News

Integrative Biology News

Winter 2006 (pdf file, requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, to get free software go to www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/ )

Winter 2005 (pdf file)

Summer 2003 (pdf)

Spring 2002 (pdf)

Department of Entomology Newsletters

Updates


    INITIATIVE WILL PUT ILLINOIS AT FOREFRONT OF FARM BIOENERGY PRODUCTION.     UIUC News Bureau (Feb. 1) --A $500 million research program announced today by the energy company BP will bring farm bioenergy production to Illinois on a grand scale, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Illinois will join the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in forming the new Energy Biosciences Institute, with UC Berkeley taking the lead. more...

    ANTS' FAST MANDIBLES COULD LEAD TO 'FANTASTIC APPLICATIONS.' Chicago Sun-Times (Aug. 24) -- The mightiest mandibles in the animal world belong to the tiny trap-jaw ant, researchers at Illinois say. U. of I. entomology professor Andrew Suarez and colleagues are building models inspired by the ants. "Getting incredible speeds and forces with small, simple materials, without damaging them in the process, could lead to fantastic applications for mechanical engineering or robotics," he says. more...

    CICADA-KILLER WASPS. The Courier News (from the Chicago Sun-Times; Elgin, Ill., Aug. 24) -- Despite their size, cicada-killer wasps aren't threatening - unless you're a cicada. The main danger to humans comes when people unwittingly step on one of the insects, says May Berenbaum, the head of the entomology department at Illinois. more...

    TREE STUDY HAS GLOBAL-WARMING IMPLICATIONS. Chicago Sun-Times (Aug. 3) -- U. of I. researchers report that the movement of white spruce trees in Alaska and Canada is even more sluggish than previously believed - a finding that could add to climate change woes. "The fact they can't respond as fast as we thought has big implications for global warming," says Lynn Anderson, a doctoral student in plant biology. more...   LAKE SHAPE A MAJOR FACTOR IN OUTBREAKS OF EPIDEMICS AMONG PLANKTON. The shape of a lake's basin - in reverse of what researchers had theorized - has a prominent role, along with predation and weather patterns, in epidemics affecting water fleas grazing on lakes in Michigan, researchers say. more...