News Bureau

It’s been proposed before, but so far no one has heeded the call for an official advisory board to support ethical behavior in research institutions. Today, leaders in academia with expertise in the professional and ethical conduct of research have formalized a proposal to finally assemble such an advisory board. The proposal appears in the journal Nature.

A phthalate found in many plastic and personal care products may decrease fertility in female mice, researchers at the University of Illinois found in a new study.

Dance faculty and alumni will present new work in February Dance to celebrate the dance department's 50th anniversary.

University of Illinois Librarian and Dean of Libraries John Wilkin is being honored for his innovation in library technology, including online publishing and providing access to digital content.

Illinois political scientist Damarys Canache discusses the history and politics behind the crisis of two presidents in Venezuela.

University of Illinois professor Mara Wade has been awarded an international research prize for her work on emblems and the culture of Nuremberg, Germany.

Students' comprehension of words in a foreign language improves if teachers pair each word with a gesture – even if the gesture is arbitrary and does not represent a word’s actual meaning, researchers at the University of Illinois found.

Krannert Art Museum recently purchased a painting by University of Illinois alumna Louise Fishman that will be part of an exhibition of 20th century paintings at the museum.

Microplastics contaminate the world's surface waters, yet scientists have only just begun to explore their presence in groundwater systems. A new study is the first to report microplastics in fractured limestone aquifers – a groundwater source that accounts for 25 percent of the global drinking water supply.

An Illinois professor looks at presidential speechmaking through one of its more-eloquent practitioners, John F. Kennedy.

Land conservation programs that have converted tens of thousands of acres of agricultural land in Illinois back to a more natural state appear to have helped some rare birds increase their populations to historic levels, a new study finds. Other bird species with wider geographic ranges have not fared as well, however.

Growing muscle tissue on grooved platforms helps neurons more effectively integrate with the muscle, a requirement for engineering muscle in the lab that responds and functions like muscle in the body, University of Illinois researchers found in a new study.

With a population between 10,000 and 30,000 in its heyday (A.D. 1050-1200) and a sprawling assortment of homes, storage buildings, temples, cemeteries, mounds and other monuments in and around what is now St. Louis and East St. Louis, Illinois, the ancient Native American city known as Greater Cahokia was the first experiment in urban living in North America.

A new book, “Revealing Greater Cahokia, North America’s First Native City,” offers the most complete picture yet of a decade of archaeological research on a little-known part of the larger city and its precincts in East St. Louis.

In reversing an Obama-era decision that effectively allowed internet gambling, the Department of Justice has revitalized the Interstate Wire Act of 1961, an anti-gambling statute championed by then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to fight organized crime, said John W. Kindt, a professor emeritus of business administration at the University of Illinois and a leading national gambling critic.

Two Illinois professors tell the story of a secret Hollywood studio at the heart of the Cold War and the early nuclear age.

Waves of undulating cilia drive several processes essential to life. They clear debris and mucus from the respiratory tract, move spinal fluid through the brain and transport embryos from the ovaries to the uterus for implantation. According to a new study in mice, however, cilia perform somewhat differently in the male reproductive tract.

By gaining control over shape, size and composition during synthetic molecule assembly, researchers can begin to probe how these factors influence the function of soft materials. Finding these answers could help advance virology, drug delivery development and the creation of new materials. 

President Trump’s approach to undocumented immigrants and migratory laborers follows the example of past presidents who relied on racial animus to scapegoat foreigners during times of cultural change, says U. of I. labor professor Michael LeRoy.

Research by Michael LeRoy, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois, indicates that presidential powers over immigration have been significantly hamstrung by the courts, with plaintiffs winning all or part of 89 percent of the rulings in cases that consider immigration orders that affect employment relationships.

Tap at Illinois will celebrate tap dancing with a semesterlong series of tap performances at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

A University of Illinois team of researchers led by chemistry professor M. Christina White has developed a new manganese-based catalyst that can change the structure of druglike molecules to make new drugs, advancing the pace and efficiency of drug development. 

Researchers at the University of Illinois and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service suggest in a new study that environmental greenness may not be associated with higher test scores in schoolchildren after all.

By enticing away the repressors dampening unexpressed, silent genes in Streptomyces bacteria, researchers at the University of Illinois have unlocked several large gene clusters for new natural products, according to a study published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

Researchers placed 160 cameras on 19 of the 22 Apostle Islands in northern Wisconsin to see which carnivores were living there. After taking more than 200,000 photos over a period of three years, the team discovered that several  carnivores are living on various islands in this remote archipelago in Lake Superior.

