News Bureau

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

Surprising someone – whether it’s by a joke or via a gasp-inducing plot twist – can be a memorable experience, but a less heralded effect is that it can provide an avenue to influence people, said Jeffrey Loewenstein, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois.

As a chef-turned-nutritional neuroscientist, I explore how the food we eat impacts the way we think. As a part of my graduate training, I design dietary interventions.

The “cupcakes” in the image above are actually not cupcakes at all. They’re 90 percent egg powder with a dash of sugar and flour. In academic speak, they’re “tightly controlled isocaloric vessels of lutein that will serve as the intervention of a randomized control trial in preadolescents with below-average retinal lutein levels.”

Artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme want you to listen to, and not just look at, their work on view at Krannert Art Museum.

A citizenship question on the 2020 census could add to existing undercounts, says an Illinois professor who serves on a Census Bureau advisory committee

As an architecture student, I came across a whole new world of kinetic structures. I learned that almost any form can be given mobility and deployed by calculating its geometry accurately and by strategically selecting the joints to allow rotation.

Federal funding is needed to improve diagnosis and treatment of perinatal depression in Latina and black women, according to University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo. 

Latinos who are the most optimistic are more likely to have healthy hearts, according to a new study of more than 4,900 Latinos in the U.S. led by University of Illinois social work professor Rosalba Hernandez.

Bacteria in tap water can multiply when a faucet isn’t used for a few days, such as when a house is vacant over a week’s vacation, a new study from University of Illinois engineers found. The study suggests a new method to show how microbial communities, including those responsible for illnesses like Legionnaires’ disease, may assemble inside the plumbing systems of homes and public buildings

The University of Illinois Wind Symphony and Chamber Singers will perform a new composition written to celebrate the U. of I.’s sesquicentennial in April concerts at New York City’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and at Urbana’s Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

“Quantum Voyages,” an interdisciplinary theater piece created by University of Illinois physics and theatre professors, gives a glimpse into the strange world of quantum physics.

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.

Scientists have built a “computational microscope” that can simulate the atomic and subatomic forces that drive molecular interactions. This tool will streamline efforts to understand the chemistry of life, model large molecular systems and develop new pharmaceutical and industrial agents, the researchers say.

Each day brings with it a host of decisions to be made, and each person approaches those decisions differently. A new study by University of Illinois researchers found that these individual differences are associated with variation in specific brain networks – particularly those related to executive, social and perceptual processes.

Researchers have produced a “human scale” demonstration of a new phase of matter called quadrupole topological insulators that was recently predicted using theoretical physics. These are the first experimental findings to validate this theory.

The NFL has reflected the changing dynamics of the modern U.S. workplace due to the football-workplace connection that was forged during the sport’s early years, said Daniel A. Gilbert, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois and an expert who studies the cultural and labor history of sports.

Mixed-plastic electronics waste could be a valuable source of reusable polymers, a new study led by Illinois Sustainability Technology Center scientists suggests. The team has developed the first energy-efficient and environmentally friendly process that separates mixed polymers so that they can be recycled into new, high-quality plastic products.

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.

A new lightweight, low-cost agricultural robot, developed by a team of scientists at the University of Illinois, could transform data collection and field scouting for agronomists, seed companies and farmers.

Researchers say they can now produce a vast library of unique cyclic compounds, some with the capacity to interrupt specific protein-protein interactions that play a role in disease. The new compounds have cyclic structures that give them stability and enhance their ability to bind to their targets.  

The job of a Congress member is not one size fits all, say two U. of I. political scientists. In fact, there are five "legislative styles."

Storing your dead tarantulas in a gallon-sized pickle jar is not the best solution to long-term preservation. Especially when those tarantulas are toe-tagged – like corpses in a morgue. But that’s what I find this morning when I open one of the dozens of metal storage cabinets in the chilly insect collection: a pickle jar full of tarantulas.

News reports, social media campaigns such as #MeToo are raising awareness of sexual misconduct and helping survivors find their voices, says educational psychologist Anita Hund

The University of Illinois theatre department is celebrating its 50th anniversary with events March 3-5.

Scientists report in the journal eNeuro that they’ve built an artificially intelligent ocean predator that behaves a lot like the original flesh-and-blood organism on which it was modeled. The virtual creature, “Cyberslug,” reacts to food and responds to members of its own kind much like the actual animal, the sea slug Pleurobranchaea californica, does.

Researchers at the University of Illinois College of Medicine and Carle Illinois College of Medicine have found that creating short videos that explain information presented during physiology lectures makes teaching easier for medical educators and learning easier for their students.

Researchers have developed an imaging technique that uses a tiny, super sharp needle to nudge a single nanoparticle into different orientations and capture 2-D images to help reconstruct a 3-D picture. The method demonstrates imaging of individual nanoparticles at different orientations while in a laser-induced excited state.

