RESEARCH General 2000 2001 2002 2003

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

ARTS
Music: During an impending three-year residency at Illinois, the famed Pacifica Quartet string ensemble plans to perform, teach and help launch a chamber music institute. (9/1/03)

Japan: Ambassadors from Japan will travel to the University of Illinois in September to better acquaint Westerners with the art, culture and history of the kimono. (9/1/03)

Literature: The World War II correspondence between Carl Sandburg and a young naval officer inspired both men as they wrote novels that became best sellers and the bases for movies. (8/1/03)

Industrial Design: Commercial Laundromats haven’t changed much in years, so a team of students has come up with what they hope is "the Starbucks of Laundromats." (6/1/03)

Design: A student at the University of Illinois, moved by the images of firefighters’ heroism on 9/11, has come up with an award-winning redesign of the classic firefighter’s helmet. (5/1/03)

Landscape Architecture: A new book on 18th-century Italian villa culture reveals a complex story of a colonial culture evolving in an era of rapid political, economic and social reform. (5/1/03)

Housing: Eighteen University of Illinois students are building a home in a community that has been fighting the effects of urban blight for years. (5/1/03)

Children's Literature: A new literary award has been established to honor transitional reading – books for children in kindergarten through grade 4. (5/1/03)

Art & Politics: In the 19th century, politicians couldn’t rely on television to paint rosy pictures of them, so instead, they engaged painters, including some still highly regarded. (4/1/03)

Movie Posters: An exhibition of movie posters at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign shows the often contradictory images created by depictions of women in films. (4/1/03)

Beethoven: Studying one of Beethoven’s sketchbooks was like an archaeological dig, says the scholar whose research unearthed treasure of interest to Beethoven scholars and music lovers. (4/1/03)

Two Thumbs Up: "The Right Stuff," a film about the original Mercury astronauts, opens the fifth annual Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival, coming April 23-27 to Central Illinois. (3/1/03)

Insect Fear: The Insect Fear Film Festival at Illinois is bringing in Mr. BIG – movie director Bert I. Gordon – to help honor the genre of low-budget films featuring large killer insects. (2/1/03)

Art: A graduate student in art and design has interviewed bus riders and is combining their recorded thoughts with graphic documentation in a display at a local bus terminal. (2/1/03)

EDUCATION
Children and the Internet: Internet filters may help protect parents from their fears, and schools from lawsuits, but they’re "highly imperfect" tools for protecting children. (9/1/03)

Industry: Six large companies have joined a program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that lets industry interact with students and faculty on engineering and business issues. (9/1/03)

Death: In response to 9/11, an archaeology professor who teaches a course on death has added a section on memorials, including those proposed for the World Trade Center. (9/1/03)

Student Suicide: Evidence suggests that mandatory counseling for students who threaten or attempt to kill themselves has helped reduce the rate of suicide by more than half at Illinois. (8/01/03)

Math Education: How children come to understand "two-ness" and "three-ness" and other basic but abstract math concepts lays the foundation for what comes later. (8/01/03)

Teacher Support: An innovative program for online group mentoring of new teachers, one of a handful in the U.S., is branching out from East Central Illinois to other parts of the state. (7/1/03)

Disabilities: A nine-week case study involving the interaction between a severely disabled 16-year-old boy and a dog indicates the extraordinary effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy. (6/1/03)

Children's Literature: A new literary award has been established to honor transitional reading – books for children in kindergarten through grade 4. (5/1/03)

Regulating Research: A conference at Illinois will examine the impact of the growing array of regulations for human-subject protection on academic research and academic freedom. (4/1/03)

Research Policy: The system requiring faculty members to get approval before conducting research involving human subjects is too broad and raises the specter of censorship, a scholar says. (4/1/03)

Library Technology: IBM recently gave the University Library high-tech equipment that will provide safe access to rare and fragile materials endangered through normal use. (4/1/03)

Early Childhood: More than a dozen projects focused on early childhood at Illinois have been gathered under one roof, a new Early Childhood and Parenting Collaborative. (4/1/03)

Access to Education: A symposium will be held at Illinois to explore how public education can better reflect the workings of a multiracial democracy in the context of the new immigration. (4/1/03)

