Newsmakers

(Every week faculty and staff from across campus are featured or cited in newspapers, magazines, broadcasts and other media from around the country. The listings that follow represent a small selection of the many stories that spotlight UW–Madison and its people. More newsmaker listings)

He’s got active lobes
Psychology professor Richard Davidson has seen the academic views on emotion come a long way, from utter dismissal to new regard as an emerging area of inquiry. Davidson’s work is winning him professional distinction – he will receive the American Psychological Association’s most prestigious award next year – as well as admiration from colleagues. “Richie may be the most left-frontally activated person I have ever met,” author and scientist Daniel Goleman, who studied with Davidson at Harvard, tells the Washington Post (Nov. 2).

Falling water worries
Water levels of the Great Lakes have been dropping in recent years, a factor that has wreaked havoc on boaters and others who use the water. Many recreational and commercial boaters have run aground on rock piles and other obstacles that they believed to be submerged at greater depths, and maps of the lakes are becoming untrustworthy because of the dropping levels. Most experts believe the fall in water level is due to two consecutive mild winters and below-normal snowfall in the Upper Midwest, and many say a normal winter should return the lakes to expected levels. But Jim Lubner of the Sea Grant Institute tells the Associated Press (Oct. 18) that wetter weather is no guarantee. “If conditions remain like this for another year or two, we could be near a record low,” he says, “but it’s a crap shoot.”

Animal testing needed
Animal-rights protesters have long argued that the merit of conducting research on animals does not justify the harm they endure. Deborah Blum, a professor of journalism who wrote about animal research in her book, “Monkey Wars,” points out that while animals aren’t perfect models, scientists do rely on them to help identify how humans will react to things such as new drugs or treatments. But she agrees that more needs to be done to find other ways of replicating human reactions. “I wish more people in science would push non-animal testing, but we are not there yet,” Blum tells the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Oct. 13). “There are no good computer simulations of what happens in a whole human system, nor can you do it in a single cell grown in a test tube.”

Skyscraper prospects doubted
Chicagoans have been upset ever since their city was stripped of the distinction of having the world’s tallest building, an honor now held by Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers. Developers are now proposing a new behemoth, which at over 1,550 feet (2,000 with antennae) would eclipse the Petronas. The likelihood that the new structure will actually be built, though, isn’t great, says Richard Green, a professor of real estate. Green tells The Economist (Oct. 2) that skyscrapers are disproportionally expensive to build and run, and he and other property economists are wondering if the numbers will ever add up suitably to win city and investor approval for the project.

Labor rights supported
A study by Gordon Hewitt, who did much of his work while a doctoral student at the university, is showing that collective bargaining by graduate students has little to no effect on the educational environment. The results of the survey make sense to Chris Golde, an educational administration professor who helped Hewitt with his study. Golde notes that the subjects of union bargaining, such as pay and benefits, don’t pertain directly to the educational setting. “That’s the business of being a university employee, not the business of being a student,” Golde tells the Chronicle of Higher Education (Oct. 22).