News Bureau

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.

University of Illinois design students created immersive reality scenarios to help people who are soon to be released from prison learn how to meet certain challenges.

The impact of unpredictable state funding on students and postsecondary institutions will be the focus of an upcoming conference at the University of Illinois.

Illinois professor Scott Althaus tells the story of his extended family’s five-year search for the details of a relative’s last bombing mission during World War II, which also resulted in finding his plane.

Under a low-workload scenario, bank employees tend to take performance-enhancing risks. But in a high-workload scenario, employees make more errors due to multitasking, said Yuqian Xu, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois.

University of Illinois researchers say they now know how to track and map drug and gene delivery vehicles to evaluate which are most effective at infiltrating cells and getting to their targets, insight that could guide development of new pharmaceutical agents. The researchers described their tracking system and their findings on the most effective delivery vehicles in the journal Nature Communications. 

Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, assassinated 50 years ago, was prone to blunt talk that often made him controversial, says an expert on political rhetoric.

Brazilians with less education are more likely to self-report as being in poor health, according to a study using data from nationwide surveys distributed every five years from 1998 to 2013. The study also found that general subjective health did not improve over the study period, even though more people gained education throughout the study, indicating that other factors associated with poor education may need to be addressed to improve self-perceptions of health.

The decision in Murphy v. NCAA will likely usher in an era of unregulated, readily available sports gambling on smartphones, said John W. Kindt, a professor emeritus of business administration at the University of Illinois and a leading national gambling critic.

In health care, four service-quality proxies – bedside manner, diagnosis accuracy, waiting time and service time – disproportionately affect demand for patient care, said Yuqian Xu, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois.

Scientists report they can now drive two-electron chemical reactions, bringing them one step closer to building a carbon-recycling system that can harvest solar energy to efficiently convert CO2 and water into liquid fuels.

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts will kick off a two-season 50th anniversary celebration this fall.

The future of electronic devices lies partly within the “internet of things” – the network of devices, vehicles and appliances embedded within electronics to enable connectivity and data exchange. University of Illinois engineers are helping realize this future by minimizing the size of one notoriously large element of integrated circuits used for wireless communication – the transformer.

Biochemists at the University of Illinois have isolated a protein supercomplex from a bacterial membrane that, like a battery, generates a voltage across the bacterial membrane. The voltage is used to make ATP, a key energy currency of life. The new findings, reported in the journal Nature, will inform future efforts to obtain the atomic structures of large membrane protein supercomplexes.

A new technique that uses tiny elastic balls filled with fluorescent nanoparticles aims to expand the understanding of the mechanical forces that exist between cells, researchers report. A University of Illinois-led team has demonstrated the quantification of 3-D forces within cells living in petri dishes as well as live specimens. This research may unlock some of the mysteries related to embryonic development and cancer stem cells, i.e., tumor-repopulating cells.

Two Illinois urban planning professors say responding to extreme heat waves has become more difficult in Chicago, as the most vulnerable residents have become more dispersed throughout the area.

Susan Burton, a nationally recognized advocate for restoring civil and human rights to formerly incarcerated women, will discuss her new book and the challenges of re-entering society after prison at an event Tuesday, May 15,  in Champaign.

Makers of cars, planes, buses – anything that needs strong, lightweight and heat resistant parts – are poised to benefit from a new manufacturing process that requires only a quick touch from a small heat source to send a cascading hardening wave through a polymer. Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a new polymer-curing process that could reduce the cost, time and energy needed, compared with the current manufacturing process.

An exhibition at Krannert Art Museum will celebrate the work of graduating Illinois seniors in art and design.

The CRISPR-Cas9 system has given researchers the power to precisely edit selected genes. Now, researchers have used it to develop a technology that can target any gene in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and turn it off by deleting single letters from its DNA sequence.

Workplace violence is an endemic problem for front-line health care workers in Illinois, says new research from U. of I. labor and employment relations professor Emily E. LB. Twarog.

Common cuckoos and oriental cuckoos in eastern Russia appear to be expanding their breeding range into western Alaska, where songbirds are naive to the cuckoos’ wily ways, researchers report. A new study suggests the North American birds could suffer significant losses if cuckoos become established in Alaska.

A brain-imaging study offers new support for the idea that infants can accurately track other people’s beliefs. When 7-month-old infants in the study viewed videos of an actor who saw – or failed to see – an object being moved to a new location, activity in a brain region known to play a role in processing others’ beliefs changed in the infants, just as it did in adults watching the same videos.

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.

