News Bureau

Pressures to maintain a facade of a perfect family and other values associated with the “culture of affluence” discourage some affluent women from leaving violent spouses or disclosing that they are being abused, a new study suggests.

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. 

A project called the Human Library is designed to challenge stereotypes by bringing people together to talk. A newly formed Champaign-Urbana chapter of the Human Library will hold its first event Sept. 22 as part of the Pygmalion Festival.

Resistance to multiple herbicides is the new norm for populations of waterhemp, a common agricultural weed. With their herbicide options dwindling and nothing new on the horizon, Illinois growers must be strategic in how they manage waterhemp-infested fields, says a University of Illinois expert on crop weed management.

A new 30-minute documentary tells the story of Tim Nugent, known by many as the “Father of Accessibility,” who founded the first comprehensive program for college students with physical disabilities at the University of Illinois. Prior to the start of that program, people with disabilities were not expected to go to school, find employment or play sports.

The least convincing arguments can reverberate in the public consciousness over time – provided they’re delivered by a credible source, says new research from U. of I. psychology professor Dolores Albarracin.

A University of Illinois professor who lived through the Iranian Revolution, included three years on death row in an infamous prison, reflects on the experience in a new autobiographic novel.

Researchers at the University of Illinois and collaborators have identified the active form of an iron-containing catalyst for the trickiest part of the process: reducing oxygen gas. The finding could help researchers refine better catalysts, making fuel cells a more energy- and cost-efficient option for powering vehicles and other applications.

Several galleries at Krannert Art Museum reopened at the start of the fall semester, and some of the paintings hung there now have a fresher, brighter look.

University of Illinois professor Ben Grosser says software design is directing the way all of us move as we use our technology, yet we pay little attention to these human-tech interactions. Grosser recently made a video supercut of scenes from the Netflix series “House of Cards” showing characters in the show using technology – the first in a series of three videos for his “Touching Software” project.

Scientists at the University of Illinois may have unlocked the genetic code that determines why many patients with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer fail to respond to the widely used drug tamoxifen.

 A new exhibition at Krannert Art Museum looks at stories of migration, refugees and human rights as they relate to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – a region known as the Northern Triangle.

An eight-year study of soybeans grown outdoors in a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere like that expected by 2050 has yielded a new and worrisome finding: Higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations will boost plant growth under ideal growing conditions, but drought – expected to worsen as the climate warms and rainfall patterns change – will outweigh those benefits and cause yield losses much sooner than anticipated.

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts will soon see the difference in the facility’s energy bills. Every light fixture in the Foellinger Great Hall – other than those over the stage – has been changed from an incandescent to an LED light fixture. That’s well over 1,000 light bulbs.

Childhood bullying inflicts the same long-term psychological trauma on girls as severe physical or sexual abuse, suggests a new survey of nearly 500 college students.

Choreographer John Heginbotham was at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts recently for a two-week residency with his New York-based company Dance Heginbotham, during which he was developing a new production that will integrate dance with the work of visual artist Maira Kalman.

The University of Illinois has developed a repository that stores the data of Illinois researchers and provides access to it for other researchers who want to use the data in their own analyses.

Dr. King Li, a renowned researcher, educator, inventor and clinician in molecular imaging and radiology, will become the inaugural dean and chief academic officer of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine effective Oct. 1. 

On Aug. 26, the National Academy of Sciences released a report on the future of atmospheric chemistry research in the U.S. Illinois civil and environmental engineering professor Tami Bond was among the contributors

When an important bridge collapsed on Interstate 5 near Mount Vernon, Washington, in 2013, questions were raised about how such a catastrophic failure could occur. A new analysis by a team of civil engineering faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign outlines the many factors that led to the collapse, as well as steps that transportation departments can take to prevent such accidents on other bridges of similar design.

Guaranteed-tuition laws, touted by lawmakers as protecting college affordability and ensuring access to higher education for low-income students, have received failing grades from two University of Illinois experts in higher education finance.

A new study by University of Illinois researchers and collaborators in China has demonstrated that external mechanical force can directly regulate gene expression.

With popularly elected judges, political influence pervades and taints Illinois courts, said U. of I. legal expert Michael LeRoy.

With its easy-to-miss symptoms and link to birth defects, the Zika virus is very similar to German measles (rubella), according to history professor Leslie Reagan

The Flatlands Dance Film Festival will present the feature film “A Ballerina’s Tale,” about American Ballet Theater principal dancer Misty Copeland, as well as short films created for Snapchat and the winners of the Flatlands film competition.

Women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer have long complained of lingering cognitive impairments after treatment. These effects are referred to as "chemobrain," a feeling of mental fogginess. A new study from the University of Illinois reports long-lasting cognitive impairments in mice when they are administered a chemotherapy regimen used to treat breast cancer in humans.

