In the News
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August 11, 2021
“Americans are very good at finding reasons why you are great even if you fail,” but in Japan, “even if you succeed, you have to apologize,” said Shinobu Kitayama, professor of psychology, commenting on the practice by Japanese Olympic athletes to apologize profusely when falling short of a gold medal — sometimes, even after winning silver.
The New York Times -
August 11, 2021
New developments in running shoe design and a fast track saw many records broken at the Tokyo Olympics, but Geoff Burns, a research fellow at the Exercise & Sport Science Initiative, says that advances in technology might have drawbacks: “You don’t know exactly how much of that performance is due to the technology. When you have an athlete break a record, they no longer get total ownership over breaking that record. It’s that Faustian bargain you make.”
CNN -
August 4, 2021
“Usually when we design an algorithm, we think about inputs and outputs. We don’t think about anything else that happens when the program runs. But computers don’t run on paper, they run on physics. When you shift from paper to physics, there are all sorts of physical effects that computation has: time, power, sound. A side channel exploits one of those effects to get more information and glean the secrets in the algorithm,” said Daniel Genkin, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science.
WIRED -
August 4, 2021
Riana Elyse Anderson, assistant professor of health behavior and health education, says the stereotype of the “strong Black woman” creates an unrealistic idea that Black women need less support than others: “(Black women) tend to have greater rates of depression, and it’s not something that they talk about because, again, that stereotype makes it seem like there’s nothing wrong.”
PBS NewsHour -
August 4, 2021
The immune system is always learning to adapt and respond to bacteria and viruses as they change, says Daniel Kaul, professor of infectious diseases and internal medicine: “Our immune system sort of intentionally makes some errors and kind of broadens out that response, so over time you may actually see better responses against variants than you do initially.”
CNBC -
August 4, 2021
“Critical race theory is being conflated with discussions on race and equity, which is discussed in school and should be done,” said Camille Wilson, professor of education. “It’s not about individual blame, it’s about learning the truth in this country and lingering inequalities. It’s about making good choices to disrupt inequality.”
The Detroit News -
July 28, 2021
“Oftentimes it’s not what you can do, but what you look like. Being an Asian, being a woman and being someone with a disability, I really do have to work many times harder to satisfy the general professional demands,” said Vivian Cheung, professor of pediatrics and human genetics.
HuffPost -
July 28, 2021
Major multinational corporations are often the only entities besides government with the clout to influence societal forces, said Jerry Davis, professor of management and organizations: “It’s very clear that some of the problems that we want to have solved are going to take scale, and that’s the kind of scale that only a government or a really big business can pull off. And if we don’t trust the government to do it, that just leaves Walmart and Amazon.”
Vox -
July 28, 2021
“You might feel a nature connection by simply looking at the sky, a nearby tree, branches swaying in the wind, or ice crystals on the stem of a nearby winter shrub,” said MaryCarol Hunter, associate professor emerita of environment and sustainability, whose research shows that 20 to 30 minutes of exposure to nature several times a week lowers our stress hormones.
The Washington Post -
July 28, 2021
“There is so much information that has come out about the COVID vaccine and it’s coming fast, it’s coming from a lot of different sources and it feels overwhelming. You can see why people might feel worried, a little confused and uncertain about what really is the best thing to do,” said Sarah Clark, co-director of the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health.
CNN
