Latest University of Illinois at Chicago Stories

While gripping, lifting or manipulating an object such as drinking from a cup or placing a book on a shelf is usually easy for most, it can be challenging for those with neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's, or for people who had a stroke. For them, the tight gripping can cause fatigue, making everyday tasks difficult.A team of University of Illinois at Chicago physical therapists report this month in the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair that persons...

Serious hikers and backpackers tend to become supporters of environmental and conservation groups while casual woodland tourists do not, a new study says -- and a recent fall-off in strenuous outdoor endeavors portends a coming decline in the ranks of conservation backers.Oliver Pergams, visiting research assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Patricia Zaradic, director of the Red Rock Institute in Pennsylvania, made headlines in early 2008...

In a world filled with dogma, doctrine and discipline, it is accurate to say most of us strive to do what we believe is "right." These convictions and beliefs permeate every aspect of our lives, including education, ethics and even common law.Psychologists Daniel C. Wisneski, Brad L. Lytle and Linda J. Skitka from the University of Illinois at Chicago explored this interplay of moral convictions and religious beliefs as it relates to our trust in authority. Specifically, the...

Two studies conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University have found that commonly used botanicals do not have an effect on hot flashes or on cognitive function in menopausal women.The studies appear online and will be published in an upcoming issue of Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society.In the first study, the botanicals black cohosh and red clover were compared to the standard of care -- hormone therapy -- and to...

You probably hadn't noticed -- but the head shape and overall size of rodents has been changing over the past century. A University of Illinois at Chicago ecologist has tied these changes to human population density and climate change.The finding is reported by Oliver Pergams, UIC research assistant professor of biological sciences, in the July 31 issue of PLoS One.Pergams said that such size-and-shape changes in mammals, occurring around the world in less than a century, are quite...

Selenium is a trace element crucial to life - too little or too much of it is fatal. In the July 17 issue of the journal Science, researchers at Yale University and University of Illinois at Chicago detail the molecular mechanisms that govern its metabolism in the human body."It must require an intricately regulated uptake system," said Dieter Söll, co-senior author of the paper, Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale. "There are 25 human...

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is heading up a $2.9 million National Cancer Institute study to evaluate and increase demand for Internet-based smoking cessation treatments for young adults between the ages 18 to 24 years old. "Surprisingly, this age group has the highest rate of smoking compared to any other age group," psychology professor Robin Mermelstein, principal investigator of the 5-year study, noted in a UIC podcast. "In fact, smoking starts to escalate...

Whale sharks -- giants of the fish world that strike terror only among tiny creatures like the plankton and krill they eat -- are imperiled by over-fishing of the species in parts of its ocean range.That threat is underscored in a new study from geneticists led by Jennifer Schmidt, University of Illinois at Chicago associate professor of biological sciences, reported online April 7 in the journal PLoS One.Schmidt and her colleagues studied the DNA of 68 whale sharks from 11 locations across...

The discovery in common brewer's yeast of a new, infectious, misfolded protein -- or prion -- by University of Illinois at Chicago molecular biologists raises new questions about the roles played by these curious molecules, often associated with degenerative brain diseases like "mad cow" and its human counterpart, Creutzfeldt-Jakob.Susan Liebman, distinguished university professor of biological sciences, and postdoctoral research associate Basant Patel propagated the new prion from...

Cloud computing enables faster, less expensive processing across geographically distributed data centersThe National Center for Data Mining (NCDM) at the University of Chicago at Illinois established a cloud computing system that can quickly compile data from widely geographically distributed data centers across high performance networks. NCDM used the Open Cloud Testbed, managed by the Open Cloud Consortium, to demonstrate the "Sector System" at the annual meeting of the American...