2019-02-06
- BIOMIMICRY - PBS News Hour: Rashid Bashir, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering at Illinois, and his team are developing bio-bots that move using real muscles activated by flashes of light....
2019-01-30 - Aditi Das, assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Biosciences at the College of Veterinary Medicine was recently named the 2019 recipient of the Mary Swartz Rose Young...
2019-01-17 - The Zhang lab recently published a paper in Cell Chemical Biology titled "Optogenetic delineation of receptor tyrosine kinase subcircuits in PC12 cell differentiation." Neuronal development involves an assortment of growth factors and signal receptors that are activated during different stages. In some cases...- 2019-01-10 - GENETICS: Gizmodo(Sydney, Jan. 10) – Monogamy may have a telltale signature of gene activity, according to a study by two researchers at the University of Texas, Austin. “This group of scientists took a very novel approach by comparing disparate species who show monogamy, not making any assumptions about whether they evolved monogamy separately or inherited it,” says Gene Robinson, the paper...
2019-01-09 - ANIMAL BIOLOGY - Audubon (New York City, Jan. 8) – Coming in many shapes, colors and sizes, strange mouth markings might aid in the survival of young birds, says Mark Hauber, an ornithologist and a professor of animal biology at Illinois.- 2019-01-08 - Science (Washington, D.C., Jan. 7)–Monogamy may have a telltale signature of gene activity, according to two researchers at the University of Texas, Austin. “The fact that they got any common genes at all is interesting,” says Lisa Stubbs, a developmental geneticist at Illinois. “It is a superb data set and an expert analysis,” she says, “(but) the authors have not actually uncovered many...
2019-01-08 - e-Neuro New Research: Menthol is the most popular flavor used in all forms of tobacco products. Depending on the method used to produce the menthol, these products contain two stereoisomers ((−)-menthol and (+)-menthol) in unregulated and poorly characterized amounts. We studied how these isomers of menthol differ in their ability to alter nicotinic receptors on dopamine neurons that...
2019-01-03 - IFL Science! (London, Jan. 3) – Baby birds can recognize parents’ songs while still in the egg, according to new research performed at the U. of I. "...The idea that birds can be influenced by sounds while in the egg remains a controversial one among scientists. Dr Mark Hauber of the University of Illinois told IFLScience, 'We've...
2018-12-24 - Congratulations to Neuroscience Faculty Emeritus, Rhanor Gillette and Graduate Student, Ekaterina Gribkova on "Implementing Goal-Directed Foraging Decisions of a Simpler Nervous System in Simulation" which made the Top 10 Downloads from eNeuro in 2018!...
2018-12-20 - Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created a new technology to track tumor development within human breast tissue, a study says. The new system has the potential to speed up a normally lengthy process. A traditional cancer diagnosis takes a few days and requires tissue to be removed, dyed with chemicals and examined by a pathologist. Read more: ...
2018-11-06 - Smithsonian (Washington, D.C., Nov. 5) – Last week, a global consortium of scientists, including U. of I. researchers, officially launched the Earth BioGenome Project, which intends to sequence the DNA of most species of life on Earth. ------ The ambitious idea first came together in 2015 at a meeting ...
2018-11-01 - Science, Oct. 3–Bird eggs have been admired since ancient times for their many hues and patterns, from the vivid blue of American robin eggs to the deep green-black of emu eggs. Now, a study shows these colors and markings are even older than we thought – they may have graced dinosaur eggs some 150 million years ago or more. “(This) is a true discovery,” says Mark Hauber, an ornithologist at...
2018-10-24 - BLASTING BIOFILMS - Design News, Oct. 24-Antibiotic-resistant infections derived from microbial films that coat medical devices and surfaces in hospitals are becoming a deadly epidemic. U. of I. researchers have come up with a new solution to this problem with a nano-based system of microbubbles to wipe out these films and prevent them from spreading disease....
2018-10-19 - If you have ever been to a loud concert or suffered from a bad head injury, you may have experienced a constant ringing in your ear for some time afterwards, but this ringing can be a permanent issue for people with tinnitus. Fatima Husain, assistant professor in speech and hearing sciences, is studying whether relaxation and sound apps can minimize the symptoms of tinnitus in adults ages 21 to...
2018-10-18 - Science (Washington, D.C., Oct. 18) – A new study suggests that changes to the expression of a single gene could determine which bees are solitary and which are social. Gene Robinson, a behavioral genomicist and the director of the U. of I.’s Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, says the next step is to figure out how the genes in his study of honey bees affect brain development and...