In the News
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April 2, 2021
“In theory, the perfect mix would be to satisfice most of the time and only maximize the decision process when the stakes are high,” said Stephanie Preston, professor of psychology, commenting on the two categories of decision-makers: “maximizers,” who want to ensure they get the most out of the choices they make, and “satisficers,” who tend to adopt a ‘this is good enough’ approach.
BBC -
April 2, 2021
“It’s not that I’ll pay a dollar more for a book, it’s that control of the arena of ideas gets limited. If the variety of ideas — if the venues for people who want to challenge the mainstream ideas — narrows, then in addition to something costing me a dollar more, we’re talking about something entirely different,” said Erik Gordon, clinical professor of business, on the unforeseen cultural ripple effects caused by growing consolidation in the publishing industry.
The New York Times -
April 2, 2021
“In terms of keeping us healthy, disgust is associated with fewer infections, so it is a helpful emotion in disease-relevant contexts,” said Josh Ackerman, associate professor of psychology. “(But) it can be a double-edged sword because it also is associated with aversion to unfamiliar things, like food, some of which could actually improve our health and immune functioning.”
National Geographic -
April 1, 2021
The anti-vaccine crowd can appear larger when clumped together with people who are hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine, says Brian Zikmund-Fisher, professor of public health: “There are not that many people who hold that strong and confident of a belief. There are a lot of people who are questioning, hesitant, want to wait and see how it goes.” Anti-vaxxers, however, are publicly committed to their ideology. “That person is never going to change their mind and they’re not persuadable,” said Anna Kirkland, professor of women’s studies, public health and sociology.
MLive -
April 1, 2021
“It’s incredible that anything from the FE was saved because they were fomenting revolution, not preserving history,” said Julie Herrada, curator of the Joseph A. Labadie Collection at the U-M Library. The Fifth Estate was “the counterculture’s source for music, politics and the arts in general. It wasn’t just a political paper or just a hippie paper, but spoke to all the communities that defined the 1960s in politics, culture and the arts.”
Detroit Free Press -
April 1, 2021
“We may be in a new place where there’s not necessarily the intestinal fortitude to take the extra effort to dispose of things in the right way,” said Brian Love, professor of materials science and engineering, commenting on why many recycling programs across the U.S. have disappeared during the pandemic.
TIME -
March 31, 2021
“Imagine trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube that rearranges itself every time you blink. That’s what hackers are up against with MORPHEUS. It makes the computer an unsolvable puzzle,” said Todd Austin, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, whose research team developed a computer chip that works by reconfiguring key bits of its code and data dozens of times per second, turning any vulnerabilities into dead ends for hackers.
DBusiness Magazine -
March 31, 2021
“No amount of lead is deemed safe and your vulnerability is often exaggerated by when in your life you’re exposed to it. So if you are a young child that’s going to have to live with the lead you’re exposed to as a child if it’s high, that’s a far more worrisome problem,” said Terese Olson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, on high levels of lead found in Benton Harbor’s water supply.
The Detroit News -
March 31, 2021
“I can go into a shelf and grab a jar off the shelf and look at a river in someplace in southeast Asia in the 1800s. I can know exactly what the fishes were eating. I can know about the chemical composition of the water they lived in,” said Randy Singer, assistant research scientist in ecology and evolutionary biology and curator of the Museum of Zoology’s fish collection, about the challenges of bringing biological specimen records online.
National Public Radio -
March 30, 2021
Whatever the roots of the dumpling may be, its contemporary manifestations are a hybrid of several culinary traditions, says Miranda Brown, professor of Asian languages and cultures: “China may be a dumpling lover’s heaven (but) it is not its original homeland. … It’s now everyone’s food. It’s 100 percent Chinese, Korean, Armenian, as well as Turkish. China is a nexus of influence. But that’s food history; these recipes tend to get around.”
AsiaOne
