Category: UW Experts in the News

Noted: The Cooperative Children?s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, which compiles statistics about the race of authors and characters in children?s books published each year, found that in 2011, just over 3 percent of the 3,400 books reviewed were written by or about Latinos, a proportion that has not changed much in a decade.

Quoted: Closing fisheries during spawning time is only one of several ways managers might soften the evolutionary pressures created by recreational and commercial harvest, says fish ecologist Jim Kitchell of the University of Wisconsin?Madison. Tweaking the legal limits on fish size might change pressures toward slower growth or smaller body size.

Mayor Paul Soglin and members of the Madison Local Food Committee explained the vision of a public market in the Madison area and introduced details of a survey for potential vendors for the market.

Quoted: But the weather may have affected availability in some markets, says Les Werner, an associate professor of forestry at University of Wisconsin. Some farms have fewer trees to sell because of weather damage, which means the retailers, tree lots and other vendors that buy from farms might need to order from farms further away, or accept a few lower-quality trees, he says.

A record number of more than three million Wisconsin voters voted in this fall?s election, according to the recently-certified results from the state?s elections agency.

Noted: Marcy Carlson, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, basically warned me not to get all googly-eyed. She pointed out that the number of marriages has been close to 30,000 in the last couple of years, a rate of 5.3 per 1,000 Wisconsinites. And, from her point of view, one would expect more marriages when the state population goes up and the rate stays the same, as it has since 2009.

Quoted: “To have doubled the population prevalence of a disorder is staggering,” says University of Wisconsin psychiatrist Eric Heiligenstein. “Obviously, that?s weird.”

Both sides say they want a diplomatic solution to fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinians militants in Gaza, but both sides also appear ready to escalate the violence if talks fail.

UW-Madison Middle East Studies expert Jennifer Loewenstein says the people of Gaza have lived under control of the neighboring Israeli government since 1967. They?re now under an economic blockade….The Israeli government has not ruled out a ground invasion, now assembling tens of thousands of troops near the Gaza border. Meanwhile, Egyptian leaders are working on a cease-fire agreement in hopes of peace. Loewenstein says it won’t come easy.

“I think what could solve or begin to solve this problem would be negotiations, face to face negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians of all different factions,” she says.

Quoted: ?It seemed the resources — in this case the energy — was all going to China,” says Edward Friedman, Chinese foreign policy expert at the University of Wisconsin,  “and the Burmese were essentially becoming servants in which their resources were serving Chinese purposes and they were beginning to worry whether they were serving Burmese purposes.?

Quoted: Michael Scott, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has co-authored a book on deadly force and served on the Madison police force for a few years before research and teaching.

Quoted: Keith Findley, a criminal law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said even that short criminal history could have a profound effect on Baumann?s sentencing if she?s found guilty. Findley said a defendant?s prior criminal history relates directly to two of the three factors Wisconsin law requires judges to consider when determining a sentence.

Quoted: “We?re seeing a very slow recovery, with increases in poverty among workers due to more new jobs which are low-wage,” Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist who specializes in poverty, told Fox News Latino. “As a whole, the safety net is holding many people up, while California is struggling more because it?s relatively harder there to qualify for food stamps and other benefits.”

Quoted: ?There is no question ? none ? that the recent redistricting effort distorted the vote,? said Ken Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?Nobody takes seriously the notion that the legislative plan for congressional districts wasn?t politically motivated.?

Quoted: Even some people who support human embryo research may feel uncomfortable with the notion of genetically engineering chimeras and hybrid animals, says Robert Streiffer, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Quoted: Sara Goldrick-Rab, an associate professor of education policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that most of the eligibility changes Congress has made so far in order to preserve the maximum grant have had little basis in research. For the most part, she said, they were ?reactive and detrimental to the overall message that we want to use aid to make decisions,? Goldrick-Rab said. ?They look like acts of desperation rather than acts of good public policy.?

Research shows our perceptions about officer-involved shootings often vary dramatically from their reality. Michael Scott, a police officer turned UW-Madison clinical associate professor of law who co-authored a book on police-involved shootings, recommended a video put together this year by the Lane County (Ore.) District Attorney?s Office that suggests officers have far less time and control than we might think in deadly force situations, which make up a tiny fraction of the 1 percent of police calls that involve the use of any force at all.

“We?re seeing a very slow recovery, with increases in poverty among workers due to more new jobs which are low-wage,” said Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist who specializes in poverty. “As a whole, the safety net is holding many people up, while California is struggling more because it?s relatively harder there to qualify for food stamps and other benefits.”