Category: UW Experts in the News

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.

The Wisconsin Department of Health reports that 2017 saw the highest number of Lyme disease cases in the state to date, indicating that Wisconsin is experiencing a “slow-burn epidemic” of Lyme disease, said UW-Madison entomology professor and department chairwoman Susan Paskewitz.

Illnesses from tick bites in Wisconsin have tripled since 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The Wisconsin Department of Health reports that 2017 saw the highest number of Lyme disease cases in the state to date, indicating that Wisconsin is experiencing a “slow-burn epidemic” of Lyme disease, said UW-Madison entomology professor and department chairwoman Susan Paskewitz.

But the sheer amount of cheese in storage may be causing problems. Cheese prices have fallen in recent weeks, Fuess said, a response both to the surplus and to growing trade concerns.That fall is problematic, said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, because the price of cheese is a major factor in the equation that USDA uses to set the price that dairy farmers receive for their milk. The current price – $15.36 per 100 pounds – is about a dollar below the average for 2017 and well below the price that many farmers say they need to break even.

Quoted: “There’s a large fixed cost of buying a house; there’s also some ease of being a renter,”said Andra Ghent, the Academic Director of the James A. Graaskamp Center for Real Estate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: In recent years, Black Lives Matter activists have halted traffic in cities to draw attention to police-involved shootings, said Pamela Oliver, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She has followed news reports of the BLM protests on expressways and highways, a tactic used more and more to bring attention to their cause.