The November 20th football game between Illinois and Northwestern next year will most likely be played in Chicago at Wrigley Field.

“It would be great national exposure and a neat thing for both sides,” said Zook, who visited Chicago on Tuesday. “Wrigley Field transcends the whole country.”

Northwestern officials, buoyed by the success of the NHL’s Winter Classic, have been trying for more than a year to make a Wrigley Field game a reality.

On Jan. 17, NU athletic director Jim Phillips said: “Within the next month or so, we’ll decide if it’s something that can work. There are a lot of moving parts.”

Bottom line, officials involved are confident the game will become a reality. But at least two hurdles remain: revenue sharing (between the Big Ten and the Cubs) and the fact if Northwestern moves a 2010 game to Wrigley, it will have just five at Ryan Field.

Phillips will meet Wednesday with Cubs President Crane Kenney in an effort to get the game closer to fruition. For a 2010 game, Northwestern probably needs to nail down details by the end of March.

Check out the graphic with the potential field orientation, and the full article from the Chicago Tribune.

Apparently college students had it right all along – naps improve all-day learning abilities.

This study suggests that if you’re trying to cram in facts you need to recall later, a same-day nap before your last-minute cram might be more helpful than powering through your day with nervous energy.

Naps Can Seriously Improve All-Day Learning Abilities

(Image via Flickr)

We’ve all realized over the years that talking causes distracted driving, but research from UIUC has proven that driving actually distracts one from talking. According to the research, driving impairs your ability to comprehend and use language.

“The previous findings made no sense to those of us who have studied language,”said Gary Dell, a psycholinguist in the department of psychology at Illinois and corresponding author on the study. “You might think that talking is an easy thing to do and that comprehending language is easy. But it’s not. Speech production and speech comprehension are attention-demanding activities, and so they ought to compete with other tasks that require your attention – like driving.”

The study reflects the tradeoffs that occur when people try to communicate while performing other tasks, Dell said. “The relative balance of attention to any two tasks is going to vary,” he said. “And perhaps we don’t understand one another as well as we should because of this. With modern technology, we’re talking more and more while we are doing other things, but we may be understanding one another less and less.”

Driven to distraction: New study shows driving hinders talking – UI News Bureau

Researchers at the Beckman Institute have proven that success in playing a video game is dependent upon the size of a specific brain structure.

The study adds to the evidence that specific parts of the striatum, a collection of distinctive tissues tucked deep inside the cerebral cortex, profoundly influence a person’s ability to refine his or her motor skills, learn new procedures, develop useful strategies and adapt to a quickly changing environment.

Kirk Erickson, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh was lead author on the study. Ann Graybiel, an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research; and Arthur Kramer, a professor of psychology at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, were co-principal investigators on the study. Walter Boot, of Florida State University, also contributed to the research, which was conducted at Illinois.

“This study tells us a lot about how the brain works when it is trying to learn a complex task,” Erickson said. “We can use information about the brain to predict who is going to learn certain tasks at a more rapid rate.” Such information might be useful in education, where longer training periods may be required for some students, or in treating disability or dementia, where information about the brain regions affected by injury or disease could lead to a better understanding of the skills that might also need attention, he said.

Video gamers: Size of brain structures predicts success – UI News Bureau

Interim Chancellor Robert Easter recently sent out an email to all students, faculty, and staff about the financial situation of the University of Illinois. In it, he points out that we have received only seven percent of our annual appropriation from the State. C’mon Illinois – get your act together!

Dear Students:

As we approach the spring semester I write to inform you of the current
financial situation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

As is the case with all public universities in the state we currently face
a cash crisis. In the current fiscal year that commenced on July 1, 2009,
we have only received 7 percent of our annual appropriation from the
state. As I write this letter the state of Illinois owes the University
more than $436 million of its appropriation. That number increases every
month.

