Noted: Every Democratic presidential candidate since Walter Mondale in 1984 has won Wisconsin, but the Obama campaign ?can?t view Wisconsin as being in the bank for them,? said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. ?They?re definitely going to have to put more effort here than they were initially planning.?
Quoted: ?The unions will have to do some soul searching on how they fit into the Wisconsin political landscape,? said former Madison Mayor David Cieslewicz, a University of Wisconsin poli-sci professor.
Quoted: “Public-sector unions are licking their wounds, but I?m not sure how that all connects to the national story,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “We?ll still be a swing state.”
Quoted: Walker?s victory will be seen as a validation of the law that weakened public-worker unions by making it ?pretty much impossible? for them to operate, said William Jones, a labor historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The law limits contract bargaining to wages and makes payment of dues voluntary, he said.
Quoted: Walker?s win “suggests that Wisconsin?s in play” in the presidential race, said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist. “This is a state that?s competitive.”
Quoted: “Particularly public employee unions, they see this as a fight to the death, because if Walker is not recalled their view is this means it?s open season on them,” said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “You have two sides to a political controversy thinking their lives are at stake in a death match.”
Quoted: Barry Burden, political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it?s not surprising Obama hasn?t been front and centre in Wisconsin given Barrett?s uphill battle against Walker. The governor has vastly outspent the mayor, with the majority of the cash coming from wealthy out-of-state donors.
Quoted: “The campaign rhetoric over the last two weeks has not been much about unions or collective bargaining?that?s not been the centerpiece of the Barrett campaign,” says Barry Burden, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Stephen Carpenter, a professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says the new study?s biggest contribution is that the researchers were able to both map the location of the tipping point, or threshold, and measure the early warning signs that predict it.
Quoted: There seems to be growing interest in such sharing, says James Wollack, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “If you go on the Web and look, it?s pretty clear that the people trying to game the system are learning from each other,” he says. “Unless the testing industry also pools its resources, we?re always going to be playing this game of catch-up.”
Quoted: ?People who are homeless are under a lot of stress, and stress causes higher cortisol levels. Higher cortisol levels lead to weight gain,? said nutritionist Sherry Tanumihardjo of the University of Wisconsin, who has studied the hunger-obesity paradox but was not involved in this research.
In a 15-story building, in the middle of land-locked Wisconsin, a team of scientists waits for hurricane season. That?s when a multi-million dollar, unmanned aircraft will start flying from Wallops Island, Va., loaded up with a UW-Madison-engineered instrument to gather data from tropical storms off the Atlantic coast. “It’s sort of a mystery right now in our science community as to why hurricanes intensify or de-intensify,” said Chris Velden, a UW-Madison scientist working on the project. “We hope to get some information from this aircraft to be able to answer those questions.”
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden.
As two of many faculty and staff long engaged in preparing UW-Madison graduate students to be both excellent researchers and excellent teachers, we were disappointed with the headline in the May 27 newspaper: “Interest in research wanes among UW-Madison Ph.D.s.” The headline missed the point and an important sea change in graduate education: Interest in teaching is increasing among UW-Madison Ph.Ds.
A: Wash your car on any given day and the chances of rain always seem to be pretty good. Raindrops typically leave a mosaic of grime that requires another trip to the neighborhood car wash. Rain makes cars dirty, according to UW-Madison atmospheric scientist Steve Ackerman, because “the air near the ground has all kinds of particles floating in it: pollen, pollutants, dust, smoke, etc.”
Talk of Wisconsin?s rich deer-hunting tradition being overhauled by a Texas wildlife biologist hired by the Walker administration to manage the state?s deer population has led to mounting fear that Wisconsin?s public hunting land will go the way of Texas. If that scenario played out, public land would be snatched up by private owners, preventing the state?s roughly 600,000 deer hunters from roaming free of charge to hunt…Besides raising concerns among some Assembly Democrats, (James) Kroll?s preliminary report also has drawn criticism from Tim Van Deelen, a UW-Madison associate professor of forest and wildlife ecology.
Noted: But Turner and his colleagues — Evelyn Wiener, executive director of the student health service at the University of Pennsylvania, and Sarah Van Orman, executive director of university health services at the University of Wisconsin at Madison — broke the data down even further.
