USC Media and Public Relations

Featured Stories

Time featured research by Mara Mather of the USC Davis School finding that stress affects the way people make decisions. The study found that stressed people tend to focus more on the upsides of decisions and overlook the downsides. It also found differences in the way that males and females make decisions when stressed. The research was also covered by The Globe and Mail (Canada), El Economista (Spain), Het Laatste Nieuws (Belgium), Hechos de Hoy (Spain), 20minutos (Spain), Metro TV (Indonesia) and Jezebel.

New York Daily News ran an op-ed by Dan Schnur of the USC Dornsife College about Mitt Romney's efforts to battle the public image of his alter-ego, the Un-Romney. Schnur wrote that Romney is a viable Republican candidate, but has come off as privileged and out of touch with the working class voters that make up today's GOP base. "Romney's fine with the soccer moms, in other words," Schnur wrote. "But what can he do to win over the NASCAR dads?"

Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool to analyze Twitter buzz around the Academy Awards that was created by the USC Annenberg School's Innovation Lab, the Los Angeles Times and IBM. It found that on the night of the Academy Awards, Oscar-related tweets spiked around 5:41 p.m., when the first award of the night went to "Hugo" for cinematography. The win, an upset over "The Tree of Life," generated more than 10,000 tweets per minute.

The Scotsman (U.K.) featured a study by Nathanael Fast of the USC Marshall School and a colleague finding that the more power business leaders think they have, the worse they are at making decisions. "The aim of this research was to help power holders become conscious of one of the pitfalls leaders often fall prey to," Fast said.

KQED-FM featured research by USC and several other research institutions, finding that the oceans appear to be acidifying at an unprecedented rate — 10 times faster than at any other time in the past 300 million years. The researchers found that a greater amount of carbon dioxide is being absorbed into the oceans, creating carbonic acid, which can damage the marine ecosystem.

The Globe and Mail (Canada) ran a Q&A with Martin Gomez of USC Libraries about the future of libraries. Gomez said that it was necessary for libraries to digitize their collections and make them available to the public. Though companies like Google will do similar work, "public libraries function as intermediaries on behalf of the public, to make sure content is available to students, families and the general public," Gomez said.

The Sacramento Bee highlighted a report by Dowell Myers of the USC Price School finding that Southern California has grown more diverse. Asian and Latino populations have grown significantly in many cities, according to the report. The research was also covered by KPCC-FM and O.C. Weekly.

RedOrbit featured research by Lisa Aziz-Zadeh of the USC Dornsife College indicating that the left brain may play a role in creativity rather than just being the source of logic and math, as was traditionally thought. A series of fMRI scans of architecture students found that the two hemispheres complement each other at different times. "We need both hemispheres for creative processing," Aziz-Zadeh said. Science Codex also featured the research.