Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: In the private sector, the situation has been far more stable, though not universally. “Bankruptcies in the airline and automobile industries have provided opportunities for these companies to get out from under what they viewed as long-term cost obligations,” says Barry Gerhart, professor of management and human resources at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. The pension commitments “were playing a key role in preventing them from being competitive or even turning a profit.”

Quoted: Of course, inconsideration isn’t new, or particular to theatres. But as technology and social media blur lines between personal and public, “there’s been an erosion in people’s norms of public space,” said Lewis Friedland, a University of Wisconsin sociology and communications professor.

Quoted: Joe Glass, assistant professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the testing could hinder the use of social services and do more harm than good.

Edward Friedman, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the US, said Xi’s priority now was to ensure that the bursting of the stock market bubble did not lead to a rise of anti-party movements.

Noted: Of course, inconsideration isn’t new, or particular to theaters. But as technology and social media blur lines between personal and public, “there’s been an erosion in people’s norms of public space,” said Lewis Friedland, a University of Wisconsin sociology and communications professor.

Quoted: Robert Bradley, who’s taught cheese-making at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for 50 years, agrees. “It takes personal attention. It’s a very fragile product,” he says.

Political observers say the ruling opens the door wide to unlimited coordination between special interest groups and candidates with no government oversight or regulation. Howard Schweber, a UW-Madison political science and legal studies associate professor, said the line between issue advocacy and express advocacy is already thin and the ruling will allow political action committees to run a candidate’s campaign without disclosing their spending.

Featured: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, testified that House Bill 589 imposes additional costs on black and Hispanic voters. Blacks and Hispanic voters used such practices as early voting and same-day voter registration at higher levels than whites, he said.

Quoted: Howard Schweber, an associate professor of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said prosecutors could seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court if they lose. And outstanding civil suits allege overreach by the John Doe prosecutors and Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board, which the plaintiffs say inappropriately helped initiate the investigation.

Quoted: “I think every bit of new evidence that we get is useful,” said Sanjay Limaye, senior scientist at UW-Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center. “So in that sense, these images are a great feat.”

Noted: “Unfortunately, we did learn that the Wisconsin DNR leadership has banned their staff from attending the conference, including their lead wolf biologist,” Adrian Treves says. He heads UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies’ Carnivore Coexistence Lab.

Quoted: “There  has been disaffection among many of The Historicals and Museveni’s associates for a long time,” says Aili Tripp, a professor of politics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Most  felt that Museveni has remained in power too long and needs to open up space for other leaders. Even those who once supported him feel the country needs a change.”

Quoted: “The Illinois State Museum is deeply respected in the scientific community for the expertise of its curators and for its irreplaceable collection of archaeological, cultural, and paleontological artifacts,” says paleoecologist Jack Williams of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has used the Neotoma database to explore vegetation change over the past 20,000 years on a continental and global scale. “The museum is also, of course, a gateway for students to discover the wonder and beauty of science.”

Quoted: Richard Keller, a professor of medical history and bioethics at University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies climate change’s potential effects on health.

Quoted: “That’s a really helpful narrative for him on the campaign trail, while he’s trying to win in these early primary and caucus states,” says Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “The fact that he’s the enemy of the Democrats and of unions is a positive in the nomination race. It’s made him sort of a hero.”

Quoted: Some expect a legal battle over the provision. University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Howard Schweber told VICE News if the law is challenged he doesn’t think it’ll be upheld because of the lack of exceptions for extreme situations. A similar abortion ban in Idaho was struck down in May because it banned some abortions before viability.

Noted: Children’s books are indeed relentlessly white. The Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the School of Education, University of Wisconsin, reports that roughly 3 percent of children’s books published in 2014 were about Africans or African Americans; about 8 percent were about any kind of minorities. Lest you think this is due to so many kids’ books featuring trains and badgers and crocodiles, the director, Kathleen Horning, addresses those concerns here: In 2013, about 10 percent of books about human beings (as opposed to trains or badgers) featured people of color.

Quoted: “There are a lot of assumptions and models in here,” says Clark Johnson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For example, he says, for the continents to get thinner in the long term, erosion would have to also outpace magma that attaches to the base of the crust – not just the build-up of crust at plate convergences that Dhuime’s team considered.

Quoted: “Once we get down into the mid to low 50s, that’s going to decrease insect activity pretty significantly,” said P.J. Liesch, manager of the UW Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab.

Quoted: “There’s a huge amount of uncertainty here,” said Kenneth Mayer, a presidential scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Though he said it’s probably within the president’s power to disavow the honor, getting the physical medal back might be another matter now that Cosby owns it.

