Media Coverage

Natasha Zelensky, associate professor of music, gave a multi-media presentation titled “Franco Memory Through Song” at the University of Maine's Lewiston-Auburn Campus on April 11. Zelensky, an ethnomusicologist who studies the role of music in immigrant communities, discussed her project, undertaken with her students, "to collect and preserve some of Lewiston's most unique—and treasured—Franco-American chanson," the Lewiston Sun-Journal reported.  Watch a short video about Zelensky's class "Maine's Musical Soundscapes: Ethnography of Maine" here.  

Christopher Soto, associate professor of psychology, has published a paper in the journal Psychological Science addressing the replicability crisis in psychology. His paper, "How Replicable Are Links Between Personality Traits and Consequential Life Outcomes? The Life Outcomes of Personality Replication Project," presents the findings of his project, which “provide grounds for cautious optimism about the personality–outcome literature,” Soto said in a press release from the Association for Psychological Science. New of this paper was also picked up these publications: Science Daily HealthNewsDigest.com MedicalXpress EurekAlert! | AAAS BrightSurf.com         

Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, conducted a Q&A for Books and Ideas, a project of the Collège de France. Yasmine Bouagga interviewed Besteman about her book Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine. Among the questions asked were "How can social service practices be reconciled with the customs and habits of those receiving aid?" and "... you also show that the relationship between refugee families and school staff can be difficult: there are misunderstandings, failures and frustrations. What kind of initiatives on the part of schools or refugees could help address these issues?"

Assistant of Professor of Economics Yang Fan was an "expert" in a WalletHub piece on Mastercard credit cards. Fan provided answers to four questions, including "Should every person have at least one Mastercard credit card?" to which he responded, "Yes, it limits the risk that the vendor you are purchasing from does not accept your credit card. Also, since many banks now partner primarily with either Visa (Chase) or Mastercard (Citi), diversifying and having both Visa and Mastercard limits the risk that if your Visa-issuing bank deems you high risk, you lose access to credit."

"The historical development of complex global trafficking networks for marine wildlife" is the title of the latest published paper by Loren McClenachan, the Elizabeth and Lee Ainslie Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies. The article, which McClenachan coauthored, appeared in the journal Science Advances and chronicles how the team "curated 150 years of tortoiseshell transactions and derived biologically informed harvest models to estimate the trade in critically endangered hawksbill sea turtles" to understand the linkage between trade networks and the "challenge to controlling wildlife trafficking and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing," according to the paper's abstract. McClenachan's research partners at the Monterey Bay Aquarium wrote a blog post about their research and the paper.

Carrie LeVan, the Montgoris Family Assistant Professor of Government, wrote an op-ed titled "What Mainers really think of ranked-choice voting" in the March 12 Bangor Daily News in which she discusses the complexity of whether Mainers support the expansion of ranked-choice voting. "Because ranked-choice voting has become a partisan issue, simply asking Maine’s voters whether they want to expand it seems to be missing the point," LeVan wrote. "Instead, we should be asking Mainers what their preferences are toward the rule that ranked-choice voting implements, as in the 'majority-rule.'”

The Colby College Museum of Art is profiled in a March 12 New York Times piece titled "Raising the Cultural Bar on Campuses." The profile mentions a new exhibit by Theaster Gates, Colby's distinguished artist and director of artist initiatives. "While not typically top of mind as a go-to destination, college and university art museums have a common goal: to raise the bar for the academic and cultural life of a campus and its environs," the Times reported.

[caption id="attachment_42078" align="alignright" width="300"] Blair Braverman '11 ready for Iditarod start[/caption] Blair Braverman '11 started her first Iditarod March 3, but she's not new to mushing. Her social media posts about her dogs and their races have a large following—dubbed "Ugly dogs"—and the media has been interested in her story. National Public Radio's All Things Considered aired an interview with Braverman March 1 and posted a story on their website the same day. Braverman was also interviewed by NBC's Harry Smith for a piece on the Sunday edition of NBC’s Today show. The Anchorage Daily News ran a front-page story about Braverman March 4 titled "An Iditarod rookie’s tweets of the trail are putting a new twist on a rich storytelling tradition." A successful author and a regular contributor to Outside magazine, "Braverman might be one of the best things to hit the Iditarod in a while — a Lower 48 musher with an abiding love for her dogs and a gift for sharing that love on a far-reaching platform," the Daily News reports. On March 6 Vogue magazine ran "Cool Runnings," a piece written by Braverman that explains what it takes to mush 1,000 miles through the Alaskan wilderness. "I entered my first race, a thirty-miler, and it felt too short. I entered another race, a hundred-miler, and it still felt too short. Time after time I came to finish lines and wished that I were not done racing. I felt better on the trail, alone with my dogs and the wilderness, than I did anywhere else," she wrote in the article that also highlights other women mushers in this year's race and contains stunning photography and video.

Herb Wilson, the Leslie Brainerd Arey Professor of Biosciences, is in the news this week. Two reports of his January birding trip to Mexico were published: in the Portland Press Herald and in Yucatán Ex-Pat Life. Both articles recount a particularly successful day birding at Rio Lagartos, a "well-known birding hot-spot" on the Yucatán Peninsula.  "Altogether we saw 83 species on our morning trip, including renewing friendships with a number of species whom we look forward to seeing again when summertime returns to Maine," Wilson reported. Wilson will be at the University of Maine Farmington March 13 giving a talk on bird migration and climate change and reporting on his citizen science project. "There have been changes in the dates of arrival and dates of departure for the many of the species of birds seen in Maine. What factors underlie these changes? How big a factor might climate change be?" the Portland Press Herald reports promoting the talk.  

The journal Nature has published an article by Robert Gastaldo, the Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, in its News and Views section. The March 1 article, "Ancient plants escaped the end-Permian mass extinction," details what two papers (one by Fielding et al., the other by Nowak et al.) "reveal about what happened to terrestrial plants during the end-Permian crisis," Gastaldo writes. Written for a general science audience, Gastaldo's article concludes that, "In contrast to prevailing wisdom, Nowak and colleagues demonstrate that land plants did not experience widespread extinction during Earth’s most severe biological crisis. Their conclusion is similar to that drawn for terrestrial vertebrates¹¹. This leaves the relationship between the end-Permian marine mass extinction and the effect on land at the time enigmatic for now, and still up in the air for further investigation."