Author: jplucas

Noted: What accounts for the rapid adoption of social networking? Convenience, said C. Shawn Green, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.

The British Cheese Board recently launched a competition inviting songwriters to compose an anthem celebrating cheddar, Britain?s most popular cheese. Of the five entries shortlisted for the finals, four pay tribute to the cheese?s notable hue. (Sample lyric: “Every pickled onion/ dreams of lying beside/ a wedge of golden cheddar, /crusty bread on the side.”) But why is cheddar yellow or orange when milk is white?

Quoted: ?They seem pretty unconnected,? said University of Wisconsin political scientist Barry Burden. The recall election was bitterly fought around a rather narrow spectrum of state issues, he pointed out. Even on the day Wisconsin voters turned out to save Walker from recall, a majority of recall voters said they planned to vote for President Obama in exit polls.

Noted: The first one appeared in Hudson, Wis., in 2009, when Todd Bol, whose background is in international business development, built a little library in his yard as a memorial to his mother, a school teacher. People seemed to love it, he said, so he and friend Rick Brooks of Madison, Wis., an outreach program manager at the University of Wisconsin whose specialties include social entrepreneurship work, decided to create the Little Free Library project.

Noted: “It is phenomenally difficult to measure with precision what the effect of advertising is,” said Ken Goldstein, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and president of Kanter Media during a Brookings Institution panel discussion on political advertising Monday. “But advertising very, very much matters at the margin.”

Quoted: “Peppers really like hot weather,” said Irwin Goldman, a horticulture professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “When it?s dry and hot outside, you?ll get a higher concentration of alkaloids.”

Quoted: ?It?s certainly unusual. Data suggests that 95 to 98 percent of people Holmes? age are on social media,? Dr. Megan A. Moreno, of University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, told CBS News. As for that other 5- to 2 percent, Moreno, who has no connection to the case, highlighted a link between extreme Internet use ? or lack of use ? and depression.

Quoted: David Egan-Robertson, a demographer with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied Population Laboratory.

Quoted: Joe Lauer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and corn agronomist for the UW Extension Service.

Noted: The trade group?s claims are based on academic work by Dermot J. Hayes of Iowa State University and Xiaodong Du of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The professors? original peer-reviewed work on the subject, published in 2009, assigned a more modest amount of credit to the biofuel for its ability to reduce gasoline prices. That work, however, was updated in May ? with financial support from the trade group ? for Iowa State?s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, and the findings ascribed greater price-reducing powers to ethanol.

Quoted: ?Peppers really like hot weather,? said Irwin Goldman, a horticulture professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?When it?s dry and hot outside, you?ll get a higher concentration of alkaloids.?

Quoted: ?I don?t care who he plays for ? I?m a Lin fan, not a Knicks fan,? says Timothy Yu, an associate professor of Asian American Studies (and Jeremy Lin Studies pioneer) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. ?What I?m mad about is that the Knicks just completely cut him loose ? and they?re blaming him for cutting such a hard-nosed deal with the Rockets. The fact of the matter is that even the team that benefited from Linsanity doesn?t believe it?s for real. That really burns me as an Asian American fan. But shed no tears for Jeremy: An Asian American athlete is getting paid like a superstar, because he is one ? and that?s cool.?

Noted: To help me understand why every state has such laws, Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, gave me a history lesson.

Noted: People who don?t want to spend the time or money are in luck, though. Most lawns in Wisconsin are made up of Kentucky bluegrass, which is hardy enough to survive up to 60 days without water in drought conditions, said Doug Soldat, a turfgrass specialist with the University of Wisconsin-Extension.