Category: Experts Guide

VIDEO: If you’re thinking about selling your home, now is the time. Andra Ghent is a professor of real estate and urban land economics at UW-Madison.

Quoted: “The dairy industry has experienced one less year of trying times than what cash-grain farmers have dealt with,” said Bruce Jones, an agricultural economist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Chuck DeMets, a professor of tectonics at UW-Madison, said the effects of blasts are site-specific and can vary widely based on soil composition. Soils heavy in water content especially serve to amplify seismic waves.

Noted: Kenneth Streit, a UW-Madison Law School professor who studies criminal justice systems, suggested the effects of low pay and staff shortages can put people in prison jobs on the defensive.

Noted: David Canon, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin said, “If you have too high a percent African-Americans in a House district, it does dilute the overall representation of African-American interests.”

Noted: University of Wisconsin Extension Forage Agronomist Dan Undersander said each type of hay has its place — from high-yielding pure alfalfa stands to versatile grass-alfalfa mixes — depending on feeding needs and growing conditions.

The protest just outside Baltimore was an event that UW-Madison’s Shawn Peters knows well, but he had never heard about Byrne’s connection to it.

Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden and UW-Madison journalism and political science professor Mike Wagner weigh in.

Quoted: “There’s two sides to a bank — there’s the interest side and the non-interest side. Because of Fed monetary policy and because of trends in competition in banking, the margins on the interest side of the bank are shrinking,” said banking expert James Johannes, a finance professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Believe it or not, there is a science to airport lines and some logistics that can help travelers. Laura Albert Mclay, an associate professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talks about it on Live at Four.

Quoted: UW-Madison Real Estate Professor Andra Ghent says we as a society have grown leery of phone calls and door-knockers. It’s why she encourages people to be skeptical, but also open to these offers because deals can be had.

Noted: Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, are guests on WHA radio (970 AM) at 11:45 a.m. the last Monday of each month.

Quoted: “We see propaganda take on an unprecedented importance and influence in girding public opinion against the chosen enemy of the U.S.,” said John Hall, a U.S. military history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said that because Feingold has made it clear he is not taking sides in the nomination contest between Clinton and Sanders, it’s not clear whether the fundraising plea was instigated by the Sanders campaign or the Feingold campaign.

Noted: James Johannes, professor of finance and director of the Puelicher Center for Banking Education at UW-Madison, says there are three forces driving mergers: an easing of government regulations, a search for better efficiency, and a drop in profitability for banks. He says in the past 15 years, the U.S. has gone from 14-thousand banks to just 6-thousand. A more efficient operation saves money and more assets means more profit.

Noted: Amaya Atucha, a UW-Madison assistant horticulture professor, said temperatures dipped below freezing in much of those areas late Saturday and early Sunday, wiping out grape shoots that had emerged early due to a warm spring. The cold turned the water in the shoots’ cells to ice, killing the tissue.

Quoted: The cold turned the water in the shoots cells to ice, killing the tissue, said Amaya Atucha, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant horticulture professor.

Quoted: “To some extent we know more about some genetically engineered food than we do about other food,” said committee member Dominique Brossard of the University of Wisconsin [professor and chair of Life Sciences Communication]. “There are limits to what can be known about any food. That’s something we’re not used to hearing as consumers.”

Quoted: More striking to Steven Deller, an economist at UW-Madison, was the decline in the threshold for middle-income status.

Quoted: “If antibiotics are eliminated from animal feed and only used by veterinarians to treat infected animals, we can prevent development of additional resistance and hopefully regain the use of antibiotics,” said Carol Spiegel, professor emerita at University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

According to Dan Schaefer, UW-Madison professor and department chair of Animal Sciences, the Federal Drug Administration is already accomplishing that mission through a new veterinary feed regulation that will take effect Jan. 1, 2017.

