Quoted: “Itâ??s like smoking cardboard without any of the benefits that most people experience physiologically from the hit they get from nicotine,” said Dr. Michael Fiore, UW Center for Tobacco Research.
Q Why do flu viruses seem to circulate more in the fall and winter?
A In Wisconsin and many other parts of the northern hemisphere, the flu virus enjoys a perfect storm of conditions for its seasonal act.
First, the virus has been shown to transmit more easily when the air is drier and temperatures are cooler, says Jonathan Temte of the Department of Family Medicine in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “When we plot flu occurrence with temperature, it picks up when the average temperature hits freezing and goes away when average temperatures rise above the freezing point. There is a very strong correlation with temperatures at the freezing mark and flu circulation.”
Q. How long have satellites been used to study Earth’s weather?
A. The first successful meteorological experiment conducted from a satellite was launched on Explorer VII on Oct. 13, 1959, fifty years ago Tuesday.
Quoted: “If the goal is to make prosecutions more straightforward, (Taylorâ??s) bill will do just the opposite,” said Shawn Francis Peters, a UW-Madison instructor and author of “When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law.”
Hundreds of University of Wisconsin community members convened Thursday at an all-day conference to evaluate campus diversity and strategize ways to position UW as the countryâ??s leader in campus diversity issues.
Quoted: About a dozen U.S. children die each year in such cases, often from diabetes, pneumonia and other treatable illnesses, according to Shawn Francis Peters, a University of Wisconsin lecturer who wrote “When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law.”
The physician shortage will complicate access to primary care services for new BadgerCare members, said Dr. Carl Getto, senior vice president of medical affairs and associate dean for hospital affairs at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics in Madison.Steps are being taken to get more primary care physicians trained, but it takes seven years to train a new doctor, said Getto, who chaired the committee that authored the WHA report.
Quoted: Byron Shafer, a University of Wisconsin political science professor, said both Pawlenty and the advisers are sending a message.”He wants inside observers to know heâ??s serious,” Shafer said. As for the advisers, “theyâ??re willing to say he could be the one and theyâ??re comfortable with him” as a potential GOP nominee, he said.
Quoted: In his medical office, Dr. Michael Fiore regularly encounters patients seduced by labeling that touts cigarettes lower in tar and nicotine.â??They will say, â??Doc, I know I shouldnâ??t be smoking, but at least Iâ??ve switched to these mild, low-tar lights,â?? â??â?? said Fiore, director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. â??These are individuals who have a chronic case of tobacco dependence and are struggling to break free of it, and that struggle is compromised by labeling that gives them a false and deadly sense of reassurance.â??â??
Quoted: “Due process is a very fundamental, procedural thing the courts take very seriously,” said Shawn Peters, a University of Wisconsin-Madison religion professor and author of “When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law.” “For me, it underscores the need for a public policy solution to clarify the laws.”
Quoted: Financial aid experts offer other reasons that might help explain the increase. First, the institutions recruit more aggressively than do their competitors for low-income students. â??The advertise — theyâ??re everywhere,â? says Sara Goldrick-Rab, assistant professor of educational policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: Shawn Peters, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has studied the nexus of religion and the law, said the Neumannsâ?? sentencing was not unusual.
David Thompson wipes his damp forehead and adjusts his glasses. He’s dressed as if for a long hike – khaki hat, sturdy shoes – because he just never knows. A stroll around the west Madison neighborhood where he lives could turn into an afternoon of scrambling through overgrown ditches and ravines, snapping photographs and hunting for clues to buried streams.
Quoted: Ken Potter, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas research professor of history, geography and environmental studies.
Quoted: Religious scholar Shawn Peters said a potential Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling on the case is needed to push the Legislature to clarify the stateâ??s conflicting laws on the role of faith healing and parenting.
A UW study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe brain responses to aversive pictures in subjects showed what most college students already know: uncertainty about life events is scary.
In a recent breakthrough, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have successfully grown retinal cells from two types of stem cells, a critical step in treatments of certain kinds of blindness.
Thomson Reutersâ?? most recent assessment lists the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the top 20 universities for research impact based on publications submitted by researchers.
Quoted: “The state of knowledge of the subsurface is just at the beginning,” says University of Wisconsin-Madison geophysicist Harold Tobin, “Weâ??re at the point now where we need to move our experiments from the lab and see if what we think is happening is actually occurring on a larger-scale.” To that end, Tobin and his team have drilled 1-mile deep holes in a major fault zone off the coast of Japan and placed instruments inside fault lines to record subtle changes in activity.
Quoted: That might be as precise as the systems ever get, said Deborah Mitchell, a professor of consumer psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Even the human brain canâ??t always determine gender, age or ethnicity.
Quoted: Ken Goldstein, who tracks political advertising at the University of Wisconsin, says in 2009, something very different is going on.”Thereâ??s certainly been massive amounts of television advertising this time around,” Goldstein says. “But I think the real story is the dogs that arenâ??t barking. So, the last time around, you had the Harry and Louise ads [on Clintonâ??s health plan], you had an enormous amount of expenditures from the pharmaceutical companies. This year the big story is the $100 million, $150 million ads that the pharmaceutical companies are not running.”
What happens when a city’s media are subjected to wave after wave of staffing and budget cuts? One consequence is that even obvious, important and interesting stories fall through the cracks.
Exhibit one is the almost total failure of local media to notice that William Cronon, a UW-Madison professor of history, geography and environmental studies, has a standout role in all six episodes of Ken Burns’ stunning series The National Parks:America’s Best Idea. Wisconsin State Journal reporter Deborah Ziff wrote a two-sentence mention in a digest column. Other than that, a search of local news archives, even those of the campus papers, comes up empty.
Quoted: No judge in Wisconsin has ever dealt with the unique circumstances of the Neumann case, and Howardâ??s sentence will be the benchmark for any future, similar cases, said Shawn Peters, a University of Wisconsin-Madison religion professor and author of “When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law.”
Wisconsin residents have a duty to know something about how to judge a dairy cow — we are the Dairy State after all. Ted Halbach from UW-Madison gives us an intro course at the World Dairy Expo.
Noted: Itâ??s the same at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where botanist Laura Jull said people notice but donâ??t dwell on the smell of the campus ginkgoes.
Quoted: Lisa Brunette, a spokeswoman for UW Health, which first publicly criticized the pitch, said it appears to be a “pay for play” in which doctors give the station money in exchange for positive publicity.
“It was striking to us there could even be the suggestion there could be editorial visibility, which is essentially a marketing opportunity,” Brunette said.
Quoted: Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin, said the United States would have to adopt â??calamitously bad policiesâ? to see it cede its reserve status to the euro, yen, yuan or the IMFâ??s special drawing rights (or SDRs).
The combination of Jamaica, the U.S., Cuba, Suriname and Guyana undoubtedly makes for an interesting global mix. The UW-Madison Dance Program will give students and patrons a taste of this unique blend with â??Causeway,â? a culturally rich, multimedia dance performance. Chris Walker and Kate Corby â?? newly appointed assistant professors â?? will make their UW performance debut in the show, which runs Oct. 1 through Oct. 3 at 8 p.m. in the Hâ??Doubler Theater in Lathrop Hall.
Quoted: Such a system might create a perception that journalists let government money skew their coverage, said Stephen Ward, founding director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “Hands-free is not risk-free,” said Dr. John Lee, a University of Wisconsin researcher.
If you’ve been watching Ken Burns’ series on national parks on PBS, you might have noticed a familiar, local face.
William Cronon, UW-Madison professor of history, geography, and environmental studies, is one of several “contemporary commentators,” providing context and history on the parks.
After seven years of investigation, an international team of researchers released an article Tuesday confirming the world famous Tyrannosaurus rex, commonly known as Sue, on display at the Field Museum of Chicago died due to a parasite infection instead of a violent encounter, as was previously believed.
Mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex may have fallen to trench mouth, paleontologists report Tuesday. In a look at the famous T-Rex, Sue, and her kin, a team led by Ewan Wolff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Steven Salisbury of Australiaâ??s University of Queensland.
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Quoted: Morton Gernsbacher, an autism researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the film could be destructive. “Any organisation that claims to support individuals with disabilities and those individualsâ?? families should familiarise itself with the decades of research which has investigated the deleterious effects of fear-eliciting messaging,” she says.
Quoted: Milk pasteurization became standard after diseases such as scarlet fever, dysentery and tuberculosis were directly linked to the consumption of raw milk, said Barbara Ingham, a food safety extension specialist who teaches food sciences at UW-Madison.
Quoted: “Itâ??s easier to produce a vaccine that has thimerosal in it as a preservative because you can make it in large quantities, and it wonâ??t get contaminated,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar at UW-Hospital. “It will stay preserved.”
An $8 million, three-year grant announced Monday will give three Wisconsin colleges the resources to collaborate in an effort to solve the mysteries of the human genome.
Quoted: Environmental historian William J. Cronon of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: UW political scientist Dave Canon says Barrett seems to be favored by many in the party. The only announced Democratic candidate so far is Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton.
Quoted: Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.
Q: Will a regular flu shot offer any protection against the H1N1 or swine flu virus?
A: In a word, no. Influenza viruses are notoriously shifty, changing their form each flu season in an effort to evade the human immune system. They do this by altering immune system-triggering features called antigens on the surface of the virus. That is why a new vaccine is developed each flu season. Vaccines work by exposing the immune system to deactivated virus particles, which tell the immune system how to defend against a particular virus.
