UW-Madison in the Media

A selection of media coverage about the university and its people.

• The real Rain Man dies of heart attack aged 58 Guardian (UK) Dec. 23, 2009 Quoted: "His legacy can be summed up in one word: inspiration," said Darold Treffert, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin medical school who advised the makers of Rain Man and who was close to Peek for the past 20 years.
• Lost Giants: Did Mammoths Vanish Before, During and After Humans Arrived? Scientific American Dec. 15, 2009 Noted: To pin down when the megafauna vanished, paleoecologist Jacquelyn Gill of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her colleagues analyzed fossil dung, pollen and charcoal from ancient lake sediments in Indiana.
• The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas: Music For Monkeys New York Times Dec. 14, 2009 When David Teie, a cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra, wanted to test his ideas about where our emotional response to music originates, he decided to try them out on monkeys. He figured that if his theories were right — namely, that our response to the "emotional vocalizations," pulses and heartbeats that we first hear in the womb establishes our sense of music — then he should "be able to write music for another species that’s effective for that species." He contacted Charles Snowdon, a psychology professor who ran a colony of cotton-top tamarins in Madison at the University of Wisconsin, who sent him recordings of tamarin calls that demonstrated fear and calm.
• Retailers take notice as record numbers turn to food stamps Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Dec. 4, 2009 Quoted: "The fact that food stamp usage is up leads us to say the stigma once associated with food stamps is down," said John Karl Scholz, a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of the book "Changing Poverty, Changing Policies," published by the Russell Sage Foundation, which studies problems facing the poor.
• As jobs remain elusive, foreclosures rise again Boston Globe Nov. 23, 2009 Quoted: Morris A. Davis, an assistant professor in the Department of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, said the government needs to act quickly before the foreclosure crisis worsens.
• Palin's way of talkin' dissected, you betcha (AP) Madison.com Nov. 16, 2009 When Sarah Palin burst onto the national political stage there was a lot of talk about her distinctive way of talkin', you betcha. Three University of Wisconsin-Madison linguists tackled the conundrum in a research article to be published in the Journal of English Linguistics next month. The answer lies in something that happened in the 1930s. The UW researchers said people living in Alaska's Matanuska and Susitna valleys, where Wasilla is located, are largely descendants of farmers who moved there in the 1930s from the Upper Midwest.
• Lake Superior Stirs Up Wind as Waters Warm, Ice Cover Recedes Bloomberg News Nov. 16, 2009 Lake Superior, the world’s largest body of fresh water, is getting windier as the inland sea warms, increasing the danger to shipping and sailing interests.Winds above the lake, which straddles the U.S.-Canada border, have increased 5 percent a year since 1985, according to a study by Ankur Desai, an atmospheric and oceanic sciences researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Housing numbers up, but will they last? Minnesota Public Radio Nov. 12, 2009 Quoted: Morris Davis, a real estate economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Popping pills is no quick fix for boosting your body's immune system Chicago Tribune Oct. 27, 2009 Quoted: "The immune system is made up of scouts -- or white blood cells -- that look for invaders or anyone who might harm the host," said family physician David Rakel, director of integrative medicine at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "If the scouts find something, they blow the whistle and recruit a number of other cells ... to immobilize and destroy the invading organism."
• Autumn’s Bounty - Pumpkins and Winter Squashes Star on Porches and Tables New York Times Oct. 26, 2009 Noted: Straight butternut is working for anyone who consumes it, too: The deep orange flesh is packed with beta carotene, vitamin C, potassium, magnesium, manganese, calcium and fiber. Dr. Molly Jahn, the dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the founder of the plant breeding department at Cornell University, helped to develop a better butternut that is resistant to pesky powdery mildew; the plant holds its foliage longer and generates sugar right up to the first killing frost. “Most of us like our squash sweet, and disease resistance allows it to really sweeten up,” said Dr. Jahn, who has taste-tested more than her share of squash. “We also selected for maximum color intensity, for the genetic potential to produce more beta carotene.” Which means the more orange, the better.
• Evolution a natural story of adventure Lexington Herald-Leader Oct. 26, 2009 For early naturalists such as Charles Darwin, cataloging new species wasn't just extraordinary because of its effects on science, but also because of the amazing stories of danger and discovery their travels produced. Many of those accounts have been overshadowed by the impressive science that lives on. Darwin's theory of evolution that he famously laid out in his 1859 Origin of Species still is a source of controversy. But how these groundbreaking naturalists gathered their research is as historic as their contributions to modern biology, said Sean B. Carroll, professor of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• The Sex-Housework Link Wall Street Journal Oct. 21, 2009 Quoted: Other research supports the "work hard, play hard" thesis. Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has found that it doesn’t lead to less intimacy in marriage when wives hold paid jobs.
• Darwin's contribution to geology overlooked (Cosmos Magazine) Oct. 20, 2009 Quoted: This was a "remarkable achievement for his early years," said Robert Dott, a sedimentary geologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "He was always making observations of that sort, which contributed to his most famous theories about evolution."
• How we're evolving (Cosmic Log) MSNBC.com Oct. 20, 2009 Our skulls and our genes show that we’re still evolving, but not always in the ways you might expect.For example, the typical human head has actually been getting smaller over the past few thousand years, reversing the earlier evolutionary trend. Meanwhile, East Asians are becoming lighter-skinned - and appear to have more sensitive hearing than their ancestors did 10,000 years ago. John Hawks, an anthropologist and blogger at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, points to such trends as evidence that "recent evolution is real."
