News Bureau

A strike by railroad unions would have been bad news for the Biden administration and an already-stressed economy, says Michael LeRoy, an expert in labor law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“Quiet quitting” means forgoing the extra mile at work but is different than work withdrawal or employee disengagement, says University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign labor expert YoungAh Park, who studies work stress and recovery.

A three-year study in northeastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana found that – even at small scales – emergent wetlands or ponds support many wetland bird species. The study also found that, at least in the years surveyed, the level of urbanization had little effect on most of the studied species’ use of such sites, provided the right kinds of habitat were available.

Brown-headed cowbirds are generalist brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of many other bird species and letting the host parents raise their young. A new study seeks to understand the strategies cowbird chicks use to survive in prothonotary warbler nests when they hatch with different numbers of warbler nestlings. The study reveals that a cowbird chick does better with two than with four or zero warbler nest mates. 

New COVID-19 vaccine boosters that target omicron variants are being distributed. Although the variants seem less deadly, the boosters are needed to keep up with the virus as it evolves, says University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign microbiology professor Christopher Brooke, a virologist and vaccine expert.

The Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has appointed 16 faculty members as associates or fellows for the 2022-23 academic year.

We stand in the open fields of Spanish Lookout, a modernized Mennonite farming community in Central Belize, looking at what remains of ancestral Maya homes after years of plowing. White mounds, the remnants of these houses, pock the landscape as far as the eye can see, a stark reminder of what existed more than 1,000 years ago. The collapsed buildings look like smudges on an aerial photograph, but as archaeologists, we get to see them up close. With enough excavation and interpretation, we can eventually make sense of how these dwellings functioned in the deep human past.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is investing $50 million to hire new faculty members. As part of this new multiyear initiative, academic units will hire additional faculty in specified strategic areas.

Older workers who entered the federal disability program when unemployment was high were in better health than those who entered when unemployment was low, says a new paper co-written by a team of Gies College of Business scholars.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's incoming class of 7,957 first-year students brings greater representation by gender, nationality and students who are the first in their family to go to college, while a change in the application process resulted in greater academic competition.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign announces graduates, Dean’s List and Bronze Tablet honorees for the 2022 spring semester. 

As emergency coordinators across the U.S. prepare for the upcoming hurricane season, they are busy planning evacuation routes. Currently, these plans don’t anticipate the needs of people driving electric vehicles, which have shorter driving ranges than gas vehicles and require recharging at stations with charging ports. Civil and environmental engineering professor Eleftheria Kontou spoke with News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian about this issue and her newly published study.

Funds in the Inflation Reduction Act targeted for energy security and climate change reduction will encourage a major transformation in the U.S. renewable energy infrastructure, says Don Fullerton, the Gutgsell Professor of Finance at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a senior scholar at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs.

An Indigenous languages collective at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is helping local Maya learn to read and write Q’anjob’al and working with interpreters for the community.

A team of psychologists, led by scholars at the U. of I. proposes training future psychologists to dismantle racism and systemic oppression in society -- while addressing their discipline's legacy of racist theories and practices.

As the COVID-19 pandemic wanes and remote work gradually turns into hybrid work, organizations will pay close attention to which workers and occupations function well in a hybrid-work arrangement, said Amit Kramer, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who studies the relationship between work, family and health.

U. of I. sociology professor Tim Liao's analysis of the protest slogans about the federal COVID-19 vaccine-or-test mandate in November 2021 found three distinct themes.

Eight civil service employees were recognized for exceptional performance by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Each recipient of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Staff Award receives a cash award and their names appear on a plaque in the Illinois Human Resources Office.

The author and her colleagues search a South Texas scrubland for the federally endangered Zapata bladderpod, Physaria thamnophila. This rare endemic plant, a member of the mustard family, is named for the region and is found in only two counties in the United States.

A new exhibition at Krannert Art Museum, “Fake News & Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic,” examines the visual strategies of Dutch printmakers and the ways they used images to promote political interests.

A new paper co-written by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign legal scholar Jacob S. Sherkow advocates for a middle ground in patent claims involving antibodies, the backbone of modern bioscience.

New research suggests that exploring one of the darkest chapters in mankind’s history – the Holocaust – may inspire tourists to act on human rights and social change. 

Illinois Chancellor Robert Jones has been named to the board of directors of Hope Chicago, a nonprofit organization seeking to reduce economic and social inequity by funding postsecondary scholarships and nontuition costs for Chicago Public Schools graduates and adult family members. Founded by businessman Ted Koenig and entrepreneur Pete Kadens, Hope Chicago has a goal of raising and investing at least $1 billion dollars over the next decade to help tens of thousands of Chicago students and family members earn postsecondary credentials.

In a new study, retired Illinois State Water Survey engineer Sally McConkey and Eric R. Larson, a professor of natural resources and environmental sciences at the U. of I., examined the metrics used at a county scale for national assessments to determine whether communities are prepared to withstand and recover from natural disasters such as floods and fires. McConkey spoke to News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about what they found.

By comparing geographic patterns of nonhuman primate biodiversity and human land-use, researchers discovered that areas managed or controlled by Indigenous peoples tend to have significantly more primate biodiversity than nearby regions. They also found that lorises, tarsiers, monkeys and apes whose territories overlap with Indigenous areas are less likely to be classified as vulnerable, threatened or endangered than those living fully outside Indigenous lands.

Grocery shopping in person remained extremely common throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, while restaurant dining was more vulnerable to surges in case rates, according to a new study examining how Americans acquired food at various points during the pandemic.

