Category: Research

More than a few people in politics and media have expressed frustration that many reporters instinctively seek out the same ?expert? sources when writing political stories. One of the most ubiquitous sources is Charles Franklin, a UW-Madison political science professor. For reporters on deadline, the gregarious Alabama native is a great source because he?s always happy to talk. However, for those of us who seek deep analysis of the nitty gritty of political data, few in Wisconsin are more qualified than Franklin, a nationally renowned pollster who is currently on leave from UW to conduct a public opinion poll at Marquette University Law School.

Nearly 30,000 public school teachers and support staff went on strike in Chicago this past week in a move that left some 350,000 students without classes to attend. And while this contentious battle between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union blew up due to a range of issues — including compensation, health care benefits and job security concerns — one of the key sticking points reportedly was over the implementation of a new teacher evaluation system.

Quoted: Rob Meyer, director of the Value Added Research Center in the UW-Madison School of Education.

A: Treatment with ionizing radiation can be used to sterilize foods as well as sensitive materials like medical supplies and equipment. And ionizing radiation can indeed alter the nutritional content of food to some extent, said Franco X. Milani, an assistant professor of food science and extension specialist at the UW-Madison.

A: The Beaufort scale is a method of estimating wind speed based on the general condition of the surface of a large body of water with respect to wind waves and swell. This scale allows sailors to estimate the wind speed just by observing the state of the sea surface. The scale has a long history, but was finalized in 1805 by Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, an Irish hydrographer in the British Royal Navy.

Most of us spent our summers doing the standard things, from yard work to browsing farmers? markets, maybe a camping trip or two. Ask UW-Madison botanist Don Waller how he spent his summer, however, and you?ll likely feel your summer was somewhat lacking in excitement. Waller spent a good part of his summer staring down feral camels in Australia. It seems they are a problem there, much as we have problems with feral cats. Only these are camels. And there are lots of them.

The University of Wisconsin denied a series of claims filed by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Wednesday morning that accuse two UW federal institutions of animal cruelty.

One of the nation?s few extension poultry specialists for small flocks, Kean also writes the Answer Man column for Backyard Poultry magazine. Most of the problems he deals with have to do with chickens who are too fat, he says. Along with his work for the UW Extension, Kean has spent nearly two decades on the academic staff at UW-Madison, where he teaches poultry courses in breeder flock and hatchery management, plus a companion animal biology class for non-biology majors.

An animal rights group is calling on federal officials to investigate potential animal welfare violations related to the treatment and use of cats in invasive brain experiments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison….Eric Sandgren, who oversees animal research at UW-Madison as director of the university?s Research Animal Resources Center, was adamant that UW-Madison did not violate any federal regulations and says he welcomes an investigation.

“This column avoids politics, but we are equipped to speak about science….Climate change is a serious issue, and policymakers would do well to plan for the challenges it poses to our way of life.

A: The first known scientific use of hurricane naming arose in the Pacific during World War II. It was an easy and effective way to distinguish one tropical cyclone from another on the weather maps, said Steve Ackerman, a UW-Madison professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies. The system was simple and alphabetical: The name of the first storm of the season would begin with A; the second, B; the third, C; and so on.

UW-Madison, thanks to its partnership with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, remained among the national leaders in commercializing its academic research during the 2011 fiscal year, according to an annual survey of the Association of University Technology Managers released earlier in the week. Only one Big Ten Conference institution had more licensing income than UW-Madison?s $57.7 million, with Northwestern University bringing in a whopping $191.5 million -? tops among all colleges and universities.

?The list changes year-to-year, but the thing about WARF is we have remained consistently strong because UW-Madison is a world class university,? says Carl Gulbrandsen, the managing director of WARF. ?We wouldn?t be able to do any of this without a great university.?

A: On a day with high ice clouds, you are likely to see shiny, colored regions at either side of the sun. These are sundogs, an optical effect caused by refraction and dispersion of the Sun?s light through ice crystals. When the light rays strike the boundary between the air and water, like an ice crystal, several things can happen. Some rays are turned back in the direction from which they came, the familiar process of reflection. Other rays are transmitted into the crystal. Some of the transmitted rays change direction, a process known as refraction.

A. You probably don?t, according to Yaohui ?Gloria? Xu, dermatology professor at UW?Madison. ?You may get a few new freckles, but it?s more likely the ones you have already are just getting darker,? Xu said. Exposure to the sun triggers the release of a brown skin pigment called melanin, the reason people with darker skin have fewer sun-related skin problems. ?It?s a defense mechanism,? Xu said. ?Melanin is a natural photo-protector. It does what the chemicals in sunscreen do, and even better. It disperses the high energy of the sun?s rays.?

Scientists in the United States and Europe have long been concerned with how well the public understands science, writes Dietram A. Scheufele, Life Sciences Communication professor, but debates about how to best communicate science with lay populations are driven by intuitive assumptions on the part of scientists rather than the growing body of social science research on the topic that has developed over the past 2 decades.