Research

Illinois once harbored more than 8 million acres of wetlands. By the 1980s, all but 1.2 million wetland acres had been lost, filled in for development or drained to make way for agriculture. Now, thanks to a 2023 Supreme Court decision, roughly 72% of the remaining 981,000 acres of Illinois wetlands are no longer protected by the federal Clean Water Act, putting communities at risk of losing the flood control, groundwater recharge, water purification and natural habitat these wetlands provide, researchers report.

Financial strain can be a major stressor that impacts people’s wellbeing and quality of life, and it can also affect couple relationships.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has announced new funding to understand and reduce grassland fire risk in the Southern Great Plains.

Genes are the building blocks of life, and the genetic code provides the instructions for the complex processes that make organisms function. But how and why did it come to be the way it is?

Scientists from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a method to isolate genes from amounts of microbial DNA so tiny that it would take 20,000 samples to weigh as much as a single grain of sugar.

In collaboration with other Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs), researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) are developing industrially feasible techniques for second-generation biofuel production from oilcane, an oil-rich variety of sugarcane, to help meet our growing societal demand for fuels.

A critical program supporting healthy communities in Illinois and across the country took a devastating hit on July 4 when HR1, the federal budget reconciliation bill, was passed and signed into law.

Many modern cancer treatments are highly effective at reducing or eliminating tumors, but they can also cause severe gastrointestinal symptoms that impact patients’ quality of life or lead to discontinuation of treatment.

Literacy rates in Sub-Saharan Africa remain low, despite increased primary school enrollment. In rural Mozambique, only 3% of children possess grade-level reading skills. Poor learning outcomes in lower grades are a barrier to further expanding school enrollment at higher grade levels.

A molecule made by bacteria in the gut can hitch a ride to the kidneys, where it sets off a chain reaction of inflammation, scarring and fibrosis — a serious complication of diabetes and a leading cause of kidney failure — according to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Mie University in Japan.