Pacific Standard Debut Cover

Facebook: Saving Lives, One Kidney at a Time

May 16, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Kidneys in transparent body

Web-based social networks have little in common with hospital operating rooms. One exists on an ephemeral realm of bits and bytes, while the other lives in the very real world of blood and tissue. That incongruity helps explain why Facebook’s recent announcement that it will encourage its members to become organ donors captured people’s imagination. And according to psychologists who study how we manage reminders of our mortality, it suggests Mark Zuckerberg’s online creation may be a particularly promising platform to tackle a major medical problem. “I think it’ll work ... Read More

Television Violence Enticing, But Not Satisfying

March 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Why is there so much graphic violence in contemporary entertainment? Producers will tell you the answer is simple: because people enjoy it. According to newly published research, the real reason may be: Because it’s easy to market. When it comes to graphic gore, there’s a gap between what whets our appetite and what we actually find satisfying. That’s the conclusion of a study by Indiana University scholars Andrew Weaver and Matthew Kobach, which found students were enticed by descriptions of violent scenes, but actually enjoyed the programs more when those elements were edited ... Read More

Announcing Our New Name

February 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Miller-McCune was launched in 2008 to showcase some of the most intriguing academic research being produced in the world today. Our belief then, and now, is that it’s important to publish stories that are research-driven and fact-based, written by journalists, innovative thinkers, and leading academics. In the run-up to our fifth year, we’ve considered carefully where we’ve been and where we’d like to go. And we’ve thought long and hard about the benefits, and pitfalls, of publishing this magazine in California when most American magazines (a few gems notwithstanding) are produced on ... Read More

Bitter About Your Life? Blame Facebook

January 11, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Has life treated you unfairly? Do you have a nagging suspicion that other people, are, on balance, happier than you are? You might want to get off of Facebook. A newly published study suggests the phenomenally popular social networking site may be skewing the way users perceive their lives. It finds those carefully selected photos of cheerful, contented people cumulatively convey a self-esteem-shattering message: Our lives are fantastic! What’s wrong with you? At least, that’s the conclusion of Utah Valley University sociologist Hui-Tzu Grace Chou, who conducted a study of 425 ... Read More

Miller-McCune’s Top Stories of 2011

December 31, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The word “top” always proves fungible in that modern media creation, “the list,” but this year Miller-McCune is adding a pinch of rigor to our own efforts to craft a Top 10 list. We’re drawing on the stories we published in 2011 that attracted the most web visitors. That’s not as elegant as some of the methodologies we’ve tried in the past, and traffic counts are fraught since gaining web visitors can verge into the black arts. Nonetheless, by accident or design, this year’s traffic winners tend to a present a balanced picture of the types of stories we favor at ... Read More