Bioresearchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have invented an ingenious method for shining light on one of the most mysterious organs we have: the brain. Their tool of choice is a thin, flat LED that can be seamlessly and innocuously injected, causing minimum invasiveness and disturbance. The LEDs will help advance our understandings of bodily organs like the brain through the field of optogenetics.
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Tags: 2014, Midwest, 2013, University of Illinois, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, UIUrbana, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Chicago, IL, U of I
A microscopic worm by the name of Schistosoma mansoni has been long credited with a long lifespan and an uncanny knack for regeneration. Thanks to recent research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the worm’s secret is out: it utilizes adult stem cells to restore and replace itself at will.
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Tags: 2014, Midwest, 2013, University of Illinois, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, UIUrbana, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Stem Cell, IL, parasite, laboratory product, UI Urbana
At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, biological engineers have created what is becoming known as a “bio-bot.” It’s neither a cyborg nor an android, and it can fit on the face of a dime. What makes it special is that it can walk independently: that is, without the help of any mechanisms or electronic parts.
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Tags: 2014, Midwest, 2013, University of Illinois, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, UIUrbana, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, researchers, IL, NSF, Bio-Robots, bio-bots
If you’ve ever been in need of a blood thinner, or you’re an avid reader of the Science Market Update, you’re probably familiar with the drug warfarin. Warfarin is an anticoagulant, which means it decreases the clotting ability of the blood in order to fight blood clots. However, it’s known to cause adverse effects if taken in the wrong amounts. In one of our September articles, we talked about research underway at the University of Illinois at Chicago that focused on prescribing the proper dosage of the drug. Meanwhile, just a few cities over, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are working on an alternate drug to warfarin.
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Tags: Midwest, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2012, Illinois, BioResearch Product Faire Event, IL, UIUC
In the search for early life we are going where we have never gone before...with newly-funded astrobiology research at the University of Illinois.
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Tags: Midwest, Bioresearch, Bioresearch funding, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2012, Illinois, biology research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, Research Funding, IL, genomics research, research grant, new research grants, UIUC
Human beings like stories. We think narratively. If there isn't a beginning, middle, and end, we try and create them from the information we have at hand, because things happen in time and, we like to think, with purpose and significance. Life science research takes as its subject living things, and all living things have a life cycle, at the end of which they die, just like in a story. There is no stasis, and nothing in real life happens in a clean room: living things interact with other living things and physical processes in what we sometimes call ecosystems, which are messy, elegant places of contingency and interdependence.
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Tags: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Cornell University, women in science, Illinois, biology research scientists, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Front Line event, Ecology, BRPF, scientific sales
We live in an age obsessed with cleanliness. Hand washing is at an all-time high, as are sanitizers of every sort. It's not enough that our municiple water is filtered at a plant somewhere before coming into our homes, no, we need to filter it once more before it's safe to drink. Yet even that level of screening for contaminants may not be enough. For people living near air force bases there's an additional threat, and it's caused by a specific chemical used in rocket fuel: ammonium perchlorate. Perchlorate has a tendency to end up in the water supply near these bases, and traditional water filters don't do the trick when it comes to screening out the toxin. Fortunately, two entrepreneurial materials science researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, have come up with a novel filtering material that does screen perchlorate, and they are well on their way to commercializing their invention, thanks to two federal small business awards and the support of the pro-business University of Illinois Research Park.
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Tags: Midwest, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, university research park, Funding, chemistry researchers, innovative solution, chemical supply, laboratory chemicals, NSF, lab chemical
Waste is an inevitable bi-product of human life, industry, and agriculture. One of the scientific challenges we face as a society is managing that waste and minimizing its deleterious effects on the environment that we depend upon for current and future sustenance. This ecosystem management increasingly involves the utilization of life science processes whereby good bacteria eat the unwanted effluent and render it neutral or even beneficial through an organically bioactive treatment system. This process is called bioremediation, in contrast to chemical sterilization systems (e.g. chlorination) that can cause problems downstream.
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Tags: Midwest, Bioresearch, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Southwest, California, University of California, University of California Santa Barbara, Illinois, Ecology
If you're a business entrepreneur considering the University of Illinois' Research Park as a location for your start-up, you may stumble upon the micro-urban video above. If you do, and the video does what it's supposed to, you'll want to relocate to the Champaign-Urbana area. Because it is smart and innovative, fast-paced, young, brimming with movers and shakers, and your average commute time will be 14 minutes.
In fact, the Research Park and the micro-urban video are both efforts to link the university with the growing industrial research market that profits from its proximity to university resources and in turn offers job opportunities and tax revenues to the larger C-U community.
Universities have always been incubators for business development to some degree, and business parks that have sprung up in campus towns have been especially popular with start-ups. What is new in the past decade is the development of research parks by the universities themselves, on university land, with clear links to the academic institution and even its business school.
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Tags: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, industry news, Midwest Region