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Category: UW Experts in the News

Skin Deep-New Year’s resolutions

New York Times

Quoted: Dr. Ladan Mostaghimi, an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Dr. Mostaghimi published a study in 2005 in the Journal of Sleep Research reporting that severely sleep-deprived lab rats developed lesions on their paws and tails while rested rats did not.

Prof: Don’t hold breath for new services under state cable law

Capital Times

Gov. Jim Doyle’s signing of the state cable franchising bill isn’t likely to mean AT&T — a leading backer of the bill — will bring its U-verse TV service to the Madison area anytime soon, one prominent observer said.

“I don’t see it in Madison in any widespread way in 2008,” said Barry Orton, a UW-Madison professor of telecommunications who has advised many communities in their dealings with cable companies.

Orton noted that AT&T has been reducing its rollout projections for U-verse in recent announcements.

Outdoors: Global warming a hot topic at Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference

Capital Times

The 68th Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference was held in Madison last week, drawing more than 1,200 fish and wildlife professionals from Midwestern states to hear reports on recent research and management experiences.

….John Magnuson, emeritus professor in the Center for Limnology at UW-Madison, gave a keynote address followed by presentations on how climate change is affecting natural resources. Magnuson made the point that people see and know how to deal with short-timeline problems and solutions, but something that changes in terms of decades is much more difficult to realize and to deal with.

(Also included in this article is Chris Kucharik of the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.)

Social-Skills Programs Found to Yield Gains in Academic Subjects (Education Week)

Richard J. Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that the findings dovetail with his own work on emotion and the brainâ??s structure and function. While studies have long shown that negative emotions, such as anxiety and fear, can interfere with learning, Mr. Davidson, who was named one of the worldâ??s most influential people by Time magazine in 2006, has documented that in people who undergo regular training in meditation or other practices akin to social and emotional learning, the brain circuitry actually changes.

Will MTV’s Tila Tequila choose boy or girl? (ABC News)

Nonphysical attributes such as respect, familiarity, willingness to work hard, and shared goals may contribute as much or more to the perception of attractiveness than youth or beauty, said Kevin Kniffin, an evolutionary anthropologist and honorary fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For his research study, Kniffin showed students some photos from a yearbook. The photos were of people they know and didn’t know. The participants consistently rated the people they had positive feelings for as more attractive. And the people they didn’t like — as unattractive.

“Our findings confirm that for some people at least there’s more to beauty than meets the eye,” said Kniffin.

Do-It-Yourself Diagnosis on the Web (NPR)

National Public Radio

Quoted: Robert Hawkins of the University of Wisconsin. “It’s a very chaotic, tough world out there on the Internet on health.”

Suzanne Pingree, Hawkins’ colleague at the University of Wisconsin, says the cancer patients were overwhelmed by all the information they found.

Social networks have risks (Deseret Morning News)

Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

Quoted: Thomas Reason, associate director of admissions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told me that neither he nor his staff have time to research applicants using such sites, but that if information about an applicant “ended up in my face, it would be hard to ignore.” Reason also said that they would not make a decision based on something they saw on Facebook or MySpace, but instead would “inquire of the student to get a better understanding of the situation.”

Cable bill critic certain it will become law

Wisconsin Radio Network

A leading critic of a controversial cable TV bill is predicting Governor Doyle will sign the measure.

UW-Madison Telecommunications Professor Barry Orton says Governor Doyle has been supportive of the bill deregulating the cable industry by saying he likes the idea of the measure. Orton says Doyle has also received a large amount of campaign contributions from AT&T, the main proponent of the bill. Orton says he would be “shocked” if the Governor vetoed the measure

Legislators Act to Curb Controversial Privilege

Wisconsin Public Radio

A UW political scientist says the state senateâ??s vote Tuesday night to limit the veto powers of the governor came as a strong message that the senate democrats count their role as lawmakers over their loyalty to Democratic Governor Jim Doyle. Steve Roisum reportsâ?¦(Audio.)

The Team That Put the Net in Orbit

New York Times

Quoted: Lawrence H. Landweber, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin who in 1980 made the pioneering decision to use the basic TCP/IP Internet protocol for CSNET, an academic network that preceded NSFnet and laid the foundation for â??internetworking.â?

New Evolution Findings About Humanity, not Races

Wired.com

Modern medicine and social safety nets haven’t slowed human evolution; instead, thanks to changes in diet, climate and lifestyle, evolution appears to be speeding up, and it’s happening in different ways in different groups of people.
So said a team of U.S. anthropologists earlier this week. Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, received widespread press coverage — some of it responsible, and some less so.

Art & democracy: UW prof’s book shows why they go together

Capital Times

Even with the Iowa caucuses less than a month away, you don’t hear much in presidential candidates’ stump speeches and broadcast debates about the arts.

That’s not the way that Caroline Levine thinks it should be.

Levine, who teaches English literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently published “Provoking Democracy: Why We Need the Arts.”

Bioethicist says stem cell war not over

Daily Cardinal

Last month, after UW-Madison and Kyoto University researchers announced a new technique that turns skin cells into cells that look and function like embryonic stem cells, the world seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. At last, the end to the nearly decade-long stem cell war was in sight. Or, so it seemed.

Cranberry Board outlines research priorities (Tomah Journal)

Quoted: Prof. Daniel L. Mahr of the Department of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison presented a proposal for a new research project. According to the proposal, the project would last three years including publication, and would survey the beneficial natural enemies occurring in cranberry beds, and determine if the adoption of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices has resulted in the increase of natural enemies of cranberry pests

Revived Madison poetry club begins a new verse

Wisconsin State Journal

Quoted: Ron Wallace, a poet who started the creative writing program at UW-Madison in 1978; and Judith Mitchell, director of the masters of fine arts program in creative writing at UW-Madison; and UW-Madison professor Heather Dubrow, who specializes in lyric poetry and Shakespeare.

Celldance prizes presented

Nature

Quoted: Steve Paddock of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, also received an honourable mention for a video that took a somewhat artistic tack. Sluder calls it â??non-canonicalâ?, as it doesnâ??t present scientific data, or even a particularly scientific idea, but is visually arresting and fun nonetheless.

Redding presentation planned for Thursday

Capital Times

Otis Redding died at a time when many others were dying, both in the U.S. and Vietnam, and his “music gave people a sense of hope,” said UW-Madison Afro-American studies professor Craig Werner.

He and journalist Doug Bradley will be presenting a Redding memorial program called “Echoes From Vietnam: (‘Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay'” on Thursday evening. Werner and Bradley have interviewed hundreds of Vietnam veterans about the era’s music for a collaborative book, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Music and the Experience of Vietnam Vets.”

Richard Nolte, Three-Week Ambassador During Six-Day War, Dies at 86

New York Times

Mr. Nolteâ??s interests extended well beyond the Middle East. From 1988 to 1996, he was chairman of the American Geographical Society. The organization has provided geographical counseling to foreign policymakers since 1851, advising on matters like the Panama Canal and European borders for the Versailles Peace Treaty after World War I.

Mary Lynne Bird, the current executive director of the society, said Mr. Nolte led negotiations with the University of Wisconsin in 1978 when ownership of the societyâ??s collection of maps, journals by explorers, artifacts from explorations and surveys went to the university, transferred to its library in a caravan of 20 trucks.

You Don’t Have to Be Smart to Share (ScienceNow)

ScienceNOW

Quoted: Charles Snowdon, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is working on a similar experiment with cotton-top tamarins, another monkey that breeds cooperatively. He says he’s “excited” about Burkhart’s paper and that it confirms some of his predictions about altruistic behavior in cooperatively breeding primates.