Affirmative Action: Regardless of the outcome of the affirmative action cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, the University of Michigan has shifted the debate on the issue, a scholar says. (3/1/03)

Fitness: A study of a state-mandated accountability program for physical education indicates teachers overwhelmingly favor such accountability initiatives. (3/1/03)

Special Education: An innovative program, with a link to Chicago schools, is increasing the number of certified special education teachers. (3/1/03)

Schools: While peer-group influence on adolescents is well established, especially regarding drugs and alcohol, new research indicates it also extends to bullying behavior. (2/1/03)

GOVERNMENT
Public Transportation: After decades of arguments to shift to the privatization of urban mass transit in the United States, government-owned systems remain largely intact. (9/1/03)

Gambling: The best approach from both a social welfare and economic perspective is to recriminalize or substantially limit all types of legalized gambling activity, a scholar says. (6/1/03)

Voting Rights: Courts should develop the means to determine the competency of elderly citizens disqualified from voting solely because they are under guardianship, a legal scholar says. (6/1/03)

Retirement Savings: Without government regulations, workers likely will continue to buy company stock, leaving them potentially exposed to heavy losses if the firm fails. (3/1/03)

The Disabled: Although there are many government programs focused on the elderly and the disabled, they rarely share resources and often compete with each other, an expert says. (3/1/03)

Insurance: Elderly or terminally ill people faced with high medical costs who sell their life-insurance policies to investors in return for lump-sum payments need protection. (3/1/03)

Economy: Even if the economy recovers from its malaise, Illinois’ finances will remain shaky for the foreseeable future as several revenue sources are used up, two economists predict. (2/1/03)

Facts and Figures: The popular statistical abstract published by the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at Illinois is, for the first time, available on the Web. (2/1/03)

HEALTH
Aging: Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are evaluating the physiological effects and potential health benefits of Tai Chi, an ancient Chinese martial art. (8/01/03)

Diet: People who focus only on a specific food and disregard other factors in meal selection can hinder a healthy diet, a scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says. (7/1/03)

Health: Researchers at Illinois are focusing on finding the link between exercise and an increased resistance to disease. (7/1/03)

Women's Bodies: The "curvaceously thin" body ideal could put women at risk of doing "double damage to themselves," a researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says. (3/1/03)

Health: A professor at Illinois hopes prostate cancer patients and their caregivers soon will be able to use the Internet to build skills that will help manage the disease more effectively. (2/1/03)

HISTORY
History: A new anthology on the Holocaust should stand out, the editors say, since it is "the first book to collect theoretical responses to the Nazi Genocide in a comprehensive way." (8/01/03)

Archaeology: Thanks to new spectroscopic technology, researchers have solved a great mystery concerning some of North America’s oldest pieces of sculpture. (7/1/03)

The Nixon Years: In a new book, a scholar argues that Watergate, or its equivalent, was almost inevitable from the first days of the Nixon presidency. (6/1/03)

Warfare: In a new book about battle, a military historian says that what drives warfare are cultural conceptions – including values, beliefs and assumptions – rather than technology. (6/1/03)

Jazz History: A new book about jazz innovator "Jelly Roll" Morton talks not only about his artistry but also about how he was bilked out of perhaps millions of dollars in royalties. (6/1/03)

Literary Collections: The Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will microfilm much of an extraordinary literary collection for a consortium of Italian institutions. (6/1/03)

U.S. History: The authors of a new book about the national climate that precipitated the Civil War make the case that newspapers increased national tensions. (5/1/03)

Newspapers: The Illinois Newspaper Project has received a grant to continue to identify and preserve Illinois newspapers published from before statehood to the present. (5/1/03)

Landscape Architecture: A new book on 18th-century Italian villa culture reveals a complex story of a colonial culture evolving in an era of rapid political, economic and social reform. (5/1/03)

Slavery: In their new book, two scholars have written the most accurate story to date of the harrowing adventures of Madison Washington and the shipboard slave revolt he led in 1841. (4/1/03)

Library Technology: IBM recently gave the University Library high-tech equipment that will provide safe access to rare and fragile materials endangered through normal use. (4/1/03)

Historical Literature: A re-edition of a historical novel by a femme fatale/Southern Belle is being hailed as a rich contribution to the history and culture of the antebellum South. (3/1/03)

