News Room

Holding your friends and peers to account if they skip a scheduled gym session or you catch them gorging on cookies after they swore they were cutting out sugar is an effective weight loss tool, a new study reveals – but not in the way you might think. The study, by Kosuke Uetake of Yale University, and Nathan Yang of McGill University in Montreal, looked into whether we lose more weight when we start our health kicks as part of a ‘buddy system’.

To open campuses—and keep them open throughout the fall—college administrators must assess risks beyond the potential spread of coronavirus. Many schools plan extensive testing and contact tracing. But campus leaders must also know the ability of local health systems to contend with an outbreak and also be able to prevent panic if—and more likely, when—infections are diagnosed, says Sheldon H. Jacobson, a founder professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an expert in data-driven risk assessment.

Dr. Julie Swann says we’re still in the first wave. Dr. Swann is the head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University where she studies how government leaders respond to a pandemic -- without overwhelming hospitals-- the efficient distribution of food and vaccines, and safe reopening businesses and schools.

Nearly 2.3 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and about 120,000 of them have died. With stay-at-home orders beginning to ease, the number of new cases confirmed each day is rising in some of the nation’s most populous states, including California, Texas and Florida.

Millikin University's new president, James Reynolds, did not grow up planning a career in academia. His original career plans was to be a scientific researcher. Reynolds will officially take over leadership of the university on July 1, replacing Patrick White, who is retiring after serving as president since 2013. Reynolds is coming from Wilmington (Ohio) College, where he served as interim president from August 2011 to February 2012, when he was named president.