Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: And having good business sense is as important to building that practice as practicing law, said Ralph Cagle, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Quoted: Shawn Peters, the author of three books on religion and the law, including â??When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Lawâ? (Oxford, 2007), said the outcome of the Neumann case was likely to set an important precedent.

â??The laws around the country are pretty unsettled,â? said Mr. Peters, who teaches religion at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and has been consulted by prosecutors and defense lawyers in the case.

Quoted: One of the plaintiffs, Stanley I. Kutler, an emeritus professor of history and law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said he remains worried that “when the Archives goes to open Cheney’s papers, they are going to find empty boxes.”

Quoted: Still, the speech â??really did help to restore national confidence,â? said Stephen E. Lucas, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and co-author of â??Words of a Century,â? a compilation of the top 100 speeches of the 20th century. The 1933 FDR inaugural came in at No. 3.

Noted: What Buchanan did not reveal, according to John Milton Cooper Jr., a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, was that he had “actually influenced and knew how the Dred Scott decision was going to come out.” The court ruling, which prohibited slaves from becoming citizens, helped spark the Civil War.

Quoted: Dr. Darald Hanusa, a psychotherapist with the Midwest Center for Human Services and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that in 15 years of evaluating law enforcement officers, he has recommended only two officers be fired.

Quoted: â??Thatâ??s one of the secrets of his success, rhetorically,â? said Stephen Lucas, a professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin. â??He seems very focused on the purpose of the moment.â?

Quoted: UW-Madison history professor Jeremi Suri; political science professor emeritus Dennis Dresang; political science professor Kathy Cramer Walsh; and Louis Butler, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who is currently Justice in Residence at the Law School.

Quoted: Shawn F. Peters, a University of Wisconsin-Madison lecturer and author of the 2007 book “When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law.”

Cited: Frank Greer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, who was not involved in the study.

Cited: James Stein of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

Quoted: In a YouTube video posted by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Professor Stephen Carpenter, who specializes in ecosystems at the University of Wisconsin, said resilience explains how things can â??change and persist at the same time.â?

â??A resilient system could be able to withstand a shock without losing its basic functions,â? he said. â??A resilient system is able to transform to a different way of life when the current way of life is no longer feasible.â?

Quoted: Dr. Michael Fiore of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Tobacco Research still spends much less than the suggested federal minimum on tobacco control programs â?? about $15 million a year.

Quoted: Some deep questions are in order for the Republican Party following the bath it took at the polls in November, says UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin.

Quoted: Thom Kriegl of the UW Center for Dairy Profitability says the decrease in price is “a great concern” to Wisconsin dairy farmers. Kriegl says the price of cheese has been on downward trend since 2007 but significantly dropped the last several weeks.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison clinical dietitian Gail Underbakke.

The good news is, Janesville drivers won’t necessarily be dealing with the snowy weather every yearâ??or even the rest of this winter, a UW-Madison expert said.

Just because Janesville had a snowy December doesn’t mean it will have a snowy January and February, said professor Jonathan Martin, chairman of the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department.

“Last year’s winter was so unusual in the persistent nature of storm traffic going right over us,” Martin said. “You could never have expected that to happen.”

Quoted: Tom Heberlein, professor emeritus from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: According to neurologist Lauren Riters of the University of Wisconsin, starlings have among the longest and most complex songs of any birds in North America. They continually incorporate new sounds into their vocal arrangements, often mimicking frogs, goats, cats and even other birds. The result is an admixture: warbles, creaks, squeaks, whistles, throaty chirrups, twitters and raspy trills.

While singing, the starling syrinx vibrates in two separate parts, which allow one bird to sing harmonizing duets with itself. “Starlings sing because it makes them feel good,” Riters explains.

Quoted: “It is amazing,” said Brian Gould, an associate professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I think the economy has caught up.”

Quoted: “Downsizing is a shock to the system, and it leads employees to take a much closer look at what they have and what they may find elsewhere,” says Charlie Trevor, the University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor who led the study. Employees afraid to quit in this extremely tight labor market may jump ship later.

Quoted: Should the feds delay implementing digital TV? A UW researcher weighs in. UW Madison Professor Greg Vanderheiden is at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and he says while manufacturers and retailers are leery of a DTV delay.

Quoted: “The thing that’s unique about it is it’s not synthesized,” says Susan Nitzke, a nutrition specialist with the University of Wisconsin Extension and a UW-Madison nutrition professor.

Quoted: Consumers need to be careful not to overreact to bad economic news, said University of Wisconsin-Madison Business School Dean Mike Knetter. If people have money and needs, they should not shy from spending.

Quoted: The limited representation of minorities in Newbery-winning books is an even thornier issue. Kathleen Horning, director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that the number of children’s books about minorities has remained around 10 percent since 1992.

Q: Why are icicles shaped like long skinny carrots?

A: The icicle shape is determined by heat diffusion and conduction.

You may notice that more icicles form on the sunny south-facing side of your home than on the shaded north-facing side.

Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, are guests on WHA Radio (970 AM) the last Monday of each month at 11:45 a.m

A new study shows that more than half of teenagers mention drugs, alcohol, sex or violence on their MySpace pages. Yet getting teens to clean up their pages is easier than many might assume, researchers say.

