Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: Real growth means that every racially-charged story – not just those that grab headlines or generate hashtags – is put into context, scrutinized for bias and examined in as many perspectives as possible, said Hemant Shah, director of the School of Journalism and Communication and a professor of mass media, race and ethnicity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: “We’re anticipating for 2015 that [price] to average out to about $16.50 per hundred pound,” says Brian Gould, professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin Madison. “That’s a pretty significant drop, but $16.50 per hundred pounds is historically a reasonable…price, given what current grade markets are.”

Airbag maker Takatas missed recall expansion deadline isnt just infuriating lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The news is sending ripple effects to the Big Three automakers in Detroit, and beyond.

Quoted: “It’s an easy thing to throw around,” says Christine Whelan, director of  Money, Relationships and Equality, and a faculty associate in the School of Human Ecology at University of Wisconsin, Madison, told TODAY. “The divorce statistics are very complicated.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Craig Werner wants to bust the many myths that he says cloud the public’s understanding of the 1960s.

Quoted: Gwendolyn Leachman, a UW-Madison Law School professor, says that noncompete agreements are disfavored by the law because they are potential restraints on trade. But the courts will uphold them, including two-year terms, she says, “if they are reasonably necessary for the protection of the employer.”

Noted: This trend is spread across numerous districts in the state — mostly urban and rural rather than suburban — that are trying to solve budget challenges left by declining enrollment by attracting open enrollment, according to Erica Turner, assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: “It’s wonderful to get parents into college. It’s a whole other thing to support them so they get their degree,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I am very worried about the amount of financial risk that’s accruing to the people who are starting college with very little resources.”

Thongchai Winichakul has been watching these developments with dismay. A leading scholar of Thai history, Thongchai witnessed a previous military crackdown firsthand as a student and pro-democracy activist.

Noted: “We’ve known for a long time that granite and glaciers played a fundamental role in the history of Tuolumne Meadows, but only recently have we recognized this relatively unique style of fracturing and how it influences the landscape in this popular location,” said lead study author Richard Becker, a doctoral student in geomorphology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison UW.

Quoted: “There’s going to be a big drop, nobody is trying to whitewash that,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Joel Rogers, a professor of administrative law at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, reviewed a transcript of her comments and said they could be seen as improperly offering advice.

Quoted: “I’m a hunter myself, but I do not support allowing hunters to sell their meat,” says Tim Van Deelen, an associate professor in the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology. Van Deelen worries about the effect a commercial market could have on rural deer populations, which are currently controlled by predators and hobby hunters.

Quoted: Patricia Devine, professor of social psychology at the University of Wisconsin, has written that three factors need to be in place to break a “prejudice habit.” One is that we must acknowledge that we hold biases, even if they are unconscious. The second is that we must be motivated to change. And the third is that we must give ourselves time to practice new ways of thinking, acting, and making decisions. I suspect that, as a nation, Step One — acknowledgment — is our major stumbling block. We have been in a collective denial about the extent, reality, and real-world effects of our racial biases for a very long time.

Quoted: Yet this chart of executive orders actually shows us very little about presidential power, as Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told me when I was reporting a feature this summer. Mayer is the author of the book With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power, so he should know.

Quoted: “Everybody has extreme limits in terms of multitasking,” said John Lee, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studies human-technology interaction. “We can’t do two things at the same time without compromising performance on one of the two. That applies to police officers as it does to average drivers.”

President Barack Obama’s efforts to keep millions of illegal immigrants from being deported are being questioned by Republican opponents, but UW Madison political expert Ken Mayer said it is unlikely those concerns will go to court.

Quoted: “People used to always say, well, if private schools are bad, they’ll close. They won’t get the people to go, they’ll close. Public schools never close. That’s incorrect. Milwaukee closed the poorer public schools,” says John Witte, a UW-Madison professor who’s studied the results of vouchers.

Quoted: “You can’t say the program doesn’t work, because it has worked for some,” said Carolyn Heinrich, a former director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she focused on social welfare policy and labor force development.

Quoted: Nicole Vesely, Safe Kids Coordinator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s American Family Children’s Hospital, said she believes some accidental overdoses could be avoided if parents teach their children to always use the dosing device that comes with most cough syrups and liquid medicines.

Quoted: “Figuring out where high-energy neutrinos come from is one of the biggest problems in astrophysics today,” said Yang Bai of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who co-authored a study about these results published in Physical Review D.

Quoted: “There is a huge demand for dairy products in China. Like other developing nations, China is building up its diary industry but dairy is a complicated blend of agriculture, science and business,” said Pamela Ruegg, associate professor of dairy science at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

The United States and China have announced new goals to reduce carbon emissions.  This is the first time China, the world’s worst polluter, has ever agreed to ambitious steps to reduce greenhouse gases.

Quoted: “If you look back to the beginning of 2014, we had right around 20 or so counties that confirmed infestations and quarantined, and now we’re at about 37 counties quarantined,” University of Wisconsin – Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab Manager PJ Liesch said.

Quoted: “The problem with deer is it’s a sacred cow. People wouldn’t be upset if we were talking about gray squirrel because they don’t have the same emotional investment as they have with white-tailed deer,” said David Drake, a University of Wisconsin wildlife ecologist.

President Barack Obama has asked the Federal Communications Commission to take up the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality, the principle that says Internet service providers should treat all internet traffic equally. A University of Wisconsin telecommunications professor says the industry is unlikely to be enthusiastic.

Quoted: Sometimes other illnesses can lead to orthorexia. David Rakel, director of integrative medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, estimated that 10% to 15% of the patients who come in with food allergies and related problems develop an unhealthy fear of particular foods.

Quoted: “My strong suspicion is this happens more frequently than you think,” said Meg Gaines, who runs the Center for Patient Partnerships, a consumer health care advocacy group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. “I mean every time someone goes down, they don’t have someone around who knows what their insurance is.”

Quoted: “It is very good idea,” says Bilge Mutlu, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who researches the interaction between humans and robots. “It’s a lot more flexible and adaptable to day-to-day environments.”

Quoted, University of Wisconsin–Madison psychologist Janet Hyde: “I don’t think [the authors] give sufficient credence” to the experimental results about implicit bias and stereotype threat, Hyde says. “I think they just didn’t take it seriously enough. … They too readily dismiss evidence of sexism in academic science.”

Gov. Scott Walker beat expectations with a wide and early win over Democrat Mary Burke in Tuesday’s election, and experts say lower-than-anticipated voter turnout was the key to his victory.

Noted: That’s the question Elizabeth Graue and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been studying at schools involved in a project called SAGE Student Achievement Guarantee in Education.

Noted: To assess this, Karine Prince and Benjamin Zuckerberg, wildlife biologists with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, used bird counts taken between 1989 and 2011 by Project FeederWatch–an international volunteer program in which citizen scientists count and record the number and species of birds gathered at their backyard feeders–to analyze winter communities across eastern North America.

Quoted: Dr. Peggy Scallon, a child and adolescent psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that kids who don’t develop a sense of autonomy may start to fall behind their peers, have lower self-esteem, strained relationships with family members and be more irritable and anxious.

Noted: During her keynote address, Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, the Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told participants that hip-hop can also be an effective teaching tool in helping scores of “New Century students” succeed.