A convenient aggregation of breakthrough discoveries and research headlines from all CIC member universities.
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September 1, 2010
University of Iowa
Some Iowa high school principals use pizza parties, pep rallies, gift certificates and days off from school as motivational strategies to raise students' tests scores on high-stakes tests in reading, math and science. However, research conducted by Liz Hollingworth, assistant professor in educational policy and leadership studies in the University of Iowa College of Education, reveals that administrators rarely have tools in place to measure whether these activities are effective or even have an impact on test scores.
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more about: UI study reveals principals use pizza parties, pep rallies to raise test scores
Contact:
Liz Hollingworth,
319-335-5409,
liz-hollingworth@uiowa.edu
August 31, 2010
Michigan State University
Girls eating a high-fat diet during puberty, even those who do not become overweight or obese, may be at a greater risk of developing breast cancer later in life, according to Michigan State University researchers.
The implications – that a high-fat diet may have detrimental effects independent of its effect to cause obesity – could drive new cancer prevention efforts.
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more about: High-fat diet during puberty linked to breast cancer risk later in life
Contact:
Jason Cody,
(517) 432-0924,
codyja@msu.edu
August 30, 2010
Indiana University
Chemists at Indiana University Bloomington have designed a molecule that binds chloride ions -- but can be conveniently compelled to release the ions in the presence of ultraviolet light. Reporting in the Journal of the American Chemical Society today (online), IU Bloomington chemist Amar Flood and Ph.D. student Yuran Hua explain how they designed the molecule, how it works and, just as importantly, how they know it works.
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more about: IU chemists develop new "light switch" chloride binder
Contact:
David Bricker,
812-856-9035,
brickerd@indiana.edu
August 27, 2010
University of Chicago
Among disadvantaged people in the United States, the most needy and least helped are probably African-American men, according to a new book from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. Black men suffer in a variety of ways, including being stereotyped as reckless and having little regard for their children. They are also disadvantaged because changes in the economy have depleted the number of well-paying, manual labor jobs, said Waldo E. Johnson Jr., Associate Professor at SSA, who is the editor of Social Work With African American Males: Health, Mental Health and Social Policy, recently published by Oxford University Press.
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more about: Book calls for social workers to better address needs of black men
Contact:
William Harms,
773-702-8356,
w-harms@uchicago.edu
August 26, 2010
Indiana University
The next generation of neutron research at Indiana University Bloomington has received a $5 million boost from the National Institute for Standards and Technology. A recently awarded NIST grant provides close to $1 million a year for five years to support cooperative research activities between the Low Energy Neutron Source (LENS) at IU Bloomington and NIST's National Center for Neutron Research, located in Gaithersburg, Md.
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more about: IU physics facility awarded $5 million for cooperative neutron research
Contact:
Steve Chaplin,
812-856-1896,
stjchap@indiana.edu
August 26, 2010
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
A group of “professional couch potatoes,” as one researcher described them, has proven that even moderate exercise – in this case walking at one’s own pace for 40 minutes three times a week – can enhance the connectivity of important brain circuits, combat declines in brain function associated with aging and increase performance on cognitive tasks.
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more about: ATTENTION, COUCH POTATOES! WALKING BOOSTS BRAIN CONNECTIVITY, FUNCTION
Contact:
Diana Yates,
217-333-5802,
diya@illinois.edu
August 23, 2010
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pa. — Health benefits from polyphenol antioxidants — substances found in many fruits and vegetables — may come at a cost to some people. Penn State nutritional scientists found that eating certain polyphenols decreased the amount of iron the body absorbs, which can increase the risk of developing an iron deficiency.
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more about: Polyphenol antioxidants inhibit iron absorbtion
Contact:
A'ndrea Messer,
814-865-9481,
aem1@psu.edu
August 20, 2010
University of Wisconsin-Madison
It was a deep history in satellite meteorology that first got the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration interested in Madison in the 1970s. When it came time to decide anew where best to put the $60 million and 130 people keeping us eyeball-deep in satellite data on Earth’s climate, three more decades of success didn’t exactly work against UW-Madison. “The field of satellite meteorology was founded here on UW-Madison’s campus,” said Steve Ackerman, director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies and professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. “We’ve been experts for 30 years and that expertise remains here.”
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more about: Renewed partnership keeps $60 million satellite center in Madison
Contact:
Chris Barncard,
608-890-0465,
barncard@wisc.edu
August 19, 2010
University of Chicago
Ngô Bao Châu, who will join the mathematics faculty at the University of Chicago on Sept. 1, has received the Fields Medal, the International Congress of Mathematicians announced today in Hyderabad, India. The ICM cited Ngô “for his proof of the Fundamental Lemma in the theory of automorphic forms through the introduction of new algebro-geometric methods.”
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more about: Ngô Bao Châu receives Fields Medal, highest honor in mathematics
Contact:
Steve Koppes,
773-702-8366,
skoppes@uchicago.edu
August 19, 2010
University of Michigan
Falsely advertising one's fighting ability might seem like a good strategy for a wimp who wants to come off as a toughie, but in paper wasp societies, such deception is discouraged through punishment, experiments at the University of Michigan suggest. The research, by evolutionary biologists Elizabeth Tibbetts and Amanda Izzo, will be published online Aug. 19 in the journal Current Biology.
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more about: Paper wasps punish peers for misrepresenting their might
Contact:
Nancy Ross-Flanigan,
734-647-1853,
rossflan@umich.edu
August 19, 2010
Michigan State University
At any given time, trillions of tiny microbes - some helpful, some harmful - are living on and in humans, forming communities and outnumbering the body's own cells tenfold. Using a $7.3 million federal grant that establishes a new cooperative research center at Michigan State University, a group of investigators is studying the microbes that live in our intestines, analyzing the role they play in food- and water-borne illnesses that kill millions of people each year worldwide.
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more about: Researchers: Cures to diseases may live in our guts
Contact:
Jason Cody,
517-432-0924,
codyja@msu.edu
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