RESEARCH General Archives 2006

TOPICS: Archaeology | Arts | Children | Education | Government | Health | History | Home & Garden | Law | Sociology | Theater |World Affairs

ARCHAEOLOGY
Seals: Six students at the University of Illinois are doing original research on a U. of I. collection of small signature stones that artisan scribes crafted up to 5,000 years ago. The research involves, among other things, examining, analyzing and documenting each item in minute detail, X-raying them, and rolling them out on soft clay, just as the original owners did when they needed to seal a deal, endorse and verify transactions. (11/1/06)

St. Louis Archaeology: Archaeologists believe they have found the Illinois home of the founder of St. Louis. So says Robert Mazrim, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and director of the French Colonial Heritage Project. The project is sponsored by the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program and the Sangamo Archaeological Center. ITARP is a joint program of the university and the Illinois Department of Transportation. (10/2/06)

ARTS
Mozart: Two and a half centuries after Mozart’s birth, the versatile and prolific composer continues to attract new generations of listeners with his symphonies, operas, masses, sonatas, chamber music and concertos for piano and strings.

But it’s the keyboard music – especially the works written during the mature phases of the composer’s life, between 1775 and 1791 – that has most recently captured the attention of William Kinderman, a music professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The musicologist-author-pianist – himself a 21st-century study in versatility – presents fresh insights on the composer, his life and his work in a new book, “Mozart’s Piano Music” (Oxford University Press). (12/21/06)

Bogatá Philmaronic: Eduardo Diazmuñoz, the artistic director of the opera program at the University of Illinois and director of the U. of I.’s New Music Ensemble, has been named artistic and music director of the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra, effective January 2007. (11/13/06)

Landscapes: The word “landscape” often conjures up pastoral images of meadows dotted with cows and haystacks under a threatening sky, or perhaps a sunny beach scene with waves breaking in the background. Slip one of those painted images into a frame and it becomes a landscape. (11/7/06)

Architecture: At the end of the semester, students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign enrolled in a course coordinated by architecture professor Abbas Aminmansour take with them knowledge that can’t be found in any textbook. (11/1/06)

Stradivari: When a University of Illinois alumna returns to her alma mater later this month, her executive jet will reach what musicians might call stradospheric heights. That’s because Sheila Crump Johnson will be bringing with her four “Strads” – extremely rare, decorated and matched Stradivarius stringed instruments, which their owner, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., is lending to the Urbana-Champaign campus for more than a month. (10/11/06)

File Sharing: Online file-sharing communities have experienced explosive growth in recent years. YouTube, started in May 2005 so that people could share and download videos, now attracts 100 million visitors a day, while Gnutella and Kazaa, for music sharing, are attracting users at an increasing pace. These sites differ from traditional chat-room and other message-based Internet communities in two ways, according to Mu Xia, a professor of business administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (9/28/06)

Yerkes Biography: Robber barons apparently didn’t come by their titles easily. Just how hard they had to work – on both sides of the law – to hold onto their empires is revealed in a new book about one particularly ingenious and controversial tycoon. (7/25/06)

World Music Gift: The School of Music at the University of Illinois has long been home to one of the nation’s top ethnomusicology programs. Now, a major gift has increased the size and brilliance of the school’s star on the world music map by several orders of magnitude. (7/21/06)

Phillips Collaboration: A new partnership between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., begins in June with a book and exhibition that examine children’s creativity, art and “giftedness.” (5/31/06)

Walking as Art: This past semester, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a group of students from diverse academic backgrounds – from computer science and electrical and computer engineering to painting, photography and music composition – pooled their talents in a course exploring ways to merge the art of walking with the culture’s emerging passion for portable electronic gadgets. (5/22/06)

Soldier Artist: Not all veterans returning from tours of duty in the Middle East are as well-equipped to process, express and share their war experiences as Aaron Hughes. (4/26/06)

Building Research Council: When tornadoes, floods and other natural disasters unleash their furies on communities, the losses can be especially devastating for small-business owners with limited budgets and flimsy safety nets. But when the skies clear, and the cleanup and rebuilding begins, savvy owners may actually find a silver – or “green” – lining beneath the rubble and ruin. (4/25/06)

