URBANA, Ill. – It’s 6 a.m., and Nick Tarleton is on a bus with 20 or so university students. They’ve just left Oak Brook, Illinois, and they’re headed to their first stop of the day on their behind-the-scenes tour of the food and beverage processing industry in the Chicago area.

Tarleton calls out, “What are you most excited to see today?” Inevitably, someone answers back, “How do you have so much energy?!”

URBANA, Ill. – Agriculture’s one big thing, according to Dennis Bowman, is this: feeding the world sustainably in the face of climate change. 

Ag has always been a complicated business, a mix of biology, geology, and weather influenced by ever-changing economics, politics, and public opinion.

URBANA, Ill. ­­– Soybean is a promising crop for developing countries, because of its high protein and oil content. Over the past decades, humanitarian aid organizations and policymakers have promoted soybean processing technologies such as the “soy cow,” which extracts milk from soybeans. But a new study from the University of Illinois shows that soy cows in many cases are not economically viable and do not provide the expected benefits.

URBANA, Ill. -- Commercially viable biofuel crops are vital to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and a new tool developed by ACES scientists and the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) should accelerate their development — and genetic editing advances overall.

URBANA, Ill. – Amy Ando, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE) at University of Illinois, will join the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources (BANR) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine this month.

URBANA, Ill. – Two University of Illinois researchers have received a $1.2 million grant from the Department of Justice to study the effectiveness of training attorneys to identify and address intimate partner violence in divorce and custody cases.

This week’s 5 Questions Friday features Benjamin Cohen, an agricultural and consumer economics student with a focus on food systems and public policy.

What year are you, and how did you choose your ACES major?

Medical practices focusing on the relationship between the nervous system (mind) and the immune system (body) are explored in the relatively new biomedical research field of psychoneuroimmunology. Significant discoveries in areas like stress, mindfulness, ancient exercise (tai chi), and dietary interventions are just some of the work pioneered in this field.  

URBANA, Ill. – Soybeans outmatch all other legumes as the protein powerhouses of the plant kingdom, providing a key protein source for humans and livestock around the world. And now, after 30 years, University of Illinois scientists have identified the gene with the largest impact on seed protein in soybean.

URBANA, Ill. – As we move into the third year of the COVID-pandemic, we still face a multitude of information and it can be hard to know what guidelines to follow. Understanding what motivates individual behaviors can provide greater insight into mitigating the pandemic’s consequences and crafting effective public health messages.