RESEARCH Science 2000 2001 2002

TOPICS: Astronomy | Agriculture | Anthropology | Archaeology |Atmospheric Sciences | Biology | Chemistry|Computers | Engineering | Environoment | Geology | Human Development | Materials Science | Medicine | Physics | Psychology | Veterinary Medicine

ASTRONOMY
'Dark Energy: The universe appears to be permeated with an invisible force – dark energy – that is pushing it apart faster and faster. By conducting redshift surveys of galaxy clusters, astronomers hope to learn more about this mysterious force, and about the structure and geometry of the universe. (4/22/02)

AGRICULTURE
Code-breaking Insects: Herbivorous insects that dine on crops use a form of molecular code-breaking to ready their defenses against a chemically protective shield employed by their dinner, say scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Pumpkin pathogen: New strategies emerging from research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are saving many of the state’s vegetable crops from a fungus that nearly put an end to pumpkin and pepper production. (8/6/02)

Soy: Food is not medicine, Barbara Klein says, but soy is nutritious and, by taking a whole-food approach, it can enhance the American diet. Helping food producers create quality soy products, developing marketing programs and educating the public about the benefits of soy make up the mission of the Illinois Center for Soy Foods. (5/9/02)

Genistein: Isoflavone-enhanced dietary supplements containing genistein may negate the tumor-fighting effects of tamoxifen, a commonly prescribed medication for women battling estrogen-dependent breast cancer, according to new findings appearing in the May 1 issue of the journal Cancer Research. (4/30/02)

Genome-mapping: An international consortium of U.S., Canadian and French scientists has begun work on a new resource that will enable the rapid and efficient sequencing of the entire cattle genome. (3/12/02)

ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology: In the first extended study of the ancient Nasca sites in southern Peru, an archaeologist challenges current anthropological theories and practices. (12/1/02)

Bipedalism: A team of paleoanthropologists says the origin of bipedalism among our prehuman ancestors appears most likely to be a response to environmental changes. ( 5/1/02)

Primates: Two American primatologists are challenging the current and dominant theory that competition is the driving force of social behavior in primates – both human and non-human. (2/15/02)

ARCHAEOLOGY
Archaeology: Using non-intrusive instruments, a team has for the first time geophysically found and mapped features of an early Louisiana culture at Poverty Point. (12/1/02)

Cahokia: 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)

ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
Climate Change: The direct injection of unwanted carbon dioxide deep into the ocean is one suggested strategy to help control rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and mitigate the effects of global warming. But, like the problems associated with the long-term storage of nuclear waste, finding a safe place to sequester the carbon may be more difficult than scientists first anticipated.(12/3/02)

Global Warming: In an article published in the Nov. 1 issue of the journal Science, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and their collaborators evaluate known advanced energy technologies for their capability to supply carbon-emission-free energy and their potential for large-scale commercialization. There are no simple solutions, they say.(10/31/02)

South Pole: Atmospheric measurements made at Earth’s geographic poles provide a convenient way of validating and calibrating global circulation models. New data shows that the current models are wrong: Temperatures over the South Pole are much colder in winter than scientists had anticipated. (8/28/02)

Climate: Substituting natural gas for coal in electrical power generating plants could reap greater long-term climate benefits than previously thought. (7/3/02)

Winter: Unusual weather across most of the United States last winter created huge and generally positive impacts to the nation's struggling economy. (6/18/02)

BIOLOGY
Mating Game: Each spring, amid the decaying rubble of dead prairie plants, emerging male gall wasps find mates by calling upon the chemistry prowess of their predecessors, entomologists scouring Central Illinois have discovered. (11/18/02)

Aging Theory: A theory that suggests the aging process might be safely slowed by targeting genes that are quiet early but threaten damage later in life has gotten a boost from new findings from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (10/15/02)

Mosquito Genome: While studying tiny pieces of a genomic DNA sequence from the African malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae on Christmas Eve 1999, entomologist Hugh Robertson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found several possible olfactory receptors similar to those others had found in Drosophila fruit flies. (10/2/02)

West Nile Virus: The nation’s first documented cases of domestic canine and squirrel deaths attributed to the West Nile virus have been confirmed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Officials stress, however, that people have a low risk of contracting the infection from affected animals. (9/17/02)

