Author: jplucas

Noted: Such displays can play a valuable role in the negotiating dance that nations do. “You don’t really have a seat at the table unless you’re willing to apply force,” said Andrew Kydd, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Russia, East Europe and Asia. “That has not been the case in previous years, and that’s why [Secretary of State John] Kerry’s diplomacy was doomed to fail.”

Noted: Boosting funding to the scholarship would help more low-income kids go to college, according to Nick Hillman, a higher education policy expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Said Andrew Reschovsky at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: “A growing economy is characterized by rising real per capita GDP and rising real wages. This growth is to be expected, and reflects increased labor productivity over time. Although Wisconsin’s economy is larger now than it was in 2000, the fact that the poverty rate is higher and that there is growing income inequality indicates that the benefits of our growing economy have gone mainly to those with the highest incomes.”

Noted: Chertavian is an “unusually dynamic individual” who is able to convince employers to take a chance on kids without a lot of experience, said Timothy Smeeding, a professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied anti-poverty programs. Chertavian figured out that training that works isn’t necessarily about teaching people how to do a certain job, Smeeding said, but rather, about how to prepare people to navigate the working world. In addition to hard skills, students in Year Up learn how to solicit and give feedback, how to network, how to make small talk. These skills are often learned through experience: Speakers come to the classrooms every Friday, and students must figure out how to follow up with them afterwards to make a connection. Chertavian “takes a lot of kids who have no role model, ” Smeeding said, adding, “What he gives them are social behavioral skills.”

Quoted: Katy Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the paper probably wrote the story without the expectation that it would be the next “outrage of the day” to go viral. But she also questioned the public interest value of the information provided, and said the way it was initially presented had a blame-the-victim feel.

Noted: After the magazine was released, the cover took on a life of its own when Susan Pitt, an endocrine surgeon at the University of Wisconsin, issued a challenge to her fellow female surgeons: to replicate the image in real life, bringing visibility to the women and other minority groups working in a traditionally white, male-dominated field.

Quoted: “Beekeepers basically have to rebuild their dwindled populations in the early spring,” said Claudio Gratton, an entomology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Historically the rate of loss of bees over the winter used to be around 10-15 percent. So when we’re seeing rates that are twice that high, that’s a cause of concern and clearly there’s something going on.”

Noted: Vanni, of Miami University in Ohio, and his coauthor, Peter McIntyre, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, had plunged into the project for their own research. But they soon realized the giant dataset they put together could be a resource for other scientists, too—all that work on animal waste didn’t have to go to waste itself.

Noted: But educational research has found that the number of hours in the classroom matters. “I think it’s a bit counterintuitive based on research we know on instructional time,” Julie Mead, an education policy professor at University of Wisconsin Madison, said. “In these budgetary times, those districts without the means could cut instructional time, which would exacerbate the differences between the haves and the have-nots.”

Noted: “Our main finding from the study was that any lake that was surrounded by some type of impervious surface — that’s usually roadways or parking lots — was more at risk of having long term salination,” said Hilary Dugan, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the study’s lead author.

Noted: Competitors to Facebook that harnessed the powers of social media only in an effort to make us wiser would probably be niche services, like National Public Radio and PBS. “Most people aren’t that fussy,” says Jack Mitchell, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin and the author of Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio. “PBS’s market share is not that high. Public radio is a little higher. It’s a minority taste.”

Noted: Nick Hillman, a professor of educational leadership at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has worked with Ellie Bruecker, a graduate student at the university, to track the effects of the tool’s closure with recent data from the Office of Federal Student Aid.

Noted: Mark Stephenson, UW-Madison director of dairy policy analysis, said he doesn’t believe the “handful” of producers who received letters make the scenario symptomatic or a reason for more widespread concern.

Noted: Science as an institution has, for hundreds of years, been viewed as the best method for producing knowledge. Until recently, science has also been relatively sacred across administrations, across partisan lines, said Dietram Scheufele, a professor of science communication at the University of Wisconsin Madison. “Once we start eroding [science], we get into dangerous territory,” he added. “Think about how important science is for national security, how important it is for business. The very laptops this stuff is being written on wouldn’t be possible if not for the science that’s under attack.”

Noted: Mike Wagner, a professor of political science and journalism at UW-Madison, says the Indivisible movement’s collective strategy will give it a greater chance of being politically effective. The fact that Indivisible isn’t endorsing candidates will help them get more credibility with liberal activists, but at some point they’re going to need to find and support candidates who will help further their agenda, Wagner says.

Noted: “Senator Warner has access to confidential and classified information through his post on the Intelligence Committee,” said Barry Burden of the University of Wisconsin Elections Research Center. “Hopefully a thorough investigation will make some of this information public.”

Noted: Based on the prevalence in Nordfjella—estimated at 1%—Lund guesses that CWD may have been present for only 5 to 7 years, which could mean contamination is minimal. “There’s a good chance they can solve the problem,” says wildlife ecologist Michael Samuel of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Quick response has been shown to work before: In 2005, routine testing revealed CWD on two deer farms in western New York. Strict regulations prevented the disease from spreading. The state has seen no cases since.