Quoted: “It was a form of puffery and everyone knows it,” Barry Orton, a UW-Madison telecommunications professor who formerly did consulting work for cities opposed to the law, said of the predictions of lower prices. “And those rates prove it.”
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health have begun administering a national clinical trial aimed at determining the proper swine flu vaccine dosage to immunize asthmatic patients against the H1N1 virus.
Quoted: David S. Schwartz, who teaches evidence at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said the amendment would make the rule more fair.
Noted: Other recent genetic research has backed up that notion. One study, published in PNAS in 2007 and led by John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found that some 1,800 human gene variations had become widespread in recent generations because of their modern-day evolutionary benefits. Among those genetic changes, discovered by examining more than 3 million DNA variants in 269 individuals: mutations that allow people to digest milk or resist malaria and others that govern brain development.
Quoted: A bullying expert says a study in the Journal of School Health shows the number of kids whoâ??ve been the victim of insults online, mirrors those whoâ??ve dealt with face to face insults, â??Itâ??s the same experience but just in a new venue,â? says Amy Bellmore, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at UW-Madison.
Quoted: “Thereâ??s help out there, but there are also some people out there trying to take advantage of the situation and run scams,” UW-Madison real estate expert Stephen Malpezzi said, advising distressed homeowners to consult official sources such as the federal HUD Web site for help.
Quoted: UW-Madison real estate expert Stephen Malpezzi praised the index as a basic informational tool that makes the best of the limited data available, even as he cautioned against reading it as anything much more than a broad measure of market direction.
Quoted: As in past years, the seasonal vaccine protects against three flu strains that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization believe will be the most common in the northern hemisphere, according to James Conway, an associate professor of pediatrics who specializes in infectious diseases at the UW-Madison medical school. The swine flu, or H1N1, vaccine will protect against only the swine flu strain.
A University of Wisconsin professor has been honored with a nomination for the competitive National Book Award for his work that collects stories from evolutionary scientists over the past two centuries.
Quoted: Other research supports the “work hard, play hard” thesis. Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and womenâ??s studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has found that it doesnâ??t lead to less intimacy in marriage when wives hold paid jobs.
This September a team of UW-Madison staff unveiled a new process to reduce the time it takes to eliminate former employees from accessing information technology systems, but the new process still takes longer than many others used throughout the University of Wisconsin System. Â
Our skulls and our genes show that weâ??re still evolving, but not always in the ways you might expect.For example, the typical human head has actually been getting smaller over the past few thousand years, reversing the earlier evolutionary trend. Meanwhile, East Asians are becoming lighter-skinned – and appear to have more sensitive hearing than their ancestors did 10,000 years ago. John Hawks, an anthropologist and blogger at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, points to such trends as evidence that “recent evolution is real.”
Quoted: This was a “remarkable achievement for his early years,” said Robert Dott, a sedimentary geologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “He was always making observations of that sort, which contributed to his most famous theories about evolution.”
Noted: Also along these lines, Richard Davidson of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discussed how destructive, negative emotions can impair learning. Recent developments in brain imaging have enabled us to see that brains are plastic. They are constantly changing and growing, even among adults – a phenomenon called “neurogenesis” – and through specific types of training, we can enhance our capabilities for emotional regulation. Therefore, habits of mind and heart can change.
UW-Madison officials continue to debate Provost Paul DeLucaâ??s plan to restructure the graduate school, and will hold another town hall meeting Friday for further discussion.
Quoted: “For a country with a semi-democracy, semi-feudal political system, the end of the present reign puts everything in uncertainty,” said Thongchai Winichakul, a Thai studies scholar at the University of Wisconsin. “As democratic institutions are undermined and all political powers are dependent on the monarchy, the future of the whole country sadly hinges on this transition.”
Noted: Rapid evolution suggest that mutations can explain historical events. Got milk tolerance? Your ability to digest lactose as an adult is relatively new in the human species. And, said John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides evidence of rapid evolution over the past 10,000 years.