Japan House's Matsuri festival celebrating Japanese culture will be from 2 to 7 p.m. Aug. 28 at Japan House, 2000 S. Lincoln Ave., Urbana.

The widespread use of the color red to signal danger can actually be counterproductive for certain people, says research co-written by Ravi Mehta, a professor of business administration at Illinois.

For gene-editing proteins to be useful in clinical applications, they need to be able to find the specific site they’re supposed to edit among billions of DNA sequences. Using advanced imaging techniques, University of Illinois researchers have found that one class of genome-editing proteins rapidly travels along a strand of DNA like a rider on a zip line – a unique behavior among documented DNA-binding proteins.

Despite the outcry from employers over the dearth of job-ready workers, three-quarters of U.S. manufacturing plants show no sign of hiring difficulties for job vacancies, says new research from Andrew Weaver, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

Wynne Korr, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois, discusses the challenges of diagnosing and providing treatment for this vulnerable population in light of the state's financial problems

James D. Anderson, the head of the department of education policy, organization and leadership and the executive associate dean for the College of Education, will become the interim dean of the College of Education effective Aug. 16.

Spiraling tuition rates at U.S. colleges and universities, and mounting concern about student loan debt, have made college affordability a key policy objective for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

An analysis of a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults reveals that access to healthy foods in a supermarket does not hinder Americans’ consumption of empty calories. In fact, the study found, U.S. adults buy the bulk of their sugar-sweetened beverages and nutrient-poor discretionary foods at supermarkets and grocery stores. The findings challenge the "food desert" hypothesis.

The state superintendent of education said providing the SAT for free would promote equity in higher education. Education professor Eboni Zamani-Gallaher isn't so sure.

Dozens of people buried in mass graves in an ancient mound in Cahokia, a pre-Columbian city in Illinois near present-day St. Louis, likely lived in or near Cahokia most of their lives, researchers report in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 

A new study challenges earlier interpretations of an important burial mound at Cahokia, a pre-Columbian city in Illinois near present-day St. Louis. The study reveals that a central feature of the mound, a plot known as the “beaded burial,” is not a monument to male power, as was previously thought, but includes both males and females of high status.

Car companies can either “design for satisfaction” by investing in function and ergonomics or “design for delight” by investing in form, says new research from Raj Echambadi, a professor of business administration at Illinois.

Batteries that charge faster and have greater capacity could boost portable electronic devices and electric cars. A new method to simultaneously test stress and strain in battery electrodes gives researchers a window into the mechanical, electrical and chemical forces within lithium-ion batteries. The method revealed an unexpected point of stress in the charging cycle, which could guide development of better batteries.

For medicinal chemists, making tweaks to peptide structures is key to developing new drug candidates. Now, researchers have demonstrated that two iron-containing small-molecule catalysts can help turn certain types of amino acids – the building blocks of peptides and proteins – into an array of potential new forms, even when part of a larger peptide, while preserving a crucial aspect of their chemistry: chirality, or “handedness.”

In early 2014, months before the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and shortly after the Black Lives Matter movement got its start, Michael Schlosser, the director of the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, began offering police recruits classes that challenged their views about race and racism, introduced them to critical race theory and instructed them in methods to de-escalate potentially volatile encounters with members of minority groups.

Think Brazil and you might think beaches, rain forest, the 2016 Olympics – all far removed from central Illinois. Yet the University of Illinois is perhaps the most comprehensive center of Brazilian studies in the U.S.

A Minute With...™ Marc Hertzman, expert on the history of samba

A new book by Madhu Viswanathan, the Diane and Steven N. Miller Professor in Business at Illinois, explores the author’s personal journey as a scholar studying people living in poverty as well as how the impoverished function in the marketplace as consumers and entrepreneurs.

Despite societal perceptions that older adults’ love lives are ancient history, many seniors are anything but retired from sex, a new study suggests.

“BEAR” is the fourth performance in “The Unreliable Bestiary,” a lifelong project by University of Illinois art professor Deke Weaver to present a performance for every letter of the alphabet, each representing an endangered animal or habitat. Weaver’s project tells the stories of animals and our relationships to them.

At the University of Illinois, an engineer teamed up with a veterinarian to test a bone cancer drug delivery system in animals bigger than the standard animal model, the mouse. They chose dogs – mammals closer in size and biology to humans – with naturally occurring bone cancers, which also are a lot like human bone tumors.

So far this year, Yellowstone has seen a record number of visitors – and what seems to be a record number of visitors disobeying the rules.

University of Illinois researchers have developed a way to etch very tall, narrow finFETs, a type of transistor that forms a tall semiconductor “fin” for the current to travel over.

University of Illinois engineers developed a model to calculate the age of nitrogen in corn and soybean fields, which could lead to improved fertilizer application techniques to promote crop growth while reducing leaching.