In the News
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August 13, 2025
“There was a lot of discussion toward the end of the election season and right after Trump got elected about ‘Did country music sort of predict Trump?’ … There are now more conservative touch points in culture that people can’t really ignore,” said Devon Powers, professor of communication and media, mentioning the TV series Yellowstone, the return of trad wives in pop discourse and the MAHA movement.
WIRED -
August 13, 2025
It doesn’t matter if you tell them it’s good for them, if it doesn’t feel good in the moment, most people won’t exercise, says Michelle Segar, associate research scientist at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender: “We’re pretty clear at this point in the research on exercise and motivation that how people feel while they’re active will have a profound influence on whether they’ll continue to be active.”
The Washington Post -
August 13, 2025
“For every one child below the poverty line, there are two to three more above it but still too close for comfort,” said Luke Shaefer, professor of public policy and social work and faculty director for Poverty Solutions. They’re in “families whose lives are a constant grind of working hard but never making it. The gains we made during the pandemic were lost.”
The Wall Street Journal -
August 6, 2025
“We need to do a better job of identifying HIV in pregnant women,” said Kengo Inagaki, clinical associate professor of pediatrics, whose research suggests that third trimester maternal HIV testing should be universal rather than risk-based to provide timely treatment and prevention of HIV in children.
ScienceNews -
August 6, 2025
“Although individual statutes do authorize limited temporary service in such posts, the administration may face legal challenges to the total length of service, especially for an acting official who has already served as an interim,” said Nina Mendelson, professor of law, on the Trump administration’s decision to extend the terms of interim federal prosecutors whose appointments were set by law to expire.
The New York Times -
August 6, 2025
“Changes to the federal share of Medicaid spending will cause states to either cut enrollment, cut benefits, cut payments to providers or greatly increase their spending,” said Susan Goold, professor of internal medicine and health management and policy, who believes Medicare will also be indirectly affected, via increases in income tax deductions, which “means less revenue to both Medicare and Social Security.”
Newsweek -
August 6, 2025
“This not only refines our understanding but also opens the door to entirely new lines of research into how our nervous system processes different kinds of sensory information,” said Bo Duan, associate professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, who found for the first time that humans perceive warm and cool temperatures on completely different neural pathways.
Live Science -
August 6, 2025
“A fair-skinned person with moles must (now) go to the doctor about every six months to send off a biopsy to see if they’re malignant or benign. With this test, they could … get the results right away and follow up with a dermatologist for a positive result,” said Sunitha Nagrath, professor of chemical engineering, who is developing an at-home skin patch test that can detect melanoma.
U.S. News & World Report -
July 30, 2025
Doug Zytko, associate professor of computer science at UM-Flint, says safety “has not been prioritized” for most dating apps, which explains the popularity of Tea, an app that lets women review men they’ve gone out with and run background checks on potential matches: “The dating app safety features that exist are largely reactive in nature. They’re not about keeping people safe, but are punitive actions one can take after something has occurred.”
CBS News -
July 30, 2025
“We know that exercise matters, and we know that intensity matters. I think it’s caught on because it’s so sustainable—it’s short, it’s doable, you don’t have to be in a gym, and there are lots of benefits to walking,” said Laura Richardson, clinical associate professor of kinesiology, about the trend of interval walking — alternating between periods of fast, high-intensity walking and slower, recovery-paced walking.
TIME