Prenatal alcohol exposure: Complex physical learning may help children overcome some mental disabilities that result from prenatal alcohol consumption by their mothers, say researchers whose experiments led to increased wiring in the brains of young rats. (8/7/02)

Cellular evolution: Life did not begin with one primordial cell. Instead, there were initially at least three simple types of loosely constructed cellular organizations. They swam in a pool of genes, evolving in a communal way that aided one another in bootstrapping into the three distinct types of cells by sharing their evolutionary inventions. (6/17/02)

Evolution: An evening Evolution Film Festival and talk by a world-renowned marine biologist will be free to the public when more than 1,000 scientists come to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign June 28-July 2 for the joint annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Society for Systematic Biology. (6/11/02)

Bacterium's toxin: Researchers are unraveling the mystery of what happens when a bacterium’s toxin hits its cellular target. In an age of growing antibiotic resistance and a threat of bioterrorism, such knowledge may help to open new lines of treatment, says a microbiologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (5/21/02)

Coral: Using molecular microbiology techniques, scientists are a significant step closer to understanding and identifying the deadly microbes responsible for the mysterious black band disease that is destroying the world’s coral reef ecosystems. (5/21/02)

Genetics: A new discovery in the brain of honeybees has researchers at three institutions suggesting that the gene they studied has played a key evolutionary role in the changes of food-gathering behaviors in many creatures. (4/25/02)

Water movement: Scientists have documented a ballet in which dancers cross the stage in a billionth of a second. The stage is a class of proteins found in all living things; the dancers are water molecules. The performance, captured by supercomputer simulation, casts new insight for biomedical researchers on the controlled movement of water through cell walls. (4/18/02)

Skin Cancer: Sunlight and PCB exposure can hit you where you least expect it. The combination enhances the development of non-melanoma skin cancer on parts of the body not directly exposed to the sun, according to a University of Illinois study. (3/21/02)

Genome-mapping: An international consortium of U.S., Canadian and French scientists has begun work on a new resource that will enable the rapid and efficient sequencing of the entire cattle genome. (3/12/02)

Geomicrobiology: Astrobiology, the search for life elsewhere, says a University of Illinois microbiologist, is making us look a lot closer at microbial life on Earth – how it adapts and its relationship to emerging infectious diseases. (2/15/02)

Disease-fighting: Growth-hormone therapy in elderly patients increases lean body mass and reduces body fat, helping them maintain fitness. Now, scientists say, the therapy also may dramatically boost the production of cells vital to fighting disease. (2/6/02)

Plant Damage: A new photosynthesis-measuring device illuminates and photographs never-before-seen injury extending far beyond an insect’s bite. (1/17/02)

CHEMISTRY
Phase Transitions: As will be reported in the Dec. 9 issue of Physical Review Letters (published online Nov. 21), scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have studied the phase transition in a supported bilayer and discovered some fundamental properties that could affect the material’s performance in various applications. (11/21/02)

Protein Folding: The comparison of simulated and experimental protein-folding kinetics had been an elusive goal for scientists. Now, however, measurements from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and molecular dynamics simulations from Stanford University have been compared and found to be in very good agreement.(10/21/02)

Synthetic Cytochromes: Chemist Kenneth S. Suslick and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created synthetic cytochromes by making a small cyclic peptide that binds to the iron millions of times more strongly than without the peptide. The scientists report their discovery in a paper in the Oct. 23 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. (10/7/02)

Synthetic Molecular Sieve: Kenneth S. Suslick and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created a new class of materials that are like zeolites in many ways. These new molecular solids are more than 50 percent empty space ­ space that can trap molecules of the right size and shape, including water. (9/23/02)

Imaginig Apparatus: A high-fidelity spectrometric system for studying the behavior of drops and particles in industrial flame reactors has been constructed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in collaboration with researchers at the University of Arizona. The instrument was used to study the potential of thermal combustors for reducing the volume of liquid nuclear wastes for safe, long-term storage. (9/18/02)