Mummy Studies: As explained in a new book, every tool in the trade of non-invasive exploration circa 1991 was used to conduct a "virtual" autopsy on an Egyptian mummy. (3/1/03)

The Jews: Emancipation for Jews has been "most complete in America, but the transition from alienation and oppression to civic rights and integration was greater in France," a historian says. (3/1/03)

HOME AND GARDEN
Environment: Citizens of poorer developing countries have the same level of knowledge about the sources of global warming as citizens of richer developed countries, a sociologist says. (9/1/03)

Children and the Internet: Internet filters may help protect parents from their fears, and schools from lawsuits, but they’re "highly imperfect" tools for protecting children. (9/1/03)

Rituals: The wedding has undergone major changes – from a modest family-bonding ritual to a lavish, sometimes obscenely luxurious, consumer event, two scholars say in a new book. (9/1/03)

Real Estate: A study conducted in an economically distressed Illinois county indicates that some homebuyers are subject to deceptive, predatory and fraudulent lending practices. (9/1/03)

Leisure Studies: Agritourism – leisure-time interest in trail rides, pumpkin patches and other farm-related activities – is rapidly taking hold in the heartland, a scholar says. (8/01/03)

Urban Development: Newspaper reporters of local growth and development are "important actors" in promoting gentrification, two scholars assert in a forthcoming article. 7/1/03)

Food: When it comes to foods that bring them psychological comfort, men like hearty meals, while women look for snacks that require little or no preparation, a marketing professor says. (7/1/03)

Discrimination: Discrimination against many Muslim Americans in the days and weeks after 9/11 affected their ability to participate in everyday leisure activities, such as walking. (6/1/03)

Construction Technology: Lightweight wearable wireless computers may transform the construction industry in the not-too-distant future, a professor of architecture says. (3/1/03)

Land Use & Technology: A computer-based modeling tool has been designed to aid planners, policymakers and others in visualizing the impact of policy. (3/1/03)

HUMANITIES
Children's Literature: A new literary award has been established to honor transitional reading – books for children in kindergarten through grade 4. (5/1/03)

Humanities: Fourteen humanists will spend the 2003-2004 academic year engaged in research on projects centered on the theme of violence, and its many meanings and manifestations. (4/1/03)

LAW
Pharmaceuticals: The big challenge facing the federal government will not be passing legislation to help the elderly buy prescription drugs, but keeping the costs under control. (8/01/03)

Immigration Law: While Russian immigrants legally can become Israeli citizens, their frequent poverty and marginality have polarized Israeli society, a legal scholar says. (7/1/03)

Law: The past should guide how courts handle the increased volume of lawsuits over the use of railroad rights of way to install telecommunications equipment, a law journal editor argues. (6/1/03)

Legal Scholarship: Legal scholarship needs to move from "an orderly study but haphazard science" to a full-blown science to ease communications among scholars everywhere. (5/1/03)

WORLD AFFAIRS
Tourism: Tourists’ perceptions of other cultures is likely shaped by accounts of travel writers, who tend to perpetuate certain myths and stereotypes about tourist destinations, a scholar says. (8/01/03)

Iraq: What began as a simple university Web site to provide information for a campus forum on the war in Iraq, is now a rich blueprint for tracing the war, the peace and the aftermath. (8/01/03)

Geography: With the guidance of their professor, 13 geography students at Illinois have published a unique "Atlas of World Hunger." (6/1/03)

Ukraine: A contingent of Ukrainian intelligentsia will meet at Illinois in June, and judging by their conference program, they will spare few topics of discussion. (6/1/03)

9/11: A book about 9/11, written by 50 professors, serves as a call to dissent against U.S. policies that may have made 9/11 possible and continue to make the world a dangerous place. (5/1/03)

Gambling: The U.S. gambling industry is exporting technology and know-how to Asia and the Middle East, causing conditions that could threaten both U.S. and world security, a scholar says. (4/1/03)

The Jews: Emancipation for Jews has been "most complete in America, but the transition from alienation and oppression to civic rights and integration was greater in France," a historian says. (3/1/03)

International Affairs: Illinois faculty and staff members received a warm welcome in Egypt last month when they presented an award to alumnus Atef Ebeid, the prime minister. (2/1/03)