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Category: UW Experts in the News

Amazon’s HQ2 Search Is About Politics, Too

Bloomberg

Quoted: “He is one of those executives who wants to be remembered as being on the right side of history,” said Thomas O’Guinn, a marketing professor at the University of Wisconsin school of business. “Part of the quid pro quo is there will be none of this stupid gender bathroom stuff. They are going to demand that the city do everything it can to fight voter suppression. They are going to demand high attention paid to meaningful spending on the environment and more efficient greenhouse reductions.”

Coffee cancer warning: What science says about cancer risk, coffee and acrylamide

AP

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.”

SciLine scores successes in first five months of operation

Science Magazine

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.”

Here Is FEMA’s Plan If the Falling Chinese Satellite Takes Aim at a US City

Gizmodo

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.”

Teen Drinking Down In State, Nation

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: In the most recent Wisconsin Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 30 percent of students admitted to drinking. Twenty years ago nearly 50 percent of Wisconsin’s public school students said they used alcohol. That’s when underage drinking in the U.S. went “sky high” according to Julia Sherman, coordinator of the Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project, which is based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and funded by a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

Cambridge Analytica psychology: The science isn’t that good at manipulation

Quartz

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.

Here Is FEMA’s Plan If the Falling Chinese Satellite Takes Aim at a US City

Gizmodo

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.” Instead, it might be better to just give people what information is available, and remind them not to touch any debris with their hands, as it might contain a corrosive fuel called hydrazine.

Wisconsin Companies Weigh Benefits Of Wellness Programs As Obesity-Related Health Problems Rise

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: “There’s been a push recently for companies, in particular, to start offering direct cash payments or reductions on premiums for insurance for people who engage in healthier activities, so exercising more, dieting, taking a health risk assessment,” said Justin Sydnor, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, who researches wellness programs.

A Cambridge Analytica Briefing

WORT

What’s the story behind the Cambridge Analytica scandal? What are the implications for our democracy? And will Facebook and other data giants be more regulated? Esty Dinur speaks with Young Mie Kim, Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication and a Faculty Affiliate of the Department of Political Science at University of Wisconsin Madison, and Scholar-In-Residence at Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C.

Emma Gonzalez Fake Photo: Twitter Didn’t Stop Viral Image

Fortune

Noted: As the image bounced around among self-professed NRA supporters and alt-right figures, a college professor alerted people that the image was, in fact, a fake. Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, tweeted the doctored image alongside the original photo, which showed González tearing up a gun target poster.

A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains

Washington Post

Noted: Donald Moynihan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, debunked the altered image, saying in a tweet: “Just a sample of what NRA supporters are doing to teenagers who survived a massacre (real picture on the right),” referencing a user named “Linda NRA Supporter” who posted the photo and whose account has since been suspended.

New Census Data Show Wisconsin Population Trends Recovering From Recession

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted:  David Eagan Robertson of the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said a closer look shows that counties like Winnebago, Sheboygan, and Calumet have grown, which is a reversal of recession era trends. “The manufacturing counties in the state as a group are actually now, in this most recent year, are seeing an increase in the domestic migration number,” said Robertson. “So, that’s a bit of a turn.”

Research aimed at helping cranberry industry

La Crosse Tribune

Noted: The research of Amaya Atucha, an assistant professor and Gottschalk Chair for cranberry research in the university’s horticulture department, focuses on how cranberry plants are able to withstand subfreezing temperatures during winter, as well as strategies to reduce the impact of frost and winter stress in cranberry plants.

The romance between Foxconn and Wisconsin almost had a rocky star

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Maybe, said Hart Posen, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, who studies corporate strategy and decision-making under uncertainty. “Gou (a multi-billionaire who runs one of the world’s biggest companies) is clearly a more powerful figure in the global sense than is Gov. Scott Walker, and he should rightly feel like the bigger player on the world stage,” Posen said.

Can Nicorette Really Help Smokers Quit?

The Daily Beast

“There’s no magic bullet as far as quitting smoking, but I think the contribution of NRTs has been an important one,” Dr. Michael Fiore, director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, told The Daily Beast.