Young people also could be rejected by college or business recruiters who see coarse language or photos on their profiles, says the study’s lead author, Megan Moreno, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: In the opinion of several media antitrust experts, the current joint distribution deal and sharing of editorial content doesnâ??t quite cross the line. But further consolidation might. â??It does raise some concerns,â? said University of Wisconsin law professor Shubha Ghosh, an expert on media antitrust cases. â??But you would have to prove who is harmed in this process. The readers probably are not, under the strict definition of the law. But if they start combining ad rates, competing media or those that buy the ads might have a case.â?

Quoted: “This is one of the largest community exposures to chlorine gas since World War I,” study lead author David Van Sickle, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin, said in a news release issued by The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, which published the report in its January issue.

Quoted: That can make it hard for doctors to decide on treatment and for experts to compare studies aimed at determining the optimal level of vitamin D in the blood. â??If you get your vitamin D level measured in the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic and the Timbuktu Clinic, it would be nice if it came out the same value,â? said Dr. Neil C. Binkley, associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin.

Quoted: Director Jim Seward of the Nicholas Center for Corporate Finance and Investment Banking in the UW-Madison Business School is skeptical of the value of what he called the auto industry’s classic turn around management.

Quoted: “The idea that you’re going to make a lot of money tearing down an old house to build a new one, that’s gone,” says Morris Davis, a real estate economist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who has advised the Federal Reserve on the teardown trend.

Quoted: J. Michael Collins, a professor who specializes in consumer psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: “Strictly on the basis of this video, it is impossible to determine whether the shooting was justified because the officer who fired the shot might have seen some imminent threat to his or others’ lives that the camera does not detect at that distance, angle and resolution,” said Michael Scott, a University of Wisconsin law professor, former police chief in Florida and co-author of “Deadly Force: What We Know.”

Quoted: Salt lowers the freezing point of water, said UW-Madison chemistry professor Bob Hamers.

Quoted: Embryonic cells remain the “gold standard,” said Tim Kamp, co-director of the University of Wisconsin Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Centre, and scientists say it is still far too early to abandon embryonic stem-cell research. But that could change in the years to come as this new field of research takes off.

Quoted: Lewis Leavitt, a University of Wisconsin pediatrics professor and an expert on the effects of war on children. “There are some children who can manage well and actually succeed, but as with any heavy burden, some people can’t handle it.”

Quoted: “It’s the body’s natural attempt to get rid of the booze,” said Susan Smith, a professor of nutritional sciences at UW-Madison. “The reality is it just happens with time.”

Quoted: “It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” said Susan Nitzke, chairman of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at UW-Madison. “But it distracts from how most children learn to like new flavors: people enjoying them as part of the daily routine.”

Quoted: â??People donâ??t want to panic,â? said Brian W. Gould, an agricultural economist at the University of Wisconsin, adding that farmers were receiving $20 for 100 pounds of raw milk just a few months ago. The price is expected to drop to about $14 for 100 pounds of raw milk in coming months. â??It is unclear as to whether this will be a short-term or long-term market correction. It all depends on how long it takes the U.S. economy to recover,â? he said.

Quoted: Donald Downs, a UW-Madison professor of political science, law and journalism, said he thinks the plaintiffs will have a tough time winning. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that starting a legislative session with a chaplain or prayer is not a violation of the First Amendment because it has been a traditional practice, he sa

Quoted: Some experts say the ultimate human choice is whether to think positively or not, even in times of woe. Studies show it helps to pay attention to the good things in your life, said Carol Ryff, a UW-Madison professor who studies psychological well-being.

Quoted: It’s entirely possible to maximize the good feelings associated with drinking alcohol while avoiding the bad ones, said Kevin Strang, a UW-Madison faculty associate with a doctorate in human physiology.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business Dean Mike Knetter said rates are great but that homeowners should be sure to do a reality check of their own financial well-being. He said it all depends on a homeowner’s current rate.

Noted: To be sure, only about 10 percent of new childrenâ??s books published last year focused on minorities, according to the Cooperative Childrenâ??s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, a library that serves the universityâ??s School of Education.

The number of books about minorities has remained around 10 percent since 1992, said Kathleen Horning, the centerâ??s director.

QUoted: “We’ve been looking into this for a century,” said Adam Gamoran, interim dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “First researchers focused on personality characteristics, then qualifications, and now we measure what teachers do in the classroom.

Quoted: Barry Orton, professor of telecommunications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the transition has been poorly organized, with too many entities, private and public, managing the process. It should have been done locally, with each television market managing its own transition, he said.

Quoted: But education experts say the push needs to start well before college. This month, it was announced that the performance of American students on the most recent international science test had declined. And researchers have found many students do not retain what they’ve learned, says Sarah Miller, co-director of the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

If you were one of the many people who checked out President-elect Barack Obama’s topless Hawaiian beach photos this week on the Internet, don’t worry, you’re not a presidential pervert.

“Everybody’s gonna talk about it,” says Charles Franklin, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, who admits that he, too, visited paparazzi blog bauergriffinonline.com late Monday night to see our soon-to-be commander in chief in swim trunks, looking sun-kissed and svelte.

Q: Is it possible to catch the same cold more than once?

A: Probably not the exact same cold, says Jonathan Temte, an associate professor of family medicine at UW-Madison. “With an infection, you will mount an immune response that is specific to that particular strain, but the common cold is usually caused by a rhinovirus, and well over 100 rhinovirus strains affect people.”

Quoted: Jim Leary, director of UW-Madison’s folklore program.