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.
One week after celebrating a landslide victory over Kathleen Falk in the Democratic gubernatorial recall primary, Tom Barrett faces a painful reality: Polls show he trails Gov. Scott Walker by almost the same margin that separated him from Walker in the November 2010 governor?s race. The latest Marquette University Law School poll, conducted by visiting professor Charles Franklin and released Wednesday, shows Walker ahead of Barrett 50 percent to 44 percent, with only 3 percent undecided.
Noted: The new numbers are a more accurate reflection of what?s happening, but they still show very slow job growth for the state, said University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Andrew Reschovsky. Since they?re being released early, it?s impossible to tell how Wisconsin compares to other states, he said.
Quoted: Steven Deller, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Walker?s budgetary austerity and a “tremendous amount of uncertainty” generated by the recall “have kind of put the brakes on the state economy.”
Noted: “By that measure, the most popular movies have already won a very big award in the form of lots of cash,” Jonathan Gray, a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in an email. “While it may seem elitist and snobbish for other award ceremonies to ?ignore? popularity, I often find myself wondering why something that got half a billion dollars at the box office needs a little faux-gold statuette for validation.”
Interviewed: UW-Madison Political Scientist Barry Burden describes why the majority of voters have not needed swaying.
UW-Madison professor Gloria Ladson-Billings is one of seven education heavyweights from across the country named to a panel that?s designed to accelerate and advise on efforts to close achievement gaps at schools in the United States. The NEA Foundation on Tuesday announced the scholars and practitioners who would serve as the inaugural cohort of its Senior Fellows Advisory Group. Dawn Crim, the School of Education?s associate dean for external relations, says Ladson-Billings and others within UW-Madison continue to work with the Madison schools on a range of issues -? including closing the achievement gap.
A detailed analysis of the 4,400 entries in Walker?s calendar by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism paints a portrait of a public relations-minded governor who focuses his message on receptive, conservative audiences and who, as the effort to recall him has intensified, has spent a sharply decreasing amount of time on official state business. Katherine Cramer Walsh, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the center?s findings matched her own assessment of Walker?s strategy: ?To shore up his base, spend time with his supporters, and not necessarily build bridges, compromise or reach out to opponents.?
Noted: For Carolyn Abbott, the numbers will be little more than a curiosity. She has decided to leave the classroom, and is entering the Ph.D. program in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall.
The state Department of Revenue is out with a video presentation arguing that the federal estimates on Wisconsin job losses over the past year are wrong. The video features department economist John Koskinen saying the state economy is doing much better than the employment numbers from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest. Gov. Scott Walker on Monday said that ?brighter? job numbers are coming out later this week but did not offer more details.
….Meanwhile, a UW-Madison think tank is out with a report showing that Wisconsin would have gained nearly 50,000 jobs over the past 14 months if job creation had kept pace with the rest of the nation. Instead, Wisconsin is down 14,200 jobs since Walker took office in January 2011, leaving a 64,000 ?jobs hole,? according to an analysis by the left-leaning Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS).
Noted: Viewers easily absorb health messages that are embedded in a narrative, research shows. Inaccurate information offered in a story format is recalled more readily than the real facts received during sex education classes or from a doctor, said Al Gunther, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Quoted: Colonography “does have some advantages and disadvantages and I think it?s important for people to know what those are,” said Dr. Perry Pickhardt, of the department of radiology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.
Wisconsin?s proposal for holding schools accountable is short on details and lacks ambitious goals to improve student achievement, according to a federal review. As a result, the state?s request for flexibility under the federal No Child Left Behind law could be at risk of being denied, said Doug Harris, a UW-Madison associate professor of education and public policy who is following the school accountability reform process.
….Gary Cook, a research scientist at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research who has reviewed past state applications for Education Department programs, said the most serious criticism was Wisconsin?s application lacked ?ambitious annual measurable? goals for improving student achievement.
A: Actually, large sewage-treatment plants have been creating and collecting methane for more than half a century, said Daniel Noguera, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the UW-Madison.
A: Since the invention of the telescope in the 1600s, observers have recorded variations in the numbers of dark spots, or sunspots, on the sun?s surface. Observations show that the sun exhibits a periodic change in the number of sunspots that normally follow a regular cycle with peaks 11 years apart.
Noted: The Helium-3 fusion process is not simply theoretical ? the University of Wisconsin-Madison Fusion Technology Institute successfully performed fusion experiments combining two molecules of Helium-3. Estimates place the efficiency of Helium-3 fusion reactions at seventy percent, out-pacing coal and natural gas electricity generation by twenty percent.
Quoted: Walter Dickey. “They are the final authority. Since they?re deciders of what the parameters of their authority are, in the event members of the court wish to recuse themselves, they can appoint members of the appellate court to the Supreme Court for purposes of discipline.”
Eliminating loans isn?t an option at most public universities. Substantial state funding cuts are forcing public schools to depend more heavily on tuition payments to cover operating costs. “We just don?t have the fiscal means to eliminate debt,” says Susan Fischer, financial aid director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where students graduated with an average debt of $24,140 in 2011.
Noted: Being a nanny is like being a second parent. ?Nannies want to form lasting bonds with the children. They recognize they won?t be there forever, but they do want to be recognized for their hard work,? said Cameron McDonald, author of “Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs and the Micropolitics of Mothering,” to The Huffington Post.
Noted: The testing found statistically significant improvements in employees? investment knowledge, their establishment of goals and budgets, and an increase in their contributions to retirement plans, according to research by J. Michael Collins, an assistant professor and director the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Quoted: Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says people are more likely to do better for themselves — and their children are likely to do better — in states with more educated residents and more dynamic economies, such as those in the Northeast.
Noted: A leading U.S. Pushkinist, David Bethea of the University of Wisconsin, agrees that translations of Pushkin into other languages can be disastrous. Most renderings into English come out like ?a pretty good Victorian poet, maybe Tennyson,? he told me by telephone.
Lawrence Landweber, a UW-Madison emeritus professor of computer sciences, is one of 32 people recently inducted into the newly created Internet Hall of Fame. Landweber is being honored as one of 10 ?innovators.? According to his bio posted on the Hall?s website, Landweber?s ?first networking project in 1977, TheoryNet, involved an email system for theoretical computer scientists.
Regarding the recent assertion by Rep. Don Pridemore, R-Hartford, that domestic violence victims should not divorce their abusive partners, graduate students in my family problems in social work class composed this rebuttal.
Quoted: “With Maurice Sendak?s 1963 classic tale of vengeful rebellion, Max and the Wild Things ushered in a new era in children?s literature,? says Kathleen Horning, director of the Cooperative Children?s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin School of Education in Madison.
One of the world?s experts on vaccinations for pets is Dr. Ron Schultz, professor and chair of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, Madison. He says you?re in a no win situation. He can?t advocate that you break the law, but is hopeful for changes in this inflexible law.
