Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: Jessa Valentine, a senior research specialist at UW-Madisonâ??s Center on Wisconsin Strategy.

Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl said Wednesday he supports President Obamaâ??s nomination of Louis Butler as a federal judge in Western Wisconsin despite the nomination being turned back in the U.S. Senate on Christmas Eve. A justice on the state Supreme Court from 2004 to 2008, Butler was defeated for re-election by current Justice Michael Gableman. He is currently jurist in residence and a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Mentioned: Prof. Alfred McCoy, a torture expert from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

University of Wisconsin-Madison experts helped create the first new strategic plan for the Madison School District since the early 1990s.

Quoted: Peter Carstensen, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor who specializes in agricultural marketing issues.

Quoted: Joel Pedersen, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies soil science and prions.

Thereâ??s little doubt Governor Jim Doyleâ??s decision to not seek a third term was the top state political story of 2009. It blind-sided most Wisconsin political observers, including UW political scientist Charles Franklin.

Quoted: â??Itâ??s interesting because of the personal stories of that, as well as for the way it shapes the political story that will run throughout 2010,â? says UW political scientist Charles Franklin of the Democratsâ?? race for governor, which generated headlines as early as August.

Six years ago, as a senior at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Meg Goodwin was motivated in her job search by social anxiety as much as anything else. Her friends had positions lined up, so she wanted one, too. She went to the career counseling center and signed up for interviews for 10 different jobs, none of which she particularly wanted.

Quoted: The latest smart phones have applications for just about everything, but every single download uses up a valuable resource. According to Barry Orton, professor of telecommunications at the University of Wisconsin, the broadcast spectrum is filling up one download at a time and he said that reality requires a change.

Quoted: Dr. Adam Rindfleisch with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health said he often suggests people with fibromyalgia and depression get involved with a volunteer activity.

Quoted: Dr. Jonathan Patz, University of Wisconsin: Many of our communities combine storm water with sewage, simply because itâ??s too expensive to separate these systems.

Noted: Grubs attack a treeâ??s roots, said Chris Williamson. He is an associate professor of entomology for the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW-Extension, and heâ??s also Lieschâ??s supervisor. An older tree, with a more extensive root system, can tolerate losing some roots to grubs, he said. Young trees, those about 18 inches tall, canâ??t.

Quoted: As Dr. Sandra Sawchuk, an instructor at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine put it, “Pets have gone from the barnyard to the bedroom.”

Quoted: â??When Queen Victoria and her German husband, Prince Albert, decorated a Christmas tree in Windsor Palace in 1848, it was widely reported in popular American publications,â? says Jim Leary, professor and director of the Folklore Program at UW-Madison. â??Well-to-do, fashion-minded Americans soon followed suit, with rural and working-class folks not that far behind. By 1856, President Franklin Pierce gave the Christmas tree official sanction when he had one decorated in the White House.â?

If youâ??re a parent, you may want to consider getting a Facebook page in the new year. Thatâ??s advice from Kathleen Culver, a professor at UW School of Journalism & Mass Communication. â??I really do encourage all of the parents . . . of children in their teens or younger, anyone who has a person living in their home who has a Faceboo account, you should also have a Facebook account, because you need to know how it works,â? says Culver.

Noted: Hamersma and Carolyn Heinrich, a University of Wisconsin public affairs professor, studied occupational records, wages and earnings for 5,877 Wisconsin workers between 1995 and 2004.

Noted: Last week, Science acknowledged the furor, publishing online an â??Editorial Expression of Concernâ? in which the journalâ??s editor-in-chief, Bruce Alberts, notes that â??serious questions have been raised about the methods and data presented.â? â??It was just so obvious the chemistry was flawed,â? says biochemist Laura Kiessling of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, editor-in-chief of ACS Chemical Biology.

Noted: Looking at a couch on a furniture retailerâ??s Web site, you probably take no conscious notice of the green-patterned wallpaper behind the couch. Yet, Deborah Mitchell, a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said one study showed that green is associated with money, and got subjectsâ?? neurons firing in a way that made them sensitive to the cost of the item.