A big data research study by a University of Illinois professor shows a decline in the prominence of female characters in fiction and in the number of female authors from the 19th century to the 20th century.

As far as anyone can tell, the cold-water crayfish Faxonius eupunctus makes its home in a 30-mile stretch of the Eleven Point River and nowhere else in the world. According to a new study, the animal is most abundant in the middle part its range, a rocky expanse in southern Missouri – with up to 35,000 cubic feet of chilly Ozark river water flowing by each second.

A new study links doing one’s homework, being interested and behaving responsibly in high school to better academic and career success as many as 50 years later. This effect, reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, holds true even after accounting for parental income, IQ and other factors known to influence achievement, researchers report.

Swapping food stamps for food boxes would mean scrapping 'the most successful government program we have going today,' said U. of I. professor Craig Gundersen

Iron deficiency in the first four weeks of a piglet’s life – equivalent to roughly four months in a human infant – impairs the development of key brain structures, scientists report. The abnormalities remain even after weeks of iron supplementation begun later in life, the researchers found.

Depictions of medical doctors in comics have become less stereotypical and more realistic, says Carol Tilley, a University of Illinois professor of information sciences and a comics historian and scholar.

The boilerplate text that nobody reads when signing up for an online service has very tenuous legal footing, said Robin B. Kar, a University of Illinois legal scholar and internationally recognized expert in contract law.

Every significant emancipation of black enslaved people in North America came with plans to relocate them to tropical areas, says a U. of I. historian.

Geologic activity within stable portions of Earth’s uppermost layer may have occurred more recently than previously believed.

A new study of middle-aged women found that sleep problems vary across the stages of menopause, yet are consistently correlated with hot flashes and depression.

A University of Illinois graphic design professor has developed a cellphone app that enables users to report suspected cases of human trafficking anonymously.

Social media data can be used as an additional source of information to gauge public opinion about health issues alongside traditional data sources like phone-based polling, says new research co-written by U. of I. psychology professor Dolores Albarracin.

Three Illinois scientists are among 126 recipients of the 2018 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. According to the foundation, the awards “honor early career scholars whose achievements mark them as among the very best scientific minds working today.” Winners receive a two-year $65,000 fellowship to further their research.

A study of foxes offers new insights into the brain changes that occur in wild canids as they become more tame, researchers report. The study links fox domestication to changes in gene activity in the pituitary gland, a brain center that kicks out hormones to regulate various bodily functions, including the stress response.

MIRI, MALAYSIA — We awake from our post-training slumber at 6:30 a.m. for an activity unlike any of the team-building exercises we have experienced so far. This is only the first week of training for the Fulbright Program here. There are nearly 100 of us on this waterfall hike, braving the rain and humidity together to swim in one of Malaysia’s hidden pools.

The 35th Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois will focus on ticks, which are not insects but arachnids and are important for humans to understand as they are vectors for Lyme disease.

A drug-carrying microsphere within a cell-bearing microcapsule could be the key to transplanting insulin-secreting pig pancreas cells into human patients whose own cells have been destroyed by type I diabetes.

Krannert Art Museum will host Art Remastered, a performance by six local musicians who composed new music in response to a piece of art at the museum.

Fewer than half of parents of children with disabilities make long-term care plans to ensure their child's needs are met if the parent dies or can no longer care for the child, University of Illinois special education professor Meghan Burke found.

Physicians played a key role in defining racial differences in the age of slavery, planting ideas that have carried to the present day, says a U. of I. historian in a new book.

I slowly turn each page of Florence Lee’s large paper scrapbook, making sure not to wrinkle any of the items she placed inside. Its contents offer a snapshot of student life in the early 20th century at the University of Illinois: a laminated orange and blue button from a homecoming football game, a brochure from the Anti-Cigarette League of America, ribbons and tickets from Dad’s Day events and dozens of photographs of scenes around campus, including personal photographs of Florence Lee with her family and friends. All of these items were either glued or, in the case of some of the flat paper items, had their corners tucked into angled slots cut into the pages. The items that Florence Lee placed in this scrapbook come from her undergraduate years at the University of Illinois – 1917-20. This memento offers a window into that time.

A new exhibit at the U. of I.’s Spurlock Museum offers a glimpse of the artistic and spiritual legacy of the American Indian people who built Cahokia, a great, thousand-year-old urban center on the Mississippi River. “Cahokia’s Religion: The Art of Red Goddesses, Black Drink and the Underworld” displays artifacts recently returned from the St. Louis Art Museum, including three of more than a dozen red carved-stone goddesses that the Illinois State Archaeological Survey found in our excavations of this ancient metropolis. You can view these figures alongside other cultural objects that reveal a civilization’s core beliefs and values. 

Whether or not survivors share their stories publicly, they often carry lifelong scars associated with being sexually traumatized