Teen climber continues his sport despite cancer and loss of leg
By Siyan (Jen) Huang Climbing is a sport that requires great courage and strength. I met 17-year-old Ian Vallejo, an agile climber who had lost a leg to cancer, right after his second round of chemotherapy for yet another cancer. He was pale and sitting in a wheelchair. It was hard for me to picture him […]
Millennial Era Jazz: Pianist Alexis Lombre hopes to return the jazz club to a dance hall
By Thaddeus Tukes After first-year adjustments, most college sophomores are ready to immerse themselves. 20-year-old pianist Alexis Lombre has been doing just that. A Chicago native and full-time music student at the University of Michigan, Lombre says her first year left her feeling isolated and targeted, due to racist, sexist, and heteropatriarchal statements that were […]
Stop blaming the polls
By Mariah Quintanilla Stop blaming the pre-election polls. They told you all they could about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The pre-election polls based on national surveys accurately predicted what they were designed to predict: Clinton’s popular election win. So why did so few consider the fact that the electoral college had a real chance of […]
U.S. innovation at risk: Science funding crunch clashes with a burgeoning Ph.D. workforce
By Lakshmi Chandrasekaran “A CR (continuing resolution) Attenuates Progress. That would be C-R-A-P in case you haven’t figured that out,” said National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins last month, talking about how government funding affects research. Collins, quoted in Science magazine, referred to an amorphous continuing federal funding program that ends this Friday. Congress passed a […]
Pearl Harbor and the Enduring Legacy of War
By Duke Omara Seventy-five years ago, on Dec. 7, 1941, a Japanese strike force consisting of six aircraft carriers descended on the territory of Hawaii and unleashed a ferocious aerial raid on the American naval base of Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island. Less than two hours after the first Japanese aircraft appeared over the horizon, […]
Researchers and animal rights activists continue their heated debate
By Catherine Chen More than 200 rats “go through” Mason Lab each year. The lab at the University of Chicago conducts experiments with the rats to study psychology, neurobiology and social behavior and advance diagnosis and treatment for human conditions. The Mason Lab used 24 rats in their latest research focusing on rats’ helping behavior. […]
Safe in Chicago but never far from their flight
By Fariba Pajooh When Soghra Ataee and her four children go grocery shopping in Chicago, they melt into the crowd. Their tortuous 7,500-mile, 15-year journey to get here from Afghanistan is their private secret. But the memory of that trip never escapes them. “I have been like a stray cat, picking my children up in […]
The ‘Light’ shines on for Chicago’s Neo-Futurists and underground theater
By Grant Rindner Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind has been a mainstay of Chicago’s underground theater scene and the most visible performance of the city’s Neo-Futurist movement for 28 years since the play debuted on Dec. 2, 1988. The long-standing show made new headlines this fall as its creator, Greg Allen, abruptly decided […]
Veterans of Chicago’s DIY counterculture see a shifting scene and new paths ahead
By Grant Rindner When Rae Bees came to Chicago from Tallahassee, she already had deep roots in Florida’s DIY culture that went back to her college days. When she arrived in the Windy City, she became involved with Hostel Earphoria, a house and creative space that hosts artists traveling through Chicago and looking for an authentic understanding […]
Northwestern scientists go high-tech to uncover the secret hidden on top of a 16th century book
By Catherine Chen Researchers at Northwestern University are relighting lost history by identifying “ghost” texts on a degraded manuscript used as the cover of a book printed in Italy in the early 16th century. The book, “Works and Days,” was originally written by Greek poet Hesiod in the 8th century B.C. Northwestern has a copy […]