Category: UW Experts in the News

To better understand the problem, researchers from University of Wisconsin-Madison are using a new tool to measure bluff failures in Sheboygan County.

Noted: While it’s no Nobel substitute, Wired has published a feature on Sau Lan Wu, the Enrico Fermi distinguished professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, whom the magazine argues “might have won the physics prize in the intervening 55 years” if we lived in a “different world.”

Quoted: Ian Baird, associate professor of geography at University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Laos expert, said the collapse of the subsidiary dam was unlikely to affect others in the project, but added that the dam can’t be fixed until the dry season.

Quoted: “What attracted Lincoln is they’re so incredibly interesting,” said Karen Oberhauser, a monarch expert and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum.

Noted: The panelists included Allan Brandt, professor of the history of science at Harvard University; Dominique Brossard, chair of the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: “We need to be as accurate as possible because we are providing information for students and parents who are making decisions on what career to follow,” said Matias Scaglione. He’s an associate researcher with Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Starting a cable news network from scratch is a daunting task — especially one that could compete with a behemoth like Fox News. But Lewis Friedland, who directs the Center for Communication and Democracy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the acquisition of Tribune would have given Sinclair an unprecedented array of assets.

Noted: The researchers in Madison wanted to study the impact of childhood stress on genetic chemistry. Seltzer said the biological impact of trauma can put markers on specific genes that act as an on-off switch, which in turn determine whether the natural function of those specific genes are activated or repressed.

Quoted: “Sesame Workshop probably can be trusted to do this in an ethical way, but the door opens for other companies to do it in a less ethical way,” said Heather Kirkorian, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies the effects of media in young children.

Noted: New research out this week shows liver cancer death rates are going in the wrong direction, despite the fact that death rates for all cancers combined is going down. Dr. Sam Lubner with the UW Carbone Cancer Center talks about the trend.

Noted: But recently, neuroscientists have started to explore other states of consciousness. In research published in the journal Nature in 2017, Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin and colleagues looked at what happens when we dream. They measured brain activity as people slept, waking them up at regular intervals to ask whether they had been dreaming. Then the scientists looked at what the brain had been doing just before the sleepers woke up. When people reported dreaming, parts of the back of the brain were much more active—much like the brain areas that are active in babies. The prefrontal area, on the other hand, shuts down during sleep.

Noted: Dr. Phil Greenwood, a senior lecturer at the Weinert Center of Entrepreneurship at the UW School of Business, talks about this hot topic in entrepreneurship.

Noted: Rural manufacturers often stay in their original location because of historic roots, according to Steven Deller, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in economic growth and development patterns.

The presentation, part of the “Courageous Conversation” series hosted by the Coalition for Dismantling Racism, featured research conducted by Dr. Geoffrey Swain of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health on the health effects of Wisconsin’s incarceration policies and practices.

David Drake, a professor of forest and wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW-Extension wildlife specialist, says that while he acknowledges the concern about the practice, it’s necessary. And lethal methods are far from the first attempt at controlling the population.

Quoted: “One mistake I made was telling my kids ‘we can’t afford that’ when they asked for something, even if it wasn’t quite true,” said Elizabeth Odders-White, a mom and associate professor of finance at Wisconsin School of Business

Noted: On the other hand, the nature of Putin’s regime makes it hard to say with certainty that he would have known, said Yoshiko Herrera, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist with a specialty on Russia.

Interviewed: Yoshiko Herrera, professor of political science specializing in Russia and the former Soviet states at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Heather Abercrombie, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin—Madison who heads the school’s Mood and Memory Laboratory, says scientists tend to capture data from groups of people rather than looking at them as individuals. But since people are bound to have different physiological reactions to different situations, Mohsenvand’s one-person life logging could be useful.

Noted: Anna Kaatz, a computational data scientist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who studies diversity in the scientific workforce, agrees that the overall picture painted by the paper is encouraging. Yet the study glosses over the systemic pressures that discourage women from applying for grants and renewals at the same rate as men, she says

Noted: Robert Drechsel, who taught media law at the University of Wisconsin, said if he were Tesla’s attorney, he would advise the CEO to stop tweeting.

A spending plan shows how overspending one week will leave you with a cash shortage the next week. Even a $50 shortfall can feel stressful, said J. Michael Collins, faculty director for the Center for Financial Security at University of Wisconsin, Madison.”You’re doing this plan to create ways to reduce the stress you have on yourself, so you’re not behind and trying to catch up,” Collins said.

Noted: Laws that keep offenders in a state facility even after they’ve served their sentence might keep offenders from committing repeat offenses, but the regulations are costly and states that have adopted the laws do not have lower recidivism rates, said Michael Caldwell, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Luke Zoet is an assistant professor of geoscience with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He says erosion makes bluffs steeper and more prone to small-or medium-scale landslides.

As indicated by the Sugar, Tobacco, Alcohol Taxes (STAX) group, “there are greater complexities in the relationship between diet and obesity than between alcohol and tobacco and negative health outcomes,” said Dale Schoeller, PhD, FTOS, TOS Secretary/Treasurer and professor emeritus in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Wisconsin.

Laws that keep offenders in a state facility even after they’ve served their sentence might keep offenders from committing repeat offenses, but the regulations are costly and states that have adopted the laws do not have lower recidivism rates, said Michael Caldwell, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.In addition, he said most sex offenders in the state face parole requirements following their release even if they have not been sent to a mental health facility.

Quoted: “The good thing about dog ticks is they’re big enough that we typically pull them off. You see them, you get them off and need not worry,” said Lyric Bartholomay, associate professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. She also co-directs the Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Disease.

After spending several days over the open oceans of the western Pacific, Typhoon Maria made landfall on the Japanese island of Miyakojima on Tuesday afternoon (local time) as the equivalent of a Category 3 hurricane with wind gusts up to 125 mph.