Category: UW Experts in the News

Noted: “With drug shortages, it is often a race to see who can find a supply of the drug on shortage and also any alternatives,” said Philip J. Trapskin, who is the program manager of medication use strategy and innovation at UW Health, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s health system. “We have been able to get what we need to avoid disruptions in patient care, but the mix of products is not ideal and there are no guarantees we will continue to get the supplies we need.”

You can tell by the way Carrie Coon confidently maneuvers around the tables of a crowded Tribeca restaurant that this is an actress who has hit her stride.

Noted: Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a long-standing opponent of China’s birth control policy, said more changes could be on the way next year.

Noted: While the movement long predates the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, it got new energy from the American religious right in the 1980s. Now, according to Daniel Hummel, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the movement is undergoing a transformation, both theologically and geographically.

Noted: After the election, registered voters in Milwaukee County and Madison’s Dane County were surveyed about why they didn’t cast a ballot. Eleven percent cited the voter ID law and said they didn’t have an acceptable ID; of those, more than half said the law was the “main reason” they didn’t vote. According to the study’s author, University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kenneth Mayer, that finding implies that between 12,000 and 23,000 registered voters in Madison and Milwaukee—and as many as 45,000 statewide—were deterred from voting by the ID law. “We have hard evidence there were tens of thousands of people who were unable to vote because of the voter ID law,” he says.

Noted: Despite assurances in its FCC filing that the company plans to invest millions in local news gathering and increased programming, Lewis Friedland, a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor who previously managed a news station in Milwaukee, said that he expects Sinclair to make cuts to news operations.

Quoted: Barry Burden is a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He said people do not always change their opinions from an important personal experience. “Sometimes it actually causes them to change their position, but more often it leads them to put more focus on the issue, becoming a champion of the cause,” Burden said.

Quoted: “She was going to be referred to hospice; there was not much we could do,” said Dr. Nataliya Uboha, who took the case to a tumor board at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The panel gave several options, including off-label treatment, and Meffert chose a study that matches patients to gene-targeting therapies and started on an experimental one last October.

Quoted: Jason M. Fletcher, a professor of public affairs and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said some of the results from the new study suggest a “general weakness in the analysis.” Fletcher did not participate in the new study.

Noted: Jason M. Fletcher, a professor of public affairs and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said some of the results from the new study suggest a “general weakness in the analysis.” Fletcher did not participate in the new study.

Noted: “Giving voice to a problem is really important. What we don’t want to do is set up something where we got men versus women,” UW Madison’s Gender Studies expert, Christine Whelan said.

Noted: Collectively, the brain “samples them [to] assess their overall strength,” says Chiara Cirelli, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Then, it decides what’s vital and what’s not.

Noted: Prof Jenny Saffran, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, commented: “This is the first study to ask whether [mothers] also change the timbre of their voice, manipulating the kinds of features that differentiate musical instruments from one another.

Noted: Volker Radloff, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who works at Silvis Labs, describes some WUI areas as “like a medieval city, with an urban city next to a big dark forest.”

Noted: “This is fascinating because clearly speakers are not aware of changing their timbre, and this new study shows that it is a highly reliable feature of the way we speak to babies,” commented Jenny Saffran, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in this research.

Quoted: “There are no good ways to describe it, but using ‘flinch point’ sounds appropriate,” said Nancy Wong, a professor of consumer science and marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Preparing children for the democratic society that they will inherit is an important role of schools, says Paula McAvoy, program director for the Center for Ethics and Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of a book that explores how politics are taught in the classroom.

Noted: Development in wildland-urban interfaces increases frequency of fires and contributes to the ferocity of a fire, said Volker Radeloff, a forest and wildlife ecology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: “Most wildland firefighters are not trained in structural protection, but the urban fire departments are not trained to deal with dozens or hundreds of houses burning at the same time,” says Volker Radeloff, a forestry researcher at the University of Wisconsin. “When these areas with lots of houses burn, the fires become very unpredictable.”

Noted: Each week, the group learns new skills that range from painting to writing raps to cooking food. The kids meet partner instructors that include students and faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and local artists, they learn that art isn’t limited to just visual art. Last month, they learned how to make pizza.

