RESEARCH General 2000 2001 2002

TOPICS: Arts | Education | Government |Health | History | Home & Garden|Illinois |Law | Sociology | World Affairs

ARTS
Louis Sullivan: Architecture based on the work of Louis Sullivan integrated "high art" with functional construction, and was embraced by architects and developers, an author says. (12/1/02)

Building Design: The annual conference of the American Institute of Architecture Students will be held in Chicago, in part to help those attending get a firsthand look at urban design issues. (12/1/02)

Architecture: New technologies are giving architecture students the opportunity to do something their predecessors only dreamed of: designing three-dimensional buildings in 3-D. (11/1/02)

Carl Sandburg: Carl Sandburg, a Socialist who considered himself a "Poet of the People," also briefly considered a run for the presidency – as a Republican, a document reveals. (11/1/02)

Proust: A new book of 19 essays examines why French novelist Marcel Proust has appealed to so many cultures and continues to be a figure of fascination. (11/1/02)

Musicology: How the legendary musician Thelonious Monk went from being part of the jazz scene to part of jazz history is among the topics explored in an article by a scholar at Illinois. (11/1/02)

Collaboration: new video examining the role of emotions in robots is part of a sustained exploration of the interplay among the arts, humanities, sciences and technology. (11/1/02)

Information Sharing: A new course at Illinois will use cutting-edge virtual 3-D environments to develop novel ways of visualizing and navigating knowledge networks. (11/1/02)

Computers & Art: An artist will dance on stage at the University of Southern California Oct. 29 with an image being created thousands of miles away by researchers at Illinois. (10/1/02)

Art: An exhibition opening Sept. 4 at Illinois focuses on drawing, an art form that historically has played second fiddle to its more colorful cousins -- painting, sculpture and installation work. (9/1/02)

The Web: The author of a new book presents an easy-to-follow, crash course on Web design and visual communications principles that can benefit Web designers, regardless of their expertise. (9/1/01)

American Literature: A new anthology shows how 56 American poets were inspired and haunted by the Spanish Civil War, the first antifascist cause of the 1930s. (9/1/02)

Art & Economics: An artwork disguised as a mail-order catalog explores the relationships between people and things, art objects vs. real objects, and art prices vs. real-object prices. (6/1/02)

Industrial Design: A student who has designed a bicycle that converts to a scooter with a 90-degree rotation of the frame has won the grand prize in an international bicycle design contest. (6/1/02)

Arts and Technology: A new project that explores 300 years of dance history combines live performances with film created by a documentary filmmaker. (5/1/02)

Art: A new exhibition at Illinois of sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints created by Louise Bourgeois in the 1940s and '50s includes some works never before shown publicly. (5/1/02)

Movies: A decade of explosive growth in the U.S. divorce rate set the stage for the plethora of popular teen-slasher films that began in the late 1970s, a cinema studies scholar says. (5/1/02)

China: The China Pop Culture Conference April 19-20 at the UI will cover the mainstays of current culture: popular literature, mass communications, pop music and popular film. (4/1/02)

Roger Ebert: Thousands of film buffs will gather April 24-28 at a 1920s-era Champaign movie palace and the UI, for the fourth annual Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival. (4/1/02)

Industrial Design: UI industrial design students are teaming with engineers and other specialists to provide corporate partners with solutions to product-development challenges. (4/1/02)

Women and the Sciences: In a new book, a UI English professor explores how 19th century American female writers worked to advance knowledge about science and the sciences. (4/1/02)

Architecture: A UI scholar's new method for designing beam-columns is incorporated into the latest edition of what is considered the bible of the steel-construction field. (3/1/02)

Fantasy Literature : A University of Illinois course explores author J.R.R. Tolkien's place in the modern literary movement embodied by the Oxford Fantasists. (2/1/02)

Writing: A new book of previously unpublished writings details daily life at one of the weirdest creative writers' colonies ever to operate in the United States -- or perhaps anywhere. (2/1/02)

American Indians: An exhibition of photographs by a UI architecture scholar explores the tribal life and customs of the prehistoric Anasazi Indians of the American Southwest. (2/1/02)

EDUCATION
Children's Books: If you're considering a book to give a child, you may want to take a look at an online guide created by expert reviewers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (12/1/02)

Early Childhood Learning: One way to ensure that preschoolers develop an interest in books and reading is by reading them a good story again and again, researchers say. (12/1/02)

Child Behavior: Researchers interested in the causes of sexual harassment in school suggest people look beyond details of a given act of harassment and see the context in which it occurs. (11/1/02)

Collaboration: A new video examining the role of emotions in robots is part of a sustained exploration of the interplay among the arts, humanities, sciences and technology.(11/1/02)

