Category: UW Experts in the News

Noted: Researchers led by Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin?Madison recently experimentally tested the variance signal by adding more and more largemouth bass to a lake over a three-year period. The researchers took measurements of the light spectra of chlorophyll in the lake every five minutes (and in a control lake where they were not adding fish). Fifteen months before the food web of the whole lake shifted, the variance signal appeared in the chlorophyll measurements, Carpenter and his colleagues reported in Science last May.

Quoted: Other church bankruptcy cases were not as adversarial in resolving abuse claims as Milwaukee?s may turn out to be, said Jonathan Lipson, a University of Wisconsin law professor.

Quoted: Stanley G. Payne, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of several influential books on Spain?s Civil War and Franco regime, said Mr. Garzón?s trial reflects deep-seated divisions in Spanish society.

Quoted: While there?s no standard definition for insomnia, suggested criteria include taking more than 30 minutes to fall asleep, waking up too early, or sleeping less than 6 1/2 hours a night, according to Ruth Benca, a sleep disorders doctor at the University of Wisconsin?Madison. Insomnia is twice as likely in women as men and affects some 6 to 10 percent of adult Americans, yet often goes undiagnosed and untreated.

Quoted: ?CCP (Chinese Communist Party) ruling groups know that many people in the democracies imagine Chinese foreign policy as one of choosing to support cruel pariah regimes,? said Edward Friedman, politics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

We?re always on the move.

These days, however, we?re moving in some new and different directions. Specifically, we?re moving more in circles.

Quoted: Laura Dresser of the U-W Madison Center on Wisconsin Strategy says the economy?s taking a hit, because thousands of people are getting cuts in their take-home pay. And Dresser says it ?moves Wisconsin away from creating jobs.?

Quoted: ?Women will be important given they are just over half the population,? adds Christina Ewig, Ph.D., an associate professor of Gender & Women?s Studies and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?Women in Mexico have historically tended to support the PRI, but in recent elections some women have shifted to the PAN.  Getting more women to shift to the PAN may be part of the strategy of nominating Vásquez Mota.?

Each degree that the mean temperature is below 65 degrees is one heating degree-day. So, if today?s average temperature is 55 degrees, that is 10 heating degree-days. 

Does the recent spate of small earthquakes in the Midwest and eastern U.S. signify any underlying geological change?

Quoted: ?Those are the people on the doorsteps of the service system,? said Marsha Mailick Seltzer, an autism expert at the University of Wisconsin. ?They may not have a diagnosis, but they are there.?

Quoted: David Schultz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, said Steineke?s proposal falls in line with recent trends. Wisconsin lawmakers, for example, revised time limits in child sexual assault cases five times between 1989 and 2006.

Quoted: “When he came to Chicago, he?s reported to have jumped off the train and said, ?I?m here to write the ?Uncle Tom?s Cabin? of Chicago,” says Russ Castronovo, professor of English and American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “He always calculated this to have a certain type of dramatic social and political effect. And that was abetted by the fact that, as ?The Jungle? was making its way into print, Congress was debating food-safety legislation.”

Quoted: ?This speaks about the complicated nature of the readership of Urdu fiction,? said noted literary figure Prof Muhammad Umar Memon at a critical literary session on ?Urdu Fiction and its Audience? held here on Friday.

Noted: News of the allegations against Yang spread far beyond the Valley, said Choua Lee, a language lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

MADISON (WKOW) — It may have become permanently attached to your hand in the last five years. While most adults can?t seem to live without their cell phones, the same may be coming true for kids. But the debate over when a child should get a cell phone and how they should be able to use it continues.

“We’re entering a brave new world of communications where young people need to understand messages from their peers that not spoken but written or texted and be able to respond quickly. If young people don’t develop that skill, it’s going to be challenging for them to communicate effectively as adults in the future. Without learning those skills, one is likely to be left behind,” says Professor Bradford Brown, an expert in Educational Psychology.

One little-noticed bit of fallout from the ongoing financial crisis is the decline of lawyer jokes. “I don?t think people are as worried about lawyers as they are bankers and financial people,” Marc Galanter was saying this week. Galanter, an emeritus UW-Madison law professor, would know. He wrote the book on lawyer jokes. “Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture” came out in 2005. In the book, Galanter noted that it was around 1980 when lawyer jokes both increased and became more vicious.

Dr. Theresa Guilbert, a pediatric pulmonologist from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, said that despite the new findings, it?s still “controversial” whether or not asthmatic moms pass on any risk to their babies by breastfeeding.

A University of Wisconsin professor broke down the complex relationship between environmental issues and mass media in a lecture Wednesday night at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. 

