Research Shorts

Associate psychology professor Kenneth Norman, Susan McDuff *09, and ­colleagues from the University of ­California, Irvine, showed that a person’s brain activity while remembering an event resembles brain activity from the original experience, even when the person cannot recall specifics. The finding, which could lead to new insights about HOW MEMORIES ARE RETAINED, was published Sept. 10 in the journal Neuron.

A daily poll measuring the well-being of subjects in the United States found that on average, taller people report more positive emotions and fewer instances of sadness and physical pain than shorter people do. The LINK BETWEEN HEIGHT AND HAPPINESS is likely because of a “positive association between height and both income and education,” according to economics and public affairs professor Angus Deaton, who published the findings with co-author Raksha Arora in the July issue of ­Economics and Human Biology.  

Major climate regulations like the Kyoto Protocol and the European Union’s cap-and-trade law significantly UNDERESTIMATE GREENHOUSE-GAS EMISSIONS, according to an Oct. 23 Science study led by Timothy Searchinger, an associate research scholar at the Princeton Environmental Institute; and Steven Hamburg of the Environmental Defense Fund. They said the regulations fail to count carbon dioxide emitted from vehicles and factories that use bioenergy and do not include emissions from the changes in land use that accompany production of biofuels.