Research

URBANA, Ill. – Lead exposure in early childhood can have lifelong consequences, including brain damage, developmental delays, and learning and behavioral disorders. Preventing these devastating outcomes means avoiding lead, but that’s only possible if you know where to find it.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A study of overweight dogs fed a reduced calorie, high-protein, high-fiber diet for 24 weeks found that the dogs’ body composition and inflammatory markers changed over time in ways that parallel the positive changes seen in humans on similar diets. The dogs achieved a healthier weight without losing too much muscle mass, and their serum triglycerides, insulin and inflammatory markers all decreased with weight loss.

URBANA, Ill. – Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers transformed agriculture as we know it during the Green Revolution, catapulting crop yields and food security to new heights. Yet, despite improvements in crop nitrogen use efficiency, fears of underperformance spur fertilizer overapplication to this day. Excess nitrogen then ends up in waterways, including groundwater, and in the atmosphere in the form of potent greenhouse gases.

The ACES International Global Food Security Fellowship, now in its third year, supports exceptional ACES graduate students who wish to conduct their thesis research in a developing country.

The selected students will work in collaboration with a mentor from an international agricultural research center in the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) or a national research institute devoted to food and agricultural issues. 

URBANA, Ill. – When we think of evolution, many of us conjure the lineage from ape to man, a series of incremental changes spanning millions of years. But in some species, evolution happens so quickly we can watch it in real time.

That’s the case for Xanthomonas, the organism that causes bacterial leaf spot disease in tomato and pepper plants. Like many microbes with short generation times, it can evolve at lightning speed to acquire beneficial traits, such as the ability to elude its host’s defense system.

URBANA, Ill. – Bat box designs vary widely, but many commercial varieties remain untested and risk cooking the animals they’re designed to shelter. Often small and painted dark colors, these boxes may rise to dangerous temperatures on sunny days in summer, putting mom and pup in harm’s way.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill., U.S. —  The world is warming quickly with no indication of slowing down. This could be catastrophic for the production of food crops, particularly in already warm areas. Today, research from the University of Illinois and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service shows that bypassing a photosynthetic glitch common to crops like soybean, rice, and wheat, can confer thermal protection under heat stress in the field. 

URBANA, Ill. – Soil organic carbon is a cornerstone of soil health. It improves soil structure while enhancing water- and nutrient-holding capacity, key factors for any agricultural production system. To build it up, farmers incorporate crop residues into soils.

So why, despite decades of residue inputs, is soil organic carbon diminishing in corn production systems? Short answer: it’s the nitrogen.

URBANA, Ill. – Not to pile on, but winter is coming and the COVID-19 pandemic is about to get worse. Not necessarily because of omicron – scientists are still working that one out – but because there’s more evidence than ever that COVID-19 is a seasonal disease.

We know this intuitively. It’s no surprise that moving indoors and closing windows bumps up transmission. But new analyses from University of Illinois researchers show that, underneath all the variants and waves, the disease has been cycling seasonally across the globe for nearly two years.

URBANA, Ill. – Wheat and barley growers know the devastating effects of Fusarium head blight, or scab. The widespread fungal disease contaminates grain with toxins that cause illness in livestock and humans, and can render worthless an entire harvest. As Fusarium epidemics began to worsen across the eastern U.S. in the 1990s and beyond, fewer and fewer farmers were willing to risk planting wheat.