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A New Vision of Democratic Individualism in ‘Awakening to Race’

Jack Turner, UW assistant professor of political science, is the author of “Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America,” published this month by University of Chicago Press. He answered a few questions about his book for UW Today.

What’s the central concept behind “Awakening to Race”?

The book addresses the challenge of racial justice by asking, “What does it mean to be a self-aware human being? What does it mean to be awake to reality?”

In part, it means confronting the worst aspects of ourselves and our lives. Being awake to reality in the United States means confronting the ways America’s history of slavery, Jim Crow and white supremacy still shapes the present — the opportunities we have or we lack, the confidence we have in ourselves or fail to have in others, the ways our chances for success are still color coded. (more…)

comScore Releases September 2012 U.S. Online Video Rankings

Technology

Maker Studios Inc. Climbs Into #3 Position in YouTube Partner Channels Ranking

RESTON, VA, October 29, 2012– comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 181 million U.S. Internet users watched more than 39 billion online content videos in September, while video ad views totaled 9.4 billion.

Top 10 Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in September with 150.3 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 57.4 million, AOL, Inc. with 53.8 million, VEVO with 50.3 million and Facebook.com with 46.4 million. More than 39 billion video content views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 13.1 billion, followed by AOL, Inc. with 741 million. Google Sites had the highest average engagement among the top ten properties. (more…)

Female Pulitzer Prize Winners Require Higher Qualifications, MU Study Finds

Culture, General, Media

Gender disparity in journalism still exists, but is improving

COLUMBIA, Mo. —The Pulitzer Prize in Journalism is one of the world’s most prestigious awards. Despite progress in the last few decades, gender disparities in the field of journalism have existed as long as the profession has. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that female Pulitzer Prize winners are more likely to have greater qualifications than their male counterparts in order to win the coveted award.

In a study to be published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Yong Volz, an assistant professor of journalism studies in the MU School of Journalism, along with Francis Lee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, studied biographical data from all 814 historical winners of the Pulitzer Prize from 1917 to 2010. They found that the majority of the 113 female Pulitzer Prize winners enjoyed access to greater resources than the average male winner. (more…)

Interactive Classroom

Education

Economics professor implements Wireless Interactive Teaching System

Ellen Green, a visiting assistant professor of economics in the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, is finding new ways to engage students in the classroom instead of simply lecturing.

Green uses a Wireless Interactive Teaching System (WITS) in her introductory economics classes that enables students to act as players in different economic scenarios — they even compete against each other during class. (more…)

Hungry Black Hole

Science

Astronomers poised for galactic chow-down

The super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy has a healthy appetite, frequently snacking on asteroids and comets. Now, a cloud of gas and dust called G2 is on a dangerous course to become its next meal.

Even though Sagittarius A* (pronounced “Sagittarius A-star”) hasn’t been easy to see through the cosmic dust, sitting 25,000 light years away at galaxy central, scientists know it is a black hole — and a hungry one at that. Its weight has been estimated to be more than that of 4 million suns. (more…)

University of Toronto Study Demonstrates Impact of Adversity on Early Life Development

Science

Study part of growing body of knowledge surrounding gene-environment interplay

TORONTO, ON – It is time to put the nature versus nurture debate to rest and embrace growing evidence that it is the interaction between biology and environment in early life that influences human development, according to a series of studies recently published in a special edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“Biologists used to think that our differences are pre-programmed in our genes, while psychologists argued that babies are born with a blank slate and their experience writes on it to shape them into the adults they become. Instead, the important question to be asking is, ‘How is our experience in early life getting embedded in our biology?’” says University of Toronto behavioural geneticist Marla Sokolowski. She is co-editor of the PNAS special edition titled “Biological Embedding of Early Social Adversity: From Fruit Flies to Kindergarteners” along with professors Tom Boyce (University of British Columbia) and Gene Robinson (University of Illinois). (more…)

Elevated Indoor Carbon Dioxide Impairs Decision-Making Performance

Environment

Berkeley Lab scientists surprised to find significant adverse effects of CO2 on human decision-making performance

Overturning decades of conventional wisdom, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found that moderately high indoor concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) can significantly impair people’s decision-making performance. The results were unexpected and may have particular implications for schools and other spaces with high occupant density. (more…)

NASA Radar Penetrates Thick, Thin of Gulf Oil Spill

Environment

PASADENA, Calif. – Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have developed a method to use a specialized NASA 3-D imaging radar to characterize the oil in oil spills, such as the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The research can be used to improve response operations during future marine oil spills. (more…)