Leonardo da Vinci: Scientific visualization artist-wizard Donna Cox is among a select, eclectic group of visionaries from a broad range of disciplines whose work will be spotlighted in a major new exhibition opening this week at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. (4/13/06)

Architecture: After Rodney Howlett graduates from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a master’s degree in architecture, he hopes to return to his home base near St. Louis to design churches. In the meantime, he’s devoted countless hours to collaborating on the design of a Web site aimed at spreading a different brand of good news. The site focuses on the noteworthy, but little known, achievements of the U. of I. School of Architecture’s African-American alumni.(2/9/06)

CHILDREN
Book Guide: If children’s books are on your holiday shopping list, but you’re already snowed under with shopping, or worse yet, paralyzed by the avalanche of books out there, professional help is on the way. (12/5/06)

Children in China: What could an English-speaking American reading expert hope to discover from studying how Chinese learn their language? And what might he and his colleagues have to offer as a result? (10/18/06)

Animation Research: Animation is a proven vehicle for biting comedy, a la “The Simpsons” and “South Park.” But some of the same qualities that make it work for comedy make it valuable, too, as an outlet for victimized children and for a new research method that tests the empathy of teachers who may deal with them, says Sharon Tettegah, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (7/17/06)

Meth study: The children’s stories are distressing: They had been left alone and hungry for days, were physically abused, forced to get high, told to steal from loved ones and to lie to authorities, and they had seen their parents “hyper” and delusional.

They are the children of methamphetamine users, and they were the subject of a study, apparently the first, to get a child’s-eye view of what happens in these families and how it affects the children.(6/12/06)

Child Welfare: A five-year study by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, involving 1,300 parents of 1,900 children in foster care in Cook County, found that having a "recovery coach" made a difference for a small but significant number of families. (3/10/06)

EDUCATION
New Orleans Schools: The state took over most of the city’s schools and began an effort to reopen as many as possible as charter schools. The result is “one of the most massive experiments in urban education ever conducted.” (8/23/06)

Chancellor's Academy: Forty-two local teachers and 28 school principals are expected to attend the second Chancellor’s Academy, starting Monday (July 31). (7/27/06)

Religious Schools: Whether it’s prayer in schools, alternatives to evolution, or courses on the Bible, the debate continues on the role of religion in public schools. (6/1/06)

Math Divide: More women are pursuing higher education and doctoral degrees than ever before, but women still are rare in the math-oriented professions. Yet, researchers say, girls perform just as well as boys on achievement tests and tend to earn better grades in math than do boys during the earlier school years. (2/20/06)

Public and Private Schools: Contrary to common wisdom, public schools score higher in math than private ones, when differences in student backgrounds are taken into account. (1/23/06)

GOVERNMENT
Assisted Living Facilities: Over the last 20 years, a housing industry has sprung up to handle elderly citizens who cannot live independently but do not require around-the-clock nursing. Known as assisted living facilities or ALFs, the industry has become the fastest growing segment of residential care for the elderly. And along with their rise have come a host of health and care issues that need to be addressed by the federal government, according to an article in the Elder Law Journal published by the Illinois College of Law. (11/1/06)

State of the State: A look at the state’s changing demographics offers some clues as to how Illinois lawmakers may handle public policy choices in the future, according to researchers at the University of Illinois. (5/17/06)

Rhetoric: President George W. Bush frequently has been criticized for being verbally challenged, but a new rhetorical analysis of the Bush White House, based on the public record, argues that the president and his colleagues have demonstrated an impressive facility with the language.
(5/15/06)

HEALTH
Exercise: As an expanding body of work continues to confirm links between exercise and improved brain function in older adults, a new study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam suggests similar improvements among younger populations as well. (12/18/06)

Body Image: Researchers have discovered a subtle new difference between men and women – this one occurring in the realm of eating. (12/13/06)

Abortion: A new study that tracked the health of thousands of female textile workers in China indicates that women who have had an abortion do not have an increased risk of developing cancer. (12/1/06)

Exercise: New work by researchers at the University of Illinois lends strength to previous research documenting the health benefits of Qigong and Taiji among older adults who practice these ancient Chinese martial-arts forms. (6/28/06)

Mad cow disease: The U.S. Agriculture Department’s mad cow disease-testing program is wholly inadequate and the agency’s refusal to let processors do their own testing further undercuts the safety of American beef, a University of Illinois scholar writes.(5/15/05)