National Chemical Landmark: The centennial celebration of the construction of Noyes Laboratory will take place Sept. 13-14. The symposium will feature public talks and a dedication ceremony recognizing the laboratory as a National Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society. (9/6/02)

Artificial Antibodies: Nature is especially adept at producing molecules that can recognize and bind other molecules. For example, antibody molecules will search out and bind a single foreign molecule, called an antigen, from among myriad other natural substances. This type of exquisite molecular recognition has long inspired chemists, who for decades have tried to make molecules that are capable of performing similar feats. (7/24/02)

Single Bubble Sonoluminescence: Like fireflies, bubbles trapped and energized by ultrasound emit light in a periodic rhythm. By holding a single bubble of gas in a standing acoustic wave and driving it into pulsations, the bubble converts sonic energy into light with clocklike regularity. At the same time, the intense energy released by the implosive compression of the bubble rips molecules apart. Chemists at Illinois have now quantified those effects in a single bubble. (7/24/02)

Laser Spectroscopy: Using an ultrafast laser spectroscopy technique, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have tracked – and timed – the flow of vibrational energy through certain molecules in their liquid state. (6/20/02)

COMPUTERS
Supercomputing: NAMD, a molecular dynaics code for high-performance simulation of large biomolecular systems developed at the UI, was among the winners of this year's Gordon Bell Awards -- the Olympics of supercomputing -- at the SC2002 conference.

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. (9/1/02)

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)

ENGINEERING
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)

Medical microspheres: Researchers have developed a method for making drug-encapsulated, biodegradable polymer microspheres that provides precise control over sphere size and shell thickness. (4/9/02)

Nanotechnology: Through numerous avenues of research on nanotechnology, scientists at the UI are well poised to push back the frontiers of knowledge and make such exciting and beneficial discoveries. (4/5/02)

Electronics: Microelectronics researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a low-loss, wide-bandwidth microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) switch that can be integrated with existing technologies for high-speed electronics (4/3/02)

ENVIRONMENT
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. (91/02)

GEOLOGY
Impact craters: Two of the three largest impact craters on Earth have nearly the same size and structure, researchers say, but one was caused by a comet while the other was caused by an asteroid. These surprising results could have implications for where scientists might look for evidence of primitive life on Mars. (10/25/02)

Soft tissue: Fleshy tube feet preserved in a rare fossil suggest an ecological shift through time, and may settle a long-standing debate about the preservation of soft parts, say paleontologists at the University of Illinois. (4/3/02)

Earth's Core: New evidence from short-period earthquake waves may solve a long-standing mystery of EarthÕs inner core, and offers additional support for a layered inner core model, say seismologists at the University of Illinois.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Siblings: The sibling getting favored treatment from mom and dad feels great and has the best self-esteem, right? Not necessarily, researchers say. If a favored sibling doesn’t think the preferential treatment is deserved, that child may actually suffer. (9/24/02)

MATERIALS SCIENCE
Water Purification: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to create a science and technology center to develop advanced materials and technologies for water purification. The grant will provide $4 million in funding for each of five years, with the possibility of a five-year renewal. (9/19/02)

Colloidal inks: A new way to assemble complex, three-dimensional structures from specially formulated colloidal inks could find use in advanced ceramics, sensors, composites, catalyst supports, tissue engineering scaffolds and photonic materials. (6/19/02)

Photonic crystals: Scientists at the University of Illinois have fabricated features within self-assembled photonic crystals, greatly enhancing the potential functionality of this class of photonic band gap materials. (2/7/02)

Surf against surface: Why water beads on some surfaces but not on others has puzzled scientists and engineers for a long time. Now UI researchers have succeeded in both pinning down the waTer and its response at a hydrophobic surface. (1/24/02)

MEDICINE
Exercise and 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)

Estrogen: Deciding on hormone-replacement therapy – weighing the far-reaching benefits and risks – can give a woman a headache. Now researchers say estrogen may dictate what problem-solving strategies the brain uses to solve problems. (5/15/02)

HIV: An experiment to understand how chemokine peptides dock to a receptor on a cell wall – a pivotal connection that allows HIV to infect healthy cells – has yielded an unexpected fundamental discovery and a possible new way to block AIDS. (5/15/02)

