EAST LANSING, Mich. — Support for gay marriage is growing in Michigan, mirroring changing attitudes in many parts of the United States, according to Michigan State University’s State of the State Survey.
A recent survey found that 56 percent of the state’s residents support gay marriage while 39 percent oppose it. Two years ago, 48 percent supported gay marriage and 51 percent were opposed. (more…)
In the wake of the announcement that Provost Peter Salovey has been named as Yale’s 23rd president (see YaleNews story), here is a look at how he fits in with his presidential predecessors.
• He will be the third psychologist to hold Yale’s top administrative post.
Noah Porter, president 1871-1886, was an early figure in the development of American psychology. His book “The Human Intellect,” which features an “Introduction upon Psychology and the Human Soul” (1868), explored the tensions between religious belief and “scientific” psychology. (more…)
UD conservators triage to provide advice, resources
In a news clip on MSNBC, Phyllis, a 62-year-old grandmother from Staten Island, clutches a black-and-white photograph of her mother in her wedding gown. She found the family treasure strewn among the muck and marsh grass where her shattered home ended up in Hurricane Sandy’s wake.
If you have recovered photographs or photo albums that were damaged by the superstorm, don’t throw them out. There is hope for saving storm-damaged photos, according to Debra Hess Norris, professor and chair of the Department of Art Conservation at the University of Delaware. (more…)
Eliminating excessive spending could mean windfall for U.S., study suggests
The respected national Institute of Medicine estimates that $750 billion is lost each year to wasteful or excessive health care spending. This sum includes excess administrative costs, inflated prices, unnecessary services and fraud — dollars that add no value to health and well-being.
If those wasteful costs could be corralled without sacrificing health care quality, how might that money be better spent? (more…)
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…)
UCLA scholar, culinary historian champions foraged foods in new book
Today, delicacies like capers, arugula and fennel are at home at Dean & Deluca, Whole Foods and fancy restaurants, but they haven’t always lived the high life.
These and other darlings of the foodie set started out as peasants’ fodder, foraged from rocky outcroppings, empty fields and roadsides, according to a new book by a UCLA professor.
Luigi Ballerini revisits this distant past in “A Feast of Weeds: A Literary Guide to Foraging and Cooking Wild Edible Plants” (University of California Press), which celebrates the foraged foods that are currently enjoying a renaissance in Italy and elsewhere. (more…)
High-risk children adopted from foster care do equally well when placed with gay, lesbian or heterosexual parents, UCLA psychologists report in the first multi-year study of children adopted by these three groups of parents.
The psychologists looked at 82 high-risk children adopted from foster care in Los Angeles County. Of those children, 60 were placed with heterosexual parents and 22 were placed with gay or lesbian parents (15 with gay male parents and seven with lesbian parents). (more…)
ANN ARBOR — Some called it “witchcraft.” Others just watched in awe as their scanned fingerprints were used to pull up their records on a computer.
They were paprika farmers in Malawi participating in a new study that shows fingerprinting can help encourage borrowers to repay their loans.
Like many impoverished countries, Malawi lacks a national identification system. Most of the population lives in rural areas with few government services. Even ID as basic as a birth certificate is rare in the southeastern African nation. (more…)