Mineral-rich waters originating from the Apennine Mountains of Italy flowed through ancient Rome’s Anio Novus aqueduct and left behind a detailed rock record of past hydraulic conditions, researchers said. Two studies characterizing layered limestone – called travertine – deposits within the Anio Novus are the first to document the occurrence of anti-gravity growth ripples and establish that these features lend clues to the history of ancient water conveyance and storage systems.

Counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine underscore the importance of unmanned aircraft to future military capabilities, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign political scientist Nicholas Grossman, the author of “Drones and Terrorism: Asymmetric Warfare and the Threat to Global Security.”

Using single calcite crystals with varying surface roughness allows engineers to simplify the complex physics that describes fault movement. In a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, researchers show how this simplification may lead to better earthquake prediction.

Light-activated proteins can help normalize dysfunction within cells and could be used as a treatment for diseases such as cancer or mitochondrial diseases, new research suggests.

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University at Buffalo published the results of their study in the journal Nature Communications. The research centers on the functions of mitochondria, organelles within a cell that act as the cell’s “power plant” and source of energy.

Phytoplasmas are bacteria that can invade the vascular tissues of plants, causing many different crop diseases. While most studies of phytoplasmas begin by examining plants showing disease symptoms, a new analysis focuses on the tiny insects that carry the infectious bacteria from plant to plant. By extracting and testing DNA from archival leafhopper specimens collected in natural areas, the study identified new phytoplasma strains and found new associations between leafhoppers and phytoplasmas known to harm crop plants.

Patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head or neck were 93% less likely to die during the first three years after diagnosis if they ate a healthy diet high in nutrients found to deter chronic disease, U. of I. researchers found in a recent study.

Black adolescents who lived in poverty as children and were pessimistic about their future had accelerated immune cell aging and greater levels of insulin resistance in their mid- to late twenties, according to a study by Allen W. Barton, a professor of human development and family studies.

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts’ upcoming season will include touring artists, rescheduled performances that were canceled due to COVID-19 and work from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s dance, music and theatre departments.

The ancient North American city of Cahokia had as its focal point a feature now known as Monks Mound, a giant earthwork surrounded on its north, south, east and west by large rectangular open areas. These flat zones, called plazas by archaeologists since the early 1960s, were thought to serve as communal areas that served the many mounds and structures of the city.

New paleoenvironmental analyses of the north plaza suggest it was almost always underwater, calling into question earlier interpretations of the north plaza’s role in Cahokian society. The study is reported in the journal World Archaeology.

The “With Illinois” fundraising campaign officially ended June 30 and concluded with a $200,000 personal contribution from Chancellor Robert J. Jones and his wife, Dr. Lynn Hassan Jones.

A new analysis of reports from more than 35,000 people offers the most comprehensive assessment so far of menstrual changes experienced by pre- and post-menopausal individuals in the first two weeks after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Published in the journal Science Advances, the study adds to the evidence that significant numbers of people experience this unexpected side effect.

An individualized diet plan developed by nutritionists at the U. of I. shows promise at helping users lose weight and keep it off. The program uses a visual tool that encourages dieters to select foods high in protein and fiber.

Blockchain technology has the potential to transform industries ranging from health care to government, says Robert Brunner, the associate dean for innovation and chief disruption officer at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Young children’s development of the higher-level cognitive skills called executive function may be adversely affected by household chaos and poor nutrition, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign scholars found.

Having high levels of compassion satisfaction buffered some temporary medical workers at a New York field hospital from stress disorders during the early days of the pandemic, a new study found.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is partnering with local businesses and organizations to invest $300,000 to fight violent crime in Champaign County. The university is joined by Busey Bank, Carle Health, Christie Clinic, OSF HealthCare and the United Way of Champaign County, each of which is investing $50,000.

Grassroots organizing efforts strengthen their campaigns for economic policy changes by collaborating with racial justice groups, says urban planning professor Marc Doussard in his new book “Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities.”

Chrystalla Mouza has been appointed dean of the College of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign effective Aug. 15, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Cryptocurrencies have real-world use cases and will remain a viable investment because of the functionality blockchain technology provides, says Robert Brunner, the chief disruption officer at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

A study of a herpes virus that infects chickens offers new insights into potentially problematic interactions between vaccines made from live viruses and the viruses they are meant to thwart.

When the coronavirus causing COVID-19 infects human cells, the cell’s protein-processing machinery makes modifications to the spike protein that render it more flexible and mobile, which could increase its ability to infect other cells and to evade antibodies, a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found.

The researchers created an atomic-level computational model of the spike protein and ran multiple simulations to examine the protein’s dynamics and how the cell’s modifications affected those dynamics. This is the first study to present such a detailed picture of the protein that plays a key role in COVID-19 infection and immunity, the researchers said.

According to a new study, the first louse to take up residence on a mammalian host likely started out as a parasite of birds. That host-jumping event tens of millions of years ago began the long association between mammals and lice, setting the stage for their coevolution and offering more opportunities for the lice to spread to other mammals.

When most people are just getting home from their workdays, I’m about to start mine. I am a researcher studying the breeding behavior of the Eastern whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus), a cryptic bird that is primarily active after sunset as it forages on the wing for moths. So – for the summer, at least – I also am nocturnal.

Illinois officials this month announced that Asian carp would now be called “copi” in an attempt to make the fish more desirable for eating. Joe Parkos, the director of the Illinois Natural History Survey’s Kaskaskia, Ridge Lake and Sam Parr biological stations in Illinois, spoke with News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about scientific initiatives to study and control carp/copi fish populations and the potential for rebranding to aid those efforts.