 0-for-2 in his quest to win prize money in WSOP events.

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  • Epidermal electronic system

    by news@illinois.eduJun 24, 2019 3:00 pm2  Views

    Epidermolysis Bullosa News (Pensacola, Fla., June 21) – A skinlike device that measures heart rate, breathing, blood oxygen, blood pressure and body temperature may provide a safer way to monitor vital signs of those in intensive care who have fragile skin, such as newborns and patients with epidermolysis bullosa. The technology, referred to as an epidermal electronic system, is a wireless, battery-free, ultrathin device that gently contacts the skin in a noninvasive way. It was developed by a team of multidisciplinary researchers from several universities, including scientists from the U. of I.

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  • Wheelchair athletes

    by news@illinois.eduJun 20, 2019 11:30 am1 View

    Chicago Tribune (June 19) – Two wheelchair racers with U. of I. ties are competing for ESPY Awards, to be given out July 10 in Los Angeles by the ESPN sports network. Wheelchair racer Tatyana McFadden, an Illinois alumna, is vying for Best Female Athlete With a Disability. Daniel Romanchuk, a member of the U. of I. Wheelchair Racing Team who won last year’s Chicago Marathon and this year’s Boston Marathon, is competing for Best Male Athlete With a Disability.

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  • State education budget

    by news@illinois.eduJun 19, 2019 12:30 pm2  Views

    Chicago Tribune (June 19) – Illinois’ public universities and community colleges are getting an increase in state funding not seen in nearly three decades. The state budget Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed June 5 raises higher education general funding by $154 million or 8.2%, the largest year-over-year percentage jump since 1990, according to the Illinois Board of Higher Education. Tim Killeen, president of the University of Illinois System, says the budget marked “a significant step in rebuilding the trust and confidence” in the state’s higher education system.

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  • Archaeology

    by news@illinois.eduJun 18, 2019 1:15 pm1 View

    Chicago Tribune (from the Daily Southtown; June 17) – Mark Ryan, the executive director of the Prairie Research Institute at Illinois, where the Illinois State Archaeological Society is located, says that a day’s work digging at a site in the Cook County Forest Preserves revealed insight into a civilization that was on the edge of encountering western culture. As they unearthed trade items from the early 1600s, the scientists were able to denote that European goods had made their way to the Chicago area through tribal networks even before the French arrived in the area.

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