Quoted: His across-the-board cuts are a blunt ax approach to budget-cutting that provides “some sort of positive political symbolism – everyone sharing the pain,” says Donald Moynihan, associate director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It doesnâ??t differentiate between programs that are essential and programs where resources are perhaps less necessary.”
Quoted: Joanne Cantor is professor emerita and director of the Center for Communication Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her forthcoming book is â??Conquer CyberOverload: Get More Done, Boost Your Creativity, and Reduce Stress.â?
Quoted: “It is appalling that we have such a high infant mortality rate [among African Americans] in Wisconsin,” says Gloria Sarto, UW-Madison professor of obstetrics and gynecology and co-director of the UW Center for Womenâ??s Health Research. “Overall, birth outcomes in Wisconsin are very good, but in this specific population it is just dismal.”
Quoted: “The great tag line is: reinvent yourself to survive,” said UW-Madison School of Business professor Mason Carpenter.
Quoted: UW-Madison economist Andrew Reschovsky noted the stimulus bill quickly provided significant tax cuts and added payments to Social Security recipients and the unemployed. He said it also made sense to help schools and local governments as they struggle with busted budgets for years to come.
Question: With so many foods – cereal, milk, orange juice, water – fortified with more vitamins, is it possible to overdose?
Answer: It is possible to get too much of a good thing when it comes to vitamins, says UW-Madison nutritional science professor Sherry Tanumihardjo.
Quoted here and elsewhere in the story:
“Its nice to see that it shows that, that the closer humans are to the natural environment, that seems to have a healthy influence,” said Dr. David Rakel, director of integrative medicine and assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Q. How does frost form?
A. Frost on objects is just water vapor in the air that has condensed as ice onto a surface. Frost forms on objects close to the ground, such as blades of grass.
Faculty and administrators voiced concern over the cost and effectiveness of implementing Provost Paul DeLuca Jr.â??s proposal to restructure the graduate school at a town hall meeting Wednesday.
Quoted: Dr. Yoshi Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin said studies showed people born in 1918 or earlier had many antibodies against the new pandemic H1N1 and said it may more closely resemble its distant 1918 cousin. See Next Story in Health
Quoted: UW-Madison math professor Andrei Caldararu.
Quoted: “If itâ??s used under optimum circumstances, it should last approximately 10 times longer (than standard incandescent bulbs),” said Jim Lawler, a University of Wisconsin-Madison physics professor.
The number of reported H1N1 cases on the University of Wisconsin campus has reached a semester low following four weeks of steadily declining reported flu cases, University Health Services said Tuesday.
Quoted: Robert Golden, dean of the University of Wisconsin school of medicine and public health, said the extra funding was greatly needed to try to reverse drinking rates he called astonishing.
“Clearly the current system is broken and is not working,” he said. “The strongest deterrent to drunk driving is a belief you have a good chance at getting caught. More law enforcement will keep people from getting behind the wheel … And for those who are caught, we do not have adequate access to evidence-based treatment programs.”
Quoted: Continued cold will ward off the annual invasion of the multicolored Asian beetle, said Phil Pellitteri, an extension entomologist with the University of Wisconsin Insect Diagnostic Lab.
Noted: And at the Ecological Society of America meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in August, Jacquelyn Gill, a palaeoecology doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reported finding no evidence of massive burning in sediment cores taken from lake beds in Ohio and Indiana.
John Milton Cooper, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, is the author of the forthcoming â??Woodrow Wilson: A Biography.â?
Quoted: Mary Schneider, Professor of Occupational Therapy and Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has taken up Harlowâ??s baton, showing that if you make a pregnant monkey stressed, her young will be more anxious and have a fear of being touched, which is common in autistic children.
Quoted: 27 News also spoke with a local political science professor at UW-Madison about the win. Professor Kenneth Mayer says, “Ultimately this is not going to make a huge difference to the success or failure of hiultimatelyncy.. and if anything.. it could possibly bolster opposition among Republicans, who may see that they may react that theyâ??re being pushed around by the international community.”
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.
