Author: jplucas

Noted: None of this means it?s easy in America for someone from a lower economic class to find and marry someone from a higher class. “Assortative mating”?the human urge to pair up with someone who is similar to you?is on the increase in the U.S., according to research by sociologists Robert Mare of UCLA and Christine Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They found that those with college degrees are marrying people with college degrees at higher rates than at any time in the last half-century.

The University of Colorado?s Leaf Van Boven has shown that experiences make us happier than material items, since they can?t be compared to anyone else?s experiences and form the positive memories that tell us we like our lives. Thomas DeLeire, at the University of Wisconsin, found that only one of the nine categories of consumption he measured was linked to an increase in happiness: leisure purchases. Recreation is so good at “re-creating” mindsets that there is a whole field of health devoted to it: recreation therapy, which builds self-worth and positive mood for people with disabilities, through activities such as horseback riding or wheelchair basketball.

Quoted: People who want to refuse life-sustaining treatment have years of legal precedent behind them, Norm Fost, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.

Noted: So what?s the best way to stave off that weight gain? Chad Cook and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin have done research suggesting that it might not be exercise. Their study of 443 adults ages 40 to 60, presented at a recent meeting of the Obesity Society, found that even those people who habitually burn more daily calories than predicted for their age and body weight are not protected against holiday weight gain. Cook notes that 75 percent of participants gained at least some weight and nearly a fifth put on 4.4 pounds or more.

Another free legal clinic for struggling homeowners will be held Thursday, as part of the resources offered by the Dane County Foreclosure Prevention Taskforce. The answer clinics are an effort of the taskforce, the Dane County Bar Association and the UW Law Foundation, with grant funding provided by the State Bar of Wisconsin, plus county support.

Quoted: Jim Johannes, UW-Madison School of Business professor and director of the Puelicher Center for Banking Education.

Quoted: Jim Steele, a UW-Madison professor of food science and an expert on food fermentations.

Noted: UW-Madison education professor Gloria Ladson-Billings.

Kathleen Horning is having a few close friends over for the holidays, some of the same characters who might show up in anyone?s home over the next four weeks. They include Truman Capote, an angel or three, a donkey, a carpenter, a couple of guys on skis and some freezing soldiers, even a snow lady. Horning directs the Cooperative Children?s Book Center located on the fourth floor of the Helen C. White building on the UW-Madison campus. It is a treasury of lore, content and advice effusively doled out to the state?s and the nation?s librarians, teachers, parents and anyone else interested in all that touches children literature. She was asked about unheralded or forgotten children?s books about the holidays, the sort of books that a family keeps together in one place and might bring out just for the season, the sort that make good gift books that are opened time and again, that might be read starting Dec. 1 a chapter per night, book in hand, child in lap.

Quoted: Joan Houston Hall, chief editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English at UW-Madison.

Noted: The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, which collaborates with its partners, including the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication.