In the News
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January 13, 2025
About a third of older Americans feel a lack of companionship “some of the time” or “often,” while 1 in 10 cannot name one close friend, according to Sarah Patterson, research assistant professor at the Institute for Social Research and a demographer working with the National Poll on Healthy Aging. “They didn’t think of even one person,” she said.
Bridge Michigan -
January 13, 2025
New FDA guidance on how manufacturers should test and label pulse oximeters is “an important step,” says Thomas Valley, associate professor of internal medicine, but may not be enough: “One reason why this problem has persisted for so long is that pulse oximeters are rarely, if ever, tested on the patients for whom we most need to know their (blood) oxygen levels — sick patients, often in the hospital.”
STAT -
January 13, 2025
Many patients read their medical test results online before their doctor has had a chance to go over them, provoking confusion and anxiety, mainly because medical reports contain a lot of jargon the average patient doesn’t understand, says Cathryn Lapedis, assistant professor of pathology: “Most people cannot get basic information — like whether or not they have prostate cancer — from standard pathology reports.”
U.S. News & World Report -
January 10, 2025
An understanding of how the moon’s temperatures fluctuate in different places will be crucial for future exploration, says John Monnier, professor of astronomy: “If we want to have a permanent settlement on the moon, like a base, or we want to have scientific instruments, we have to know the temperature and how it varies so we can make things that will last.”
Live Science -
January 10, 2025
“Drivers perform many different services in terms of customer service, like answering questions, responding to incidents, or offering help if somebody has a health crisis. There are many different social functions of having paid staff on the bus that contribute to the success of transit,” said Robert Goodspeed, associate professor of urban and regional planning, on the advantages of traditional public transport vs. autonomous personal rapid transit.
Bloomberg -
January 10, 2025
“Neighborhood green spaces may draw children out of the house and give them an alternative space to engage in activities other than screen time,” said Ian Lang, research project manager at the School of Kinesiology, whose research shows that community programs aimed at reducing screen time work more effectively when kids have access to spaces such as parks, forests and lawns.
Earth.com -
January 9, 2025
“Our approach to exercise and healthy eating is so dogmatic and based on all-or-nothing thinking. Yet when we step out of those two behaviors and we go into our parenting lives and our professional lives and our partnering lives, we don’t expect perfection, right?” said Michelle Segar, associate research scientist at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender.
The Grio -
January 9, 2025
“The same types of processes that result in volcanic eruptions are processes that form gold deposits,” said Adam Simon, professor of earth and environmental sciences, whose research confirms that sulfur forms strong chemical bonds with gold, allowing it to be transported up to the surface.
The Washington Post -
January 9, 2025
“The hue and cry over the minimum wage is often disproportionate to the actual economic impact — in terms of how the economy broadly is impacted. Firms offset (minimum wage increases) with new revenues, but workers get substantially larger incomes,” said Nirupama Rao, assistant professor of business economics and public policy.
CNN -
January 8, 2025
“We’ve shown conclusively that COVID-19 infections are less severe and less frequent after infection or vaccination. That is why you see hospitalizations and deaths decreasing so dramatically,” said Emily Toth Martin, professor of epidemiology. But Adam Lauring, professor of microbiology and immunology and of ecology and evolutionary biology, cautions that the virus has not gone away and continues to mutate: “The virus is still out there. People still need to be aware.”
Bridge Michigan