As a response, we have instituted a number of measures on campus to ensure
that we have the necessary resources to get through the semester with an
eye to confronting a similar fiscal shortfall in the next fiscal year. Our
faculty and administrative staff will begin mandatory furloughs in
February. (A furlough is a leave of absence without pay.) We have also
been cutting costs at all levels of the university and we are looking at
ways we can consolidate services to garner even more savings. Finally, we
continue to draw on cash reserves, but these are finite and we can no
longer continue to go down this path.

Please understand that we are doing everything we can to protect our
students – our number one priority – from the impact of these cost-cutting
measures. We believe that each fiscal decision we make must not compromise
the education of this state’s greatest assets, its daughters and sons.

Please share this letter with your parents and family members. Great
public universities such as ours must be preserved and supported to ensure
that Illinois and the nation stay competitive in a global economy.

Thank you for your support,

Robert A. Easter
Chancellor and Provost (Interim)

Welcome to the first day of class. Did you have a good break? Are you excited about the upcoming semester? Are you ready for this semester?

Here are some resources that you may want to check out during this first week of class:

Textbook Buying Guide

2010 Spring Course Catalog

How to Find Your Classroom

UIUC General Calendar

And what better way to start the semester than with an Illini Men’s Basketball game! Tonight at 8PM at Assembly Hall. The Illini will take on Purdue, and the game will be broadcast on ESPN.

Illinois vs. Purdue // Jan. 19 // 8pm

• Live Audio | GameTracker | TV: ESPN
• BUY TICKETS TO THIS GAME | Fan Guide

Go Illini!

Something everyone wants – to be happy. Did you know research is being done at Illinois on happiness?

In those lucky nations endowed with a decent standard of living, happiness is, for sure, related to income – but strongly related only to a point. In the U.S., the point is around $40,000. That is to say, when the median household income in this country reached $40,000, the rising happiness curve started to flatten.

Five Propositions About Happiness: Ed Diener

Today is reading day, a day when you’re supposed to “read.” What are students doing other than reading? Check out our list from last year.

In other news, congratulations to the 2010 Siebel Scholars from Illinois:

They join an elite group chosen on the basis of outstanding academic performance and demonstrated qualities of leadership. Each will receive a $35,000 award established by the Siebel Scholars Foundation to recognize the most talented students at the world’s leading graduate schools of business, computer science, and bioengineering.

Remember back to last year on this same day. Then governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested by federal prosecutors. As reported by The Quad, the former govoner was arrested in early December on federal corruption charges. He was officially impeached in early January, and was officially replaced later that month. It’s been a fun year for Illinois politics, but the questions about Blago still remain. He’ll get his chance to speak at his federal corruption trial in June.

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune writes this as he reflects upon this anniversary:

Throughout the year, Blagojevich has amused many of us, me included. His wife, Patti, showed up on reality TV, eating jungle bugs and blubbering that her husband is not a crook, with the bugs still on the back of her teeth.

Rod plays the jester. All that’s missing are the curly-toed boots, and Rod holding a wooden rattle carved in his own likeness, a smirk on the tiny Rod head, as Rod himself waves his arms, gesturing at the unfairness of it all.

It’s all so amusing, so droll. But the joke’s not on him.

It’s on us. On every man, woman and child in the state of Illinois.

Christopher Willis of the Associated Press thinks that Blago has caused a shift in Illinois politics:

The scandal could have a national impact by tipping a U.S. Senate seat — the one previously held by President Barack Obama — into Republican hands. The GOP also hopes to reclaim the governor’s office, and they could be helped if Blagojevich stays in the spotlight with a role on “Celebrity Apprentice” next year and a federal trial during election season.

What do you think about our former governor?

Blagojevich’s legacy no joke – Chicago Tribune

Holy mackerel! 1 year since Blagojevich arrest – Associated Press

H1N1 shots will be available at no charge to University of Illinois students, staff and faculty who are under the age of 25 or between the ages of 25-64 with chronic medical conditions. No documentation of illness required. Present your I-card at the walk-in clinic in the Pine Lounge at the Illini Union on Tuesday, December 8th and Thursday, December 10th from 10am to 2pm. Available to the first 800 each day.

H1N1 Information – McKinley