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library collection includes holiday- and winter-themed books and images, such as photographs of snowflakes, a depiction of a 1683 frost fair on a frozen River Thames and illustrations of Norse folk tales.

2018 marks the 80th anniversary of the landmark physics discovery of superfluidity. News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian asked University of Illinois physics professor and 2003 Nobel Prize winner Anthony Leggett about the significance of the historic finding.

A new study links higher levels of several key nutrients in the blood with more efficient brain connectivity and performance on cognitive tests in older adults.

The study, reported in the journal NeuroImage, looked at 32 key nutrients in the Mediterranean diet, which previous research has shown is associated with better brain function in aging. It included 116 healthy adults 65-75 years of age.

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.

Employee discrimination claims largely received worse outcomes in arbitration than other work-related disputes such as wrongful termination or breach of contract, according to new research co-written by U. of I. labor professor Ryan Lamare.

For tech company workers protesting sexual harassment in the workplace, there are few practical benefits to be gained from employers ending mandatory arbitration beyond an increased perception of procedural justice, says U. of I. labor professor Ryan Lamare.

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.

A new compound that targets a receptor within sarcoma cancer cells shrank tumors and hampered their ability to spread in mice and pigs, a study from researchers at the University of Illinois reports.

The rubber stopper is sticky in my hands. I can see it drooping into the vial, threatening the two tiny insect specimens inside, a pair of small green stoneflies, Alloperla furcula. Vial stoppers should not be sticky, and definitely should not be melting into the glass vial holding these important reference specimens. I have to save them from total annihilation.

Move over, trap-jaw ants and mantis shrimp: There’s a faster appendage in town. According to a new study, the Dracula ant, Mystrium camillae, can snap its mandibles at speeds of up to 90 meters per second (more than 200 mph), making it the fastest animal movement on record.

An emotional coping skills program developed for natural disaster survivors appears to help young children deal with the traumatic experiences associated with living in chronic poverty, a new study found.

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 examines the planning processes associated with Chicago's 606 Trail and concludes that delegating management of the project to a nonprofit may have made gentrification the most likely outcome.

Illinois researchers and their French partners have created a website to make thousands of letters written by Marcel Proust available to the public.

With the “Land of Lincoln” celebrating its bicentennial, a historian looks at the influence of four Illinois-connected presidents.

On Dec. 5, the Global Carbon Project published the Global Carbon Budget 2018, giving world leaders access to data on atmospheric carbon concentrations, emissions and trends. Illinois atmospheric scientist Atul Jain was among the many scientists worldwide who contributed data to the report. Jain talked about the carbon budget and this year’s findings with News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian.

In a step toward producing renewable engine fuels that are compatible with existing diesel fuel infrastructure, researchers report they can convert wet biowaste, such as swine manure and food scraps, into a fuel that can be blended with diesel and that shares diesel’s combustion efficiency and emissions profile.

They report their findings in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Illinois author Nafissa Thompson-Spires has received national recognition for her first book, “Heads of the Colored People,” which uses humor and satire to tell the stories of black Americans.

Boys who enter sixth-grade with co-occurring social skills, anxiety, learning and conduct problems are at the greatest risk of developing aggressive behavior and using substances by the end of eighth grade, a new study found.

Illinois ethnomusicologist Michael Silvers writes in his new book about forro music of Brazil and its connections to the environment, drought and politics.

Jim Angel, the Illinois state climatologist, has announced that he will retire in December 2018 after 34 years at the Illinois State Water Survey. News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian spoke with him about his career, climate change and the National Climate Assessment released on Black Friday.

“Pull off in about a mile and a half,” I tell my colleague Josh Sherwood, an ichthyologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey. A minute goes by before he flips on the amber light bar over our heads and pulls the truck into the grass alongside the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway, about 60 miles west of Chicago. The ground is littered with trash, broken glass and bits of tire – like any major highway. A few feet away is a small, unnamed stream, barely more than 2 feet wide and less than 6 inches deep.

“Why would anyone want to sample this site?” I ask myself.

Eleven faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been named to the 2018 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list.

Paying for goods with a smartphone not only increases the overall transaction amount and frequency of purchases by consumers, it also effectively replaces the actual, physical credit cards in their wallets, said Yuqian Xu, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois.

Some fungi are smelly and coated in mucus. Others have gills that glow in the dark. Some are delicious; others, poisonous. Some spur euphoria when ingested. Some produce antibiotics.

All of these fungi - and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more - occur in North America. Of those that are known to science, 44,488 appear in a new checklist of North American fungi, published this month in the journal Mycologia.

Krannert Art Museum will screen short films about AIDS activism – the only downstate Illinois venue to show the films – for World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.