ANN ARBOR, Mich.— In the mating game, some female mites are mightier than their mates, new research at the University of Michigan and the Russian Academy of Sciences suggests. The evidence comes, in part, from 40 million-year-old mating mites preserved in Baltic amber.
In a paper published March 1 in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, researchers Pavel Klimov and Ekaterina Sidorchuk describe an extinct mite species in which the traditional sex roles were reversed. (more…)
*New University of Michigan research shows higher education, religion, income levels influence Arab American support of organ donation*
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – U.S. organ procurement organizations looking to increase donation rates among Arab Americans can turn to new University of Michigan Health System research for recruitment ideas.
U-M researchers identified various factors – from education and income levels to gender and religion – that may predict how members of this population view organ donation, says lead study author Aasim I. Padela, M.D., an emergency physician and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the U-M Health System. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Organizational efforts to create and maintain an inclusive multicultural environment often face resistance by whites, says a University of Michigan researcher.
“Without the support of whites, organizations and educational settings will fail in their attempts to navigate and manage the complexities of diverse work forces and constituencies,” said Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, an associate professor of management and organizations at Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “In the face of the dramatic projected growth in demographic diversity, such failure could have severe economic, social and political consequences. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Some scholars estimate that presenteeism, a relatively recent buzzword that applies to people who are less productive at work because of health issues, costs employers as much as three times the dollar amount as absenteeism in terms of lost productivity.
But researchers at University of Michigan believe those numbers may be inaccurate. A new opinion paper suggests that the tools for measuring and quantifying hours of lost productivity and translating those hours to dollars are unreliable and don’t capture the entire presenteeism picture, said Susan Hagen, an analyst from the U-M School of Kinesiology Health Management Research Center (HMRC). (more…)
The new Polaris gamma ray detector can pinpoint the location of special nuclear materials, such as those used for dirty bombs or nuclear weapons. Image credit: Zhong He
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— A table-top gamma-ray detector created at the University of Michigan can not only identify the presence of dangerous nuclear materials, but can pinpoint and show their exact location and type, unlike conventional detectors.
“Other gamma ray detectors can tell you perhaps that nuclear materials are near a building, but with our detector, you can know the materials are in room A, or room B, for example,” said Zhong He, an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences.
“This is the first instrument for this purpose that can give you a real-time image of the radiation source. Not only can we tell you what material is there, but we can tell you where it is, and you can find it and walk towards it.”(more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Talking with other people in a friendly way can make it easier to solve common problems, a new University of Michigan study shows. But conversations that are competitive in tone, rather than cooperative, have no cognitive benefits.
“This study shows that simply talking to other people, the way you do when you’re making friends, can provide mental benefits,” said psychologist Oscar Ybarra, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — When parents set up long-term savings accounts for college, business start-ups or home ownership, kids feel more financially and emotionally secure, new research shows.
The studies show the importance of families using child development accounts (CDA) as one measure to shift from an overreliance on credit and create a foundation for asset building. In other words, this program encourages households to maintain less debt and more savings. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Is your character shaped by where you live—or vice versa?
University of Michigan psychology researchers found that some cities lead with their heart—emotional and interpersonal strengths—while others lead with their head—intellectual and self-oriented strengths.
They also found such distinctions are also related to economic and political consequences. (more…)
