Category: UW Experts in the News

Because so many news sites are incorporating live blogging into their daily dose of content and conversation with readers, Katy Culver, a faculty member in the journalism school at University of Wisconsin at Madison, had her students learn how to use CoveritLive, which can be embedded within a site.

Quoted: Police can use the Web sites as a two-way street to put out information to the public and get tips, anonymous and otherwise, in exchange, said Michael Scott, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

â??The sites have â??proven to be pretty effective in finding missing people or wanted people,â? Scott said.

Quoted: Judith Leavitt, a professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked back at the show’s groundbreaking pregnancy series in her new book “Make Room for Daddy: The Journey From Waiting Room to Birthing Room,” to illustrate that like “real-life men in this period,” Ricky was left in the waiting room.

Quoted: Once the domain of hippies and purists, locally grown and organic foods now are considered mainstream by many.

“That’s not really a niche anymore,” said Michelle Miller, assistant director for the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: â??Nuclear is the only large baseload source of energy that is not a fossil fuel, and the Obama administration has wisely decided to invest in nuclear along with other non-carbon sources,â? said Michael Corradini, who chairs the UW-Madison Department of Engineering Physics. Baseload sources such as nuclear run around the clock, while solar and wind operate intermittently.

What is the origin of the saying, “Red sky at morning, sailorâ??s warning; red sky at night, sailorâ??s delight”? Does a red sky in the morning actually foretell a storm?

“Long before computers and the Weather Channel, humans needed weather forecasts,” says Steve Ackerman, a UW-Madison professor of oceanic and atmospheric sciences. “Farmers and sailors in particular needed to know if storms were approaching.”

Quoted: Dr. Alta Charo, an ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, said that much of the Bush councilâ??s work â??seemed more like a public debating societyâ? and that a new commission should focus on helping the government form ethically defensible policy.

A commission of this kind, Dr. Charo said, â??lets the president react judiciously to rapid and often startling changes in the scientific landscape.â?

Quoted: “The most common treatable cause of male factor infertility is called varicocele,” said Dr. Dan Williams, director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Quoted: America is behind the rest of the world when it comes to bilingualism, with only 9 percent of the population reporting fluency in a second language, compared with 52 percent of Europeans, according to a research review by University of Wisconsin professor Francois Victor Tochon.
English is spoken by about 15 percent of the world’s population, but its “postulated ubiquity” is a “myth,” writes Tochon. “On average, bilinguals earn more in the United States and, more recently, in the United Kingdom.”

Quoted: “People are turning to things that remind them of simpler times,” said Ron Kean, a poultry specialist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “If you’re smart, you can save money doing this.”

Q: Why do cats seem compelled to eat some plants, like my poor aloe, and ignore others?

A: Cats may devour some plants but ignore others as a simple matter of taste, says Sandra Sawchuk, a clinical instructor at the School of Veterinary Medicine at UW-Madison. “Itâ??s each to his own. I like romaine lettuce over iceberg; cats can have their own desires.”

Quoted: Joanne Cantor, a professor emerita at the UW-Madison who studies the psychology of media and communications, leads seminars with titles like “You’ve Got (Too Much) Mail! – Preserving Productivity under Information Overload” and “This is Your Mind on Media: Staying Sane in a Crazy Culture.”

Quoted: Gerald Kulcinski, a nuclear engineer and director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison, has been researching the possibility of mining the moon’s helium-3 for decades. He is, along with Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, one of the concept’s most prominent advocates. (Schmitt wrote an article for Popular Mechanics in 2004 that describes a harvesting operation much like the one Bell manages at Sarang.)

Quoted: Information technology industries appear the most likely to lead the United States out of the recession, said Michael Knetter, dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. A Rhinelander native, Knetter said Marathon County is positioned fairly well, with a diverse economic base on the doorstep of what he envisions as a booming tourist destination in years to come.

Quoted: “People pay attention to the stock market whether they’re in it or not. They watch those ups and downs, they hear the press everyday talk about the dow is up, the dow is down,” says University of Wisconsin financial specialist Michael Collins.

Noted: Recent work, notably by economist William Brock of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues, incorporates adaptive models of agent behaviour to suggest that classical economics might have got things backwards. People participating in markets will quickly copy investment strategies that seem to be working, creating swings in the future price of assets that are actually fundamentally destabilising.

Quoted: Dr. Ben Wedro, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin and a consulting onsite physician at the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, agrees.

Quoted: The tornado was described as F-5 which leaves “nothing but the cement foundation of a building,” according to Jonathan Martin, Chair of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UW Madison. The categories ranges from F-0, a harmless funnel cloud, to F-6, an “inconceivable” storm which has yet to be observed

Noted: Of course, nobody knows whether these meditators’ brains were different to begin with. And that’s the problem with much of the meditation research so far. Although studies have improved, most still aren’t large and lack good control groups, says Richard Davidson, a pioneering meditation researcher and neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin.

His research shows that even novice meditators have greater activation in a part of the brain tied to well-being. The more activation, the greater their antibody response to a flu vaccine, which makes the vaccine more protective. By changing the brain, meditation could affect many biological processes, he says.

Quoted: “This study does nothing to assuage my concerns about [Avandia],” says James Stein of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He notes that patients and doctors knew which drugs they were on, weakening the result, and that in a subgroup of patients who had established heart disease the risk of heart attack increased by nearly 26%.

QUoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business Associate Dean Deborah Mitchell agreed that now is truly the time when consumers can find great deals on vehicles.

“There are going to be some amazing things going on,” Mitchell said. “The manufacturers are making it easier for the dealers to cut prices, and in fact all of them, manufacturers and retailers, want to move cars — move the metal off the lot.”

Quoted: It’s previously been argued that chimps chuckle, but their methodâ??”laughing” on both the exhale and inhaleâ??had been deemed too different from the human, exhale-only laugh.

The tickle study, however, found evidence that most ape laughter, especially among gorillas and bonobos, shares key traits with human laughter.

Like humans, for example, gorillas and bonobos laughed only while exhalingâ??leading University of Wisconsin zoologist and psychologist Charles Snowdon, who was not involved in the study, to conclude that, “contrary to current views, the exhalation-only laughter is not uniquely human but is found in our ape ancestors.”

Quoted: “Can it be bad for you? Without a doubt. We could say that about nearly every chemical,” said Robert Moore, senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy.

Quoted: Tom Reason, associate director of admissions for UW-Madison, said while the university â?? and all of the UW System â?? has moved toward a more comprehensive view of applications, class rank â??is still pretty meaningful.â?

Quoted: Sleep deprivation can trigger depression and anxiety, said Dr. Ken Robbins, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin. New moms are also at risk for postpartum depression, and both parents will likely feel stretched for time.

Quoted: The key issue is trust, said UW-Madison School of business senior lecturer Deborah Mitchell.

â??Consumers perceive bankruptcy as an off-the-scale risk,â? as far as service, parts and warranties, she said.

Q: Why do the blue eyes of babies often turn brown after a year or so?

A: Melanin is the pigment that makes body parts dark, said Burton Kushner, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. “Melanin makes freckles brown, hair brown and pigmented races brown, and it can make the iris brown as well. Melanin is not fully developed in newborn babies, so the iris is relatively devoid of whatever melanin pigment it will have, and that gives the eye its baby-blue eye color.”

Quoted: Steven Deller, a professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says local governments’ dependence on the state in Wisconsin is the result of continual â?? and mostly unsuccessful â?? efforts to control property taxes.

Quoted: “It’s one thing to say that looking at it from a social science or behavioral perspective, judges’ decisions are seldom completely divorced from the intellectual and moral and experiential things they bring to the table. We’re imperfect creatures,” says Donald Downs, law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: â??We have a work-based safety net without work,â? said Timothy M. Smeeding, an economist at the University of Wisconsin. â??Weâ??re really in a pickle.â?

“The work represents another important milestone, however, challenges remain,” says University of Wisconsin stem cell biologist James Thomson, by e-mail. “The most important criteria for choosing a particular reprogramming approach will be whether one can derive an (induced pluripotent stem) cell line from an easily obtained clinical sample consistently, and whether the resulting (induced pluripotent) cell line has a normal genetic and epigenetic (gene activation) status. It is not yet clear what approach, or combination of approaches, will most consistently meet these criteria.”
(Second item from beginning.)

“A lot of people want to avoid chemotherapy because they’re afraid of it, and what they’re actually afraid of is the symptoms,” said Dr. Lucille Marchand, clinical director of integrative oncology services at the University of Wisconsin Paul C. Carbone Cancer Center.

Quoted: “A lot of people want to avoid chemotherapy because they’re afraid of it, and what they’re actually afraid of is the symptoms,” said Dr. Lucille Marchand, clinical director of integrative oncology services at the University of Wisconsin Paul C. Carbone Cancer Center. “And symptoms can be treated.”

Credit card reform is turning into a rebellion. As the federal government pushes toward stricter rules for credit card companies, those companies are passing on their pain to customers.

“Lenders don’t know who to trust anymore. And so almost all of us are paying a premium for that lack of trust in the economy. You notice in the fine print about late fees, over the balance fees, annual fees, they all seem to be going up and they’re being levelled pretty aggressively,” says University of Wisconsin financial specialist Michael Collins.

