Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: When today’s young adults do decide to get married, many of them are further along in their careers, with a better sense of who they are, and what they contribute to their workplace. One 29-year-old I talked to, a medical resident in San Francisco, told me that for those who believe one’s bank account offers a clear reflection of a person’s work ethic or success, it can be hard to cede control. “It’s about wanting to maintain one’s sense of identity, individuality, and autonomy,” said Fenaba Addo, an assistant professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: The speech was ranked No. 47 on a list of the top speeches of the century in 1999. The list, compiled by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Texas A&M University, was based on a survey of scholars who ranked speeches by social and political impact and rhetorical artistr

Quoted: “Wisconsin’s economy is kind of just slugging along,” said Steven Deller, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We weren’t hit as badly by the great recession, but our recovery has been painfully slow.”

Quoted: “When it was time to stand up and say, ‘Hey we can’t do things that way,’ or ‘This doesn’t make sense’, he never did that,” said Tim Smeeding, a public affairs and economics professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Quoted: “Our history follows us more publicly than it used to,” said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Culver noted that maybe two decades ago if Reed’s final round had been marred by a scoring discrepancy or lost-ball kerfuffle, the stories of his past might have surfaced briefly and merely as footnotes. But today those stories face boldly forward in the midst of an essentially flawless performance.

Quoted: “Beyond question, patients should be informed that the ‘safety step’ of not undergoing surgery is theirs to choose,” wrote Dr. Kirk Hogan, professor of anesthesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, in an article published earlier this year. “Each patient must determine if the proposed benefits of a procedure outweigh the foreseeable and material risks of cognitive decline after surgery.”

Featured: U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin announced Wednesday that he will not seek re-election at the end of his term saying he wants to spend more time with family. We talk with WPR News’ Capitol Reporter Laurel White for reactions from the speaker’s district, then turn to a political scientist look at the effects on Congress, Wisconsin and on Ryan’s future. (Guest: David Canon)

Some 4,500 years ago, the Bell Beakers invaded Britain. Roughly 90% of the genes of later Britons came from this group, named for the distinctive shape of their pottery. Archaeologists long thought that Britain’s early farmers, who built Stonehenge five millennia ago, adopted the pots from continental neighbors. Instead DNA evidence shows that the farmers were nearly annihilated by the Bell Beakers.

Mr. Hawks is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Reality: A major study on this question came out in 2011, and Janet Mertz, senior author of the study and a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, concluded, “This is not a matter of biology: None of our findings suggest that an innate biological difference between the sexes is the primary reason for a gender gap in math performance at any level.”

Quoted: “I think this is a cool discovery and it definitely suggests that we need to explore the Arabian peninsula much more for fossil humans and their ancestors,” John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who was not involved in the study, said via email.

Quoted: “Strategically, politically, it was really, really effective,” said Ryan Owens, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin who heads the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.

Quoted: “I’m definitely doing more overuse hamstring surgeries now,” says Geoffrey Baer, an orthopedic surgeon with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and team physician for the University of Wisconsin Athletic Department.

Quoted: One of the biggest misconceptions about this issue is that the size of the farm is the main contributor to well contamination, said Becky Larson, a professor of biological systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and bio-waste specialist at UW-Extension.

Quoted: The danger for Trump’s opponents, said Dietram Scheufele, a professor of communications at the University of Wisconsin, was “letting him define the battlefield.”

Quoted: TV anchors decrying ‘fake’ news puts spotlight on Sinclair Broadcast Group (with UW–Madison’s Lewis Friedland.)

Quoted: While there’s no doubt that Democrats this year are more energized than Republicans, it’s dubious whether one election can be an accurate bellwether of what’s to come in November, said Ryan Owens, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin who heads the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.

Quoted: Amy Trenton-Dietz, public health specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the California ruling contrasts with what science shows.”Studies in humans suggest that if anything, coffee is protective for some types of cancer,” she said. “As long as people are not putting a lot of sugar or sweeteners in, coffee, tea and water are the best things for people to be drinking.”

Quoted: “We need the support and engagement of the general public and of course government and private funding agencies, and it’s always useful to practice articulating what is interesting and important in our research,” said Pepperell, who works at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “I also saw it as an opportunity to raise the profile of women in science, to increase the diversity of voices and perspectives that make up the ‘face’ of science—my hope is that all young people have the opportunity to see themselves as scientists, to consider science as a career and pursue it if that’s where their passions and skills lie.”

Quoted: So would a warning even be worth it? “I imagine perhaps if there was a public information plan, it would generate more hysteria than would be warranted for something so unlikely,” Ruth Rand, historian of science, technology, and the environment during the Cold War at the University of Wisconsin told me. “I imagine some people might respond with undue fear and you might have a crisis in your hands.”

Quoted: If the company did obtain a comprehensive set of user data from Facebook, as has been reported, then it may have gotten unique insight into what makes people vote and how. “Facebook allowed them to combine different data sources in a way that allowed them to understand voters maybe better than voters themselves did,” says Dietram Scheufele, science communication professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: “When an object is uncontrolled, and its orbit is decaying, it starts tumbling,” Lisa Rand, a space junk scholar and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus, told Quartz.