Category: UW Experts in the News

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.)

Q. Are there really alligators living in the sewers of New York, flushed down as overgrown pets, or is this just a fanciful urban legend? A. “I suppose they could live there for a time,” says University of Wisconsin zoologist Jeffrey R. Baylis. Sewer water is warmer than groundwater; this would help. Gators hunt at night, so darkness would not be a problem so long as they got some light. Rats and other small animals could provide food.

Quoted: Even if a few Asian carp reach the lakes, “its not the end of the game yet, said Phil Moy, a researcher with the University of Wisconsin. In fact, a few have turned up in Lakes Erie and Michigan over the past couple of decades but apparently didnt reproduce.

Quoted: “All that snow that would go through the combine would plug those sivs up and youâ??d have the corn get threshed in, but then itâ??d just go right out the back end and not get collected,” said Joe Lauer, UW-Madison agronomist.

Quoted: â??Our ability to test what is going on is limited,â? conceded J. Val Klump, the director of the water institute affiliated with the University of Wisconsin. But what scientists have concluded is that the lakes â??are surprisingly fragile.â?

Noted: The chairman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Dairy Science tells the Norwich Bulletin newspaper itâ??s not unusual for a Holstein cow to have a white marking on its head. But department chairman Ric Grummer says the cross shape is unusual.

Quoted: “One of [NCCAMâ??s] critical roles is to actually weed out the snake oil, which I am sure there is quite a bit of,” says Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist and NCCAM grantee at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His work on the effects of meditation on the brain and peripheral biology has been published in mainstream journals such as The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PLoS Biology and The Journal of Neuroscience.

Quoted: Dr. John Lee, director of human factors research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said scientifically there are three kinds of driving distractions: visual, which is taking your eyes off the road; manual, which is taking your hands off the wheel; and cognitive, which is taking your mind off the road.

More rigorous scientific training in clinical psychology graduate programs would turn out more competent clinicians, researchers write in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. But not all psychologists agree. Interviewed: Bruce Wampold, professor and chair, Department of Counseling Psychology, clinical professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Madison, Wis.

Quoted: That may sound like a high rate, but J. Michael Collins, a UW-Madison professor of personal finances, says borrowers often end up paying much more if they allow payday loans to carry over month to month. 

While the past year has left millions fretting over their financial futures, itâ??s proven a boom time for economists.

Long derided as the â??dismal science,â? economics has gone decidedly mainstream as Americans seek an explanation for falling home values, shrinking retirement account balances and long lines at the unemployment office.

Among those enjoying the newfound fame is Menzie Chinn â?? professor of public affairs and economics at the UW-Madisonâ??s Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs â?? whose blog â??Econbrowserâ? has developed a national following.

Noted: The Bush Foundation is partnering with the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s Value-Added Research Center to evaluate teachers based on student performance. “Bush is pushing us in a new territory, because we havenâ??t really done value-added assessment for teachers,” said Chris Thorn, the centerâ??s associate director. “Theyâ??re pushing all of the teacher-prep programs into issuing a warranty for the teachers they produce. They want these institutions to make sure that their teachers are good.”

Quoted: I asked UW-Madison polling authority Charles Franklin if Wisconsin, long considered a swing state, was now a Democratic state, as Barack Obamaâ??s 14-point margin in the 2008 presidential election seemingly demonstrated.

Quoted: “These drugs save lives,” says James Stein, director of preventative cardiology at the University of Wisconsin. “Youâ??d be hard pressed to find a class of drugs with more evidence for how safe and effective they are. The risk-benefit ratio trumps almost any other medication I can think of.”