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Category: UW Experts in the News

UW professor helps analyze terror risks

Wisconsin State Journal

As a child and later as a parent, Vicki Bier worried about swing sets.

They just didn’t seem safe, she thought, the way individual swings arced back and forth, faster and higher.

Bier, a professor of industrial engineering and engineering physics at UW-Madison, has more serious things to be concerned about now.

Baby Einsteins or baby couch potatoes?

Wisconsin State Journal

“There is not a shred of evidence that these products make babies ‘smarter,’ whatever that means,” said Seth Pollack, director of the child emotion research lab at UW- Madison. “At very best, babies may find them interesting . . . but there are lots of physical and social things in the world that babies are also captivated by.”

Justice Prosser admits campaign conduct in Assembly

Wisconsin State Journal

“David Prosser needs to be a little bit careful here,” UW- Madison law professor Walter Dickey said. “He might be admitting to a crime. Even if it’s not prosecutable, it undermines the legitimacy of the judiciary if you admit to behavior that amounts to a felony.”

Richard Jacobson, a private attorney and lecturer in legal ethics at the law school, said Prosser’s admission only shows he disagrees with rulings by the 4th District Court of Appeals and upheld by the Supreme Court that operating private political campaigns with public resources wasn’t a legitimate state duty.

Piecing together Henry Kissinger

Daily Cardinal

As one of the foremost Henry Kissinger historians nation-wide, UW-Madison history professor Jeremi Suri is privelaged with extensive access to archival materials and has even had six or seven meetings with the man himself�two resources few historians have at their disposal.

Small businesses get angelic help

Wisconsin State Journal

Starting a business is a big risk, said UW-Madison finance professor Jim Seward, and small businesses don’t have access to the range of stocks, bonds and lending that larger companies can use.

“A lot of the success of the American economy is making sure that funds flow to those sorts of businesses so that they get a chance to commercialize their discoveries,” said Seward, director of the Nicholas Center for Applied Corporate Finance. “It’s a great thing.”

Warm Winter Reaches Historic Status (AP)

NBC-15

The warmer-than-usual temperatures in Wisconsin this month are of historic proportions.

Record keepers say it’s the warmest start to a year since 1880.

U-W Madison research meteorologist Scott Bachmeier says it’s pretty amazing given the magnitude of how much warmer it is compared to normal.

Study: Evidence of African slaves found

USA Today

Researchers have found the remains of African slaves in a 16th-century Mexican graveyard, confirming historical accounts that slavery began in the New World not long after Europeans conquered Mexico, according to a new study. The graves were discovered near the ruins of a colonial church in Campeche, Mexico, a port city on the Yucatan Peninsula. The authors of the study being released today say the remains are the earliest physical evidence of slavery in North America.

University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropology professor T. Douglas Price, who helped conduct the study, said the remains confirm historical descriptions of the beginning of slavery in the New World. ââ?¬Å?It underscores very vividly that in the Spanish world, slaves were being brought into the colonies right from the very start,ââ?¬Â said Matthew Restall, a professor of colonial Latin American history at Penn State University.

Of sound mind: music on the brain

Daily Cardinal

ââ?¬Å?Music is my religionââ?¬Â – Jimi Hendrix

Iâ��m walking back from class, iPod in tow, and the familiar opening piano line of my favorite Sigur R�³s song kicks in and, about a minute into the track, the hairs on my arm stand on end and chills run down my spine.

Losing control: Phone firms’ TV plans would cut local franchising

Capital Times

Opponents of legislation that would let phone companies avoid local franchising when they offer TV services in Wisconsin gathered today to bring attention to the issue.

Bills that would let phone companies franchise on a state or federal level have been introduced in Congress and several states, but not yet in Wisconsin, where time is running out on the 2006 legislative session, which ends in March.

However, “We’re expecting one,” said Barry Orton, a UW-Madison professor of telecommunications who advises many communities in their dealings with cable companies.

Doyle keeps his distance

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Gov. Jim Doyle distanced himself Wednesday from an indicted state administrator, saying he’d never met the woman federal prosecutors say manipulated a bid process to award a state travel contract to a firm whose executives contributed to the governor’s re-election campaign. Article also qutoes UW-Madison political scientist Katherine Cramer Walsh.