2019-05-16
- ENTOMOLOGY: WLS-TV (Chicago, May 16) – For the growing number of beekeepers in Lake County, the arrival of 3 million bees was a welcome sign that winter was finally ending. Gene Robinson, an entomology professor at Illinois, credits three factors with the growth of beekeeping as a hobby. “With the concern for bees and the interest in locally produced food and the interest in food in...
- 2019-05-02 - 5G WIRELESS - Chicago Tribune (May 1) – 5G, the fifth generation of wireless, promises lightning-fast download speeds and could lay the foundation for high-tech advancements like self-driving cars, but it’s also sparking health concerns. Lav Varshney, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois, says concerns surrounding new technologies are common throughout history. “When...
2019-05-01 - New soft, stretchable electronic devices designed by a team including Neuroscience faculty and alumni at Beckman Institute could change the way people undergo medical tests, control prosthetic devices, and more. The innovation, which can range from the size of a postage stamp to that of entire body parts, is a shining example of what is possible through interdisciplinary collaboration....- 2019-04-17 - 3D printing is...allowing scientists to create models at a much finer scale, says ornithologist Mark Hauber at the University of Illinois in Urbana. Hauber studies a behavior known as brood parasitism, in which birds lay eggs in the nests of other species, leaving the unwitting foster parents to rear their chicks. Previously, researchers studied host birds’ reactions by placing plaster and wood...
2019-04-17 - Hakai Magazine (Campbell River, Canada, April 17) – Mark Hauber, an animal behavior researcher at the U. of I., has discovered that year after year a female common murre will produce an egg with a shell pattern that has an individualized, recognizable pattern that is nearly identical to her previous eggs by manipulating just two pigments.- 2019-04-11 - On April 10, Associate Professor's Dan Llano, MIP and Stephanie Ceman, CDB, debated before the Neuroscience Program weekly seminar audience as to whether they believed beta-amyloid plaques cause Alzheimer's disease.
2019-04-11 - Featured in the April 10 Daily Illini, Aadeel Akhtar, founder of PSYONIC, is featured for the bionic hand he has been working on and is currently produced by PSYONIC. He states, “Our prosthetic hand is actually faster, smaller and stronger than all the other prosthetic hands that are out there...
Systems Biology Understanding of the Effects of Lithium on Affective and Neurodegenerative Disorders2019-02-18 - Lithium has many widely varying biochemical and phenomenological effects, suggesting that a systems biology approach is required to understand its action. Multiple lines of evidence point to lithium intake and consequent blood levels as important determinants of incidence of neurodegenerative disease, showing that understanding lithium action is of high importance. In this paper we undertake...
2019-02-18 - URBANA, Ill. – Cancer: The word alone evokes dread, anxiety, and fear. Accordingly, many women living with the disease and undergoing treatment experience chronic stress and depression. Scientists have demonstrated, in studies with rodents and humans, that stress can exacerbate cancer’s progression, but it wasn’t clear how. A new study, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation...
2019-02-11 - Professor earns award for tinnitus research: Tinnitus is one of the most common health conditions in the United States, affecting an estimated 45 million Americans, according to the American Tinnitus Association. Despite its prevalence, scientific knowledge about the condition remains limited. In an effort to better understand tinnitus, Fatima Husain, associate professor in the Speech...
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.