Out-of-state drivers involved in high rate of crashes out West

With the summer tourist season upon us, out-of-state drivers may want to be extra careful if they’re planning to vacation in the American West, U-M researchers say.

A new study by the U-M Transportation Research Institute appearing in the June issue of Traffic Injury Prevention shows that a larger percentage of drivers involved in fatal crashes in several Rocky Mountain and Great Plains states are from out of state compared to other areas of the United States.

UMTRI researchers Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle examined data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System for about 50,000 fatal crashes nationwide in 2008.

They found a wide variation across the 50 states in the percentage of drivers involved in fatal crashes who are from out of state. While the West Coast states are near the bottom of the range (only 5 percent in California — the lowest rate overall — and 9 percent in Washington), most of the rest of the western states are near the top.

Wyoming has far and away the highest proportion of drivers involved in fatal crashes who are from out of state — 41 percent. South Dakota (27 percent) and New Mexico (24 percent) rank second and third, respectively.

According to Sivak and Schoettle, several coastal states have lower rates of fatal crashes involving out-of-state motorists (California, Washington, Florida, Maine) partially because they are not fully surrounded by other states.

The Midwest has four of the bottom 10 states for fatal crashes involving motorists from other states: Michigan (5 percent), Ohio (8 percent), Minnesota (9 percent) and Illinois (9 percent).

— Bernie DeGroat, News Service

Lasers used to form 3-D crystals made of nanoparticles

U-M physicists used the electric fields generated by intersecting laser beams to trap and manipulate thousands of microscopic plastic spheres, thereby creating 3-D arrays of optically induced crystals.

The technique could someday be used to analyze the structure of materials of biological interest, including bacteria, viruses and proteins, says U-M physicist Georg Raithel.

Raithel, professor of physics and associate chair of the Department of Physics, is co-author of a research paper on the topic published online May 31 in the journal Physical Review E. The other author is U-M research fellow Betty Slama-Eliau.

The standard method used to characterize biological molecules like proteins involves crystallizing them, then analyzing their structure by bombarding the crystals with X-rays, a technique called X-ray crystallography. But the method cannot be used on many of the proteins of highest interest — such as cell-membrane proteins — because there’s no way to crystallize those molecules.

To move toward that goal, Raithel and his colleagues are developing the laser technique using microscopically small plastic spheres instead of the molecules. Other researchers have created 3-D optically induced crystals, but Raithel says the crystals his team created are denser than those previously achieved.

The process involves shining laser beams through two opposed microscope lenses, one directly beneath the other. Two infrared laser beams are directed through each lens, and they meet at a common focal point on a microscope slide that holds thousands of plastic nanoparticles suspended in a drop of water.

The intersecting laser beams create electric fields that vary in strength in a regular pattern that forms a 3-D grid called an optical lattice. The nanoparticles get sucked into regions of high electric-field strength, and thousands of them align to form optically induced crystals.

— Jim Erickson, News Service

A brain training exercise that really does work

Forget about working crossword puzzles and listening to Mozart. If you want to improve your ability to reason and solve new problems, just take a few minutes every day to do a maddening little exercise called n-back training.

In an award address on May 28 at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Washington, D.C., U-M psychologist John Jonides presented new findings showing that practicing this kind of task for about 20 minutes each day for 20 days significantly improves performance on a standard test of fluid intelligence — the ability to reason and solve new problems, which is a crucial element of general intelligence. And this improvement lasted for up to three months.

Jonides, who is the Daniel J. Weintraub Collegiate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, collaborated with colleagues at U-M, the University of Bern and the University of Tapei on a series of studies with more than 200 young adults and children, demonstrating the effects of various kinds of n-back mental training exercises.

Jonides says the n-back task taps into a crucial brain function known as working memory — the ability to maintain information in an active, easily retrieved state, especially under conditions of distraction or interference. Working memory goes beyond mere storage to include processing information.

The new studies also include tests with children, showing the same sort of training effect using a video-game version of n-back training. Again, Jonides and colleagues found that mental training on the n-back task resulted in improvements on tests of fluid intelligence. They also found that training made children less likely to be fooled by tempting, but incorrect, information.

— Diane Swanbrow, News Service

Big bucks for MLB megastars mean big team profits, but fewer wins

Spending top dollar for megastar players like Miguel Cabrera and Alex Rodriguez helps Major League Baseball teams attract fans and earn higher profits, but clubs that spend the bulk of their player payroll on a couple of superstars ultimately win fewer games, a U-M study shows.

“Superstars who are paid more could bring more to the team in terms of profits,” says Jason Winfree, an associate professor of sport management at the School of Kinesiology. “The flip side of that is that a more equitable pay scale among all players results in more wins for the team, but not necessarily higher profits.”

The study, which is forthcoming in Sport Management Review, also found that the relationship between salary inequities and low performance became much more pronounced after the baseball strike of 1994.

Winfree and lead author Chris Annala of the State University of New York-Geneseo looked at Major League Baseball team salary distribution and team performance. Their research supports the theory that if an MLB team wants a championship, it should pay a handful of solid players roughly equal salaries, but if it wants to maximize profits, it should consider paying a couple superstars most of the salary budget.  

“With sports teams you don’t hear it talked about very often: ‘Should we get a bunch of OK players or get one or two really good players?’” Winfree says.

The researchers did not look at the reasons why salary inequality causes problems within MLB teams, but there are several theories. It could be that when teams put a premium on star players, they don’t have enough money left to recruit other solid players. It could be that groups work better when people with the same jobs earn roughly the same.  

— Laura Bailey, News Service

Obama’s election reduced perceptions of racism, but boosted opposition to race-related policies

Many Americans changed their perceptions of discrimination and racism after Barack Obama became the nation’s first black president.

This belief that racial biases had softened, however, did not translate to positive feelings about policies that address racial disparities, according to a new U-M study. In fact, opposition to affirmative action and immigration may have increased since 2008.

“When racial progress is made, and perceived, by many Americans from a variety of racial backgrounds, it may seem counterintuitive that opposition to affirmative action would increase,” says Nicholas Valentino, an associate professor of communication studies and political science.

He wrote the study with Ted Brader, a research assistant professor at the Center for Political Studies.

“The answer may be simple: If the playing field is perceived to be more balanced than before, then the need for policies to address inequality is lessened,” Valentino says.

Perceptions of discrimination could play a factor in how some vote in next year’s presidential election.

“It is possible that these perceptions could be used by both parties to mobilize their base voters,” he says.

Prior to the election, 61 percent of those surveyed said there was “a lot” or “some” discrimination against blacks, but only 50 percent endorsed that view after the election. More than one in four people revised their estimate of racial discrimination downward immediately after the election.

Other emotions such as anger, enthusiasm and sadness before the election did not seem to affect the size of the change in perceived discrimination.

“These results suggest that voters used Obama’s election as a sign that things have improved for blacks even more than they previously believed. They think the playing field is more balanced,” Valentino says. “As a result, and regardless of the reality, policies designed to improve equality of opportunity such as affirmative action are seen as less necessary.”

The findings appear in this month’s Public Opinion Quarterly.

— Jared Wadley, News Service