Wednesday, 8 February, 2012

The “official” arbiter of recessions is the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private, nonprofit research organization, comprising a number of top economists, according to Stephen Malpezzi, Lorin and Marjorie Tiefenthaler Professor of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics at the Wisconsin School of Business. Actually, NBER doesn’t officially use the word “recession” as [...]

Yes, says Linda Roberts, a professor of human development and family studies at UW-Madison. Roberts, who studies couples, says evidence supports this folk wisdom. People are generally attracted to those of similar social class, age and ethnicity. To illustrate the point in her class on couple relationships, she chooses someone in a long-term relationship and [...]

Plucked from his own time in the autumn of 1621 and deposited at a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner today, a Plymouth, Mass. Pilgrim would have gawked at the foodstuffs, says UW-Madison historian Stanley Schultz. “He would not have recognized mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, bread stuffing of any composition, green beans (alone or in some noxious casserole), [...]

The essential skills of bird migration are orientation — knowing north from south, and east from west — and navigation, having some sort of “map” to establish the location you’re aiming for, says Stanley Temple, emeritus professor of conservation. Birds usually orient themselves by observing the sun and the stars – although some can also [...]

This year’s influenza vaccine in the United States contains three strains of the influenza virus. Last March, experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization chose those strains based on the varieties of flu virus that were present at the end of North America’s flu season. The [...]

First of all, it’s important to remember that many people don’t enjoy these experiences, said Jack Nitschke, a UW-Madison professor of psychiatry and psychology. But those who do may be seeking thrills provided by the amygdala, a brain region that controls our emotional responses to salient objects and events. The amygdala kicks in when we [...]

The moment a knife slices through apple—spilling the contents of apple cells along the surface of the cut, and allowing everything to mix—a reaction begins. In particular, an enzyme known as polyphenol oxidase that had been held in check is loosed. Almost immediately, it begins altering polyphenols, a group of health-promoting chemicals with antioxidant activity [...]

It depends on the kind of lifestyle those people enjoy, says Lisa Naughton, a UW-Madison professor of geography and environmental studies. The late 18th century English economist Thomas Malthus – one of the first to express concern about overpopulation – observed that there should be no more people in a country than can “daily enjoy [...]

When the Large Hadron Collider starts running this summer near Geneva, Switzerland, some physicists have predicted that some of its high-energy proton collisions could produce microscopic black holes. Concerned about the ramifications of such black holes, two men filed a lawsuit in March in Hawaii contending that safety concerns have been inadequately addressed at the [...]

Today, ethanol is a fuel additive used to replace or decrease the need for fossil fuels in trucks, automobiles and other engines. Most of this ethanol comes from the sugars within corn kernels, but the search for other sources of sugar is under way. “The likely candidate? Ethanol made from sugars in cellulose, or ‘grassoline,’ [...]