Author: jplucas

Quoted: Happily, there is some good news these days. The widely held belief that boys are naturally better than girls at math and science is unraveling. Evidence is mounting that girls are every bit as competent as boys in these areas. Psychology professor Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin–Madison has strong U.S. data showing no meaningful differences in math performance among more than seven million boys and girls in grades two through 12.

Noted: If you are thinking, “Wait, that’s just nuts,” think again about the nature of risk. We have learned to protect and restore rivers in our cities, says Adrian Treves at the University of Wisconsin, even though floods sometimes destroy homes and drown people. We cherish trees on urban streets and in parks even though branches sometimes fall on our heads. For that matter, we let cars dominate city streets, though they kill more than 4,700 pedestrians in the United States every year (and many times more in India).

Quoted: According to Dr. David Vail, a veterinary oncologist who’s also a professor at the University of Wisconsin, an initial cancer diagnosis can cost between $1,000 and $2,000. A standard course of chemotherapy costs between $3,000 and $5,000, and radiation treatments used for brain and nasal tumors run between $6,000 and $10,000. Costs vary by region and the type of cancer, among other factors.

Like other holiday traditions, the Newenhouse sisters — Sonya and Astrid — have compile a list of gift ideas for those who want the perfect present for someone who loves gardening and/or is conscious about sustainability. Astrid is a senior scientist in the Environmental Resources Center and the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The fact that the ground is wet — not frozen — is a bad thing for some people with seasonal allergies. Dr. Mark Moss is with the School of Medicine and Public Health at UW-Madison. He says people allergic to outdoor mold haven’t yet had relief.

Peter Timbie, a UW-Madison physics professor, isn’t quite sure what he’s stumbled upon. He only knows it comes from very far away.

Noted: David Cannon, University of Wisconsin-Madison political professor, told Schuster that Wisconsin’s politics over the past several years have increasingly been more aligned with states found below the Mason-Dixon Line.

Now is a moment in history when we get to do some hard thinking about what free speech means in a free society.

Quoted: “You have very vocal minorities on two sides of the spectrum,” says Dominique Brossard, who studies the way controversial scientific ideas are discussed on social media at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “and then the vast majority in the middle that are pretty silent about it.”

Quoted: In their book, The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education, Diana E. Hess and Paula McAvoy offer guidelines to these and other questions, using a study they conducted from 2005 to 2009. It involved 21 teachers in 35 schools and their 1,001 students. Hess is the dean of the school of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and McAvoy is the program director at UW-Madison’s Center for Ethics and Education.

Bob Turner, the UW-Madison’s Chief Information Security Officer, said the formation of the cyber protection team comes at a time when cyber threats continue to evolve.

Noted: In agriculture, Dupont sells about one-third of the corn and soybean seeds planted in the United States, while Dow has about five percent. “That strikes me as a just plain no,” said Peter Carstensen, who teaches antitrust law at University of Wisconsin Law School.

Noted: The University of Wisconsin’s Stanley Payne, author of Fascism: Comparison and Definition and A History of Fascism, 1914–1945, emphasizes that fascism is a “revolutionary nationalist project. Not just a nationalist project, but a nationalist project that is revolutionary and breaks down all the standards and the barriers.” Trump and other far-right populists don’t count.

Quoted: Dr. Barbara Knox, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said research she and five other pediatricians conducted on the torture of children found that of the 28 young victims studied, nearly half were home-schooled and an additional 29 percent weren’t allowed to attend school at all.

Quoted: “Everything that could go wrong has already gone wrong,” says University of Wisconsin, Madison, senior scientist Sanjay Limaye, who is helping with the mission. “The rest has been tested and verified and tested again and again.”