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Category: UW Experts in the News

Is meditation a religion? 

Washington Post

Noted: This could be because the current Dalai Lama is so undogmatic about how Buddhism is understood. Richard Davidson, a University of Wisconsin psychiatry professor who studies meditation?s impact on the brain, calls the Dalai Lama ?one of the strongest advocates for secularizing these practices.? That is, Davidson said, because the Dalai Lama believes the practices can ?reduce suffering,? a core Buddhist objective.

Poll: 59 pct disapprove of Wis. gov’s performance

Madison.com

A majority of Wisconsin residents disapprove of Republican Gov. Scott Walker?s performance and are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the state, according to a new poll released Wednesday. The University of Wisconsin Survey Center?s Badger Poll found that 59 percent of residents disapprove of the performance of Walker, who took office in January and wasted no time pushing divisive legislation through the Republican-controlled Legislature, including a law that stripped most public employees of their collective bargaining rights. Quoted: Katherine Cramer Walsh, a political science professor at UW-Madison who helped with the poll.

Inca Paradox: Maybe the pre-Columbian civilization did have writing

Quoted: The Spaniards, who were no slouches themselves in the bureaucracy department?Pizarro?s landing party included 12 notaries?observed that the Incas were remarkably skilled with numbers. For many years during the 16th century, says Frank Salomon, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Inca khipucamayocs and Spanish accountants would square off in court during lawsuits, with the khipu numbers usually deemed more accurate.

Speaker debunks achievement gap theories (Riverside, Calif. Press-Enterprise)

The achievement gap between middle-class white students and poor black or Latino students isn?t just academic, a speaker said Tuesday at a Summer Institute put on by the University of Redlands? Center for Educational Justice.

“We need to change the discourse from achievement gap to what I call educational debt,” said Gloria Ladson-Billings, a professor in educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin and a former president of the American Educational Research Association.

Guarding Privacy May Not Always Protect Adolescent Patients

New York Times

Quoted: ?In the vast majority of cases when we?re working with a student who has some sort of medical or mental health news, they want their parents involved and we are able to communicate freely,? said Dr. Sarah Van Orman, executive director of University Health Services at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and vice president of the board of directors of the American College Health Association.

Redistricting legal challenges face tough road

Wisconsin Radio Network

In most legal challenges to redistricting, UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin says the courts focus on two primary factors when determining maps; whether districts are equally divided among the state?s population and if minorities have proper representation. So far, he says the GOP-drawn maps appear to meet those conditions.

New school reform for Wisconsin a model for nation?

Wisconsin State Journal

A new initiative to reform how Wisconsin schools are held accountable could lead to the development of a national model, similar to welfare reform in the 1990s, according to a leading UW-Madison education researcher. But the effort, announced over the weekend by Gov. Scott Walker and State Superintendent Tony Evers, could be hampered by an intensely partisan political climate in which school funding has been slashed by hundreds of millions of dollars, education advocates said Monday.

Quoted: Adam Gamoran, professor of sociology and director of the Wisconsin Education Research Center at UW-Madison

Stage Presence: Theater director loves sharing tricks of the trade with others

Wisconsin State Journal

People know me as: David Furumoto, associate professor in the UW-Madison theater department and currently its director of theater production. I?m also an actor, director, playwright and in Japanese traditional dance circles have the professional name of Onoe Kikunobuhide. I play the Highland bagpipes and have accompanied Celtic fusion dancers at programs here in Madison. I also love collecting ghost stories and folk tales.

Republicans Release Redistricting Maps For State

WISC-TV 3

Quoted: “I think the question will be what challenge could be posed,” University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin said. “Redistricting is in one sense easy to get equal populations and relatively easy to draw it, so they provide minority representation. But beyond that, it?s easy to move the lines for partisan reasons, and generally partisan reasons are not subject to challenge in court where the population and minority representation.”

Grisly labels not so scary for cigarette sales (AP)

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Quoted: Aside from the potential to get people to quit smoking? or prevent them from starting __ the labels also could have a huge marketing effect for cigarette makers by making their brand names less important, said Deborah Mitchell, executive director of the Center for Brand and Product Management at the University of Wisconsin.

4 Ways Colleges Can Take Their Social Media Presence to the Next Level (Mashable)

Noted: At UW-Madison, outgoing Chancellor Biddy Martin tweets to more than 5,000 followers about campus events and meetings, frequently responding to questions and comments from her community. Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee tweets to more than 18,000 followers about faculty and student accomplishments, university news and his perspective on happenings in the world.

Default worries UW economist

Wisconsin Radio Network

Congressional leaders are set to meet with President Obama today to discuss raising the debt ceiling and reducing the deficit. University of Wisconsin Economics Professor Andrew Reschovsky has been following the debate closely ? and says the economic impact may yet be avoided.

Wisconsin has its place in final frontier

Wisconsin State Journal

From experiments involving potatoes and sea urchin eggs to elements of the Hubble Telescope and tweeting, NASA space shuttles have carried and had connections to many UW-Madison scientists and Wisconsin residents during its 30-year history. Here are some of the highlights.

Study: Financial aid most helpful to students unlikely to succeed without it

Wisconsin State Journal

A first-of-its-kind study found that financial aid may be most helpful to the Wisconsin college students who are the least likely to otherwise succeed. For the last three years, UW-Madison professors Sara Goldrick-Rab and Douglas Harris followed a group of students who received grant money from the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars program. The program was created through a $175 million donation by John and Tashia Morgridge, providing a $3,500-a-year grant to some first-time, full-time students enrolled in the University of Wisconsin System. Goldrick-Rab and Harris tracked data from the 600 students who received Morgridge grants, plus 900 eligible non-recipients. In initial results, they found that the most disadvantaged group of students were more likely to stay in college if they received the Morgridge grant, compared to those who did not.

Arab Spring to Arab Summer (Columbia Journalism Review)

Quoted: ?When we first started partnering with Arab journalists, we were just trying to build bridges,? said Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who chaired the international conference committee for the Doha meeting. ?It was in the midst of the Iraq War and there was a great deal of conflict between our cultures. We thought, we can do better than that. We built relationships and trust and eventually decided to partner to hold this conference in the Arab world.?

CDI shares in $6.26 million research grant

Wisconsin State Journal

Cellular Dynamics International, Madison, and the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, have received a five-year, $6.26 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.The funds will be used to study the causes of a heart condition called left ventricular hypertrophy. CDI is the company founded in 2005 by UW-Madison stem cell pioneer James Thomson.

Fox Cities justice officials decry Supreme Court divisiveness

Appleton Post-Crescent

Quoted: “In a very short period of time, we have gone from having a Supreme Court that was a national model to a Supreme Court that is really fodder for late-night comics,” said Howard Schweber, a political science and law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We no longer view the court as being somehow above or outside the day-to-day politics. It?s become just another partisan office.”

N.E.A. Shifts Position on Teacher Evaluations

New York Times

Quoted: The policy calls for teacher practice, teacher collaboration within schools and student learning to be used in teacher evaluations. But for tests, only those shown to be ?developmentally appropriate, scientifically valid and reliable for the purpose of measuring both student learning and a teacher?s performance? should be used, the policy states, a bar that essentially excludes all existing tests, said Douglas N. Harris of the University of Wisconsin, a testing expert.