Quoted: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that Walker was elected in the 2010 Tea Party revolt, a powerful reaction against President Barack Obama?s stimulus legislation, health-care overhaul and federal deficits. After proposing, fighting for and winning passage of Act 10, a budget repair bill that greatly restricted the organizing rights of public employee unions – and facing demonstrations of up to 100,000 people – Walker became “a poster child for that new face of the Republican Party,” Burden said.
Quoted: Newspaper endorsements do little to influence or sway voters, says James Baughman, professor of journalism at University of Wisconsin-Madison. But they do facilitate discussion of current issues and candidates in state papers and on their websites. A polarized readership places some newspapers in a tight position when it comes time to announce endorsements, says Baughman.
Two common sites in Wisconsin, toxic algae blooms on lake water and cows standing in a field, could become the next big things in the biofuel industry. UW-Madison researchers have been awarded federal grants to investigate using the bacteria in toxic algae and cow stomachs in the development of biofuels, according to a release from the UW-Madison news service. Jennifer Reed, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, and Garret Suen, an assistant professor of bacteriology, each received five-year, $750,000 early career awards from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research.
Quoted: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that Walker was elected in the 2010 tea party revolt, a powerful reaction against President Barack Obama?s stimulus legislation, health care overhaul and federal deficits. After proposing, fighting for and winning passage of Act 10, a budget repair bill that greatly restricted the organizing rights of public employee unions ? and facing demonstrations of up to 100,000 people ? Walker became ?a poster child for that new face of the Republican Party,? Burden said.
Quoted: In the big picture, “given the research showing the importance of the olfactory — smell — system among other animal species, it is likely that humans possess similar capabilities that we don?t yet fully understand, yet influence our behavior more than we realize,” said Elizabeth Krusemark, a smell researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin Madison?s Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab.
Noted: The momentum has been building since April 2005, when Nimmerjahn published his movies2. A month later, a team led by Wen-Biao Gan ? a neuroscientist at New York University, who first developed the skull-thinning method ? published similar results6. ?This was a major breakthrough and inspired a lot of people,? says Marie-Ève Tremblay, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin?Madison who studies the role of microglia in sleep and wakefulness.
Noted: On a more practical level, Patti Lux-Weber, the Parent Program coordinator at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says that there are some basic topics that parents may want to cover before sending their offspring into an environment where they?ll have significantly more freedom than they had at home.
Noted: The idea is to produce solar fuels that can store the electricity for longer periods and which can be accessed at all times. The two main tools employed by the Wisconsin-Madison researchers are ultraviolet light and fluorescent paint. During the electrolysis process, potential catalysts are photographed while the paint reacts to the oxygen being formed.
Quoted: Studies over the last few decades suggest that people whose diets are high in specific antioxidants such as vitamin C, E, zinc, or carotenoid plant pigments such as beta-carotene or lutein are less likely to develop common age-related eye diseases, said Julie Mares, a professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: In a pattern that is part education, part family background, college graduates tend to have longer life expectancies, higher household incomes, lower divorce rates and fewer single-parent families than those with less education, and cities where they cluster tend to exhibit those patterns more strongly. Montgomery County, where Dayton is located, has a premature death rate that is more than double that of Fairfax County, Va., the highly educated Washington suburb, according to Bridget Catlin, a University of Wisconsin researcher.
In what you could call a lab-coat love story, University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Lance Lian is hoping to find a way to your heart.
Wisconsin residents are living longer but not necessarily living better, according to a report released Tuesday.
A UW-Madison free speech expert is questioning whether the university had the evidence to suspend a school fraternity for two years.
Quoted: Frank Tuerkheimer, an emeritus law professor at the University of Wisconsin and former member of the Watergate prosecution staff, said reports today about the John Doe looking into potential bid rigging in Milwaukee County means the investigation has taken a turn of “an even more serious magnitude.”
Noted: Some scientists and defenders of the wolves say the Wisconsin rules are too lenient for hunters?and too cruel for the wolves. At up to 4½ months, “the season is too long; it covers too wide of an area and it comes with too many untested methods,” including using dogs and allowing night hunts, said Adrian Treves, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who studies predator-prey ecology.
Death rates are dropping in Wisconsin but obesity is up, more people say they?re in poor health and socioeconomic factors such as childhood poverty are on the rise, a new UW-Madison report says.
