Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: UW-Madison dairy economist Ed Jesse.

Their concepts sound like the type that could change the world: drugs to prevent Alzheimer’s or influenza, a test for mad cow disease, a new construction material that could eventually replace steel.

They are local finalists in the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest – seven young companies that are among 20 statewide being considered for a total of more than $100,000 in cash prizes.

Several companies have UW-Madison ties.

With its especially large population of workers nearing retirement, Wisconsin needs more investment in training, not less, Center on Wisconsin Strategy director Laura Dresser said. “It would be better to get in front of the ball on this.”

Quoted: David Larbalestier, a superconductivity researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison

Quoted: Politics professor Edward Friedman of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Quoted: James Gee, the Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin.

Quoted: UW-Madison Limnologist Elena Bennett.

Quoted: Erwin Montgomery, a professor of neurology at the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison, said there has been a great deal of interest in the role of inflammation in Parkinson’s.

Quoted: Larry Rittenberg, 58, co-author of the survey and an accounting professor at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison

Quoted: Deborah Lowe Vandell of the department of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin.

Quoted: Andrew Reschovsky, professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, an expert on state and local government public finance.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin at Madison clinical instructor Joseph Foerner

Quoted: Ann Kelley, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison

Quoted: University of Wisconsin bioethicist Alta Charo.

Quoted: Donald Ferree, a public opinion researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Quoted: An economist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Robert Haveman.

Quoted: Stanley A. Temple, a scientist whose research has reported that stray cats in Wisconsin are a problem for grassland birds.

The earliest feminist bookstores opened in 1969, and though A Room of One’s Own, named for the book by Virginia Woolf, began a little later than that, it was a groundbreaker, said Anne Enke, a UW- Madison women’s studies professor.

The 1970s saw a boom in feminist bookstores, but many have folded due to competition from large booksellers like Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, Enke said.

Kenneth Mayer, a UW- Madison political science professor, said it’s uncertain what effect his divorce and bachelor status will have on Feingold’s presidential aspirations and political future.

“It’s hard to predict when these kinds of things will have an effect and when they won’t,” Mayer said. “Obviously politicians who are divorced are pretty common. In fact, divorced people are pretty common.”

Supporters of the proposal say such a law is necessary to control the population of wild, unvaccinated cats that eat songbirds and other wildlife and transmit diseases to animals and people. A study by UW-Madison wildlife ecology professor Stan Temple estimates that feral cats kill 7.8 million to 219 million birds in Wisconsin each year.

Call it much ado about almost nothing. To build excitement about an otherwise arcane subject, the University of Wisconsin-Madison showed off a tiny speck of zircon crystal believed to be the oldest known piece of Earth, about 4.4 billion years old.

Quoted: Chad Dorgan, who also serves on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus, one of the leading universities providing formal training for building commissioning

Quoted: John Karl Scholz and Ananth Seshadri of the University of Wisconsin

Quoted: Dr. Michael Fiore, director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin Medical School.

Tim Moermond, who teaches ornithology at UW- Madison, said the owls are susceptible because they normally don’t have to deal with much traffic and also because they are so intent on hunting they pay little attention to vehicles that get in their way.

Quoted: Andrew Reschovsky, professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, an expert on state and local government public finance.

Quoted: Allan Odden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor is a leading expert in revamping teacher compensation. He also is the co-director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education.

Drinking beer and paying taxes are two things Wisconsinites do in high quantities. So it should come as little surprise that a proposal to increase taxes on beer has tapped strong feelings over the best way to fund alcohol abuse treatment programs in the state.

UW-Madison Professor Richard Anderson in the news regarding Cross Plains village issues.

Michael Scott, a policing expert at the UW-Madison Law School, said departments nationwide are looking at revamping their Taser policies.

“There are other departments around the country that have abandoned use of Tasers altogether,” he said, adding that Madison’s changes were more restrictive than those of many departments.

With its chance detours and forks in the road, cultural history is full of what-ifs. Tonight, folklorist Jim Leary explores one of the most tantalizing – at least for Wisconsinphiles and folk music fiends:

What if … the great ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax had spent two months wending his way through Wisconsin in 1938 instead of just a day?

Quoted: Michael Gutter, professor of family financial management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Su-Chun Zhang, a stem cell researcher from the Waisman Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Fans of creationism and “intelligent design” theory would do well to leave evolution alone until they get their own ideas in order, a noted philosopher argued Monday.

Using the same logical tool, University of Wisconsin philosophy professor Elliott Sober derailed cases claiming that God either did or didn’t design what we see on Earth.

Quoted: Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It was back in 1981 that professor Waclaw Szybalski arrived in his hotel room in Rome and found a note from Pope John Paul II.

The pope, it seemed, wanted Szybalski, a UW-Madison microbiologist, to drop by for a chat about recombinant DNA. This is a subject Szybalski knew quite a bit about and, since the UW-Madison scientist was both in Rome for a genetic engineering conference and of Polish descent, the pontiff summoned him.

Expert commentary from educational psychology professor Chuck Kalish.

Quoted: Dr. Richard J. Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin,