Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: “I think it?s more than just rhetoric right now,” said Donald Downs, a professor of political science, law and journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a forthcoming book on the military and universities. “Especially at the administrative level, I think the schools are sincere. The real question is how willing the military might be.”

Quoted: The cosmic event excited scientists and treasure hunters alike. The appeal was understandable, said John Valley, a geology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: “This is no country for young men,” said Timothy Smeeding, a public policy professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who is among a growing legion of social scientists who fret about the fate of working men.

Quoted: To learn more about Doyle?s overall legacy, WUWM?s Ann-Elise Henzl chatted with John Witte, a professor with the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison.

Quoted: “It?s a very experienced cabinet,” UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin said. “There are a lot of people with legislative experience, and there are also at least three people that have experience from the Thompson administration.”

Quoted: Beth Graue, a UW-Madison professor of early childhood education, said the benefits of early childhood programs can?t be limited to test results.

Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin said the hiring made sense. He said idealism only gets a Senator so far in Washington.

Quoted: Joel Rogers, director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS), says that despite the gains made mostly earlier this year, the cumulative job loss since the recession began is considerable.

Quoted: Wisconsin Innocence Project co-director Keith Findley says that recommendation can be read as a strong indicator that state officials are beginning to realize state law needs to be changed. He says there is a growing awareness that Wisconsin?s compensation statute is simply inadequate.

Quoted: Douglas N. Harris, an economist affiliated with the center at the University of Wisconsin that produces the city?s rankings, called the science behind them promising, and said that they had jump-started a wider effort to come up with better measures of teacher performance, which was long overdue.

Quoted: Donald Downs, a professor of political science, law and journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a forthcoming book on the military and universities.

Quoted: “He?s not going to be around next year or the future to affect green energy in the state,” Charles Franklin, a UW political science professor, said, questioning what a lame-duck governor could accomplish in a trip during his last few weeks in office.

Quoted: Anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison says DNA evidence is changing the way anthropologists work. “It?s so much more than we knew from the fossil record. It?s really like discovering something for the first time,” he says. Hawks says genetic analysis will provide a much richer picture of life in the distant past.

Quoted: Kenneth Mayer is a professor of political science at UW-Madison. He says losing seats can set up a potentially bruising redistricting battle ? one where an incumbent can be literally written off the map, or where two incumbents can be forced to run against each other in a newly drawn district. While the number of seats here will stay the same, Mayer says political lines will almost certainly have to be redrawn based on population changes within Wisconsin.

UW-Madison Political Science Professor David Canon says that will have a big impact on the political landscape over the next decade. Largely because it will allow Republicans to pick up even more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than they would have under the current district lines.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist David Canon, an expert on redistricting, said Wisconsin probably will keep all eight seats.

Quoted: “An increasing proportion of Wisconsin residents are facing economic hardship,” said the report?s author, Katherine Curtis, a demographic specialist at UW Extension and an assistant professor at UW-Madison.

Quoted: “I don?t recall it coming up in the debates at all,” said David Canon, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, of the war that Obama has made his own. “I don?t really remember seeing any reference to it in any of the ads. So I don?t think it really played a role at all. It was definitely about the economy, about jobs, a little bit about health care, but Afghanistan really didn?t come up. The issue on most people?s mind was the economy.”

Karl Malcolm is a PhD student in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin. He?s also a lifelong hunter and a coordinator for the state?s Learn to Hunt program.

Quoted: Jim Johannes, UW-Madison School of Business professor and director of the UW?s Puelicher Center for Banking Education.

UW-Madison engineering professor emeritus Rajan Suri was one of 10 people named to IndustryWeek?s 2010 Manufacturing Hall of Fame for fundamental contributions to the field. Suri developed the concept of “Quick Response Manufacturing,” a strategy aimed at cutting costly lead time by increasing efficiency in all of a company?s processes. Suri also founded UW-Madison?s Center for Quick Response Manufacturing, which applies QRM principles to help state manufacturers reduce overhead and be more competitive in the global economy.

Quoted: ?The concern we?ve had is that the decisions they made were based on flawed, outdated data,? said Maryl R. Johnson, medical director for heart failure and transplantation at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, and president of the American Society of Transplantation, a professional organization.

Quoted: An M&I merger or acquisition is not a surprise, said Jim Johannes, UW-Madison School of Business professor. “Everybody knew this was coming; it was just a matter of when and who,” he said.

Quoted: “If this doesn?t raise an ethical red flag, nothing will,” said Stephen Ward, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin. By moonlighting for the companies and industries they cover, he notes, reporters risk compromising their independence and neutrality and leave themselves open to suspicions of being bribed.

That line between being angry and perceiving anger is crucial. As University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Leonard Berkowitz points out, anger “can be linked to an urge to hurt, and at times, even to destroy the target object.” (More on Time.com: The New Map Of The Brain)

Noted: This is precisely what happened to the catastrophic-insurance program that a Democratic Congress and President Ronald Reagan added to Medicare 1988. Opponents in both parties succeeded in repealing the program within 18 months, as older Americans who hadn?t yet warmed to the entitlement railed against the higher costs. ?There?s a case where the window was open, and the opposition slammed it shut,? says Byron Shafer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin.

A department on the University of Wisconsin campus dedicated to educating faculty and staff on effective technology use has a new director, UW?s Division of Information Technology announced Friday.

A federal judge in Virginia on Monday ruled part of the federal health care law unconstitutional, but a law professor from the UW-Madison says the battle is likely far from over.

Quoted: The call to boycott the ceremony was ?probably a happy event among those authoritarian regimes because the rich government of China now owes them for something they probably would have done without Chinese urgings?, said Edward Friedman, a specialist in Chinese politics at the University of Wisconsin.

Quoted: That kind of thinking has apparently penetrated to the very highest levels of the American judiciary, as University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse noted.

Quoted: ?A lot of research shows that by far the most important thing for long-term residents, for quality of life and quality of care, is their relationships with their caregivers,? said Barbara Bowers, a nursing professor and researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?Most people would actually take inferior technical care done by somebody they care about, who cares about them,? over skilled care by a string of strangers, she said.

Quoted: But does that mean it?s a bad idea to buy a home? I don?t believe so, based on some dispassionate analysis. For the long-term homeowner (or patient investor), a home appears to be one of the better investments around, with minimal downside risk. “Housing is priced to earn its historic real rate of return of 0.5 percent to 1 percent and interest rates are low,” says Morris Davis, professor of real estate and urban land economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Now may be a once-in-a-lifetime time to buy.”

About a dozen U.S. children die in faith-healing cases each year, a handful of which spawn criminal charges, according to Shawn Francis Peters, a University of Wisconsin lecturer who wrote a book about the phenomenon.

Letter from Darald Hanusa, UW-Madison School of Social Work.

Quoetd: Sarah Orr of the UW Law School.

Quoted: Susan Nitzke, a professor of nutritional sciences at UW-Madison.

Quoted: Sara Goldrick-Rab, assistant professor of educational policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the results are deeply troubling and mean elite colleges and universities have succeeded in diverting blame from themselves.

Flanked by his wife, three kids and friends at an East Side technology center, Noel Radomski launched his campaign for Madison mayor on Tuesday, promising to focus on quality-of-life issues and job creation. Radomski, a 44-year-old UW-Madison administrator who served one term on the Madison City Council from 2005 to 2007, said Cieslewicz has done a “fabulous job” in his eight years as mayor. But he said it?s time for a change.

Quoted: Species that nest in the grassy “margins” around farms have the most to lose or gain, said Tim Meehan, a University of Wisconsin ecologist.