Quoted: If you eliminated the smokers from the equation, non-smoking lung cancer would be the seventh- or eighth-most common cancer in the United States, said Dr. Toby Campbell, a lung cancer specialist at the UW Carbone Cancer Center and assistant professor of medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
Quoted: Nevertheless, the Hummer brand has retained a certain appeal, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research by Marius K. Luedicke from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, Craig J. Thompson of the University of Wisconsin and Markus Giesler of York University in Toronto. “Hummer drivers believe they are defending Americaâ??s frontier lifestyle against anti-American critics,” the study notes, adding that Hummer owners employ the ideology of American foundational myths, such as the “rugged individual,” and the “boundless frontier.”
Quoted: “Thereâ??s been a ton of speculation,” said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor. “We just havenâ??t seen much action.”
Richard Davidson, one of the worldâ??s top brain scientists, believes mental exercise, specifically meditation, can literally change our minds.
â??Our data shows mental practice can induce long-lasting changes in the brain,â? said Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “There is no doubt based on an economic analysis, giving someone a kidney within about three years is a tremendously cost-effective thing to do,” said Dr. Bryan Becker, a transplant nephrologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the president of the National Kidney Foundation.
Quoted: Alfonso Morales, an “open air market” specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said more and more people are trying to turn bric-a-brac – miscellaneous small articles collected for sentimental or decorative interest – into cash to cope with the harsh new reality of lost jobs, slashed hours and dwindling incomes.
Quoted: As far as timing of when to find the best fall colors in Dane County, expect it to be earlier than usual this year, says Laura Jull, associate professor of horticulture at UW-Madison and president of the Wisconsin Woody Plant Society. Thatâ??s due to the unusually dry weather the area experienced through late August and much of September, with no real precipitation for weeks until record rainfall on Wednesday finally broke the drought.
The United Statesâ?? bleak economy and struggling newspaper industry have combined forces in recent months to give journalism schools across the country a surprising boost in applicants.
Quoted: A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, who studied the use of tire shreds, also deems the material safe. In his research, specifically on athletic fields or artificial turf, Tuncer Edil wrote, “the artificial fields are safe for humans of all ages.”
Quoted: “Health care and health care financing is very much within the jurisdiction of the committee that he sits on, so in that case he will be influential in the health care debate,” said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist.
The University of Wisconsin and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia publicly launched their twinning project Wednesday, partnering to cooperatively confront the emergency medical services crisis in Ethiopia.
Wisconsin School of Business professors produced a recommendation based on their recent study to the Obama administration regarding the grave condition of foreclosures across America.
Quoted: “For people like Brecht, the collapse in 1929 was a confirmation of suspicions of market capitalism had a destructive power,” says Marc Silberman, who studies the work of Bertolt Brecht at the University of Wisconsin.
MADISON (WKOW) — Researchers at the University of Wisconsin Business School call it the “perfect storm”.
Home values are declining and unemployment is rising.
Authors of a new study at the business school say President Barack Obamaâ??s foreclosure rescue plan doesnâ??t adequately address both problems.
Authors: Morris A. Davis, Stephen Malpezzi and François Ortalo-Magné
MADISON, Wis. — As summer turns to fall, many feel the pain of seasonal allergies, but is this yearâ??s weather making matters worse for allergy sufferers?
Quoted: University of Wisconsin Hospitals allergist Dr. Mark Moss
Two months ago, Michael Pflanzer was hoping to take advantage of the federal governmentâ??s new Post-9/11 GI Bill to go to Madison Area Technical College.
….But Pflanzer’s college plans fizzled before classes started at MATC on Aug. 24. The more he looked into things, the more he became convinced that a growing backlog of those applying for GI Bill benefits meant the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs would be unable to get living stipend payments to those who qualify in a timely manner.
Quoted: Assistant dean of students John Bechtol
(Gerald Kapinos, a 28-year-old Air Force veteran, UW-Madison student and the Midwest regional director of Student Veterans of America is also quoted in the story.)
Quoted: â??What happened in New York City was successful because of federal, state, and local communication, voluntary vaccinations, and a public-information blitzâ??and thatâ??s whatâ??s needed in an any future potential pandemic, or epidemic,â? says Judith W. Leavitt, professor of History of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: Bruce Jones, a University of Wisconsin dairy economist, reported that dairy producers in Wisconsin should gain less than 50 cents per hundred pounds from the temporary rise in the price support.
Noted: The correlation between venture capital investments and productivity growth was researched by Masako Ueda, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She analyzed total factor productivity (or TFP, which is a measure of innovation) in several industries.
Quoted: Yet the economic benefit of marriage isnâ??t what it used to be. In a chapter of a book just out from the Russell Sage Foundation, Changing Poverty, Changing Policies, two social scientists show that since 1969 the marriage premium has subsided. Maria Cancian, a professor of public affairs and social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Deborah Reed, director of research at Mathematica Policy Research, set out to study how the changing make-up of American families has affected the number of people below the poverty line. Considering how the rate of marriage has fallen and the rate of divorce has risen, the researchers expected the number of people living below the poverty line to grow by 2.6%. But when they looked at the data, poverty had increased by less than half that amount.