Bomb Cyclones, Nor’easters, and the Messy Relationship Between Weather and Climate

The New Yorker

Throughout her career, (Francis) had focussed on how global warming was affecting the Arctic, and after many months staring at the sea she began to wonder how Arctic warming was affecting the global weather system. On her return to New Jersey, where she is a professor at Rutgers University, she and her colleague Stephen Vavrus, a climate modeller at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, set about examining changes in the behavior of the polar jet stream since the early nineties.

Russian Twitter trolls stoked racial tension in wake of Sherman Park rioting in Milwaukee before 2016 Trump election

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: A team that included University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Chris Wells found last month that at least 116 articles from U.S. media outlets included tweets from @TEN_GOP and other Russian-linked accounts, with the tweets usually cited as examples of supposedly ordinary Americans voicing their views. Wells said the tweets found by the Journal Sentinel seemed similar. “It looks very consistent with what we’ve seen in our research so far,” Wells said.

Arizona women went to a Tempe mosque and mocked Islam

The Washington Post

In a 2016 column outlining myths about sharia, Asifa Quraishi-Landes, a University of Wisconsin law professor, wrote that sharia is not necessarily a law in the sense that the West sees it. “Sharia is not a book of statutes or judicial precedent imposed by a government, and it’s not a set of regulations adjudicated in court,” she wrote. “Rather, it is a body of Koran-based guidance that points Muslims toward living an Islamic life.”

How Stephen Hawking did theologians a favour  

Church Times

Which is not to say that we then read it, as e-reader data now shows. When Professor Jordan Ellenberg of the University of Wisconsin-Madison devised a measure of how far people actually get through the books that they download, he called it the Hawking Index. A Brief History comes second in this ranking of owning but not reading: on average, people get seven per cent of the way through.

Russian Twitter trolls stoked racial tension in wake of Milwaukee rioting before 2016 election

KVUE

A team that included University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Chris Wells found last month that at least 116 articles from U.S. media outlets included tweets from @TEN_GOP and other Russian-linked accounts, with the tweets usually cited as examples of supposedly ordinary Americans voicing their views. Wells said that the tweets found by the Journal Sentinel seemed similar.

When Do Toddlers Start Having Night Terrors? The Scary Phenomenon Comes On Earlier Than You Think

Romper

According to a presentation by Dr. Cami Matthews, MD, Associate Professor Division of Pediatric Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine at the University of Wisconsin Department of Pediatrics’ Wisconsin Sleep Center, sleep terrors or pavor nocturnus usually happen between the ages of 4 and 12, and they’re associated with “Pallor, sweating, pupil dilation, piloerection (hairs standing on end), tachycardia (rapid heart rate), and screaming.”

How Cheese, Wheat and Alcohol Shaped Human Evolution

Smithsonian

You aren’t what you eat, exactly. But over many generations, what we eat does shape our evolutionary path. “Diet,” says anthropologist John Hawks, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “has been a fundamental story throughout our evolutionary history. Over the last million years there have been changes in human anatomy, teeth and the skull, that we think are probably related to changes in diet.”

How Forests Change Over Time

WXPR

The rate of natural forest succession is affected whenever a disturbance such as fire, a windstorm, pests, or management activities occurs on the site. The more severe the disturbance, or the more often disturbances occur, the more slowly natural forest succession moves forward.

Let Them March: Schools Should Not Censor Students

Education Week

Noted: Kathleen Bartzen Culver is the James E. Burgess Chair in journalism ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Center for Journalism Ethics. Erica Salkin is an associate professor of communication studies at Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash., and the author of the 2016 book Students’ Right to Speak: The First Amendment in Public Schools (McFarland).

Real Time Economics

Wall Street Journal

“Naloxone access may unintentionally increase opioid abuse through two channels: (1) saving the lives of active drug users, who survive to continue abusing opioids, and (2) reducing the risk of death per use, thereby making riskier opioid use more appealing,” the University of Virginia’s Jennifer Doleac and the University of Wisconsin’s Anita Mukherjee write. Because there are more opioid abusers needing to fund their drug habit, theft may also rise.