Information Sharing: A new course at Illinois will use cutting-edge virtual 3-D environments to develop novel ways of visualizing and navigating knowledge networks.(11/1/02)

Schools: Illinois schools that have moved to implement state learning standards are seeing higher test scores, more-focused instruction, and more equity in the classroom. (10/1/02)

College Students: The "other" leisure activities of college students, including underage drinking and illegal drug use, were the subjects of a recent study by two Illinois researchers. (10/1/02)

Early Childhood: The Illinois Early Learning Project offers parents, teachers and caregivers of young children easy to get, to-the-point advice, by Web site, e-mail or phone. (8/1/02)

Math Education: A new class developed at the University of Illinois employs real-world and high-tech approaches to engage high school students who have struggled with math. (6/1/02)

Stuttering: A $4 million grant will help a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scholar and his colleagues expand the existing knowledge base about the speech disorder. (5/1/02)

Higher Education: The specter of employing plagiarism-detection software on student papers appears to be the most effective means of stemming the use of "paper mills." (5/1/02)

Youth Violence: A new 91-page research-based booklet for parents is aimed at providing guidance on how to deal with such topics as bullying, video carnage and preschooler aggression. (3/1/02)

Teacher Support: New teachers who find themselves alone and overwhelmed now can seek advice online, where about 40 veteran Illinois teachers are waiting to help as "e-mentors." (2/1/02)

Travel & Tourism: In new classes being offered at the UI, students are developing an African-American heritage tour as well as the kind of journey that can transform one's life. (2/1/02)

Schools in Wartime: A new book focuses on letters written by Japanese-American students in World War II who were removed from their school and sent to internment camps. (2/1/02)

GOVERNMENT
Carl Sandburg: Carl Sandburg, a Socialist who considered himself a "Poet of the People," also briefly considered a run for the presidency – as a Republican, a document reveals. (11/1/02)

Child Welfare: Offering subsidized guardianship as an option for relatives acting as foster parents can provide more permanent homes for children. (9/1/02)

The Constitution: The blanket imposition of human subject protections on researchers is hindering scholars in the humanities to the point where their work is delayed or abandoned. (7/1/02)

Disability Research: Researchers will meet in Washington in June to discuss the status of research aimed at informing policy decisions by the U.S. Social Security Administration. (6/1/02)

Child Welfare: Illinois' child welfare workers, dealing with an estimated 100,000 children in state and private agencies, now have an electronic "help" manual at their fingertips. (6/1/02)

Crisis Communication: A study of how Germans and the Dutch responded to the mad cow crisis indicates the importance of honest communications from governmental agencies. (3/1/02)

Welfare Reform: A new study of single mothers in inner-city Chicago indicates that many of those who left the welfare rolls were not much better off for having found work. (3/1/02)

Illinois Economy: The shortfall in Illinois tax revenues -- which has caused Gov. George Ryan to call for $500 million in budget cuts -- was apparent long before Sept. 11, two economists say. (2/1/02)

Illinois Data: The 2001 Illinois Statistical Abstract, including the most complete economic and demographic data on the state, is available from the UI Bureau of Economic and Business Research. (2/1/02)

HEALTH
Fitness and Health: The nationwide move toward reducing time devoted to physical education in school will have serious health consequences for children, a scholar says. (11/1/02)

Health: Although exercise is thought to make people feel good, new research indicates that for women with eating disorders, working out may have just the opposite effect. (9/1/02)

AIDS: Social activism in groups such as ACT UP may have a positive effect on the way people with AIDS and HIV cope with their medical and psychological problems, a researcher says. (8/1/02)

Health Care: Health-care reform makes sense to most people, but the political climate is not conducive to change at this time, according to a professor of community health. (7/1/02)

Exercise & the Elderly: The senior who exercises regularly is likely to be better prepared that a sedentary peer to respond to situations requiring quick thinking, researchers say. (6/1/02)

Elder Care: To help people cope with increasing long-term care costs, Medicare should pay all nursing-home costs and private long-term care insurance should be improved, an expert says. (6/1/02)

Women's Health: Well documented is the postmenopausal woman's accelerated loss of bone mass and density, but brittle bones are just one consequence of sex-hormone deficiencies. (5/1/02)

Stuttering: A $4 million grant will help a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scholar and his colleagues expand the existing knowledge base about the speech disorder. (5/1/02)

Alcohol Abuse: As many as one in six Americans 60 and older are overdependent on alcohol, according to a lawyer who calls the problem an invisible epidemic. (5/1/02)

HISTORY
John Bardeen: In a new book about John Bardeen, a two-time Nobel Prize-winner in physics, a historian asks readers to disabuse themselves of the widely held notions about "true genius." (12/1/02)

American Literature: A new anthology shows how 56 American poets were inspired and haunted by the Spanish Civil War, the first antifascist cause of the 1930s. (9/1/02)