Noted: Manipulating a map to move around Wisconsin Democrats also means manipulating a map to move around Wisconsin voters who are not white, said Malia Jones, an applied demographer at The University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: There’s also the issue of false positives, which plague any prediction model aimed at identifying a minority group, said William T.L. Cox, a psychologist who studies stereotypes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

There’s also the issue of false positives, which plague any prediction model aimed at identifying a minority group, said William T.L. Cox, a psychologist who studies stereotypes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: “If it’s warm and there’s enough water and there’s plenty of sunshine, the plant continues to make food and remains green by keeping chlorophyll in the leaves,” said Dr. Ken Cameron, chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Botany Department.

Noted: One key reason, say Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, authors of the book We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, is the role technology played in getting the music to the battlefield. Between radio, portable record players, early cassette players and live bands coming to Vietnam, soldiers in that war had far more access to music than their forebears.

Noted: Genetically, corn is a “highly variable species” and one that is “relatively easy to manipulate,” said Bill Tracy, an agronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Noted: Self-help enthusiasts do buy an awful lot of books. A third to one-half of all Americans will buy a self-help title in their lifetimes, said Christine Whelan, a professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, adding that at any given time there are more than 45,000 titles in print.

Quoted: “It’s not any single gene that makes a huge difference … It’s not like morning people have one thing and evening people have another,” says anthropologist John Hawks, of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “It’s many genes. Each of them has some small effect. This study is pointing out that, hey, there’s one of these [genes] that has a small effect coming from Neanderthals.”

Noted: The sequencing of this new genome also represents “a real technical advance,” says anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin. Until now, the only high-quality Neanderthal DNA has come from a cave in Denisova in Siberia, where DNA is well-preserved because of the freezing temperatures year-round, Hawks explains. But the new genome came from bones found in a more temperate cave, where DNA preservation is suboptimal.

Quoted: “The biologist in me says, ‘Preserve everything. We don’t have the right to make the decision to get rid of an entire species,’ ” says Susan Paskewitz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and chairman of the Department of Entomology. “The global health specialist in me says, ‘A half a million people die from malaria, most of them under the age of 5. That’s an awful lot of suffering.’ ”

Quoted: With Wisconsin being one of the most politically divided states, Dave Schroeder, a U.S. Navy intelligence officer and cybersecurity expert at UW-Madison, said it’s no surprise Russian actors are targeting it.

Noted: Congress usually reauthorizes the program’s funding with broad bipartisan support, said Dipesh Navsaria, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and vice president of the Wisconsin chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Quoted: The “stark reality” of lower academic achievement transcends borders and calls for shared strategies between countries, says Jerlando Jackson, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and chair of the International Colloquium on Black Males in Education.

Noted: The U.S. system may have been based on a delegate model, but it evolved into something more individualistic, closer to a trustee relationship. By the 1970s, any form of independent voting had succumbed to a party-bloc voting model, something closer to the British Parliament, according to Barry Burden, professor of political science and director of the election research center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Noted: If the Supreme Court does rule that the Wisconsin map is unconstitutional, it could invalidate district maps in 20 other states, Barry C. Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Times. According to the paper, a dozen or so Congressional districts could also be challenged.

Noted: “People with heart disease are especially susceptible to getting worse if they get the flu,” said Orly Vardeny, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of pharmacy and co-principal investigator for a flu vaccine trial. Some of the factors that make heart disease worse are further increased by the flu.

Noted: Nonetheless, Ian Baird, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has expertise on natural resources management in Southeast Asia, said the lack of flood forecasting and control in the Sesan and Srepok river basins at the national level in Cambodia is a big concern “as erratic water releases from the [Lower Sesan II Dam], designed to maximise profit from electricity sales .?.?. should be expected”.

Noted: UW-Madison Political Scientist Barry Burden says in 2020 when states are again redrawing their political boundaries, they likely would use the ruling in Wisconsin as the blueprint.

Noted: A decisive ruling striking down the Wisconsin Assembly map could invalidate redistricting maps in up to 20 other states, said Barry C. Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Other analysts said that at least a dozen House districts would be open to court challenges if the court invalidated Wisconsin’s map. Some place the number of severely gerrymandered House districts as high as 20.

Noted: Erin Silva is an organic production specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She says the increase in farms will strengthen the industry. Silva says growing consumer demand for organic products means there’s room for more farms in the industry.