Category: UW Experts in the News

Noted: ?At first only Chinese peasants were on my side, now an increasing number of Chinese intellectuals are with me,? Yi, 43, now a University of Wisconsin scientist, said in an interview in Beijing. He gave 23 talks at universities and forums in China in May and June opposing the policy. Yi Qiming, the Tangwan township head, declined to comment on the lunch.

Quoted: ?For most parents, the total benefits of children likely outweigh the financial costs,? said Lonnie Berger, associate professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. ?At the same time, parents may think about economic costs when making decisions about having children, especially with regard to timing and number of children.?

Noted: In a first step to get beyond polarization, the SPJ invited three panelists to address the issue: Tony Earl, former Democratic governor of Wisconsin, former U.S. Rep. Scott Klug (R-Madison), and Katherine Kramer Walsh, a political science professor at UW-Madison, whose research has taken her to coffee shops and community centers around the state to observe conversations about politics.

Quoted: Gretchen Viney, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor with expertise in family law, said it isn?t unusual for judges to waive bonding requirements entirely based on their high cost.

Quoted: “So called ?minor people? were very important in unravelling this story,” says Stanley Kutler, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin and author of The Wars of Watergate.

Noted: University of Wisconsin researchers even found that profile pictures and the presence or absence of a declared relationship status can predict the level of harmony between two people. Men who post their status as ?In a Relationship? rather than leave it blank were more satisfied with their relationships, the Wisconsin researchers found. Women whose profile pictures include their partners were similarly more satisfied.

Quoted: ?There?s a lot of uncertainty about what the solution is,? said Mark Copelovitch, an assistant professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who specializes in the politics of the world economy. ?Investors are savvy and they realize this is a short-term solution and not a permanent fix.?

Quoted: All these Muslim warriors governed immense inkblots of territory that were extensions of the Arab-Persian world that lay to the west, even as they interacted and traded with China to the north and east. It was a land without fixed borders that, according to University of Wisconsin historian André Wink, represented a rich confection of Arab, Persian, and Turkic culture, bustling with trade routes to Muslim Central Asia.

Quoted: In 2010, Paul Mitchell of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that US growers of conventional maize benefitted economically from having an adjacent Bt maize farm, because it suppressed maize-damaging pests. “This paper is part of the ongoing research documenting the environmental, economic and social benefits that Bt crops generate for more than just their users,” he says.

Quoted: “They?re virtually all unnatural means to enhance performance,” says Norman Fost, professor of paediatrics, medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin.

Quoted: John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved in the research, said it would be interesting to learn how these genetic differences influenced behavior.

UW-Madison announced Tuesday that four finalists have been named for the position of dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, and two of those people currently work on campus.

Noted: That uncertainty is no better illustrated than in the essay “Diagnostic Quests and Accidents,” in which Norman Fost, director of the University of Wisconsin?s bioethics program, describes how mistakes in the diagnostic stage have affected many patients, including two contributors to this book: Arthur Frank (his doctor thought he had chlamydia) and Dresser (an ache in her ear and mouth didn?t seem unusual to her regular doctor). Not only do such mistakes delay the right treatments, they instill a lot of frustration and disappointment.

Noted: So while husbands and wives have become more equal, inequality between families appears to be on the rise. As Christine R. Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, puts it: ?Marriages are increasingly likely to consist of two high- or two low-earning partners,? rather than of one of each.

Noted: It doesn?t stunt their growth, as some have speculated, said Tom Cline, a graduate student at the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A long-term study there that involved capturing, marking and then angling for bass found they lose weight over the first one to three days after being caught. But they then feed so heavily that growth rates actually double for a time, Cline said.

Noted: God, the weather and the Packers used to be enough to diffuse any political argument among Wisconsinites, said Katherine Walsh, an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin. but the tenor of the discourse during Walker?s short term in office has been louder than in recent memory, and Walsh isn?t totally convinced the end of the recall will mark the end of the tension.

A: Maybe if you?re standing on your head. “Nowadays, if corn is knee-high by the Fourth of July, it?s way behind,” said Joe Lauer, agronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin?Madison. The last time the old adage was a useful gauge of corn crop development was maybe two generations of farmers ago. “The technologies we have now for growing corn ? from the equipment we have to the plant hybrids we develop to the treatments we put on the seeds and in the fields ? have shifted things,” Lauer said. “With all that working for us, corn should be chest- or even neck-high by the Fourth of July.”

Quoted: Indeed, MadisonCommons.org at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently got some funding via a service learning grant to integrate the news website into the journalism curriculum, said its founder, Lew Friedland.

Quoted: Democrats are up against a well-funded and well-mobilized Republican Party that recently redrew legislative districts in its favor, University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said.

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.”