Historic Renovation: A sacred and endangered site in India may be in line for a facelift, thanks to a team of landscape architects from the University of Illinois. (3/1/02)

Revolutionary History: A new book gives voice to the experiences, thoughts and feelings of ordinary Russian people during the political, social and economic upheavals of 1917. (3/1/02)

French History: A new history of the seamstresses' guild in 18th century France explores how seamstresses made clothing and looks at the social, political and economic influence of the guild. (3/1/02)

U.S. History: A new history of the only all-black maritime lifesaving crew in the United States captures the raging racial tensions and political upheaval of the late 20th century. (2/1/02)

HOME & GARDEN
Home Cooking: A national survey of 770 adult cooks found that healthy meal preparation is linked to the personality of the cook more than to recipes or ingredients used in fixing a meal. (12/1/02)

Kids as Consumers: The commercial marketplace is now a key arena where children work out their sense of self and of peer relationships, a professor of advertising says. (12/1/02)

Children's Books: If you're considering a book to give a child, you may want to take a look at an online guide created by expert reviewers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (12/1/02)

Early Childhood Learning: One way to ensure that preschoolers develop an interest in books and reading is by reading them a good story again and again, researchers say.(12/1/02)

Parenting: A new book that is a collaboration among two scholars and a "church mother" in her 80s offers a rarely studied perspective on child rearing.(12/1/02)

Youth Culture: Raves -- prolonged parties during which young people thrash to loud, pulsating music -- have redeeming values, says a scholar who suggests how to make such events safer. (12/1/02)

Child Welfare: Kinship care – a living arrangement in which a grandparent or other relatives raise a child – should get more governmental support, an expert says. (11/1/02)

Journalism: A memoir by a former Washington Post reporter now teaching journalism tells a story of driving ambition, of the joys of hunting and of the nature of friendship. (10/1/02)

Child Welfare: Offering subsidized guardianship as an option for relatives acting as foster parents can provide more permanent homes for children. (9/1/02)

Housing: Critics of a brand of city planning known as New Urbanism say it's an attempt at social engineering, a claim that an Illinois scholar says is unjustified. (9/1/02)

Land Management: A clash of values underlies the debate over what should drive land management: an aesthetic based on beauty or one based on ecology and sustainability. (9/1/02)

Housing: It wasn't just real estate agents who were responsible for denying non-whites access to homes in the post-war housing boom in America -- the federal government played a role, too. (8/1/02)

Home Comfort: Researchers building on groundbreaking work on air-conditioning done at Illinois in the 1930s now are focusing on indoor air quality and humidity and moisture control. (8/1/02)

Leisure: Community gardening results in many benefits, including contributing a good feeling about one's community and a sense of interaction with people of other backgrounds, a study shows. (7/1/02)

Immigrants: A study reveals the problems teen-agers emigrating to the United States face, such as harassment from their U.S.-born peers, as well as pressure to buy things and compete in sports. (6/1/02)

Cultural History: The American household is a "point of global encounter" and its amateur decorators genuine players in international relations, according to a historian. (5/1/02)

Condominiums: The increase in condominium housing raises questions about the prevailing law that gives condo associations wide latitude in controlling the behavior of its members. (5/1/02)

Congress: Bankruptcy reform legislation under consideration by a congressional committee is biased against poor and middle-class families, an expert on bankruptcy law says. (3/1/02)

Consumer Attitudes: Customer preferences are based less on satisfaction with a service than with the expected future use of that service, a survey conducted by a marketing professor shows. (3/1/02)

Parenting: Because the popular media ignore research findings, parents aren't getting enough good advice for helping older children establish positive relationships with new siblings. (2/1/02)

ILLLINOIS
Archaeology: A 900-year-old village discovered this summer about 15 miles east southeast of St. Louis challenges previous notions of the Cahokians, the areaÕs first people. (9/1/02)

Child Welfare: Illinois' child welfare workers, dealing with an estimated 100,000 children in state and private agencies, now have an electronic "help" manual at their fingertips. (6/1/02)

O'Hare Expansion: Proposed federal legislation to give Chicago the OK to proceed with a $6.6 billion expansion of O'Hare International Airport is unconstitutional, a legal scholar says. (4/1/02)

Illinois Economy: The shortfall in Illinois tax revenues -- which has caused Gov. George Ryan to call for $500 million in budget cuts -- was apparent long before Sept. 11, two economists say. (2/1/02)

Illinois Data: The 2001 Illinois Statistical Abstract, including the most complete economic and demographic data on the state, is available from the UI Bureau of Economic and Business Research. (2/1/02)

LAW
Public Policy: The latest version of an anti-loitering law in Chicago is legally questionable and bad public policy, argues a scholar in the University of Illinois Law Review. (12/1/02)