Quoted: â??What they hear is some notions â?? some accurate, some distorted â?? about what Democrats are trying to do,â? said Charles Franklin, a polling expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Q: Why donâ??t we forget how to ride a bike?

A: Theory holds several clues to support the oft-heard phrase â??just like riding a bike.â?Riding a bicycle is what motor control experts tend to refer to as a â??continuous task,â? compared to discrete tasks with definite endings (like turning a key to start your car). Peter van Kan, kinesiology professor at UW-Madison, said research has laid out three reasons why bicycle riding feels like second nature.

Quoted: “If this is your first exposure to womenâ??s volleyball at this level, I think youâ??re going to be in awe,” said University of Wisconsin associate athletic director Terry Gawlik, who serves as chairperson of the NCAA Division I Womenâ??s Volleyball Committee. “Itâ??s fast, itâ??s furious, itâ??s emotional and itâ??s played way above the net.

Quoted: The findings provide, â??finally, the hard-core biochemical information that explains how these kinds of metabolic reactions can take place,â? says geochemist Eric Roden of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It is “the full explanation that people in many disciplines have been waiting for,” he says.

Quoted: â??Reprogramming is an incredibly important find,â? said Dr. James Thomson, the University of Wisconsin researcher who first cultured a line of stem cells from human embryos in 1998.

Quoted: Tim Van Deelen, of the Department Of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said hunters have been getting spoiled to a certain extent and they are angry now with population numbers where they should be.

Quoted: “Weâ??d never bring Hadoop code into one of our products,” said Microsoft technical fellow and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor David J. DeWitt.

Quoted: “This is the missile of greatest concern at this point,â? said Valerie Lincy, a senior associate at the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a nonprofit organization working to stem the proliferation of unconventional weapons that operates under the auspices of the University of Wisconsin. â??So the fact that theyâ??re testing it now is worrisome in of itself and worrisome if you put it in the context of whatâ??s going on with the nuclear program.â?

Quoted: UW-Madison education professor Gloria Ladson-Billings.

Quoted: “Any time someone in a setting of excitement has a sudden cardiac arrest, especially at a young age with a seemingly normal heart, you have to consider [an inherited condition] such as long QT,” said Dr. Richard Page, chair of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and president of the Heart Rhythm Society. “One of the genetic variants is especially predisposed to having an arrhythmia when exposed to loud sound.”

Noted: To pin down when the megafauna vanished, paleoecologist Jacquelyn Gill of the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison and her colleagues analyzed fossil dung, pollen and charcoal from ancient lake sediments in Indiana.

Quoted: Carrie Kruse, the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison library, told the DI last month she believes itâ??s â??pretty importantâ? to have a building with extended hours.â??Our society is a 24-hour society,â? she said. â??Thereâ??s a frame of mind that we need to do anything weâ??re able to at any hour of the day.â?

Quoted: Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The story also mentions a recent UW Badger Poll done by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center.

Quoted: Jerry Clark of the University of Wisconsin Extension.

Quoted: But University of Wisconsin professor Allan Odden, co-director of the think tank Strategic Management of Human Capital, said the New Teacher Projectâ??s own research shows the system is much more effective than Weisberg said.

Quoted: “Itâ??s almost impossible,” said Jake Vander Zanden, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin. “Thatâ??s why Iâ??m a firm advocate for preventing them from getting here in the first place.”

Noted: At the University of Wisconsin, Menzie D. Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics in the La Follette School of Public Affairs, is teaching a new graduate seminar, â??Policy Responses to the Great Recession.â? His students are analyzing the causes of the crisis and the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on the gross domestic product, employment and state budgets.

Quoted: Fiber-to-the-home is where the money is, said Barry Orton, a professor of telecommunications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Stephanie Tai, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said courts in large environmental cases generally apportion culpability based on such factors as how much contamination the parties contributed, how much they tried to control their contamination and how cooperative they have been in the cleanup.

Quoted: Advertising on social websites is relatively inexpensive compared to print and television ads according to Deborah Mitchell. Sheâ??s an executive fellow with the Center for Brand and Project Management at UW-Madisonâ??s Business School. (Ninth item.)