2021-04-10
- It’s not a nightmare. It’s a summer preview for a sliver of eastern Illinois and swaths of Indiana. And you can think of it as a warmup for what’s coming to Chicago in 2024.
Sometime in May, maybe after a light rain around Memorial Day, one of the largest groups of periodical cicadas will head above ground in Illinois for the first time in 17 years. They’re called Brood X — the cohorts are...
2021-04-09 - Dr. Esther Ngumbi began her life’s work as a child alongside a river in rural Kenya. At just seven years old, Ngumbi wanted a hand at farming, so her parents gave her a small strip of land near the river that she could plant cabbage on. Though her parents were both passionate educators, their incomes from teaching alone could not sustain her immediate and extended...
2021-04-08 - Avian brood parasites lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species, forcing the hosts to do the hard work of raising the unrelated young. A team of scientists wanted to simulate the task of piercing an egg – a tactic that only a minority of host birds use to help grasp and eject the foreign eggs. Their study offers insight into some of the physical challenges the discriminating host birds...
2021-04-07 - The Technology Entrepreneur Center in The Grainger College of Engineering is pleased to announce 2021 finalists of the campus-wide innovation awards, to include SIB's own Gabe Price. The Illinois Innovation Prize (IIP) for $20,000 is awarded annually to a creative and passionate student working towards innovative...
2021-03-18 - Agricultural scientists who study climate change often focus on how increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will affect crop yields. But rising temperatures are likely to complicate the picture, researchers including co-author Carl Bernacchi report in a new review of the topic.
2021-03-09 - The Graduate College is proud to announce that Kim Leigh (Department of Entomology) is the winner of the 2021 Graduate College Excellence Award for Graduate Contacts. The award is given annually as part of the Graduate College’s Annual...
2021-03-09 - Honorees will be celebrated in April along with last year's winners The College of LAS has selected winners of this year’s teaching excellence awards. Twelve professors (including Wendy Yang from Plant Biology), graduate student teaching assistants (including Nicholas Anderson from...
2021-03-01 - Earlier this year, Emmarie Alexander, junior in ACES, sat at her desk in her room in her second-floor apartment, taking one of her Zoom classes. Alexander was startled by a loud noise, quickly turning her attention away from her class. She investigated the noise and realized a bird had collided with her window, now laid on the ground below.
2021-02-05 - Pity the poor cowbird. Under-appreciated at best and outright hated at worst, the cowbird and its parasitic nest ways certainly lend themselves to strong opinions. But it is a remarkable bird in its own right, capable of amazing developmental feats that allow it to fit into its very odd niche. In this episode of the American Birding Podcast, PhD student ...
2021-02-04 - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign entomology professor Esther Ngumbi is the 2021 recipient of the Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science, an annual award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented to scientists and engineers in recognition of their contributions to public engagement with...
2021-02-04 - The Center for Advanced Study has appointed nine faculty members from the College of LAS, including associate Mark Hauber, as associates or fellows for the 2021-22 academic year. They were among 20 faculty members chosen across campus. Center for Advanced...
2021-01-29 - Last spring, robins living on an Illinois tree farm sat on some unusual eggs. Alongside the customary brilliant blue ovoids they had laid were some unusually shaped objects. Although they had the same color, some were long and thin, stretched into pills. Others were decidedly pointy — so angular, in fact, that they bore little resemblance to eggs at all. If robins played Dungeons and Dragons,...
2021-01-28 - As much of the United States and countries around the world shelter in place this year, the ability to be out in nature is even more precious. Access to clean open spaces should be a right for all; unfortunately, this is not always the case. Even among scientists who study the environment, there is an inequality of access to nature, especially for women, and even more so for women of color. We...
2021-01-27 - The fossilized insect is tiny and its genital capsule, called a pygophore, is roughly the length of a grain of rice. It is remarkable, scientists say, because the bug’s physical characteristics – from the bold banding pattern on its legs to the internal features of its genitalia – are clearly visible and well-preserved. Recovered from the Green River Formation in present-day Colorado, the fossil...
2021-01-26 - Click beetles can propel themselves more than 20 body lengths into the air, and they do so without using their legs. While the jump’s motion has been studied in depth, the physical mechanisms that enable the beetles’ signature clicking maneuver have not. A new study examines the forces behind this super-fast energy release and provides...