In the News
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December 7, 2022
“There is definitely a systematic pink tax women are paying. Items all the way from children’s clothing to senior health care,” said Aradhna Krishna, professor of marketing, commenting on research that shows that goods marketed to females cost more than similar products marketed to men.
WXYZ/Detroit -
December 7, 2022
“We should stop cutting down forests. … If we allow time to let them get older they will develop the resistance to climate extremes,” said Tsun Fung Au, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Global Change Biology, whose research found that trees more than 140 years old are better able to withstand the dry, hot weather that will become more likely as the climate continues to change.
The Detroit News -
December 7, 2022
“It is possible that homes will have their basements in contact with contaminated groundwater that is of sufficiently high concentrations to present an exposure and health risk,” said Rita Loch-Caruso, professor emerita of toxicology and environment, who believes a chemical plume caused by a solvent used at the former Gelman Sciences site could eventually cause vapors in some Ann Arbor basements.
Michigan Radio -
December 6, 2022
“The only way to join metal and plastic has been with adhesives or mechanical fasteners, which is too slow and expensive for anything but low-volume specialty vehicles,” said Pingsha Dong, professor of mechanical engineering, and naval architecture and marine engineering. “The processes we’re developing could change that and bring multimaterial vehicle structures and components from the realm of exotics into the mainstream.”
R&D World -
December 6, 2022
“You have older patients with much more progressive disease, and you’re trying to cobble together an anesthetic that you have half of the medication available to you. You have a third of the equipment available to you.” In a sense, “you’re MacGyver-ing … what you need,” said Bridget Pearce, assistant professor of anesthesiology, who notes that her work in El Salvador and Peru “really is like nourishing your soul.”
MLive -
December 6, 2022
“It’s a failure of humanity to have created these amazing materials which have improved our lives in many ways, but at the same time to be so shortsighted that we didn’t think about what to do with the waste,” said Anne McNeil, professor of chemistry, and macromolecular science and engineering, whose research team found a way to recycle one of the world’s most prevalent but toxic plastics by chemically breaking it down.
WDIV/Detroit -
December 5, 2022
“In new construction, installing a heat pump can be cheaper than extending a natural gas connection, installing a furnace, and installing an air conditioner,” said Parth Vaishnav, assistant professor of environment and sustainability, whose research found that 70 percent of U.S. households could reduce climate damages caused by CO2 emissions by installing a heat pump.
Popular Science -
December 5, 2022
The fraying of social networks and shutdowns during the pandemic exacerbated alcohol and drug abuse among older Americans, said Frederic Blow, professor of psychiatry and director of the U-M Addiction Center: “When you add that to feelings of loneliness and isolation, of feeling at the end of the world in some ways, it became an impetus for people to start using more than they ever had in the past.”
The New York Times -
December 5, 2022
“AI is like the nuclear power of this age,” said Kentaro Toyama, professor of information. “It has tremendous potential both for good and bad, but … I think if we don’t start practicing regulating the bad, all the dystopian AI science fiction will become dystopian science fact.”
The Washington Post -
December 2, 2022
Despite claims that Jupiter is warming, there’s not enough data to show a global trend, says Sushil Atreya, professor of climate and space sciences and engineering: “The only systematic measurements of Jupiter’s heat balance were done by Voyager spacecraft four decades ago.” Limited data since then have shown temperature fluctuations in “different regions of the atmosphere and different parts of the planet, but they don’t represent the planet’s temperature as a whole.”
USA Today
