Category: UW Experts in the News

Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, noted Iowa has used their model for decades and that there has never been a map that has had to be subject to amendment.

“The effort to remove Wolfe appears to be almost entirely partisan and not based on facts about her actions or authority,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. “Trump supporters in particular who distrust Wolfe have blamed her for many things over which she does not actually have responsibility.”

“The best evidence that we have to date shows no deterrent effect of where gun violence happens in schools or where weapons are brought to schools… Similarly, when a shooting does happen in a school, those shootings, actually, on average have been more deadly in schools with police,” said Ben Fisher, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who recently reviewed dozens of studies on the effects of police in schools.

Ryan Owens, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin who ran for attorney general as a Republican in 2021, defended the calls for Protasiewicz’s recusal, arguing that she was too explicit about her policy views during the campaign.

“Candidates who are running for justice shouldn’t go to the levels that she did when campaigning,” he said. “In the short term, it might gain you votes, but in the long term, you put the court’s credibility at risk.”

UW-Madison political scientist Howard Schweber said Republicans would be much less competitive in Wisconsin if the maps were redrawn.

“A threat to the gerrymander is an existential threat to their hold on power,” Schweber said.

UW Professor of Social Work Kristen Slack will hare her research into programs designed to prevent child maltreatment. She’ll discuss her work with coordinating services and benefits and detail improved strategies for preventing child neglect.

Quoted: Adrian Treves, a predator-prey ecologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who sits on Peer’s board, said no proper studies exist on whether the hunts protect livestock. Rather, more studies have been conducted on how the kills affect populations of caribou, moose, elk and other wildlife, and a 2020 meta analysis of available science found little evidence that they increase populations.

Research shows two much bigger factors in herd health are weather and habitat, Treves said, but hunts are still pushed by state game agencies because “hunter perception is a big part of it, and their attitudes are typically negative toward predators”.

Quoted: Among cats, an increase in vocalization, meaning more crying or howling — an obvious and frequently reported sign. “With cats, there is excessive vocalization and disorientation and changes in interaction with humans or other animals, such as hissing and swatting,” said Starr Cameron, clinical associate professor in small animal neurology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, who studies cat dementia. “Some cats are up all night and vocalizing. They go outside the litter box or can’t find it.”

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison population geneticist Aaron Ragsdale, who wasn’t involved in the research, says the study raises some very intriguing questions about human evolution during a time period from which both genetic and fossil data are relatively scarce. “I am eager to see if their results are replicated using other methods,” Ragsdale says.

Andrea Dutton, a professor of geology and sedimentologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is leading international research on climate change. Her work focuses on studying fossilized corals to track changes in sea level. It’s helping scientists better understand the impact of rising temperatures.

“A lot of what I do is reconstruct past sea levels during warm periods so that we can understand how high sea level gets as temperatures rise and how quickly those ice sheets retreat,” Dutton said.