7/30/08 - String Probes for Devastating Childhood Digestive Disease
A swallowed string may someday replace the invasive, uncomfortable endoscope now used to diagnose a devastating childhood disease of the esophagus. Steven J. Ackerman of University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and Dr. Glenn T. Furuta, his colleague at the University of Colorado Denver, were recently awarded three grants for an all-fronts attack on eosinophilic esophagitis, an inflammatory disease in which defense cells called eosinophils mistakenly attack the esophagus, causing it to narrow until food can't pass.
"Most cases are first encountered in the emergency room, where a child is brought in because something he ate is caught in his esophagus," said Ackerman, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at UIC. more
7/10/2008 - UIC Psychology Professor Named Humboldt Fellow
Jennifer Wiley, associate professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship for the 2008-09 academic year. The foundation's competitive fellowships are granted to experienced foreign scientists and scholars from around the world for an extended research period in Germany.
Wiley's research explores how the size of a small group affects the quality of problem solving and learning by group members. She is currently working on National Science Foundation-funded project exploring which group size -- dyads (two people) or triads (three people) -- allows individuals to take advantage of the diverse expertise available in a group.
The Humboldt Fellowship will allow Wiley to extend that research, which so far has been conducted with face-to-face groups, into computer-supported collaborative learning environments.
Wiley will work at Ludwig-Maximillian University in Munich, where internationally renowned experts Frank Fischer and Heinz Mandl and their research teams are supporting effective small group online learning More