Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: “I think we?ll probably call for recounts less often in the future,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This one looks like it?s going to essentially reinforce the results we already suspected, so that just builds trust in the system, and I think is going to make us as citizens and candidates think less skeptically of how the process works.”

Quoted: “The use of anti-psychotic drugs when they are not necessary is a form of restraint,” said Dr. David Zimmerman, University of Wisconsin. “It?s a form of chemical restraint.”

Quoted: ?In my opinion, it?s just tragic that parents have to suffer and think about their child having a chronic illness when the child is perfect healthy,? said Audrey Tluczek, an assistant professor and psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing.

Quoted: “Insects being cold-blooded, they develop like you bake a cake,” Phil Pellitteri, an entomologist with the University of Wisconsin-Extension in Madison, said. “The warmer the oven, the faster things happen.”

Quoted: You?d be hard pressed to dig up any dirt in this home but that?s why we brought along an expert: Microbiologist Dr. Robin Kurtz. Her testing plates can pick up microorganisms, including unwanted bacteria.

Quoted: UW-Madison horticulture professor Irwin Goldman.

Quoted: Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. [See page 2]

Quoted: UW-Madison political scientist Ken Goldstein.

Quoted: “Survival from sudden cardiac arrest with prompt resuscitation can really be quite high at exercise facilities,” said lead researcher Dr. Richard L. Page, a cardiac electrophysiologist and chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin. “That relates to the fact that people are healthier, they?re feeling fit enough to go exercise, and they had a higher likelihood of CPR.”

Quoted: Then there is corruption. Many of the west African ?land grabbers? described by Ms Hilhorst are local politicians, civil servants and other urban elites who bribe local chiefs with gifts of motorbikes. Madeleine Fairbairn of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, argues that in Mozambique, an informal division of the spoils has emerged. Local bigwigs use their influence to get ?facilitation fees?, while national leaders manipulate the law and promote (or obstruct) projects to their own and their supporters? advantage.

Quoted: They should also feel comfortable when their doctor opts to skip a scan, says Dr. Megan A. Moreno, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who wrote about the study in an accompanying Archives article. Observing a child with a suspected appendectomy might be just as effective as wheeling them right into the scanning room, she said.

Noted: According to the man in charge of overseeing the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s animal testing programs, however, the billboard may actually be “serving a very useful purpose.”

Quoted: University of Wisconsin telecommunications expert Barry Orton says that includes the ability of the PSC to regulate technical standards and prices. Orton says it?s similar to a bill pushed unsuccessfully last session by AT&T and other phone companies.

Quoted: Listeria is a problem because of its unique ability to keep growing even when refrigerated. Lunch meats are cooked at food-processing plants, and the bacteria in them is killed when they?re prepared and packaged, says Jeff Sindelar, a professor of meat science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The problem with cold cuts and lunch meats is that once they?re sliced, or the package is opened, if even a single cell of listeria from a contaminated surface, a meat slicer or even the air gets on them, it can continue to grow in the refrigerator.

Quoted: “Hitting the golf ball did not do a good job at demonstrating the profundity of this effort,” said James Spiller, associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It kind of provided a lot of the late-night talk-show parodying and cynicism with the space program.”

Noted: Another team of researchers asked Japanese and American respondents to describe situations in which they felt mixed emotions. That team ? a group led by Yuri Miyamoto of the University of Wisconsin-Madison ? reported last year that Japanese respondents more often have mixed emotions in ?predominantly pleasant situations? than Americans do.

Quoted: When certifying a program for Medicare payments, CMS looks at quality measures, including outcomes and patient volumes, said Maryl Johnson, a University of Wisconsin transplant cardiologist who is president of the American Society of Transplantation. Its rules help determine where Medicare patients can get transplants and are often followed by private insurers.

Quoted: Carole Trone, director of the Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth at UW-Madison.

Quoted: In an email, report author Xiaodong (Sheldon) Du of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said such a sudden shortfall of ethanol represents “the worst case scenario.”

Quoted: One of those options is educational body donation. Dr. Edward Bersu runs the program at UW Madison. “These people will then write to us or call us and send an email and request what we call the body donor registration forms,” he said.