Wisconsin?s agriculture secretary isn?t just surrounded by the statistics that show the changing face of the state?s signature dairy industry. He?s part of them.
Quoted: ?It looks like the public here is not quite willing to say Walker went too far,? offered Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?Wisconsinites view there being an inequality between public-sector unions and private-sector unions and see Walker as having remedied some of that.?
A UW-Madison work group has revised its recommendation for reorganizing university staff after criticism that it would eliminate collective bargaining rights for some employees.
Noted: Most of these appointments don?t happen immediately under any governor. And in theory, Barrett could take “as long as he wants,” says University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Dennis Dresang, professor emeritus of public affairs and political science. But for the high-profile jobs, including cabinet chiefs, deputies and communications staff, it would behoove Barrett to get his people in place quickly, Dresang adds.
An internal poll done by the union-backed We Are Wisconsin group shows a tighter race between Gov. Scott Walker and Tom Barrett than was indicated in several polls that came out last week. The most recent poll, conducted by Greenberg Quislan Rosner Research, a Democratic polling firm, shows Walker leading Barrett, 50 percent to 47 percent, well within the margin of error. That displays a better outlook for Democrats than last week?s round of polls, all of which showed the governor leading Barrett in the June 5 recall election by five or six points.
If a campaign?s own polls show its candidate performing poorly, it usually simply won?t report them, says Charles Franklin, the pollster who conducts the Marquette University Law School poll.
A hunting season for wolves proposed by the state Department of Natural Resources is likely to face a court challenge and could land the animal back on the endangered species list, according to a UW-Madison expert in predator-prey ecology who has spent 12 years studying wolf management in Wisconsin. The DNR?s wolf hunting plan “increases the risk that wolves will be returned to federally endangered status because it proposes untested methods in a very long season in too broad an area of the state,” warned Adrian Treves, an associate professor of environmental studies who has surveyed thousands of state residents on the issue.
Quoted: Some vegetables have real babies and fake ones, too. Irwin Goldman, a beets-and-onions man at the University of Wisconsin, explained that scallions might be sold as foetal bulbs in the United States, but they come from a different species altogether overseas (cf. Allium fistulosum, the “Welsh onion”). Or bok choy: American grocers sell a baby version harvested before it gets too big and fibrous. A true infant, perhaps, but also a hack; an Asian dwarf variety claims to be the real thing.
Ever wonder what students at UW-Madison are working on these days? Sue Robinson — an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication — emailed me a note last week highlighting the work of those in her Intermediate Reporting (Journalism 335) class. For the students? final project, they worked collaboratively to launch a website about education in the state called edUtopia Wisconsin.
Quoted: ?I think it?s still competitive, I think there?s still a chance for Barrett to win. But right now most of the forces are pushing in favor of Walker,? said Barry Burden, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison Dean of Students Lori Berquam described an early-morning shooting near campus on the eve of graduation last weekend as “unsettling.” She said she spoke to a number of students at graduation who were nearby at the time of the shooting on the 600 block of University Avenue.”They were pretty shaken,” she said. “The sentiment was like ?well, it?s not something you expect to happen in Madison.?”
How do you teach middle-schoolers about compassion? Create a video game about it, of course. That?s the thinking, anyway, behind a new study at UW-Madison. With a $1.39 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UW-Madison researchers will develop and test two educational games to help eighth-graders develop empathy, cooperation, mental focus and self-regulation.
Quoted: “Given his past history of violence, that could certainly have put him at an increased risk of becoming psychotic and violent again,” said Dr. Ken Robbins, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “Some people might see it as a nuisance, but it means the economy is moving, particularly if those trains are stopping to load and unload,” said Teresa Adams, a professor and director of the National Center for Freight and Infrastructure Research and Education, a consortium led by UW-Madison.
Quoted: ?ALEC is a huge player in pushing forward a conservative agenda based on the premise that the free market and private sectors address social problems better than the government,? said Julie Underwood, dean of the school of education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has been critical of ALEC?s education agenda.
