News Bureau

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - In the beginning - of the ribosome, the cell's protein-building workbench - there were ribonucleic acids, the molecules we call RNA that today perform a host of vital functions in cells. And according to a new analysis, even before the ribosome's many working parts were recruited for protein synthesis, proteins also were on the scene and interacting with RNA. This finding challenges a long-held hypothesis about the early evolution of life.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Immigrants arrived by the millions between 1890 and 1920, a surge mostly from eastern and southeastern Europe.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -The recent settlement of claims by BP from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster of 2010 is a step in the right direction, but it won't solve the most pernicious problem of the entire debacle - corporate greed, says a University of Illinois expert in maritime law and corporate and government relations.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Ask Claire Barker how she became a tango dancer and she tells a story that begins when she became a nun. Barker - a professor of internal medicine at the University of Illinois - had a friend who was staging a production of "The Sound of Music" at a local theater and needed more holy sisters for the abbey scenes. Barker auditioned, and was cast not only as a nun but also as a dancer in the ballroom scene. Dance coaches for the production noticed Barker's knack for the Viennese waltz and encouraged her to continue dancing. She enrolled at the Regent Ballroom in Savoy, Ill., and soon fell in love with the Argentine tango. For the past five years, she has been hosting monthly "milongas" (tango dance parties) at the Channing-Murray Foundation on the Illinois campus.

A Minute With™... Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, a professor of history and of sociology

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - A new study in Science suggests that thrill-seeking is not limited to humans and other vertebrates. Some honey bees, too, are more likely than others to seek adventure. The brains of these novelty-seeking bees exhibit distinct patterns of gene activity in molecular pathways known to be associated with thrill-seeking in humans, researchers report.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Babies who are breastfed exclusively for their first six months of life may be less likely to become picky eaters as preschoolers, according to a recent study of 129 mothers and their children.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Kevin Warsh, the former chief liaison to Wall Street for the Federal Reserve System, is scheduled to be at the University of Illinois on Monday (March 12) to give a talk about the financial crisis.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Brainiacs of all ages are invited to explore the mysteries of the brain and nervous system March 11 during an afternoon of games and activities at the Orpheum Children's Science Museum in Champaign. The event, F.I.N.D. Orphy, will kick off a new science education outreach program jointly sponsored by the Orpheum and the University of Illinois that highlights the research of the university's neuroscientists.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - No matter how many hours a day young women spend tweeting and texting, downloading electronic media or communicating online with co-workers or friends, many of them believe they're not as competent at using computer technology as the men around them. Since the Internet's infancy, researchers have observed a distinct gender divide in attitudes toward and adoption of computer technology, with many women tending to feel intimidated by it, a phenomenon called computer anxiety.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The principles of sustainability need not be at odds with a classic education in business, since environmental and poverty issues likely will be among the biggest challenges for tomorrow's leaders of industry, according to published research from a University of Illinois expert in poverty and subsistence marketplace behaviors.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - With the support of a $3.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, researchers will take the first steps toward engineering two new oil-rich crops. They aim to boost the natural, oil-producing capabilities of sugarcane and sorghum, increase the crops' photosynthetic power and - in the case of sugarcane - enhance the plant's cold tolerance so that it can grow in more northerly climes.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Beautiful people, scenic locations, cool music and ... the right plot structure? It turns out that a plot structure found in folktales is potent in television advertisements, according to published research by Jeffrey Loewenstein, a professor of business administration at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - High corn prices are leading many growers to plant corn every year and to overuse pesticides and other bug-killing technology to maximize yields, researchers report. In many instances, pesticides are applied without scouting fields to see if they are needed, violating a bedrock principle of integrated pest management. The result is a biological diversity desert in many corn and soybean fields in the agricultural Midwest, and signs that the surviving insects are becoming resistant to several key bug-fighting tools now available to farmers.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - At its Feb. 22 meeting, the University of Illinois Student Senate passed a resolution encouraging Facebook users to avoid posting racially insensitive material on a memes page associated with the school. The page administrators voluntarily removed the posts deemed offensive, but the debate continued in the Opinions section of the Daily Illini, a student newspaper. Few of the racially charged memes referred to African-Americans or Latinos; most referred to students of Asian heritage.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Aric Rindfleisch has been appointed head of the department of business administration and the J.M. Jones Professor of Marketing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pending approval by the U. of I. Board of Trustees.

A Minute With™... National Atmospheric Deposition Program coordinator David Gay and researcher Christopher Lehmann

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Pianist Konstantinos Papadakis will perform music by contemporary Greek composers and works inspired by Greek themes at a free recital March 13 (Tuesday) at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - A chemically altered osteoporosis drug may be useful in fighting malaria, researchers report in a new study. Unlike similar compounds tested against many other parasitic protozoa, the drug readily crosses into the red blood cells of malaria-infected mice and kills the malaria parasite. The drug works at very low concentrations with no observed toxicity to the mouse.

