In the News
-
January 23, 2024
“Everywhere you look on the internet, there’s 30 quick and easy ways to go green. And often, they’re trying to sell you something. They’re trying to sell you a slightly better version of what you already have. … But the greener alternative is never going to be as green as the thing we don’t buy,” said Shelie Miller, professor of environment and sustainability.
WEMU -
January 23, 2024
Despite the recent bitter cold, there’s been a “perceptible” reduction in the intensity of cold snaps, says Richard Rood, professor emeritus of climate and space sciences and engineering: “The size of the Arctic cold pool is decreasing. Though at spots it is still quite cold, extreme cold is becoming a rarer event.”
The Washington Post -
January 22, 2024
“Michigan lost a lot more jobs at the start of the pandemic. The historical pattern is when the national economy catches a cold, Michigan gets the flu,” said Gabriel Ehrlich, director of the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics. “We’re not going to see prices go back to where they were before the pandemic, but we can see the prices get back to where the Federal Reserve wants (them) to be.”
Crain's Grand Rapids Business -
January 22, 2024
Language ideologies are “the connections we make in our heads between the language features a speaker uses and our social perceptions of what that speaker’s like,” said Jessi Grieser, associate professor of linguistics, who notes that dialects affect Americans on a largely subconscious level, often perpetuating stereotypes.
Smithsonian Magazine -
January 22, 2024
Frigid temperatures can cut electric vehicle range and make charging tough. “Pretty much anything that’s a chemical substance slows down when you get to a low temperature. That’s just something that nature has given us, and we have to deal with that,” said Neil Dasgupta, associate professor of mechanical and materials science engineering.
The Associated Press -
January 19, 2024
“From a clothing standpoint, this is what my mom told me and what everyone’s mom tells them: Dress warmly, cover up. It’s the exposed skin that’s at risk for frostbite,” said Brad Uren, associate professor of emergency medicine, whose emergency department has seen several cases of frostbite this past week.
The Detroit News -
January 19, 2024
“Youth have a particularly important viewpoint. They often know much more than the adults do about what’s going on in their relationships and in their school communities,” said Elyse Thulin, research assistant professor at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, who found that an anonymous student tip line in just one state flagged thousands of firearm threats in schools.
National Public Radio -
January 19, 2024
“Forests have been absorbing a significant amount of carbon from the atmosphere, which has helped to slow down the pace of climate change,” said Kai Zhu, associate professor of environment and sustainability. “However … their capacity to absorb carbon is likely to decrease in the future. As a consequence, more carbon will remain in the atmosphere, leading to a faster rate of global warming.”
MLive -
January 18, 2024
All 15 states that rejected a new federally funded summer food program for kids are led by Republican governors. “Americans would like to think that all kids get a fair shot. What we’re seeing is this increasing gap between kids in different states in the union,” said Luke Shaefer, professor of public policy and social work and faculty director of Poverty Solutions.
Detroit Free Press -
January 18, 2024
“People sort of overreact to the (amount of the national debt). Because of inflation, that number is always going to get bigger. We usually want to try to make some sense of the number by scaling it in a way that is a little bit easier to understand,” said Betsey Stevenson, professor of economics and public policy.
USA Today