Illinois professor Mara Wade has been awarded a Getty Residential Scholar Grant. She’ll use the residency to work on her book on the relationship between public monuments and cultural politics in the city of Nuernberg.

Scott E. Denmark, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest professional honors a scientist can receive. Denmark is one of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates recognized for distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

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.

The University of Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired a manuscript written by Sir Isaac Newton that includes instructions for making the philosopher’s stone.

A U. of I. professor discusses drones and the implications of their use in terrorism and warfare.

Concern over the potential imminent eruptions of Earth’s supervolcanoes, like Taupo in New Zealand or Yellowstone in the United States, may be quelled by the results of a new study suggesting that geological signs pointing to a catastrophic eruption would be clear far in advance.

Losing an arm doesn’t have to mean losing all sense of touch, thanks to prosthetic arms that stimulate nerves with mild electrical feedback. University of Illinois researchers have developed a control algorithm that regulates the current so a prosthetics user feels steady sensation, even when the electrodes begin to peel off or when sweat builds up. 

A new article in the journal Science provides guidance for those intending to study ancient human remains in the Americas. The paper, written by Indigenous scholars and scientists and those who collaborate with Indigenous communities on studies of ancient DNA, offers a clear directive to others contemplating such research: First, do no harm.

U. of I. historian Winton Solberg tells the story of the Big Ten’s first half-century, focusing on the organizers and issues rather than on-the-field action.

A pending U.S. Supreme Court case could lead to the most significant changes in labor relations since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, says Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

An international consortium of scientists is proposing a massive project to sequence, catalog and analyze the genomes of all known eukaryotic species on the planet, an undertaking the researchers say will take 10 years, cost $4.7 billion and require more than 200 petabytes of digital storage capacity. Eukaryotes include all organisms except bacteria and archaea. There are an estimated 10-15 million eukaryotic species on Earth. Of those, the team proposes sequencing 1.5 million.

The more failing grades students have during eighth grade, the more likely they are to experience social-emotional learning problems, academic difficulties and behavioral problems as high school freshmen, a new study found.

Laser light shows are no longer just the stage dressing for rock concerts. They’re also a fun way for local middle school students to learn the fundamentals of mathematics from educators and scientists at the University of Illinois.

Krannert Art Museum will feature the work of graduate students in art and design in its MFA Exhibition, opening April 21.

A new study of trial court judges suggests these arbiters of the law sometimes let their personal ideas about gender roles influence their decision-making.

Speech and hearing science professor Laura DeThorne and doctoral students Henry Angulo and Veronica Vidal discuss how the neurodiversity movement recognizes autistic individuals’ unique experiences, skills and strengths, and resists the medicalization of autism.

A new paper from a team of U. of I. legal scholars explores restorative and transitional justice in the #MeToo movement.

It’s a summer day in June, and as my husband and I approach the Great Smoky Mountains National Park visitor center, I have one goal in mind: I want to see something extraordinary. At my request, the ranger at the visitor center pulls out a map, smiles and immediately points to the tallest waterfall in the area: Ramsey Cascades. Getting there will require hiking a rugged 8-mile trail that gains 2,200 feet in elevation. Our reward: a 100-foot waterfall – something you won’t find in Illinois.

Consuming high amounts of carbohydrates and various forms of sugar during the year prior to treatment for head and neck cancer may increase patients’ risks of cancer recurrence and mortality, a new study reports.

University of Illinois architecture professor Sudarshan Krishnan designs lightweight and transformable structures that can expand and collapse to adapt to a user’s needs.

I scan the woods around me, carefully eyeing the tree-line through the darkened windows on each side of my blind. I see no turkeys and go back to reading my book. After a few pages, I glance up again and jump in surprise as turkeys emerge over a hill in the field to my right. They are about 40 feet from the Netblaster. I text my crew to let them know our prey has arrived!

Cancer lurking in tissue could be more easily found when looking through a butterfly’s eye.

University of Illinois professor of geography Jesse Ribot has been awarded a 2018 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

R. Marie Griffith, the director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, will talk about political and religious disagreements surrounding sex when she delivers the annual Majorie Hall Thulin Lecture in Religion at the University of Illinois.

The underwater environment may appear to the human eye as a dull-blue, featureless space. However, a vast landscape of polarization patterns appear when viewed through a camera that is designed to see the world through the eyes of many of the animals that inhabit the water. 

Deaths from homicides, accidents, disasters or armed conflicts can result in unknown human remains that require identification before further investigation. To identify these remains, an anthropologist can piece together details about a person’s life from their bones. The accuracy of such anthropological methods depends on the diversity of available skeletal research collections, of which there are few around the world.