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Team tracks vegetation recovery from sudden permafrost collapse

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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Some Arctic regions regain their “greenness” within a decade of a sudden permafrost collapse, while others can take a century or more to recover, researchers report in a new study. The difference is directly related to each site’s gross primary productivity, a measure of its...

IGB Director Steps Down, Interim Director Named

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After nearly 15 years of dedicated leadership, Gene Robinson has stepped down as IGB Director to assume the role of Executive Director and CEO of the Discovery Partners Institute. Lisa Ainsworth, Charles Adlai Ewing Chair of Crop Physiology in the Department of Crop Sciences and the Department of...

Grasshopper wing structure inspires design of gliding robot wings

Three grosshoppers lined up vertically with wings spread
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A collaboration between Princeton University engineers and entomologists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign began with the researchers chasing grasshoppers in a hot parking lot. Their eventual focus on the hindwings of one species of grasshopper, Schistocerca...

The Coming of Age of Miscanthus

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Giant, versatile, and genetically complex, miscanthus poses unique opportunities for the farm economy, domestic manufacturing, next-generation biofuels, and the environment. This ancient, highly productive, and resilient grass hails from Asia, where it thrives from the tropics of New Guinea to...

Durbin discusses critical bee research at University of Illinois

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 U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, today held a roundtable discussion at the University of Illinois with scientists, administrators, and beekeepers regarding their bee genomics research—which is sequencing the genomes of more than 4,...

New model can accurately predict a forest’s future

A man in a blue plaid shirt and brown pants standing in front of trees
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — One of the great challenges of ecology is to understand the factors that maintain, or undermine, diversity in ecosystems, researchers write in a new report in the journal Science. The researchers detail their development of a new model that — using a tree census and genomic data...