Category: UW Experts in the News

If you see large clouds of smoke billowing from the western edge of the UW-Madison campus during the next week or so, don?t be alarmed: it?s man?s way of hastening what nature is slow to do. Prescribed controlled burns are planned in areas of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve to help control weeds, remove encroaching woody plants and encourage prairie plant growth, according to a news release from the UW-Madison news service. “The prairie?s exposed location allows its abundant upright fine fuels to dry quickly following precipitation,” preserve field technician Adam Gundlach said in the release, noting that leaf litter of surrounding woodlands often stays too damp to carry fire.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney?s loss at the polls may be in part due to the Republican Party?s lack of support from the Latino community, experts say.

Quoted: While Republican Johnson and Democrat Baldwin represent near opposite ends of the political spectrum, they also are a fair picture of the state of politics in Wisconsin, UW-Madison political science professor David Canon said.

Quoted: “We knew in detail about the revenue (cuts to schools) and we knew only sketchy details about the savings from Act 10 or the tools,” said Andrew Reschovsky, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison not involved in the report. “This fills that very important gap.”

?I think he has a real opportunity to make his mark now on resolving the ?fiscal cliff,?? said David Canon, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor whose areas of expertise include the U.S. Congress. ?And if he can emerge as one of those key problem solvers in Congress, I think that positions him very well for 2016.?

A lot of Republicans are still scratching their heads over Tuesday?s stinging rebuke at the polls. But some are starting to wake up to the fact that on the national level at least, the GOP is doomed unless it finds a way to court Latino voters.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Political Science Professor Scott Straus created and coordinated a workshop in October to help agencies within the U.S. government better understand the causes of genocide and ways to suppress it.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin found that women who had taken the Pill performed significantly better in some of the tests. They also found that the longer the women had been on the Pill, the higher their scores.

Noted: Prof Michael Apple, speaking at an Australian Education Union event in Melbourne today, said the focus on testing and reduced autonomy for teachers had gone too far.

Quoted: Additionally, Constance Flanagan of the University of Wisconsin argues, there?s been a backlash on college campuses to voter-suppression efforts. “The voter-suppression thing did make people more aware,” she said. “Our university newspaper had a front-page story about what are your rights, do you have to produce an ID. … It was a conversation topic among young people and something they passed on to one another.” Particularly, she said, that minority groups who felt targeted really responded by organizing themselves and making sure people voted. (Ta-Nehisi Coates and Andrew Cohen have both written about this backlash here at The Atlantic.)

Quoted: ?There was record amount of spending,? said Michael Wagner, an election and American politics expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?There?s not much evidence candidates or interest groups can buy election with advertising. What?s difficult to figure out is all these super PACs could?ve have chosen people likely to win and seemed successful.?

Tom Parr, a Madison police investigator, has been going to crime scenes for the past six years and has noticed a change. “What I?ve been noticing over the last year and a half or so is, when I get there, there?s a ton of people standing around (but) no one wants to talk to the police,” he says. “Nobody saw anything.” Parr continues: “I started (asking), ?Do we have a community apathy problem here in Madison??

…In May, members of the department’s Officer Advisory Committee, a 40-year-old council of employees charged with advising the chief, broached the issue with Police Chief Noble Wray. What they said is that a citywide partnership is needed to create strategies that involve the entire community, not just leave things to the police. So as a result, about 40 police officers, led by Wray as moderator, met at the department’s east-side training facility on Femrite Drive with four professors from the UW-Madison in September.

Quoted: ?The partisan tone is likely to remain quite harsh, despite the departure of a few of the more extreme voices,? says David Canon, a University of Wisconsin political scientist.

Quoted: ?Even if the electorate didn?t grow at all, Republicans needed to worry,? University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said, ?because that?s enough of a flip to make the state go for Obama.? 

Quoted: Ken Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist who served as an expert witness for groups that sued the state over the maps, said the new districts have had some role, but that other factors were also at play. He noted the statewide wins for Democrats were not blowouts, which left open the possibility for Republicans to perform well in legislative races.

Apparently not. The U.S. system may have been based on a delegate model, but nowadays representatives answer to a higher power. ?They are less likely to listen to constituents and more likely to act as a national party team,? said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

Quoted: ?You can?t win an election by being just about white men, and that?s what the Republicans have been doing,? added David Canon, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison Prof. Constance Flanagan, an expert in youth attitudes and beliefs, said young voters are as ?practical as anybody else? and often do not need glossy promises or a hope-and-change savior to turn out en masse.

Noted: Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, of the University of Wisconsin, agrees, but he cautions that their experiment only used one anesthetic and in one condition. ?To me, this [study] suggests a mechanism by which propofol can block inter-cortical communication.? In fact, rat studies using different anesthetics have also found slow oscillation, but found that some longer-range brain communication is still possible during unconsciousness, noted neuroscientist Nanyin Zhang, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who was not involved in the study.

Dale Schoeller, a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has not decided if there is a relationship between high levels of caffeine and death.

The hundreds of thousands of people who vote by absentee ballots in Wisconsin might not realize mail-in ballots are probably the least reliable way to ensure a vote is counted, said Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor who studies election administration. ?If there?s a vulnerability in the system that both parties should be concerned about, it?s absentee ballots,? Burden said.

Quoted: Michael Wagner, a political expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin.

Quoted: Ken Mayer and Crawford Young, political scientists at UW-Madison.

Quoted: Charles Franklin, the University of Wisconsin “political sage whose Marquette University Law School poll commands wide respect.”

Quoted: Jordan Ellenberg, a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, is one of them. He?s spent the last two months trying to absorb Mochizuki?s ideas. He?s far from convinced that the proof works, but he?s intrigued by its immense possibility.

Quoted: ?Unions have basically been in campaign mode for two years,? said William Powell Jones, a University of Wisconsin labor historian. ?They?re stronger as a result.?

Quoted: It?s no surprise Romney is doing well in a state that is home to vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan and where poll numbers are much more favorable for Romney than they were for 2008 GOP nominee John McCain of Arizona, said Michael Wagner, a political expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A new poll released Thursday showed President Barack Obama is clinging to a narrow lead in Wisconsin over former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., with only a few days left before Tuesday?s election.

Many University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty, staff and community members have signed an online petition asking the Office of Human Resources to release a list of changes to be included in the personnel system redesign following recent campus feedback. UW-Madison sociology professor Sara Goldrick-Rab created the petition Tuesday morning hoping to urge the office to release the list of the changes they will make before the Faculty Senate will vote to support or deny the HR plan as a whole in a meeting Monday.

Quoted: It?s no surprise Romney is doing well in a state that is home to vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan and where poll numbers are much more favorable for Romney than they were for 2008 GOP nominee John McCain of Arizona, said Michael Wagner, a political expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.