Reading the news about UW-Madison can be a little like a bad case of whiplash. On the one hand, tuition hikes, cuts in state funding and a chancellor worried about “resizing” staff and reallocating resources suggests a university struggling financially to fulfill its core educational mission. On the other, a campus building boom including projects such as the $43 million Chazen Museum of Art addition and salaries for top coaches that stretch into the seven figures suggest an institution rolling in dough.

Darrell Bazzell, university vice chancellor for administration, said there’s a common misunderstanding among the public about where money for the university comes from and what it can be used for.

Quoted: But for many K-12 school systems, new technologies, social media sites, and video games are still eyed with suspicion, says Richard Halverson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education. ?You have this real split awareness…. For the people who use [such tools] … they are invaluable. [But] for many K-12 schools, it threatens the existing relationship between teachers and students, and it?s seen as … something to be controlled and banned rather than something to be exploited for learning purposes.?

Noted: Asian-Americans admitted to the University of Wisconsin?s flagship Madison campus in 2008 had a median math and reading SAT score of 1370 out of 1600, compared to 1340 for whites, 1250 for Hispanics, and 1190 for blacks, according to a 2011 study by the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Falls Church, Virginia-based nonprofit group that opposes racial preferences in college admissions.

“Backward speech is one of these things that seems to be an equal opportunity skill,” explains Lewis Leavitt, who?s now professor emeritus of pediatrics at University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Quoted: Despite the problems, nuclear and particle physicists continue to express broad support for the neutron EDM studies, which they say are a unique complement to the LHC work. ?It?s a constellation of experiments that is critical,? says Michael Ramsey-Musolf, a theoretical physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: ?Sometimes what happens is that a person?s energy improves before their mood improves. So if you still feel horribly depressed and hopeless, but have a return of your energy, your risk of being suicidal increases,? said Dr. Ken Robbins, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose lab is examining the archaic genomes, visited the cave in July. It has a high arched roof like a Gothic cathedral and a chimney to the sky, he said, adding that being there was like walking in the footsteps of our ancestors.

Quoted: Katy Culver, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison?s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said it?s beneficial for Obama to ?take the temperature of different groups of people.?

Quoted: “It makes so much sense, yet there is nothing else like this, maybe in the entire world, but certainly in the United States,” said University of Wisconsin Prof. Andrew Reschovsky, speaking from the campus of Harvard University, where he?s a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Quoted: ?We are concerned with where this might head concerning with what people can and cannot do with research,? said Rhonda Norsetter, director of federal relations for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?We respect the invaluable health research that is being conducted, including, in some cases, animal research.?

A. Long before computers, the Weather Channel and the Internet, humans needed weather forecasts. Farmers and sailors particularly needed to know if storms were approaching. Over time, various folklore forecasts, often in the form of short rhymes, were devised and passed down through the generations. Although memorable, the folklore forecasts are of uneven quality ? some good, others bad. Groundhog Day is an example of predicting the weather based on folklore. If the groundhog comes out of its hole and sees its shadow, we are in store for 40 more days of winter.

Quoted: But some critics said that shift in focus takes away from what was seen as the administration?s primary goal: enrolling and graduating more low-income students. Further expansions to the Pell Grant Program would do more to make college accessible, said Sara Goldrick-Rab, an associate professor of higher education policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Quoted: “Folks are looking at Wisconsin as a kind of barometer,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “We are a swing state, a purple state, and this could be a pretty good indication of where things are heading nationally.”

A UW-Madison professor received one of South Korea?s highest honors earlier this month for his work on a multibillion-dollar initiative to restore the area surrounding four major rivers in the country. The honor, called the Order of Service Merit, is comparable to the U.S. Medal of Honor. The professor of civil and environmental engineering, Jae Park, is a top academic advisor for the an ongoing collaboration called the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project, which is dedicated to cleaning and restoring the watershed surrounding the Han River, Nakdong River, Geum River and Yeongsan River in South Korea.

Quoted: ?When you hear the word ?fracking,? what lights up your brain is the profanity,? said Deborah Mitchell, who teaches marketing at the University of Wisconsin?s School of Business. ?Negative things come to mind.?

Quoted: “It?s a pity how comedy is often seen as culturally suspicious when awards season comes around,” Jonathan Gray, a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, wrote in an email. “I?m pleased to see comedies nominated, but under no illusion that Hollywood and The Oscars won?t simply go back to business as usual.”

Quoted: John Hall, a military historian at the University of Wisconsin, noted that special operations forces have been around since World War II, but they were initially designed to be stay-behind forces in Eastern Europe, a response to the Soviet Union.