A Minute With™... Geophysicist and earthquake expert Timothy Larson

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Not that long ago in a hot spring in Kamchatka, Russia, two groups of genetically indistinguishable microbes parted ways. They began evolving into different species - despite the fact that they still encountered one another in their acidic, boiling habitat and even exchanged some genes from time to time, researchers report. This is the first example of what the researchers call sympatric speciation in a microorganism.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Companies that want to motivate workers to use electronic-based or digital training programs need to make training modules fun and stimulating whenever they can, and offer extrinsic incentives, such as wage increases and user support, when employees need extra enticement, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Hispanics living in the Midwest have the highest obesity rates among Latinos in the U.S., and in Illinois, the percentage of obese Latino children 6-11 years of age has doubled since 2001, standing now at 24 percent.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - A small population of rattlesnakes that already is in decline in southern Illinois faces a new and unexpected threat in the form of a fungus rarely seen in the wild, researchers report.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Geologists are hoping to learn a great deal about geologic carbon sequestration from injecting 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into sandstone 7,000 feet beneath Decatur, Ill. And they're hoping the public learns a lot from the endeavor, too.

CHAMPAIGN,Ill. - Three University of Illinois professors have each been selected to receive a 2012 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

CHAMPAIGN,Ill. - Three University of Illinois professors have each been selected to receive a 2012 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Ants exposed to Iraqi plutonium turn a Los Angeles skyscraper into a nightmarish death trap, and diamond miners confront a bloodthirsty ant swarm in the Namib Desert in this year's Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois Foellinger Auditorium on Feb. 25 (Saturday).

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The best-known Greek-themed movie in recent memory had the words "big" and "fat" in the title, a $5 million filming budget and was shot in North America. These days, despite an economic crisis that has made the country a regular staple of the news, the film industry in Greece is experiencing such a surprising revitalization that Greek movies made on Spartan budgets are winning prizes and critical acclaim at international festivals.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Since its founding in 1998, Japan House on the University of Illinois campus has been holding traditional Japanese tea ceremonies for the public.

A Minute With™... Eric Snodgrass, an atmospheric sciences instructor

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The debate over the impact of tax-increment financing on funding for Chicago Public Schools has devolved into gridlock, and the key to moving forward is for both sides to recognize how contested the ground is that they are fighting over, says a University of Illinois labor expert.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Photonics pioneer James J. Coleman has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering. Coleman is the Intel Alumni Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Photonics pioneer James J. Coleman has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering. Coleman is the Intel Alumni Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Jon S. Davis has been appointed head of the department of accountancy and the R.C. Evans Endowed Chair in Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pending approval by the U. of I. Board of Trustees.

A Minute With™... linguistics professor Randall Sadler

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A so-called "Buffett Rule" that would create a higher minimum tax rate for those with income greater than $1 million per year would have little effect on the taxes of the real-life Warren Buffett unless it takes capital gains into account, says a University of Illinois expert on taxation.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Researchers have found a way to study how our brains assess the behavior - and likely future actions - of others during competitive social interactions. Their study, described in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to use a computational approach to tease out differing patterns of brain activity during these interactions, the researchers report.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - University of Illinois researchers determined that an adult stem cell present in muscle is responsive to exercise, a discovery that may provide a link between exercise and muscle health. The findings could lead to new therapeutic techniques using these cells to rehabilitate injured muscle and prevent or restore muscle loss with age.

The people who have been taking care of the injured snowy owl that was brought to the UI Wildlife Medical Clinic in January are hoping he lives up to his name, Qigiq - Inuit for "white hawk that flies in the sky."

A Minute With™... Sundiata Cha-Jua, a professor of history and of African American Studies

A Minute With™... Labor and law professor Michael LeRoy

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Anyone who has flown on a commercial airline since 2001 is well aware of increasingly strict measures at airport security checkpoints. A study by Illinois researchers demonstrates that intensive screening of all passengers actually makes the system less secure by overtaxing security resources.

A Minute With™... computer science professor Sheldon H. Jacobson and graduate student Douglas M. King

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - If you were a blind, cannibalistic sea slug, living among others just like you, nearly every encounter with another creature would require a simple cost/benefit calculation: Should I eat that, do nothing or flee?

A Minute With™... English and linguistics professor Dennis Baron

CHAMPAIGN, lll. - Land and marine iguanas and giant tortoises living close to human settlements or tourist sites in the Galápagos Islands were more likely to harbor antibiotic-resistant bacteria than those living in more remote or protected sites on the islands, researchers report in a new study.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Three exhibitions open Thursday (Jan. 26) at Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Unlike most art exhibition receptions, the one kicking off the spring semester at Figure One - the University of Illinois' art exhibition space in downtown Champaign - won't involve wine and little cheese cubes speared on colorful toothpicks. Instead, patrons will nosh on milk and cookies, then skip over a bridge and watch TV in a fort.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - With mounting concerns over childhood obesity and its associated health risks in the U.S., would a ban on junk-food advertising aimed at children be more effective than the current voluntary, industry-led ban? According to published research from a University of Illinois economist, advertising bans do work, but an outright ban covering the entire U.S. media market would be the most effective policy tool for reducing fast-food consumption in children.