Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: Julie Underwood, dean of the UW-Madison School of Education.

Quoted: UW-Madison climatologist Dan Vimont.

One of the 450 who dropped everything and headed to Romeoville was Phil Moy, a fisheries and aquatic invasive species specialist with the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute. Fifteen years ago, Moy served as the first manager of a project to erect an electric barrier in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to repel foreign fish.

Pedro Albiter recalls with feeling the moment at last weekâ??s celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day when blacks, whites and Latinos joined hands at the Overture Center to sing â??We Shall Overcome.â?

â??Color didnâ??t matter. It was so emotional, I can hardly describe it,â? says Albiter, a state worker. But the moment was just that, he admits. A lasting bridge over the chasm of race?

â??Thatâ??s going to take more years. Itâ??s very hard to even talk about.â?

Quoted: UW-Madison faculty members William P. Jones; Richard Davis; Katherine Cramer Walsh; and Tracy Curtis

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

Quoted: “My own general view is if youâ??re going to participate in the UCR Program, you are obliged to try to follow the guidelines as closely as possible,” said Michael Scott, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, a former police chief and director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing.

Noted: Professor Tom Heberlein, former chair of the Department of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin.

Quoted: UW-Madison Prof. Charles Franklin said some Democrats wonâ??t be happy about it either, especially House Appropriations Chairman David Obey of Wausau.

Quoted: Mary Beltrán, Associate Professor of Chicano and Latino studies at UW-Madison, says when casting the first season of Lost, which premiered in 2004, staff were so impressed by actors who turned out for the roles that they modified the ethnicity of the characters.

Quoted: Kathy Cramer Walsh, of the University of Wisconsin-Madisons Political Science Department said although the speeches are chiefly ceremonial, they play a crucial role in the political arena.

Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin said Democrats have been hurt nationally by a drawn-out fight over a federal health care reform bill that has kept them from dealing with higher priorities for voters.

Quoted: “Thereâ??s quite a bit of science that shows levels of serotonin, which regulates appetite and mood, dip in the winter time,” said Dr. J. Adam Rindfleisch, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Quoted: “The big mystery to me is, what on earth does he say about healthcare?” said Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Quoted: Dr. David Rabago, assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and a leading researcher on nasal irrigation, was quoted by the medical advice web site as saying chronic sinus problems cause the cilia to beat in a slow and uncoordinated way.

Quoted: Janet S. Hyde, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the study a “great paper, very clever research.” “It squares with an impression Iâ??ve had for a long time,” said Hyde, who was not part of the research team.

UW Madison political scientist Charles Franklin expects Doyle will use the speech to put that in a larger perspective. â??I think in part heâ??ll counter that by talking about how the budget has left us in a relatively good position, compared to some of the other states,â? such as California, says Franklin.

Mentions that University of Wisconsin-Madison agriculture economists said this week that the farm commodity revenue in the state declined by $1.8 billion in 2009, with most of it coming from falling wholesale milk prices.

University of Wisconsin communications professor Lew Friedland points out that the nationâ??s four largest banks would have to allocate a mere one-tenth of one percent of their assets — $6 billion — to counter a campaign in which the whole of the U.S. labor movement spent all of its assets.

Noted: And despite the sweeping economic changes in marriage over the last 40 years, all is not equal. Even among dual-earning couples, women still do about two-thirds of the housework, on average, according to the University of Wisconsin National Survey of Families and Households.

Quoted: “We saw it resonating with the public over the spring,” says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who studies public opinion. “Previous polling had not shown that deficits were at the top of the publicâ??s agenda over the past 12 months.”

Quoted: The traditional rules of journalistic ethics are changing for both good and bad reasons, Stephen Ward, a former bureau chief for The Canadian Press who is now the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told me when I wrote seeking his counsel.

Quoted: â??Thereâ??s potentially a real problem here. Unless they were dancing nude in a very lewd way, it doesnâ??t constitute pornography as defined by the ordinance,â? said University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Donald Downs. â??Simply dancing isnâ??t going to meet this test.â?

Quoted: “As recently as three or four years ago, I was fairly convinced that most newspapers would make it,” says Lew Friedland, professor at the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “Now Iâ??m not sure. I actually donâ??t think that most daily newspapers in the metro [non-national] range will make it.”

“Are there ethical questions that this raises?” asks Greg Downey, director of the UW School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “Absolutely.”

Quoted: “A simplistic answer is this is going to lead to a lot more money in politics, a lot more money on the air in terms of television advertising,” said Ken Goldstein, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Wendy Machalicek, an assistant professor at UW-Madison who studies autism.

Noted: Once blood is collected from an infant, specimens are sent to the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, an internationally recognized leader in the field of newborn screening. Wisconsin has historically been a leader in newborn screening for a variety of reasons, said WSLH public affairs manager Jan Klawitter.

Quoted: As one expert, Aili Mari Tripp of the University of Wisconsin Madison, put it, most Americans “donâ??t seem to realize that weâ??re not part of the discussion at all.”

A UW expert says a number of factors led to Tuesdayâ??s stunning election results in Massachusetts. How did Republican Scott Brown pull off his big upset in the Massachusetts Senate race? â??It is a very blue state, especially for presidential voting, but while Democrats outnumber Republicans by three to one, Independents outnumber both of them, and so there was a big group of unaffiliated voters.â? said UW political scientist Charles Franklin. â??The other thing that happened is turnout.â?

For immigrants and their families who need legal help, finding a lawyer is only half the battle. UW Law School students and faculty are involved in trying to help offer it.

Quoted: His victory clouds the billâ??s prospects because it will spark concern among Democratic lawmakers about the November midterm elections, said Charles Jones, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. â??Here is dramatic evidence that it could have a negative effect on them,â? Jones said.

Quoted: Experts on journalistic ethics, however, say asking for taxpayer funding presents a bit of a quandary for independent media outlets like Bmore. Stephen J. A. Ward, founding director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says Bmoreâ??s public-financing request “is a problem if Bmore is pretending to do journalism. Thatâ??s a problem for a media outlet, if your boss is asking for money from people youâ??re covering. And itâ??s a problem for the writersâ??they have to ask themselves â??How independent can we be?â??”

Quoted: Marjorie A. Rosenberg, chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Actuarial Science Department.

Quoted: Deborah Mitchell, senior lecturer in marketing at the UW-Madison School of Business.

A nine-minute documentary by UW-Madison graduate student Liese Dart about Milly Zantow, “Plastics One Through Seven,” will be shown as part of the free “Making it Home” film festival.

Quoted: Gregg Mitman, interim director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison.

Deborah Blum, who has won a Pulitzer Prize and currently teaches investigative reporting and creative non-fiction at UW-Madison, is awaiting the imminent publication of a new book. â??The Poisonerâ??s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York,â? due next month, is being heralded as the work of a gifted writer who knows her science.