Noted: “I think those politicians always got some degree of backlash in the form of angry letters or even hateful letters, but the bar is a lot lower with social media — you can just post it up there,” said Chris Wells, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studies the intersection of politics and social media. “The thing that makes it kind of complicated is politicians need to be in those social media spaces because that’s where so much of the tenor of the campaign takes place.”

Quoted: UW-Madison political communication professor Mike Wagner believes unity is something Ryan wants, but currently he’s is in a difficult position. He says Ryan is being pressured to both support the presidential candidate and to also keep members of the republican establishment happy by protecting their majority in the house and senate.

“I think there’s a real question about what happens after this race if Trump loses,” Wagner says. “Paul Ryan has to be thinking about the future of the party.”

Noted: “The two best studies we have on this right now actually show that the effect of increasing female judges is relatively muted,” said UW-Madison political science professor Ryan Owens, who studies judicial topics.

Noted: “The Democrats are in the driver’s seat in Wisconsin,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden. “Trump does not have a constituency here — not enough to put him over the top. In a general election he’s not going to have a lot of appeal with the broad Wisconsin electorate.”

The emerald ash borer continues to ravage ash trees in southern Wisconsin. If you have a healthy ash tree on your property, the question is should you treat it. Dr. Chris Williamson, UW-Madison entomology department, answers that question.

Noted: Dennis Dresang, a UW-Madison emeritus professor of public policy and political science, said reversing the termination could be difficult because Wall’s action in trying to circumvent the state public records law “borders on grounds for dismissal.”

Noted: “If it’s run by a student group, it’s a constitutionally protected ‘see you at the pole’ gathering,” said UW-Madison lecturer Shawn Peters, who studies religion and the law. But “the law is murkier if the group is not student-initiated.”

Noted: UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden … says … If they can’t capitalize on advantageous circumstances this fall — in the context of the last six years, and with a larger turnout that typically works to their benefit — the consequences would be disastrous, Burden said. “If that were to happen, the Democratic Party would be not much more than a shell,” Burden said.

Quoted: “It’s clear that investors want their managers to produce good performance,” says Brian A. Hellmer, director of the Hawk Center for Applied Security Analysis at the Wisconsin School of Business. Citing figures from a CFA Institute study, he says that underperformance, more than anything else, would make investors leave their current firm or advisor (53 percent of retail investors, 60 percent of institutional investors).

Quoted: “Impossible to tell this early because so much depends on upcoming precipitation patterns,” Susan Paskewitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison entomology professor and mosquito expert, said in an email. “Except in the driest of years, mosquitoes are always bad somewhere in Wisconsin at some point in the season, but we can’t pinpoint those locations with much precision. There will probably be an initial peak in June of snowmelt species, again in July as the floodwater species get going and then things may settle down … or not.”

Noted: UW-Madison professor of journalism and mass communication Robert Drechsel, who specializes in First Amendment issues, said “restrictions on political calls certainly would raise a free speech issue,” but the federal do-not-call registry does not preclude tougher restrictions by the states. “I would assume that if a state operated its own do-not-call registry, it would be able to let its citizens opt out of receiving whatever types of telemarketing or robocalling it wished,” he said.

Quoted: “In our first couple of surveys we did already identify adult deer ticks were active,” said Dr. Susan Paskewitz, an entomologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has been studying deer ticks for more than 20 years.

Quoted: Ryan Owens, a political science professor at UW-Madison who studies the Supreme Court and judicial issues, said with a 5-2 conservative majority, justices may feel less fearful of splitting off from the “coalition” at the risk of diluting the opinion.

Quoted: “I thought it was an astounding number,” said Barry Burden of the University of  Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: It’s a sign that Wisconsin’s primary could be a turning point in the GOP campaign, said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin. “These past 10 days, people have tired of Donald Trump. They’ve simply reached the end of their rope with him,” said Burden, who is also director of the university’s Elections Research Center. “There really is a movement in the party now, that for whatever reason didn’t coalesce until April.”