Beth Graue is the chair of the University of Wisconsin Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and is hosting a seminar on the topic of the “summer slide” or summer learning loss later this month.

Noted: In medical and public health circles, women’s long lives relative to men’s have often been considered “a given,” said Hiram Beltran-Sanchez, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the lead author of the study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He decided to look back at population data to see whether that had always been true.

Quoted: “It’s really going to just empower us to have more creativity … to get into the sandbox and have more control over what you build,” says Dustin Rubinstein, the head of a lab working with CRISPR and other genetic engineering tools at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “You’re only limited by your imagination.”

Quoted: “We would have gone from first to worst,” says Kathleen Culver.  She teaches at UW-Madison’s Center of Journalism Ethics. She says the state’s current open records law is one of the most expansive in the nation.

Quoted: Vulnerability is what gives authenticity to our relationships because that is how we are wired. Paula Niedenthal, Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, calls this process resonance. It is the way how we observe each other’s state in order to “interact, empathize, or assert our boundaries, whatever the situation may require.” This process happens very fast and below our consciousness that we are not aware it’s happening.

Noted: While voters in other states may be most interested in candidates’ positions on issues, approval ratings at home can provide campaign fodder, according to Mike Wagner, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison. Wagner says a candidate’s popularity at home can affect the narrative candidates unfurl.

Noted: A University of Wisconsin-Madison report released last year found Delavan-Darien had the highest proportion of Latino students of any school district in Wisconsin. Recent statistics from the state Department of Public Instruction show it’s now essentially tied with Arcadia School District for that spot.

“A lot of the higher-percentage districts were not in places that you would think of on the map as being Latino centers,” said David Long, a UW-Madison researcher in the Applied Population Laboratory who co-authored the 2014 report on Wisconsin’s Latino population. “It’s pretty striking, and Delavan is a great example of that.”

Quoted: “There’s a lot of material there that will help him with Republican activists,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “This year’s session moved to the right from previous sessions when he was governor.”

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Michael Wagner, an expert on public opinion, told VICE News that he wouldn’t characterize the new numbers as a decline, but as a return to pre-9/11 levels, pointing to the 55 percent of Americans who said they were “extremely proud” in 2001.

Noted: For guidance, we turned to Stephen Lucas, the Evjue-Bascom professor in the humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He’s the author of “The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence,” a paper that’s one of the first things you see on the National Archives’ webpages about the declaration.

Noted: At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Davidson has studied the brains of Buddhist monks and explored the ways that compassion is neurologically distinct from empathy. He even believes it to be an intrinsic trait like linguistic ability—something that must be fostered at a young age to be implemented throughout life, and something that can be strengthened through practice. To that end, he and his colleagues developed a “kindness curriculum” for preschoolers.

Quoted: Mark Richards with the University of Wisconsin-Madison department of animal sciences/poultry sciences is hesitant about such claims. Mostly because turkey is sensitive to oxidative rancidity or quality deterioration that leads to undesirable flavors and unhealthful compounds.

Noted: When Michael Jay McClure, associate professor of art history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, heard about the concept of the new exhibit “Warhol’s Nature,” he immediately knew one thing. He knew it wouldn’t work.

Noted: The first $2 million endowment will be established at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Organic Valley, a farmer cooperative based in Wisconsin, matched Clif Bar’s contribution to the university.

Noted: Among the children he rescued was Renata Laxová, professor emerita of pediatric genetics, who discovered the Neu-Laxová Syndrome, a congenital abnormality.

Quoted: “I’m fairly convinced that this is the future, for sure,” says Shanan Peters, a palaeontologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW Madison) who is co-leading an effort to use software to extract information from tens of thousands of palaeontology papers. “Building a database, per se, will be a thing of the past. Those databases will be dynamically generated based on the questions you’re interested in, and the machine will do the heavy lifting.”

Noted: Dr. Richard L. Page, who heads the department of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, has studied survival rates from sudden cardiac arrest in traditional fitness centers, such as health clubs, and alternative exercise sites, including hotel gyms.

Quoted: While many cheer this time of year, health professionals are appalled. “I cringe, and I imagine most everyone dealing with the health consequences of these foods does,” said David Allen, director of the Wisconsin Prevention of Obesity and Diabetes at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Quoted: “It gets overwhelming public support,” said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Depending on which poll, you might get 60 to 80 percent support.

Quoted: Xueli Wang, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, quoted numbers she obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics.