Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: Kurt Squire of University of Wisconsin, co-chairman of annual academic conference called â??Game, Learning & Society,â? said the project as described â??is really exciting because itâ??s taking a ubiquitous platform (cell phones) and trying to work in such a unique environment. There havenâ??t been any major successes that Iâ??m aware of, but this kind of application and deployment is really smart and could be a huge success.â?

Quoted: Brent Hueth, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Cooperatives.

Quoted: Dr. Lucille Marchand, the clinical director of integrative oncology services at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center, helped Frisch make some important health decisions.

Quoted: Even though Obama has a lead in the polls, Wisconsin isn’t a runaway Democratic state, said Charles Franklin, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-developer of pollster.com.

Quoted: Voter turnout is by far the lowest among the youngest age group, which includes people between 18 and 24 years old, said Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the co-developer of Pollster.com, a Web site that offers statistics and commentary about the upcoming election.

Quoted: Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,

Quoted: UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin.

Quoted: Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor who studies voter turnout, said Obama is trying to capitalize on recent polls that show him ahead of McCain by as many as 17 percentage points in Wisconsin and lock in those votes before they have a chance to slip away.

Quoted: Jonathan Temte – a family-medicine doctor at the University of Wisconsin and a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which made the new recommendation – said immunizing even 40 to 50 percent of children could have “very dramatic effects” on flu-transmission rates.

Quoted: A sour public mood is typical late in presidential campaigns as both sides’ attacks accumulate, said University of Wisconsin political scientist and polling authority Charles Franklin. This year’s disenchantment is probably magnified by worries about how the candidates would handle the economy, he said

Quoted: “Presidential campaigns are about making tough decisions with limited resources,” said University of Wisconsin political scientist Ken Goldstein, who tracks presidential campaign spending on television. “Obama doesn’t need to make tough decisions.”

Quoted: “Ten of the 15 states where both candidates are advertising were won by Bush in the 2004 election,” said University of Wisconsin professor Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project. “The campaign is being played on the Republican side of the field this year.”

Quoted: “These are absolutely astronomical numbers,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “Never before have the Democrats been so flush with funds.”

Quoted: â??This is uncharted territory,â? said Kenneth M. Goldstein, the director of the Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin. â??Weâ??ve certainly seen heavy advertising battles before. But weâ??ve never seen in a presidential race one side having such a lopsided advantage.â?

Quoted: â??The bottom line is, in the last two presidential elections, the voter percentages barely moved over the last three weeks,â? said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist and co-founder of the Web site Pollster.com. â??Thatâ??s very bad news for John McCain.â?

Quoted: David Mladenoff, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of forest ecology, has done computer modeling for the past six years to see how northern Wisconsin forests might change under different climates.

Quoted: â??What you see is itâ??s perfectly possible to hold a negative view of at least one aspect of African-Americans and yet simultaneously prefer Obama,â? said Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. â??Racial feelings are not as cut and dried â?? not as black and white â?? as people often say.â?

Quoted: Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, calculated that 47 per cent of Mr McCain’s advertisements since June had been negative, as had 35 per cent of Mr Obama’s messages.

Quoted: Barry Orton, a professor of telecommunications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said if the TRA were to grant AT&T’s petition, prices for local phone service would go up.

Quoted: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said third-party ad campaigns can have an effect on voters.

Quoted: Palin is an easy target for some of these efforts, given some of the gaffes she produced early on in her candidacy, said Dietram Scheufele, professor of life sciences communication, journalism and mass communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the American Political Science Association.

With only 16 days until the presidential election, many political analysts are polling and pooling information to predict a probable outcome.

On Friday morning, political science professors Christopher Wlezien and Charles Franklin, from Temple University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, gave a seminar in DuSable Hall on political forecasting.

When the candidates spared on the issue of negative campaign ads during Wednesday night’s debate, it was University of Wisconsin research that was cited. Barry Burden is a professor of Political Science at U-W and a member of the Wisconsin Advertising Project. Wisc Ads tracks political ads in over 100 television markets. (Third item, audio.)

Quoted: University of Wisconsin political scientist and polling authority Charles Franklin.

In response to dueling claims in the presidential debate over which side has been more negative on TV, the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has weighed in with a reality check.

“Despite his past, most would describe his educational research as pretty mainstream,” Simone Schweber, a UW-Madison education professor, said of Ayers, now a University of Illinois-Chicago education professor.

Quoted: Pam Oliver, a UW-Madison professor of sociology who has long studied the racial disparity in Wisconsin’s criminal justice system.

Q: How do the Chinese alphabetize?
A: The Chinese don’t have anything resembling the Roman alphabet of European languages; instead, their language has been written for centuries in symbols known as Chinese characters.

The presidential campaign is taking on a growing role in Wisconsin classrooms this fall, as teachers find ways to interest young students in elections while leading older students through potentially divisive discussions of issues such as abortion, the Iraq war and immigration.
“We want kids to talk about it better than adults do, actually,” said Diana Hess, an associate education professor at UW-Madison who organized a recent workshop attended by more than 180 classroom and student teachers from 30 school districts.

Quoted: “The house is like a Honda Accord â?? it deteriorates over time. It’s the land that appreciates,” says Morris Davis, a real estate professor at the University of Wisconsin who has studied land values. During the boom home builders and speculators spent lavishly to accumulate land.

Quoted: “The same factors that are driving non-Latino voters to favor the Democrat right now are driving Latinos in the same way,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin.

Quoted: This was McCain’s big chance to get back in the presidential contest, and it was important for him to come across as a leader, as assertive and someone on the offensive â?? all of which he did, said Dietram Scheufele, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Charles Franklin, a professor of political science and polling expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says these voters are probably in the same boat they were before the third and final showdown between the senior Arizona senator and the Illinois senator.

Noted: Mr. McCain is currently running all negative ads, according to a study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But he has run a number of positive ads during the campaign.

Quoted: Katherine Cramer Walsh, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the author of â??Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life.â?

Quoted: Jim Seward, UW-Madison School of Business finance professor.

The 2000 US presidential election highlighted one of the most unusual aspects of American politics: the fact that the president is selected, not by popular vote, but via a complicated 18th-century formula known as the Electoral College.

In an interview with Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Professor Franklin explains how the Electoral College works:

Quoted: With three weeks left to the election, the chances of a dramatic shift are slimmer â?? but that doesn’t mean McCain can’t regain some of the ground he appears to have lost, said Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Maggie Hawkins, a UW-Madison professor of education who specializes in bilingual education.

“The program at Verona is a model program,” Hawkins said. “The universities know it, the state knows it. It has a lot of eyes on it right now looking at the process that you’re going through.”

Quoted: “You can already observe that people do feel the effects of (a plant closure), even when it’s projected a year off,” said Laura Dresser, labor economist at UW-Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy. “That already changes behavior.”

Quoted: In the meantime, modern technology, and the skills it fosters, is evolving even faster than we are. There’s no telling whether future iterations of computer games, online communities and the like will require more or less of the traditional social skills and learning strategies that we’ve spent so many eons cultivating. “Too many people write about this as if kids are in one country and adults are in another,” says James Gee, a linguistics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. What the future brain will look like is still anybody’s guess.

Quoted: The survey released by Quinnipiac University has Barack Obama with a 17-point lead over John McCain in Wisconsin. However, UW-Madison political scientist Ken Mayer says we shouldn’t count McCain out just yet with three weeks to go before Election Day. Mayer says something can always change before then.

It’s not surprising that many people around the globe don’t understand how this electoral system works. But according to Charles Franklin, Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, many Americans are just as clueless as to how it operates as people elsewhere.

The Dane County Food Council will be addressing hunger in a public meeting Oct. 27.

Jane Voichick, a retired professor at the UW-Madison department of nutritional sciences will discuss economic security for families, federal nutrition programs and emergency food assistance. The meeting will also highlight healthy and affordable food options.

Quoted: The few states that fund stem cell research are more likely to be able to connect donating families to specific research programs that need embryos. People in other states do not have a clear pathway to donation, says R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Most IVF clinics are not hooked up to a research team and they may not be able to refer couples to a clinic who can do it for them,” she said.

Quoted: Former student leader Thongchai Winichakul, an historian at the University of Wisconsin, said he believes the PAD would try to provoke more violent confrontations so that it could provide a pretext for a military intervention, just as they did before the 2006 coup.

Quoted: Thailand-based analyst David Streckfuss, a historian at the University of Wisconsin, said the queen’s appearance at the funeral was unusual.

Quoted: “This race is not being moved by television advertising, with the fundamental factors so much to the advantage of the Democrats,” said Ken Goldstein, who directs the University of Wisconsin’s advertising project. “It’s just adding to the fog of information out there. . . . Obama’s huge spending makes McCain have to scream even louder to get his message heard.”

Quoted: “When government money is involved, the government sets the terms,” said Ken Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Quoted: The scope of that rescue will narrow the government’s options in stimulating demand, says University of Wisconsin economics professor Menzie Chinn. Chinn says the best way for the feds to stimulate the economy is to support infrastructure spending via aid to cash-strapped state and local governments, because that will increase economic activity more than a tax cut would.

Quoted: Most commercially available milk is fortified with vitamin D, but most children and teens do not drink enough of it â?? four cups daily would be needed â?? to meet the new requirement, said Dr. Frank Greer, the report’s co-author.