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Category: UW Experts in the News

Rutgers Gay-Slur Debacle Shows Sports Can Soil College Ambitions

Bloomberg

Noted: Biddy Martin, former chancellor at the University of Wisconsin and now president at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, said she faced a crisis soon after joining the Madison, Wisconsin-based school over alleged hazing by marching band members. Like Barchi, she relied on advice of those who reported to her, banning the band from a nationally televised night game against Ohio State.

In Mass Attacks, Public Now Advised to Take Action

New York Times

Quoted: Susan Riseling, chief of police at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said the Virginia Tech episode changed her thinking about how to advise students because it was clear that Mr. Cho had ?one goal, and that seemed to be to kill as many people as possible before ending his life.?

Girls Outnumbered in New York?s Elite Public Schools

New York Times

?It is very suspect that you don?t have as many girls as boys in New York City?s specialized schools,? said Janet S. Hyde, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin who has published research on girls? performance in math and science from elementary school through college. Individual girls might be losing opportunities, she said, ?but it is also bad for society as a whole because in a global economy we need to identify the best scientists and mathematicians.?

How Meditation Might Boost Your Test Scores

New York Times

Quoted: Richard J. Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has studied brain function in long-term and novice mindful meditators, offered this analogy: ?You can improve the signal-to-noise ratio by reducing the noise. Decreasing mind-wandering is doing just that.?

Researchers Discover How Spiral Galaxies Arms Form Using Computer Simulations

Spiral galaxies have long been the subject of astronomers? research as no definitive conclusion has been made over what actually causes them. Now, however, researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have helped solve this mystery, stating that they?ve proven that the spiral arms are persistent, long-lived, and self-perpetuating.

Review of ‘Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style & the 1960s’

Inside Higher Ed

Noted: Caroline Levine?s essay ?The Shock of the Banal: Mad Men?s Progressive Realism? provides an especially apt description of how the show works to create a distinct relationship between past and present that?s neither simply nostalgic nor a celebration of how far we?ve come. The dynamic of “Mad Men” is, in her terms, ?the play of familiarity in strangeness? that comes from seeing ?our everyday assumptions just far enough removed from us to feel distant.? (Levine is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.)

What Will New Evaluation Systems Cost? – Teacher Beat

The cost of new teacher-evaluation systems is likely to vary based on how states and districts choose to establish student-growth measures for all teachers, according to an analysis from a researcher at the Value-Added Research Center, a research evaluation firm and contractor located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Kim Tschudy: UW profs don?t deserve lumps from lawmakers

Capital Times

Dear Editor: It appears that Rep. Duey Stoebel, R-Saukville, is becoming the apprentice to Rep. Steve Nass with Stroebel?s recent charge that UW professors become department chairs in the last years of work to boost their pensions. He also laments the large number of overtime hours he thinks people work.

Waiting for the Spring Thaw

NBC-15

The layers left on local lakes are great if youre into ice fishing, but a daily taunt to those hoping to kiss winter conditions goodbye. “Pretty good for April, or almost April,” said angler Steve Garloff, describing the ice thickness while ice fishing on Monona Bay.

Doug Moe: Georgie Fabian, ?Mayor of Park Street,? takes starring turn

George Fabian is getting soft. The evidence is inescapable.For one thing, Fabian let Dick Geier make a documentary film about him. For another, I walked into the Park Street Shoe Repair this week without being insulted.Geier, the filmmaker, noticed it too. Geier recently retired from doing video production for the UW-Madison School of Education. He first met Fabian decades ago, and George growled at him.

Text mining uncovers British reserve and US emotion

Nature.com

Quoted: ?The correlation with mood terms is not altogether surprising, as these longer constructions provide increased opportunity for expressing sentiments,? explains biologist David Krakauer of the University of Wisconsin?Madison, who with his colleagues has mined Google Books for changes in literary style.

Obama’s use of executive power

McClatchy News Service

Quoted: “The expectation is that they all do this,” said Ken Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wrote “With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power.” “That is the typical way of doing things.”

How Monsanto outfoxed the Obama administration

Salon.com

Quoted: Lawyers say winning such a case would have been tough but not impossible. ?A successful case against Monsanto would have required very smart litigating,? said Peter Carstensen, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and antitrust specialist who has studied the seed industry. ?(The) Microsoft (case) required an extraordinarily able set of lawyers.?

Dems feast on Ryan budget

The Oshkosh Northwestern

Quoted: Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist, said Ryan?s budget could be a double-edged sword that cuts for him in a GOP primary and against him in a general election.

Online learning: Campus 2.0

Nature

Noted: The companies acknowledge that completion rates are a concern and that their platforms are still works in progress. And to observers such as David Krakauer, that is as it should be. ?There are two ways to make something new,? says Krakauer, a biologist who directs the Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin?Madison. ?You can design something that?s perfect on paper, and then try to build it. Or you can start with a system that?s rubbish, experiment and build a better one with feedback. That?s the Silicon Valley style ? but it?s also the scientific way.?

Julie Underwood ’76 to Discuss ‘The Privatization of Education’ in Wisconsin Presentation

Julie K. Underwood, dean of the School of Education of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and 1976 graduate of DePauw University, will discuss “The Privatization of Education” in a March 21 presentation at the Racine Marriott Hotel. The program, which is free and open to the public, is previewed in the Racine Journal Times. “Underwood will explore four challenges of privatization of education in America, and what they mean for the future of public education in this country,” it reports.

Facebook math problem: Why PEMDAS doesn?t always give a clear answer

Slate Magazine

Quoted: But first, why do we get so riled up about these problems? People don?t usually get into fistfights at the bar over arithmetic, but these math threads are spectacularly vitriolic. A couple of factors are at work in these math debates, according to Robert Glenn Howard, a social psychologist at the University of Wisconsin?Madison who specializes in Internet communication and folklore.

Power foods: New diet that might protect your brain

Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune

Quoted: Barnard supports his ideas with studies, but be mindful of the kind of studies he examined, says Sanjay Asthana, director of the Alzheimer?s disease research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most are epidemiological studies based on what people say they eat and on how their health changes over a period of years. The gold standard for research is a randomized controlled trial, in which participants would be put on different diets and their health monitored.