Six months ago, a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin sent an email regarding the fall 2010 Diversity Forum.

Quoted: Walter Dickey, a UW-Madison Law School professor who lost his younger brother in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Quoted: But even if a person believes assisted suicide is ethical, Dr. Ken Robbins, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin and director of psychiatry at Stoughton Hospital, said it is essential for a clinician to thoroughly screen patients to be sure they are not suicidal because of depression.

Quoted: “Every U.S. family has a finite amount of resources available to them, and every day they have to make decisions about how to allocate those resources. This is especially true in today?s economy where you hear people talk about ?feeling the pinch,?” study leader Lauren E. Wisk, a doctoral student and graduate research assistant at the School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin, Madison, said in an American Academy of Pediatrics news release.

UW Foreign Policy expert Jeremi Suri says the killing of Osama Bin Laden may give a boost to the American public?s feelings about the War on Terror.

Quoted: Charles Franklin, UW-Madison political science professor.

Quoted: Tim Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at UW-Madison.

Quoted: Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

Quoted: Jeff Sindelar, a meat scientist in the UW-Madison Meat Laboratory.

Quoted: Wisconsin?s more than 300,000 state workers represent about 14% of the state?s work force. They will experience the equivalent of a 7.7% cut in take-home pay due to a provision requiring them to pay for pensions and pay more for health care, according to Steven Deller, an economist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Quoted: “Once you have an exemption for [foreign-exchange] transactions, you immediately have one that also covers interest rate transactions, and the two together represent roughly 90%” of over-the-counter derivatives trades, said Antonio Mello, a finance professor at the University Of Wisconsin (Madison) School of Business. “So that would be a major portion of the [over-the-counter] market that would immediately become somewhat exempted” from the new derivatives rules.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kathy Cramer Walsh says voters here have always had their disagreements, “but Wisconsinites, in general, are good at sort of smoothing over differences and getting along. And right now we?re not getting along, and it?s blown out into the open. I?d say it?s pretty different. It feels un-Wisconsin-like to me.”

It?s been a mission that?s taken ten years — Sunday night, two leading professors at the UW-Madison reacted to the news that 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden had been killed. (Video.)

Quoted: Paul Williams, a plant pathologist at the University of Wisconsin?Madison, developed a Brassica plant with a rapid life cycle for his research on disease-resistant vegetables, and it didn?t take him long to realize that his creation ?might be useful for teaching principles of plant biology.? Today, through the Wisconsin Fast Plants Program, which he developed, his Brassica plants have been shipped to thousands of classrooms around the world.

Q. While cooking my St. Patrick?s Day corned beef, I noticed a large amount of foam that formed on top of the boiling liquid. What causes this?

A. That foam is made of proteins released from the cooking meat, says Jeff Sindelar, a meat scientist in the UW-Madison Meat Laboratory.

UW-Madison Professor Scott Straus? extensive knowledge of genocide and African politics has landed him as an expert witness in the trial of Lazare Kobagaya who is charged with ordering mass murders during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Quoted: UW-Madison?s Jonathan Martin, chair of the UW-Madison?s Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department.

Noted: These were the flashiest debates, and they brought some new light as well as heat to well-established disagreements. Listen for the judicious summaries of the differing positions by Molly Jahn, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and her essential call for adding the “environmental balance sheet,” similar to Hirshberg?s call to include externalities, in any discussion of sustainability. Jahn also mentioned a fresh-as-of-last-week coalition of growers usually on opposite sides of the table: industrial or, as Sarah Alexander, of the Keystone Center gently told us to call it, “commodity” agriculture, and small farmers, who know they need to share information and unite to save resources and keep farming. The group is just forming and will soon lay out a strategy.

Quoted: “It?s historic from just about any perspective that you want to take,” said Jonathan Martin, a UW-Madison atmospheric science professor. “Conditions have been perfect for a series of these outbreaks, one of the conditions is really moist air in the boundary layer, the lowest part of the atmosphere. Another very important condition is strong wave type disturbances in the middle troposphere, strong jet stream, and that?s been in place. We don?t know how it got as strong as it got in this particular instance; sometimes it?s interesting to find that out.”