• Fed chief warns greenback's global status at risk Globe and Mail (Canada) Oct. 2, 2009 Quoted: Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin, said the United States would have to adopt “calamitously bad policies” to see it cede its reserve status to the euro, yen, yuan or the IMF’s special drawing rights (or SDRs).
• Throat infection may have brought down T. rex Los Angeles Times Sept. 30, 2009 Did Sue the dinosaur die of a really bad sore throat? An international team of scientists thinks so after studying holes in the jaw of the 13-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton on display at the Field Museum in Chicago.
• Tiny parasite may have done in mighty T. rex Chicago Tribune Sept. 30, 2009 Sue, the biggest, meanest meat-eating dinosaur known to history, probably was not killed by some other monster after a battle 65 million years ago, as scientists and schoolchildren used to believe. Instead, the Field Museum's celebrated Tyrannosaurus rex may have died with a whimper, felled by a puny, one-celled parasite that gave her a killer sore throat. In fact, she may even have starved to death.
• Scientists, foodies and farmers join University of Wisconsin debate over Pollan's 'Food' book (AP) Los Angeles Times Sept. 24, 2009 One best-selling book advocating fresh, local foods is shaking up America's Dairyland. Students across University of Wisconsin-Madison's campus, organic grocers, scientists, and dairy farmers large and small have jumped into the debate on how food is produced and eaten. The discussions started last month when the university began giving Michael Pollan's book, "In Defense of Food," free to all incoming freshmen and school officials urged professors to use it in class.
• Baucus's Health Plan May Shape Senate Bill Even After Attacks Bloomberg News Sept. 17, 2009 Quoted: “Many people involved in the health-care debate are discontented with the Baucus proposal,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “But this is what compromise looks like.”
• Swine flu deaths show this flu is different: experts (Reuters) Forbes Sept. 16, 2009 Quoted: Dr. Yoshi Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin said tests in monkeys showed the virus lives and replicates 1,000-fold better in the lungs than does seasonal flu.
• Obama poll: Scores higher on personal traits USA Today Sept. 15, 2009 Quoted: Obama’s address to Congress last week "wasn’t the huge game-changer some had hoped or thought," says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who studies public opinion.
• How blight becomes a killer MSNBC.com Sept. 10, 2009 Scientists have unraveled the genome of the parasite that sparked the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, revealing why it was such a killer back then and why it’s still a scourge today.
• Predicting tipping points before they occur USA Today Sept. 8, 2009 Now some of the most prominent scientists in that field have published a new paper on detecting early warning signals before a system changes. Titled "Early-warning signals for critical transitions," the review paper is in this week’s issue of the journal Nature. "We began to realize that there was really pretty cool and fundamental thing going on here," says Stephen Carpenter, one of the paper's authors and a lake ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Point twins get a bang out of playing Bucky Wausau Daily Herald Sept. 4, 2009 Actors often talk about how playing a character gives them a chance to be someone they’re not.Stevens Point natives Austin and Aaron Wessell must feel like they’re part of a Hollywood fraternity without leaving Wisconsin.The twins transform themselves into Bucky Badger, the much-loved University of Wisconsinmascot, at least 100 times a year.
• Brand Loyalty and the Financial Crisis Wall Street Journal Sept. 4, 2009 Quoted: Many things influence why embrace or reject particular brands, says Aric Rindfleisch, a marketing professor with Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Our relationships with brands can be deeply psychological and rooted in our personal experience with a company.
• Music made for monkeys MSNBC.com Sept. 2, 2009 Music may have charms to "soothe the savage breast," but that doesn't mean the same music that soothes humans will charm other species. Monkeys, for example, aren't much affected by human music. To find out whether any kind of music could affect a monkey's mood, a musician and a primatologist created tunes tailor-made for cotton-top tamarins. They report that the experiment worked - but the melodies are unlike anything you've ever heard.
• Monkeys are heavy metal fans Daily Mail (UK) Sept. 2, 2009 They have wild shaggy manes that are perfect for tossing about and are known to bite the heads off rodents. Unsurprising, then, that tamarin monkeys are big heavy metal fans. When a group of cottontop tamarins were played a variety of types of music, from classical to jazz, only the songs by hard rock bands such as Metallica caused them to react.
• Scientists create music that helps monkeys chill out Guardian (UK) Sept. 1, 2009 Music inspired by the soothing calls of contented monkeys relaxes the animals when it is played back to them, researchers have discovered.Researchers composed "monkey melodies" to investigate whether non-human primates are capable of responding to music with the same emotions as people.
• The feminist prince The Nation Aug. 27, 2009 Quoted: It was Prince Damrong who instituted suffrage for Thai women under the 1897 Local Administration Act, which made Siam the first major country in the world in which women and men achieved the vote on an equal basis and without any record of controversy, says Katherine A Bowie, an American professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Scientists Morph Human Skin Cells Into Retinal Cells Popular Science Aug. 27, 2009 The retina is a lush layered field of tissue lining the back of the eye, a complex mix of specialized cells that serve as a transfer station where light signals are absorbed and sent to the brain to be translated into sight. Researchers from University of Wisconsin, Madison have now created these unique retina cells from lowly skin cells -- opening the possibility that patients with damaged or diseased retinas might some day be able to grow themselves a cure from their own skin.