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Color of memory
Research by Professor of Psychology Avi Ben-Zeev that indicates racial stereotypes or prejudices may cause people to remember a successful black person as having lighter-skin tone was featured in a Jan. 14 International Business Times report. "Uncovering a skin tone memory bias, such that an educated black man becomes lighter in the mind's eye, has grave implications. We already know from past researchers about the disconcerting tendency to harbour more negative attitudes about people with darker complexions," Ben-Zeev said. "A skin tone memory bias highlights how memory protects this 'darker is more negative' belief…"
Recording history
In a Jan. 19 Wisconsin State Journal article, Director of the Educational Leadership Doctoral Program Robert Gabriner discussed his experience in 1964 collecting documents and audio recordings in Mississippi to help create the Wisconsin Historical Society's Freedom Summer Project. "It's the articulate who record the history but the poor people who make a lot of the history," Gabriner said. "So we wanted to preserve the records and the stories of people in the rural South about the civil rights movement."
More than just an ad
In a Jan. 27 KGO-TV news segment Associate Professor of Marketing Bruce Robertson discussed how the Super Bowl became the most important event of the year for advertisers. "The Apple 1984 ad was kind of a tipping point… The Master Lock Company spent 100% of their advertising budget on one Super Bowl ad and saw their sales take off through the roof," Robertson said. "The Super Bowl ad today is much more than an advertisement. Companies that choose to participate in the Super Bowl are making a statement to the world."
Long view
Associate Professor of Biology Jonathon Stillman explained in a Jan. 28 Phys.org article why new studies of ocean acidification need to look at how marine plants and animals might evolve over the long term. "We really don't need more studies that tell us how an organism is going to respond (to acidification) instantaneously," Stillman said. "We need to know how they will really respond in the future and that depends on their capacity for adaptation."
Peering beneath the ice
Assistant Professor of Biology Anne Todgham was interviewed for a Jan. 17 report in The Antarctic Sun about her research into the development of marine life with higher temperatures or CO2 levels. "We’re really interested in learning how vulnerable, or stress tolerant, are the species down here to changes in temperature, to changes in CO2. If we really want to understand the sensitivity of a species, we need to be able to look across life stages," Todgham said. "These fish are important food sources for seals, penguins and the big Mawsoni [Antarctic toothfish]. If we see shifts in food sources – and some are more nutritionally important than others – that can have a cascading effect through the [food web] system."
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