Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: “When you buy into a franchise, you are buying a system of operations and you are buying an accepted brand,” says Michael Williams, director of entrepreneurship activities and director of the business and entrepreneur clinic and faculty associate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship. “Franchising ebbs and flows with the economy; when we have a slowdown or recession and people are laid off, there may be an uptick in franchising as people look to replace their incomes.”

Quoted: “We had about 65 days of lake ice on Mendota this year,” Hilary Dugan, a postdoctoral researcher studying limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.

Quoted: “By 1900, it was estimated that as many as 10% of all tuberculosis cases in humans were caused by infection via milk consumption,” wrote University of Wisconsin food science professor John Lucey in a review for the journal Nutrition Today. (I usually only consult with professors at Wisconsin for dairy-related matters.)

Noted: Susan Paskewitz, professor of entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, began checking Wisconsin sites in response to the news, to see if this state’s mouse population was also growing.

White-nose syndrome is named for the fuzzy white growth of fungus observed on the faces of infected bats. Infected bats show unusual behavior, such as flying during the day in summer or leaving caves during their usual winter hibernation, when no bugs are present for them to eat. A wildlife veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin confirmed the disease kills bats by causing their bodies to overheat, burning energy too quickly and at a time — in winter — when no insects are present to replace the lost calories and when it’s far too cold for the mammals to survive outside.

Quoted: “There’s a general belief in the public that teachers shouldn’t be using their classroom as a soapbox but there’s a ton of variation on what’s allowed and what’s not allowed,” said Paula McAvoy, program director at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Ethics and Education.

Noted: Geologist Huan Cui of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues discuss their findings in a recent paper, “Redox-dependent distribution of early macro-organisms: Evidence from the terminal Ediacaran Khatyspyt Formation in Arctic Siberia,” published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

Noted: Checking for fairness could eventually become a basic aspect of programing, says Samuel Drews, a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison who works on a similar fairness-checking tool.

A political science professor and elections expert will discuss the Electoral College during a presentation at 5 p.m. Wednesday in Room 1415 of Centennial Hall at UW-Eau Claire.

Noted: Allyson Bennett, a developmental psychobiologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who works primarily with rhesus macaques (which are not covered by the PETA request), argues that if the animals are removed from research, they may end up in zoos or other settings with a lower standard of care and less public oversight and transparency. “That is not a win for the animals,” Bennett says.

Noted: Three of Brady’s fellow political analysts — Edward G. Carmines and Michael J. Ensley, political scientists at Indiana and Kent State universities, along with Michael W. Wagner, a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — are taking up this challenge.

Noted: Cecelia Klingele, an assistant law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said she cannot imagine how one person could give “fair and full consideration” to the “significant” number of people who are currently parole eligible.

Quoted: “When you buy into a franchise, you are buying a system of operations and you are buying an accepted brand,” says Michael Williams, director of entrepreneurship activities and director of the business and entrepreneur clinic and faculty associate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship. “Franchising ebbs and flows with the economy; when we have a slowdown or recession and people are laid off, there may be an uptick in franchising as people look to replace their incomes.”

Quoted: Russia is a particularly important diplomatic post, explains Yoshiko Herrera, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in Russian politics. From terrorism to NATO, nuclear proliferation to the Arctic, the US and Russia have both serious disagreements and shared interests.

Quoted: “What you’re dealing with are allegations that would go from the desk of the present county administrative coordinator to the successor,” said Frank Tuerkhiemer, an attorney and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “That’s no reason that the county attorney shouldn’t do his job.”

Noted: Russia is a particularly important diplomatic post, explains Yoshiko Herrera, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in Russian politics. From terrorism to NATO, nuclear proliferation to the Arctic, the US and Russia have both serious disagreements and shared interests.

Quoted: “Probably in other sciences this is where you’d be done. However, in math that’s just the beginning. Now we want to know for sure,” said Melanie Wood, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Beau Burdett and other researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have attempted to elucidate just what happens when a ride around the circle goes pear-shaped. They pored through six years of accident data from 53 Wisconsin roundabouts and found a couple of interesting patterns, which are described in the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board (unfortunately behind a paywall).

Noted: Ben Jordan, director of the Transportation Information Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Engineering, said rain, snow, heat and cold all deteriorate pavement, but on the roads where they travel, heavy trucks do the most damage.

What can be done about all this confusion in a world where we are bombarded with information – and increasingly hear that we shouldn’t believe much of what we are told? In a post-truth world, are we even more susceptible to exaggerated or untrue stories? We speak to Dominique Brossard, professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Information at the University of Wisconsin.

Quoted: “Trump and the people around him have been quite open about their desire to smash the system,” says Ken Mayer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Quoted: “The area of…Palestine that would have been the Arab state [per the U.N. vote] was largely conquered by Jordan and by Egypt,” Nadav Shelef, Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Israel Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells Teen Vogue.

Noted: Cortland Dahl, who studies the neuroscience of mind wandering and has been meditating for 25 years, told me that he was six months into daily meditation practice when he witnessed a change in the way he related to the present moment. “I noticed I just started to enjoy things I didn’t enjoy before,” like standing in line, or sitting in traffic, he says. “My own mind became interesting, and I had something to do—‘Okay, back to the breath.’” Killingsworth’s findings help explain this, said Dahl, a research scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds.

Quoted: “You don’t have to take these extravagant vacations to foreign places. A lot of the value that we get from taking time off just doing something that breaks us out of routine,” said Dayana Kupisk, a PhD candidate, studying human development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Some scientists have suggested that the problem is an educational one. Those who disregard science and scientific consensus as not for them simply don’t have the knowledge – the facts, according to this thinking. And, as Dietram Scheufele, a professor of science communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison pointed out in a talk at the AAAS meeting, in the current “fake news panic” that mentality can fuel an impression that “if they just had the correct facts, they could make better decisions.”

Quoted: “Conversely, anything big is bad right now,” said Thomas C. O’Guinn, a professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s business school. “Anything small is considered differently, since there’s no faceless behemoth.” Customers, he added, are also more apt to know store employees or even the owner.

Noted: “She sort of burst onto the scene,” says Paul Wilson, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Now there’s a circulated quote attributed to her: Students don’t know that things [in the nuclear field] are supposed to go slowly. Let’s not tell them.”

Quoted: “On net, the downsides seem greater than the upsides,” said Barry C. Burden, a political scientist and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.