Bird flu: In the past, when government leaders, policymakers and scholars have turned their attention to peace and security issues, the talk invariably has focused on war, arms control or anti-terrorism strategies. But Julian Palmore believes it’s time to expand the scope of the conversation. (1/24/06)

Fitness goals: Predictably, on the heels of holiday-related overindulgence in sweets and treats, the word “exercise” manages to surface on many people’s lists of resolutions. What are the keys to getting a new fitness program off the ground, then staying the course? (1/4/06)

HISTORY
Explorers: Scientific travelers of the 18th and 19th centuries led waves of daring expeditions into Polynesia, netting oceans of discoveries about its geography, flora and fauna and people. (8/7/06)

HOME & GARDEN
New Orleans: As an urban planning researcher who studies how cities rebuild following natural disasters, Rob Olshansky has kept his scholar’s eye keenly focused on redevelopment plots and subplots surfacing this past year in post-Katrina New Orleans. (8/18/06)

Neighborhoods: As Stacy Harwood observed while collecting research data for a study of land-use decision-making in multicultural communities, not all residents of a California community she was studying – particularly the more entrenched ones who had lived there longer – viewed clotheslines and garage sales through the same lens. What they saw instead were eyesores and nuisances. (8/7/06)

Home Movie Preservation: If getting people to watch your home movies is like herding cats, maybe the problem isn’t your content, but rather, the physical quality of your movies.

If that’s the case, help is on the way during an upcoming event at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (7/27/06)

Advertising: In the current world of product placement, cross-promotion, pop-up ads, and ad-driven politics, it’s hard to imagine there was ever a time when advertising as an institution was severely challenged. (6/26/06)

LAW
Emergencies: Updating and clarifying the role of civilian workers in times of national emergencies is a pressing need that would improve homeland security, a University of Illinois legal scholar says. (12/4/06)

Bankruptcy Law: In attempting to crack down on irresponsible debtors, the new federal bankruptcy law is also likely to ensnare entrepreneurs and other self-employed Americans whose ideas and inventions can become engines for economic growth and job creation, according to a University of Illinois scholar. (6/23/06)

Bankruptcy: Early signs of the effect of the new bankruptcy act on consumers and the courts are not encouraging, according to an expert on bankruptcy law at the University of Illinois. (6/16/06)

Atomic Veterans: Veterans suffering from cancers linked to exposure to radiation from atomic test explosions encounter a complex and error-ridden process that routinely denies them disability benefits, a University of Illinois scholar says. (4/3/06)

Age discrimination: A potential legal hurdle for corporations seeking to cut costs through mandatory or voluntary layoffs was lifted when the U.S. Supreme Court gave its latest interpretation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). (3/24/06)

LITERATURE
August Strindberg: Misunderstood genius or misogynist? Playwright or novelist? Alchemist or artist? Beyond being the unquestioned father of modern prose drama, who was the real August Strindberg and what was he really trying to communicate? (12/7/06)

POETRY
Caribbean Poet: In his new volume of poetry, Laurence Lieberman again beckons readers to explore the islands that have bewitched him for more than 40 years. (4/28/06)

PSYCHOLOGY
Anxious Adults: Adults who are highly anxious can perceive changes in facial expressions more quickly than adults who are less anxious, a new study shows. By jumping to emotional conclusions, however, highly anxious adults may make more errors in judgment and perpetuate a cycle of conflict and misunderstanding in their relationships. (7/17/06)

Court animation: A courtroom jury views a computer animation of a vehicle accident or heinous crime. Does it help bring a conviction or acquittal? With no clear standards for animations that re-create incidents, the verdict is still out, and, for now, it may depend on which side created the simulation, researchers say. (4/10/06)

SOCIOLOGY
Immigrant health: Coming to the land of milk and honey can be hazardous to new immigrants’ diet and health.(2/9/06)

THEATER
Ebertfest: A fair lady, a “really, really bad” Santa, a Carmen from Cape Town, and Rudolph Valentino – they’re all part of the eighth annual Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival, coming April 26-30 to Champaign-Urbana. (3/20/06)

WORLD AFFAIRS
Chinese Librarians: There still are many realms where communications between the United States and China are strained or non-existent, but the realm that includes libraries, librarians and librarianship is not among them. (6/13/06)