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Category: UW Experts in the News

Loans Are as Tricky as Ever (U.S. News and World Report)

U.S. News and World Report

Some schools, including the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have long done without preferred-lender lists and are emphasizing their neutrality. “If there was ever any tendency to advise people [on specific lenders], we’re making sure that’s not happening,” says Susan Fischer, director of financial aid at Wisconsin.

Splendid excess: Book, movie club to rule on Wharton’s ‘Innocence’

Capital Times

Even as she lived in high society, she held it up to public ridicule. Once treated as a minor writer who documented the drawing rooms of the rich, the American novelist Edith Wharton (1862-1937) has, ever since the feminist literary revival that started in the 1970s, been recognized as an American master.

Quoted: UW-Madison English professor Emily Auerbach

Mike Moore: Scratch the amateur mosquito theories (Racine Journal-Times)

Racine Journal Times

Cheeseheads have short memories, so Phil Pellitteri expected the calls.

Just as media types jump at the first trace of snow to remind people where their brake pedal is, we tend to act stunned when mosquitoes follow hard rains. A big part of Pellitteriâ??s week has been to smack us upside our forgetful heads.

â??I would give you the same interview 15 years ago,â? said Pellitteri, an entomologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Cable sports fans stir up any deal

Capital Times

Fans hoping for a breakthrough in negotiations between Charter Communications and the Big Ten Network seemingly will grasp at any straw.

One favorite theory of bloggers involves the pending deal in which News Corp. is selling its 38.4 percent stake in DirecTV, regional sports networks FSN Pittsburgh, FSN Northwest and FSN Rocky Mountain, and more than $500 million in cash to Liberty Media in exchange for Liberty’s 19 percent voting interest in News Corp.

Quoted: UW-Madison telecommunications professor Barry Orton

Steinkuehler: The game of life (Ottawa Citizen)

There’s a real generational divide on the issue of video games.

For those older than 35 or so, games are mostly an unfortunate waste of time or, worse, a Trojan horse introducing our kids to violent, sexist themes. For those younger than 35, they are a leading form of entertainment, a resource for creativity and innovation, and — contrary to the common stereotype — a way to socialize.

Constance Steinkuehler is an assistant professor of educational communication and technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Live college mascots reflect obsession with traditions

USA Today

The University of Wisconsin hasn’t had a live badger since 1947 â?? about the time Bucky got loose and ran onto the football field during a game, says David Null, director of the school’s archives.

“The team got a delay-of-game call while they tried to round it up and take care of it,” Null says. “They’re feisty little animals. I doubt they’ll ever bring it back.”

Curiosities: Chargers use some power even when not charging

Wisconsin State Journal

Q. Is it true that cell phone chargers continue to draw power when they ‘re not charging a battery, simply because they ‘re plugged into an outlet? And if this is true, how can it be?
A. Although he hasn ‘t measured it, UW-Madison emeritus electrical engineering professor Don Novotny guesses that a plugged-in charger still draws about one-third of the power it does while operating.

Unsportsmanlike Big Ten school leaders faulted for cable stalemate

Capital Times

Like many Badger fans, Eric Graf is angry as the Big Ten Network launches tonight without a deal with Charter Communications.

Barring an improbable agreement to break the long and contentious stalemate, Charter subscribers won’t be able to see at least three University of Wisconsin football games and at least 10 UW basketball games scheduled to air on BTN in the next six months.

But Graf isn’t focusing his ire on the network or cable company; he blames the heads of the Big Ten universities, including UW Chancellor John Wiley.

(Professor of telecommunications Barry Orton is quoted.)

Nature trumps decades of effort

Wisconsin State Journal

The region saw floods in 1993, 1978, 1965 and the early 1950s, experts said. But this year topped all of those, with the Kickapoo River level at the community of Steuben rising nearly five feet above flood stage, two feet higher than the previous high flood of 1978, according to federal data examined by UW-Madison hydrologist Ken Potter.

Both Potter and fellow UW-Madison professor Jim Knox said that, thanks to improved methods of farming and controlling soil erosion, floods in the region have generally lessened over the past 50 years.

Japanese beetles are spreading in state gardens (Racine Journal Times)

Racine Journal Times

If your garden survived the drought that lasted through July and the recent flooding rains, youâ??re not out of the woods yet. Japanese beetles are still on the attack.

These beetles, which shouldnâ??t be confused with ladybug look-alike Asian lady beetles, are becoming more numerous and widespread this summer than ever before, said University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s Phil Pellitteri. Pellitteri said Japanese beetles are invasive insects that only appeared in large numbers in Wisconsin within the past 10 years.

Curiosities: There’s More To Teeth Than You Might Think

Wisconsin State Journal

Q. What are teeth made of?

A. Built for crunching and chewing, teeth mostly consist of hard, inorganic minerals such as calcium. But they also contain nerves, blood vessels and specialized cells that manufacture the different parts of the tooth, said Bill Gengler, a veterinary dentist and oral surgeon with the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.

Henry Kissinger and the American Century. Jeremi Suri.

No American diplomat’s career has been more thoroughly documented and debated — or celebrated and reviled — than Henry Kissinger’s. There are shelves of biographies by distinguished authors, and Kissinger himself has produced a massive three-volume memoir followed by a steady flow of books, essays, and commentaries. These two books do not provide startling new historical accounts of Kissinger, but they do offer some fresh glimpses of his motives and personality on display in high office.

Women frame a new dialogue between cultures (Aspen Times)

Quoted: University of Wisconsin law professor Asifa Quraishi, at the opening of Wednesday’s session, pointed out that Islamic conservatives point to the very topic of “women’s rights” as “a Western imposition” of outside values on Muslim women, which therefore means it can be dismissed as irrelevant and anti-Islam.

Frank Lloyd Wright and the House Beautiful

New York Times

You get an engrossingly detailed picture of how he achieved his vision in â??Frank Lloyd Wright and the House Beautifulâ? at the Portland Museum of Art. The show displays more than 100 examples of his furniture, metalwork, textiles, plans, drawings and publications, along with photographs of particular interiors.

It was organized by International Arts and Artists, of Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation of Scottsdale, Ariz. Virginia T. Boyd, professor of design studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, served as curator.

Seniors still have sex, study finds

USA Today

Americans pushing 60, 70, 80 or even 90 don’t forgo sex just because they’re aging, according a new study that shows many older adults are having sex well into their 70s and 80s.

The University of Chicago study being published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine is being called the first comprehensive look at the sex lives of older adults in the USA. It portrays an image that researchers say runs counter to the stereotypes of older people as either asexual or “dirty old men.

Quoted: John De Lamater, UW-Madison professor of sociology

Outdoors: CWD experts address first meeting of advisory committee

Capital Times

Why should we care? That was a rhetorical question asked by Scott Craven, professor of wildlife ecology at UW-Madison, in leading off the second CWD Stakeholder Advisory Committee meetings in Madison last Saturday.

The meeting, held at Lowell Inn and Conference Center on the UW-Madison campus, drew a surprisingly small public attendance, less than 10 people. However, the reason for the meeting was for the 16-member committee to hear from experts about what is known about chronic wasting disease.

….”I obviously care for both personal and professional reasons, but this issue is just not on people’s radar screen like it was three years ago,” he (Craven) said. “One of the most important challenges that you face, as liaisons to groups of citizens and hunters, is to bring that back.”

(Also mentioned are Chad Johnson, an assistant scientist in the School of Veterinary Medicine, and Joel Pedersen, associate professor of Soil Science.)