A: Yes, said Daniel Uhlrich, a UW?Madison neuroscience professor who studies visual processing in the brain. “If you flash a light at the right frequency, some people with epilepsy will have an epileptic seizure.” These “photo-triggered” seizures are not very common, affecting fewer than 10 percent of people with epilepsy. Some of those affected may experience seizures only in response to a specific trigger, while others also have spontaneous seizures.
A: As we head from early to late spring during the month of May, there are a number of ways to measure this progress. One way is to consider how often we experience a temperature 90 degrees during May. The last time Madison reached 90 degrees in May was just two years ago ? on May 24, 2010. This is a relatively rare occurrence, however, as Madison has reached 90 degrees in May only 10 times since 1971 (once each in 2006, 1991, and 1988; twice each in 1978 and 1977 and three times in 1975).
Dear Editor: I have learned that for the first time since the early 1980s, the UW-Madison has approved maternal deprivation experiments on baby monkeys. Maternal deprivation experiments were conducted for two decades at the university by Harry Harlow and his many students. After Harlow?s death, even some of his own students admitted that they should not have been allowed to continue for so long. Some of them have lamented their own silence. This angst and regret was documented by Deborah Blum in her biography of Harlow, ?Love at Goon Park.?
In December 2010, weeks before Scott Walker dropped his self-described ?bomb? eviscerating bargaining rights for public workers, the single divide that defines contemporary state politics today was already crystallizing in my mind. The truth is that, more than ever, we in Wisconsin are split into two tiers — wealthy conservatives who leverage their money and the influence it buys to control our policy debates — and the rest of us. Back then, my column was describing a series of interviews with regular people across the state by a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.
UW-Madison political science professors Katherine Cramer Walsh, Barry Burden, and Çharles Franklin are included in this column.
Quoted: Molotov cocktails are dangerous weapons, but it ?kind of stretches the bounds to define that as terrorism,? said Michael Scott, director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The historic recall election targeting Gov. Scott Walker is such a close race, the divisions between voters so entrenched, that the outcome is likely to come down to voter turnout.Both sides agree on that point. But what are they going to do about it? “Look for them to be targeting the counties that have shown shifts, in turnout, or direction, or vote margin,” said Charles Franklin, poll director for Marquette University Law School. That could be areas that have swung between blue and red, or between largely backing Democrats and Republicans, in recent statewide elections such as the 2006 and 2010 governor’s races, as well as the 2011 state Supreme Court race.
The Russian government is set to pay for up to 2,000 of its students per year to attend top universities elsewhere around the world in an effort to produce more scientists and bolster global research collaborations, Nature is reporting. Students who take advantage of the scholarships, however, will be required to return to Russia to work. Ken Cutts, the recruitment and media services manager for UW-Madison?s Office of Admissions, says he isn?t expecting a significant influx of these students and isn?t aware of any plans by the university to lure Russians to town. UW-Madison?s 2011-12 fall enrollment report indicates there were 37 students from Russia, including 13 undergraduates, attending the university.
Quoted: Day 11, I received the life-saving response from Phil Pellitteri, an insect expert from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.?It is an adult female orb weaver – likely in the genus Araneus,? Pellitteri noted.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Andrew Reschovsky said many economists have thought the negative numbers in the federal reports were at odds with indications of growing personal income and tax revenue.
Noted: The ?underground? is always with us. University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Edgar Feige has been doing his best to follow what?s happened here.
Quoted: Despite decades of effort, seismologists still cannot reliably predict earthquakes. Tanaka?s approach is promising, but Harold Tobin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison points out that her analysis was done after the quake happened.
Quoted: “When these things come to together in just the wrong way, they can really put someone at greater risk of suicide,” said Dr. Ken Robbins, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin.
Joel Rogers, a UW sociologist and political theorist, says that we often miss the reality of how money works in politics. The point at which to look at the role of money in politics is not the final tabulation that says one candidate or party had more money than the other. The point at which to compare is at the early and mid-stages of a campaign. Does one side have such an overwhelming advantage that it can effectively silence the other? Does one candidate have the ability to so dominate the discourse that their messages come to define the debate? That?s what Scott Walker and his supporters have tried to do.
….It won?t just be that the Democratic National Committee will be identified as a dysfunctional political operation when compared to the Republican National Committee. A failure to leap into an essential fight about the future of working families and their unions, as well as public education and public services, will raise questions about whether D.C. Democrats ?get? what America is debating about.
