Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: “Any Chinese lawyer would be extremely cautious in handling such a high-profile case,” says Sida Liu, a professor of sociology and law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is researching Chinese criminal law and procedure. Courts in China are subservient to the party, and lawyers regarded as politically suspect often face persecution, disbarment, or even imprisonment. China also lacks clear evidentiary rules, and criminal defense lawyers in particular are vulnerable to charges that they have elicited false testimony from their clients.

Quoted: Bruce Maas, chief information officer for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Pollster and political scientist Charles Franklin

Quoted: “A surprising finding is that when participants are asked to find a visual item among distractors, hearing its name immediately prior to searching… improves speed and efficiency of searching for the named object,” says the report from Gary Lupyan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Daniel Swingley of the University of Pennsylvania. “For example, when participants searched for the numeral 2 among 5s, actually hearing the word ?two? or, in a separate experiment, hearing ?ignore fives? immediately prior to searching improved overall search response times.”

Quoted: ?In the short attention span of an election cycle, voters sometimes expect results quicker,? said Gary Radloff, an expert on Midwest energy policy at the University of Wisconsin. ?And I just don?t know that?s fair. You have to be patient with new technologies, particularly in energy.?

Noted: ?Emanuel and Thomas can do the top 1 percent better than anyone,? Timothy Smeeding, a professor at the University of Wisconsin?s La Follette School of Public Affairs, wrote in an e-mail to The Times. Similarly, Sheldon Danziger of the University of Michigan?s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, wrote: ?Only the I.R.S. data have large enough samples to focus on the very rich.? The other major source of income data, the Current Population Survey (conducted by the Census Bureau), ?is too small to examine the top 1 percent,? Danziger wrote.

Quoted: The associate dean of teacher preparation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cheryl R. Hanley-Maxwell

Quoted: Charles Franklin, a political scientist who runs the Marquette Law School Poll in Milwaukee.

Two University of Wisconsin faculty members were awarded Guggenheim Fellowship Awards for ?past work and exceptional promise? for future creative scholarship.

Gilles Bousquet, UW-Madison?s dean of international studies and vice provost for globalization, will serve as UW-Eau Claire?s interim chancellor, according to an announcement by UW System President Kevin Reilly.UW-Eau Claire will be without a chancellor after May 1 when Brian Levin-Stankevich leaves to become president of Westminster College in Utah.

University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly has chosen an international expert to serve as UW-Eau Claire?s interim chancellor. Gilles Bousquet (zheel boo-SKAY) currently serves as dean of UW-Madison?s Division of International Studies and International Institute director.

Noted: TV critic Myles McNutt, who blogs at cultural-learnings.com, coined the term in his “Game of Thrones” reviews last year. It?s not about too much sex in TV shows, he says, but instead about sex scenes being employed as distraction while story points are crammed into the mix. “On a personal level, I wish they?d use it less often,” says McNutt, 26, a doctoral student of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin, fresh off teaching undergraduates about “Jersey Shore” and “Extreme Couponing.”

Noted: Saks said testimony from University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Kenneth Mayer will show that hundreds of thousands of voters don?t have the required ID necessary to vote.

A: Let?s agree ? like a jury did in Texas ? that it?s not Michael Doyle, a Chicago biologist who pressed into the courts a claim for his 1993 patent for an “interactive web.” Doyle lost his suit against Google, Playboy, Office Depot, Amazon and other companies in February. To be as straightforward as possible, according to Lawrence Landweber, a UW?Madison professor emeritus of computer science, one has to read back through academic publications.

Noted: And what of taxpayers whose refunds end up being larger than expected? They are more likely to open savings accounts or certificates of deposit or to buy U.S. savings bonds, according to an ongoing study of low- to moderate-income taxpayers by J. Michael Collins and Nilton Porto at the University of Wisconsin.

Noted: As rankings have been released publicly over the past few years, says Patrick Remington, co-director of the program and associate dean for public health at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, media coverage of poor rankings “has gotten people to think about the health of their community not just by whether it has a high death rate or short life expectancy but maybe a place where the quality of life is not as good as it could be.”

The ink on Madison School superintendent Dan Nerad?s resignation letter is barely dry and already the hand-wringing over finding his replacement has begun. The applicant market is tight, the job is tough, other places offer more attractive terms, warn the school administrators professional association and executive search firms, who arguably have something of a vested interest in tight markets that drive up school administrators? salaries and require executive search firms to navigate.

….District leadership is correlated with student achievement, according to a 2006 summary of research forwarded to me by the director of UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research, Adam Gamoran, but that’s not the same as saying good superintendents cause higher student achievement.

Quoted: “If you break the numbers down between undergraduate and graduate, you find 40 percent of our international undergraduate population are Chinese, and 29 percent of our international graduate population are Chinese,” said Emilie Dickson, International Admissions Manager at the Office of Admissions and Recruitment.

Noted: One is that colder, drier air allows the virus particles to remain in the air for longer periods of time, and travel longer distances, said Christopher Olsen, a professor of public health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Pauline Ohigau is from Nigeria and has been studying journalism and communication at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She will return to her position as a lecturer in communications at the University of Port Harcourt.

Quoted: Political scientist John Coleman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

An old publisher once said, “When the legend is better than the story, print the legend.” Is that where we are heading in our political beliefs, especially when it comes to the political leaders in America? Possibly, according to a new study from UW-Madison…..”The fact misperceptions about Obama’s religious beliefs are higher among less-informed liberals than more knowledgeable liberals poses a problem for the president,” said Dominique Brossard, professor of life sciences communication and an expert in media, science and policy.

Noted: Facebook says Instagram will remain a standalone app separate from the social networking site, but the acquisition could make it easier for marketers, advertisers and the apps and companies one ?likes? to access that kind of photo information, says Deborah Mitchell, executive director for the Center of Brand and Product Management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Despite talk of a global market in education, Kris Olds, who teaches geography at the University of Wisconsin, said that ?in the public sector everywhere nowadays, people realize the likelihood of getting salary increases is pretty low. So they try to ?bargain in? as high as they can.?

Noted: Among teenagers, even at-risk children who volunteer reap big benefits, according to research findings studied by Jane Allyn Piliavin, a retired University of Wisconsin sociologist. She cites a positive effect on grades, self-concept, and attitudes toward education. Volunteering also led to reduced drug use and huge declines in dropout rates and teen pregnancies.

A. So long as the non-response is unrelated to the subject of the poll, accuracy will not be affected, says Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at UW-Madison. “As long as the willingness to answer is not correlated with partisanship, or anything else you might be polling about, then it does not affect the validity.”

Quoted: “Once this (occupying) becomes a ritual, it?s harder and harder to provoke the non-participants to care,” said John Sharpless, a University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor.

Quoted: Pat Hoffman, dairy scientist and heifer management specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Professor Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Charles Franklin, who leads the Marquette polling team.

Quoted: Charles Franklin, a political scientist who runs the Marquette Law School Poll.