MLS and La Liga stars hit the beach

By Sye Bennefield Jr. Imagine a Copa Del Rey Champion, a World Cup winner, a MLS Cup Champion and a Gold Cup Champion having a kick about on North Avenue Beach with no clouds in sight. Now reconfigure that image and picture those four individuals sharing an 8’ x 24’ area pitch, against several feisty […]

Freeze-casting materials in space: Meeting the challenges of vacuums and microgravity

Northwestern University’s SpaceICE team, led by Northwestern Professor David Dunand, is preparing to test freeze-casting of materials in space, in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Bradley University. Fabricating materials is essential for a journey to Mars or for future space colonies. The SpaceICE team is pioneering the freeze-casting instrumentation for the […]

Severe storms lab developing remote flash flood sensing system

By Puja Bhattacharjee Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center, the oldest church camp in Oklahoma, hosts more than 50,000 kids and teens who come for summer camp each year. Falls Creek originates from the Washita River in Murray County and flows directly into the campgrounds named for it. But flash floods now menace the camp and the […]

Army takes Warrior Games gold medal; coach has message for team and others

By Sye Bennefield As the athletes went down the line, both greeting and congratulating each other, Army Head Coach Rod Williams, simply watched. Chicago played host to the Department of Defense (DoD) Warrior Games on June 30 – July 8. It was the first time the Warrior Games was hosted outside of a military base […]

After-school program teaches native children their heritage

By Jiayan Jenny Shi Kelly Summers, 44, is a Chicago-born Native American who volunteers with Native Scholars, an after-school tutoring program at the American Indian Association of Illinois (AIAI). Every Tuesday afternoon, native children across Chicago meet at a church basement in Andersonville where they get homework assistance and cultural instruction. Summers learned cultural traditions at a Menominee Indian […]

Making materials in space – freeze it first

Jonathan

This summer a team of Northwestern University undergraduates will finalize instrumentation designs for a NASA satellite mission that will test the manufacturing of materials while in orbit.  The students are building the device for SpaceICE to study freeze-casting, a process that could eventually be used to build materials on other planets in space colonies. “In terms of […]

Student researchers move step by step to prepare for NASA launch

By Lily Williams A combined team of undergraduates at Northwestern University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are working together to build a satellite and instruments to test the fabrication of building materials in space. The NASA mission is due to launch into orbit in the summer of 2018. It has two parts: a box-like satellite called a CubeSat (UIUC’s […]

Chicago fights back: Guns against guns

Shooting at a gun range

By Jane Bodmer In response to the city’s violence epidemic, many Chicagoans are turning to a complicated solution: fighting guns with more guns. According to State Police, Chicagoans were issued 60 percent more gun permits in 2016 than in 2015. A total of 212,000 Chicagoans are legally licensed to own a gun, and 38,712 Firearm […]

Undergraduate SpaceICE researcher wins prestigious engineering award

LK and KS

By Lily Williams Undergraduate materials science senior Lauren Kearney heads to Northwestern University’s SpaceICE lab on most days to work on the design for the team’s freeze-casting instrumentation that will launch in a NASA mission next year. Kearney won one of two of Northwestern’s Hilliard Awards for leadership, scholarship and service. Each year, the university’s […]

Young people lead Little Village protest to ‘Increase the Peace’

By Jiayan Jenny Shi Marcos Constantino Jr., 21, is a college student living in Little Village. Growing up in a family once involved in gangs, Constantino avoided joining a gang with the support from his family and by participating in a Little Village Softball League. Along with other community organizers, Constantino helped create the first “Little Village […]