News from the Chronicles - July 2017

sunset with boat and water
The history of summer vacation

Professor Stephen Mihm shares a history of how summer vacation took hold on the pages of Bloomberg: By the early 20th century, the idea that parents and children alike needed to rest their brains and commune with the great outdoors had become an article of faith among the middle class.  While summer vacation never grew to the outsized proportions found in many European countries, it has nonetheless persisted as an American ritual, with July…

VIP lanyard
The Benefits of Being Bilingual

From cross-cultural and social adaptability to increased intelligence, cognition and empathy, there are a number of ways to approach the myriad benefits of knowing multiple languages. Included among these, brain fitness: Multilingualism has been shown to have many social, psychological and lifestyle advantages. Moreover, researchers are finding a swathe of health benefits from speaking more than one language, including faster stroke recovery and…

graphic with text and radar
The science of rain delays

Spatio-temporal rainfall patterns around Atlanta, Georgia and possible relationships to urban land cover. Great stuff. Baseball fans (and teams) are weather watchers comparable perhaps only to farmers. This new work builds on the urban heat island phenomenon Shepherd has published on previously, and like the best science, may help the public make sense out of a puzzling situation.  

man outside, with monument in background
Third Emmy nomination for alumnus Tituss Burgess

Actor Tituss Burgess (AB Music 2001) was recently nominated for an Emmy Award for the third time, profiled in the Washington Post: Even in a show as whacked-out and packed with funny people as Netflix’s doomsday-cult comedy “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” Titus Andromedon has a way of stealing a scene. The character, an actor with a voice from the heavens and a wardrobe from a costume shop’s clearance aisle, once sang in the…

selena radio photo
WUGA-FM celebrates 30 years on the air

Congratulations to our local public radio affiliate WUGA, which is celebrating 30 years in broadcasting: the NPR affiliate operated by the University of Georgia, is celebrating 30 years of being on the air. The station first went live on the morning of Aug. 28, 1987, and has been serving the Athens community ever since, offering both national and local programming. "There is no other radio station in this area that provides the kind of content…

man in marsh, photo
Alexander named director of Skidaway Institute of Oceanography

Marine sciences professor Clark Alexander has been named director of the University of Georgia Skidaway Institute of Oceanography: [Alexander] has served as interim director of the Skidaway Institute for the past year. As director of the Skidaway Institute, he will continue to oversee its personnel, budgets and facilities and report to the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost. "The Skidaway Institute of…

photo of GORILLA IN THE JUNGLE
Anthropology professor helps Hollywood get 'Apes' right

A rare story combining social science scholarship and the entertainment industry brings anthropology professor Roberta Salmi to the movies: Recordings of gorilla sounds are extremely rare, so sounds used in the entertainment industry are generally not obtained from actual gorillas. In films, they are usually portrayed as screaming, aggressive beasts, when they are actually the opposite. For this summer's blockbuster "War for the Planet of the…

seawall with beach
Marine scientists evaluate coastal armoring

Overlapping constituencies and interests strive to preserve an appreciation for beauty and "nature" but perhaps without the accompanying respect for how nature actually works. This new NSF-supported study highlights that there is just so much that we don't understand about how the world works: For nearly a century, the O'Shaughnessy seawall has held back the sand and seas of San Francisco's Ocean Beach. At work even longer: the Galveston seawall…

photo of woman in front of mural
Amazing student: Sarah Caesar

Prior to the start of college, I, like many incoming freshmen, was apprehensive about many things. I pondered hard about how long it would take me to acclimate to this new environment. One of the first things that struck me when I first learned about and visited UGA was its diversity, something I believe is a crucial factor that shows how inclusive and accepting a particular setting is. The university offers a plethora of opportunities, in…

monkeys with rock tools
The Culture of Learning

A provocative new study from psychology researchers published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that practicing with others shapes not only what monkeys learn, but also how they learn: Culture extends biology in that the setting of development shapes the traditions that individuals learn, and over time, traditions evolve as occasional variations are learned by others. In humans,…

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