Antioxidant: Two new University of Illinois studies are sweet news to honey lovers. One shows that honey's antioxidant qualities preserve meat without compromising taste. A just-published study says that honey -- at least based on work done on human blood in the lab -- slows the oxidation of low-density lipoproteins (LDL), a process that leads to atherosclerotic plaque deposition. (4/8/02)

Baby shots: Four infant vaccines. One injection. How much will the industry charge? How much is a parent willing to pay? How much will government and insurance cover? Such issues are becoming real, says a UI researcher who has developed a mathematically based analysis tool to help pinpoint acceptable pricing. (4/8/02)

Skin Cancer: Sunlight and PCB exposure can hit you where you least expect it. The combination enhances the development of non-melanoma skin cancer on parts of the body not directly exposed to the sun, according to a University of Illinois study. (3/21/02)

NUTRITION

Broccoli Research: Broccoli packs a healthy punch, but not necessarily every time you eat it, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.(10/7/02)

PHYSICS
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)

DNA Unzipping: Using an optical fluorescence microscope to monitor enzyme activity, researchers at three universities have solved a long-running mystery. It takes at least two proteins, working in an unstable tandem, to unzip two strands of DNA. (10/9/02)

BioCoRE: Researchers collaborating by means of the Internet is nothing new. However, an evolving Web-based environment created at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is redefining long-range collaboration and linking far-away labs to supercomputers – for free.

Superconductivity: The peculiar behavior of high-temperature superconductors has baffled scientists for many years. Now, by imaging the copper-oxide plane in a cuprate superconductor for the first time, Illinois researchers have found several new pieces to this important puzzle. (8/26//02)

Quantum cyrptography: As telecommunications and information systems become commonplace in society, a more secure means of encrypting and transmitting data is required. Underlying nearly all forms of encryption is the necessity for a truly secret key, which can be distributed without the threat of an undetected eavesdropper. Several protocols have demonstrated the potential effectiveness of quantum cryptography in meeting this need. (7/11/02)

Dark matter: Astronomy researchers have taken a new look at the nature of the nearly 95 percent of the mass in the universe that consists of an invisible, mysterious form of dark matter. Their calculations shed some light on the characteristics of this odd material, and may lead to new theories about how structure formed in the early universe. (6/4/02)

X-ray microscope: A lensless X-ray microscope that can create three-dimensional images of micron-size samples has been developed by scientists at the University of Illinois. The instrument can be used in metallurgical and semiconductor applications, and for studying the early growth stages of protein crystals. (3/18/02)

Superconducting nanowires: By creating superconducting nanowires using carbon nanotube molecules, researchers at the University of Illinois are investigating just how small a wire can become and remain a superconductor. The answer could prove useful in applications such as supercomputing, where short superconducting wires can connect circuit elements. (3/18/02)

Silicon Nanoparticles: A process for creating silicon nanoparticles, developed at the UI, has now been shown to produce a family of discrete particle sizes useful for microelectronics, optoelectronics and biomedical applications. (1/23/02)

PSYCHOLOGY
Girls' Grades: Girls generally make better grades than do boys, but a new study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign shows that girls also experience more internal costs Ð worry, anxiety and depression Ð despite their academic success. (6/26/02)

Green views: At-risk inner-city girls who see nature through the windows of their homes may have a better chance for success than those girls whose views are not as green, say scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (6/26/02)

VETERINARY MEDICINE
Swine Research: Findings from 10 years of field research and a complex computer simulation suggest that swine producers should keep cats out of swine housing facilities to avoid Toxoplasma gondii infection of pigs and, in turn, reduce a human health risk. (10/7/02)

West Nile Virus: The nation’s first documented cases of domestic canine and squirrel deaths attributed to the West Nile virus have been confirmed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Officials stress, however, that people have a low risk of contracting the infection from affected animals. (9/17/02)

Largemouth Bass: Scientists with the Illinois State Natural History Survey and the UI have launched a three-year national study to do on-site examinations in affected areas and laboratory experiments in which they will raise largemouth bass and expose them to environmental stressors and to the largemouth bass virus. They want to know what triggers susceptibility to the virus. (3/28/02)