Quoted: But in the meantime, said University of Wisconsin political scientist Benjamin Marquez, who studies Latinos and American politics, â??this is truly a way that he can symbolically reach out to the Latino voter and Latino population, so in that sense this was a very savvy thing for him to do.â?

Quoted: “Our technology is not that advanced,” said Frederick Langheim, a neuroscientist and psychiatry resident at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Laura Dresser, a labor economist and associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said seasonal activity means job postings and fewer notices from state employers that they’re laying off workers with no hope of calling them back.

A new study offers a ballpark projection of the Chrysler Kenosha Engine Plantâ??s effect on the local economy.

The report, commissioned by the United Way of Kenosha County, figures the auto plant supports 2,133 jobs, $154 million in wage and salary income and more than $203 million in total income.

It emerged late last week, as the wheels continued to grind in the bankruptcy process that calls for the Kenosha plantâ??s closure.

Steven Deller, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of agricultural and applied economics, and Kenosha County UW Extension Professor Annie Jones created the estimate, using an economic impact computer modeling system.

Quoted: Ed Friedman, a specialist in Asian international relations at the University of Wisconsin, was not optimistic. “The continuing development of nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them by North Korea … has large and dangerous consequences,” he said by email.

Quoted: “I’ve never seen a parent flee in this manner from state-mandated medical treatment,” said Shawn Francis Peters, who teaches religion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law.

Quoted: “How is the greater good going to be served by putting kids in foster care?” said Shawn Peters, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who teaches about religion and the law. “However, a child has died and a person was found guilty. That is not something to be trifled with.”

Quoted: David Riley, a professor of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said at-home fatherhood usually begins with families considering schedules, finances or other everyday issues. From there, attitudes evolve — and the economy is one real catalyst.

Quoted: But a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist says the problem goes back much further than the last couple of years.

Using statistical modeling, Chris Kucharik found that the northern quarter of the state has received 15% to 20% less rain from the decade of the 1950s to the decade ending in 2006.

“This doesn’t even include the drought years after 2006,” said Kucharik, an assistant professor of agronomy and environmental sciences.

Quoted: Dr. Darold Treffert, a former president of the Wisconsin Medical Society and one of the state’s autism research pioneers, believes both sides have some truth on their side.

“Some of the increase is no doubt due to what we call diagnostic creep, but beyond that there does seem to be a real increase,” said Treffert, who retired from active practice five years ago but remains a clinical professor at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.

Quoted: “I’ve been out and about in the woods this spring and I’ve seen a lot of acorns in the woods,” said UW-Madison Professor Eric Kruger. “Oaks are mast (providing fruit for animals, etc.) seeders and some years they really live up to that reputation.”

Q: Do birds ever or usually nest in the same nest from season to season? Do they ever nest in other birdsâ?? old nests?

A: Most small birds, such as songbirds, build a new nest each breeding season, although they often reoccupy the same territory or join the same colony, says Stanley Temple, emeritus professor of conservation in the department of forest and wildlife ecology at UW-Madison. Saving energy and resources can be important to a bird, he adds, which shows up in a number of recycling strategies.

Quoted: â??Weâ??re about to have a big problem,â? said Morris A. Davis, a real estate expert at the University of Wisconsin. â??Foreclosures were bad last year? Itâ??s going to get worse.â?

Quoted: Laura Dresser, a labor economist and associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: â??The change weâ??ve seen is a different kind of change. In fact weâ??ve seen the creation of a new kind of virus through the process of reassortment,â? said Christopher Olsen, a public health professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of the study. â??The viruses weâ??ve seen emerge in pigs are a mixture of the classical swine flu, avian flu and human flu,â? he said. Experts also witnessed the emergence of a new subtype in 1998. â??Weâ??ve not been able to determine any specific reasons for why that began to happen,â? Olsen said.

Quoted: â??Heâ??s been waiting a long time for this,â? said David Canon, a political scientist who specializes in Congress at the University of Wisconsin. â??Heâ??s clearly exerting so much more influence over the economy than any of his predecessors.â?

Mentioned: Dr. Michael Stier, a forensic pathologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Shawn Francis Peters, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who teaches about religion and the law, said these cases are difficult for all sides because they involve value disputes over what the term “best interests of the child” means.

Quoted: In Wausau, Dr. Michael Stier, a forensic pathologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Madeline lacked insulin, which would have allowed glucose, a simple sugar, to go from her blood to tissue. Instead, the glucose built up in her body, which began to break down fat and produced acid.