Campus Highlights

Bullied teens often are assured that it gets better. And a new study suggests that bullying does, indeed, tend to decline as teens progress through high school and move toward adulthood.

As the Asian carp population grows and the threat of the invasive species entering Lake Michigan through one of the Chicago canals is monitored, University of Illinois researcher Cory Suski has found that carbon dioxide is quick and effective in repelling fish from an area.

A new study of 152 Vietnam veterans with combat-related brain injuries offers the first detailed map of the brain regions that contribute to emotional intelligence the ability to process emotional information and navigate the social world.

Opens January 25 following a public reception on Jan. 24 (6 p.m. at the museum, 500 E. Peabody Drive, Champaign). Blind Field will be on display at Krannert through March 31, and will then travel to Michigan State University where it will open at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum on June 7.

Illinois aerospace engineering professor Scott R. White has been given a Humboldt Research Award honoring his work in autonomous and self-healing materials.

The Illini Chess Club will send a team to the final four in intercollegiate competition.

Professor Isaac Cann has been chosen by the Governance Board of the Energy Biosciences Institute to be the next Deputy Director.

University of Illinois researchers developed mats of metal oxide nanofibers that scrub sulfur from petroleum-based fuels much more effectively than traditional materials. Such efficiency could lower costs and improve performance for fuel-based catalysis, advanced energy applications and toxic gas removal.

Several psychology studies have shown that time off and vacations have positive effects on workers performance, so, theoretically, football teams could have an edge over their opponents after a bye week, said Scott Tainsky, a professor of recreation, sport and tourism in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois.

Several faculty members from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are part of a multi-institutional team that has been selected by the Department of Energy (DOE) for an award of up to $120 million over five years to establish a new Batteries and Energy Storage Hub. Argonne National Lab, the project lead, will work together with five universities and four private firms to advance next generation battery and energy storage technologies for electric and hybrid cars and the electricity grid. The goals of the project are to reduce reliance on foreign oil and to reduce energy costs for consumers in the U.S.

Miniature bio-bots developed at the University of Illinois are made of hydrogel and heart cells, but can walk on their own.

A new genomic analysis reveals some new, unexpected and potentially beneficial similarities between pigs and humans, along with a few distinct differences. The International Swine Genome Sequencing Consortium led by researchers at the University of Illinois, Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the University of Edinburgh conducted the analysis. Theirs is the most thorough genomic study yet conducted of the domestic pig and its wild boar counterparts.

Scientists have identified a group of small molecules that interfere with the activity of a compound that initiates multiple steps in blood clotting, including those that lead to the obstruction of veins or arteries, a condition called thrombosis. Blocking the activity of this compound, polyphosphate, could treat thrombosis with fewer bleeding side effects than the drugs that are currently on the market.

University of Illinois chemistry professor Douglas Mitchell has been named a Packard Fellow in science and engineering. He is among 16 early career researchers honored by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation in 2012 for outstanding creative research.

In The Young Professional's Survival Guide: From Cab Fares to Moral Snares, C.K. Gunsalus, a professor emerita of business administration and a nationally recognized expert on professional ethics, shows young working professionals how to steer clear of all the traps, trouble and temptations that come with transitioning into a working adult and how to work through them should they become unavoidable.

NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, honored over decades for both her explanatory reporting and major stories on the U.S. Supreme Court and its nominees, will be the 2012 recipient of the Illinois Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism.

Bruno Nettl, a professor emeritus of music and of anthropology at the University of Illinois, has been awarded the Charles Homer Haskins Prize, presented annually to a distinguished humanist by the American Council of Learned Societies. This honor includes a cash award and asks the recipient to deliver the Haskins Prize Lecture reflecting on a lifetime of work as a scholar and an institution builder at the Council of Learned Societies annual meeting in May 2014.

Federal law ought to play a stronger role in regulating social networking sites by allowing users to determine what happens to their digital afterlives, says a recently published paper by a University of Illinois expert in intellectual property law.

A little-publicized amendment to the Illinois Constitution on this Novembers ballot could have a big impact on the pensions and health care of state workers if Illinois voters approve it, a University of Illinois expert in legal policy says.

A new study of the sense of smell lends support to a controversial theory of olfaction: Our noses can distinguish both the shape and the vibrational characteristics of odorant molecules.