Elderly: Few cases of abuse of elderly residents in nursing homes are reported and even fewer lead to penalties against offenders, an article in the Elder Law Journal concludes. (12/1/02)

Executive Fraud: A six-year campaign by a University of Illinois law professor to hold lawyers accountable for preventing executive wrongdoing has led to tough federal requirements. (9/1/02)

Aging: Single, elderly women living in rural areas are increasingly susceptible to lives of poverty and isolation, according to an article in the Elder Law Journal published at Illinois. (8/1/02)

Illicit Drugs: An overly strict interpretation for sentencing drug traffickers who at first lie to police threatens to undercut the fairness of AmericaÕs war on drugs, a legal scholar says. (8/1/02)

O'Hare Expansion: Proposed federal legislation to give Chicago the OK to proceed with a $6.6 billion expansion of O'Hare International Airport is unconstitutional, a legal scholar says. (4/1/02)

Employment Law: Sanctioned by a 1991 Supreme Court decision, alternative dispute resolution has been hailed -- and denounced -- as the number of workers covered by it has risen. (4/1/02)

SOCIOLOGY
Youth Culture: Raves -- prolonged parties during which young people thrash to loud, pulsating music -- have redeeming values, says a scholar who suggests how to make such events safer. (12/1/02)

Surveys: Conventional polls on social welfare issues almost always omit the costs of proposed entitlements and "often avoid anything to do with money, let alone raising taxes," a scholar says. (9/1/02)

Communications: The use and abuse of e-mail indicates that people still are discovering and negotiating the norms for the electronic message medium, two researchers say. (8/1/02)

Computers: A scholar hopes a new book will help historians and social scientists uncomfortable with digital media understand how they can use computers more effectively. (8/1/02)

History: The United States is a "still-white nation," a historian argues in a new book, but he believes white supremacy "can be overcome in this century." (7/1/02)

Immigrants: A study reveals the problems teen-agers emigrating to the United States face, such as harassment from their U.S.-born peers, as well as pressure to buy things and compete in sports.(6/1/02)

Travel & Tourism: In new classes being offered at the UI, students are developing an African-American heritage tour as well as the kind of journey that can transform one's life. (2/1/02)

WORLD AFFAIRS
Farm Aid: Living conditions for Afghans may begin improving soon, thanks to a new program intended to jump-start the war-ravaged country's agricultural economy. (12/1/02)

Discrimination: More than two decades after an international treaty on women’s rights was drafted, prospects for its ratification by the United States are at long last beginning to look up. (10/1/02)

History: The doctrine behind President Bush’s push toward war with Iraq is "novel, sweeping, dangerous, and subversive of world order and peace," a historian says. (10/1/02)

Price of War: War with Iraq would be costly in any number of ways, including creating a deep-seated rancor toward the United States, two historians say. (10/1/02)

World Peace: One of the things that has puzzled Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of the Mahatma Gandhi, is the "apparent absence of Abraham Lincoln from the 9/11 discourse." (10/1/02)

Political Science: Americans are no more attentive today to news of the world than they were before the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a new study by an Illinois professor. (10/1/02)

Media: The authors of a new book say today’s media system now chiefly serves the financial needs of large media conglomerates and their stockholders, not the needs of citizens.(10/1/02)

Journalism: A memoir by a former Washington Post reporter now teaching journalism tells a story of driving ambition, of the joys of hunting and of the nature of friendship. (10/1/02)

Newspapers: Newspaper publishers, owners, editors and communications scholars will take part in a symposium Sept. 8-10 on the state and fate of independent, family-owned newspapers. (8/1/02)

Eastern Europe: A journalism professor has organized a workshop this summer for her counterparts in Eastern Europe so they can get practical experience as journalists in a free society. (8/1/02)

Terrorism: An expert in international security issues says reports about the threat of "dirty bombs" sensationalized the facts and planted largely unwarranted fears in Americans' minds. (7/1/02)

Immigrants: A study reveals the problems teen-agers emigrating to the United States face, such as harassment from their U.S.-born peers, as well as pressure to buy things and compete in sports. (6/1/02)

China: The China Pop Culture Conference April 19-20 at the UI will cover the mainstays of current culture: popular literature, mass communications, pop music and popular film. (4/1/02)

Women and the Sciences: In a new book, a UI English professor explores how 19th century American female writers worked to advance knowledge about science and the sciences. (4/1/02)

Islam and the West: A literature course that rose from the ashes of Sept. 11 is sparking debate about terrorism, Mideast violence, the response of the West, the media and historians. (4/1/02)

Schools in Wartime: A new book focuses on letters written by Japanese-American students in World War II who were removed from their school and sent to internment camps. (2/1/02)