Research
Rewriting ‘Psycho’
UW prof works to demystify a loaded term.
For most people, the term psychopath evokes thoughts of violence and bloodshed, evil of the darkest kind. UW-Madison psychologist Joseph Newman would like to change that perception — and he’s spent his career building evidence to do it.
“People think [psychopaths] are just callous and without fear, but there is definitely something more going on,” says Newman, who has been studying psychopathy since he joined the UW faculty in 1981. “When emotions are their primary focus, we’ve seen that psychopathic individuals show a normal [emotional] response. But when focused on something else, they become insensitive to emotions entirely.”
Newman has gained insight on the disorder, thanks to an extraordinary partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, which has allowed him and his students to interview and evaluate thousands of prison inmates during the past two decades. In doing so, he came to believe that the dominant scientific explanation of psychopathy — which held that psychopathic individuals were incapable of feeling fear or other emotions and therefore indifferent to the consequences of their actions — was inadequate.
Instead, Newman argues that psychopathy is essentially a type of learning disability — an information-processing deficit that arises when an affected person perceives the promise of instant reward. Being focused on a short-term goal, Newman says, makes psychopathic individuals incapable of detecting surrounding cues, such as another person’s discomfort or fear.
For most people, the term psychopath evokes thoughts of violence and bloodshed, evil of the darkest kind. UW-Madison psychologist Joseph Newman would like to change that perception — and he’s spent his career building evidence to do it.
“People think [psychopaths] are just callous and without fear, but there is definitely something more going on,” says Newman, who has been studying psychopathy since he joined the UW faculty in 1981. “When emotions are their primary focus, we’ve seen that psychopathic individuals show a normal [emotional] response. But when focused on something else, they become insensitive to emotions entirely.”
Newman has gained insight on the disorder, thanks to an extraordinary partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, which has allowed him and his students to interview and evaluate thousands of prison inmates during the past two decades. In doing so, he came to believe that the dominant scientific explanation of psychopathy — which held that psychopathic individuals were incapable of feeling fear or other emotions and therefore indifferent to the consequences of their actions — was inadequate.
Instead, Newman argues that psychopathy is essentially a type of learning disability — an information-processing deficit that arises when an affected person perceives the promise of instant reward. Being focused on a short-term goal, Newman says, makes psychopathic individuals incapable of detecting surrounding cues, such as another person’s discomfort or fear.
In one study, for example, Newman gave psychopathic and non-psychopathic individuals a series of mislabeled images, such as a drawing of a pig with the word dog superimposed on it. While most people are momentarily confused by the conflicting signals and stumble when asked to identify what they see, psychopathic subjects answer immediately, barely taking notice of the discrepancy. The difference, Newman says, points to a basic fault in how psychopathic people perceive peripheral cues that are obvious to others.
Newman’s work may lead to new interventions that help identify and target the disorder. It also could help end the over-classification of criminals as psychopathic.
“My main concern is that the label is applied too liberally and without sufficient understanding of the key elements,” says Newman. “As a result, the term is often applied to ordinary criminals and sex offenders whose behavior may reflect primarily social factors or other emotional problems that are more amenable to treatment than psychopathy.”
By some estimates, 1 percent of the general population could be described as psychopathic. In prisons, however, 7 to 15 percent of female inmates and 15 to 25 percent of male inmates display psychopathic behaviors, according to researchers. Trying to alter stereotypes about this reviled segment of society has been a long and uphill road. Newman’s provocative theory has faced opposition from his scientific peers, although he has now won over many of his critics.
“In looking back, I see [Newman] as one of the preeminent research scientists in the field — his work is ingenious, meticulous, methodologically sophisticated, and driven by theory,” says Robert Hare, a leading psychopathy expert at the University of British Columbia. “I really think he’s the top man in the area.”
— Paroma Basu
Newman’s work may lead to new interventions that help identify and target the disorder. It also could help end the over-classification of criminals as psychopathic.
“My main concern is that the label is applied too liberally and without sufficient understanding of the key elements,” says Newman. “As a result, the term is often applied to ordinary criminals and sex offenders whose behavior may reflect primarily social factors or other emotional problems that are more amenable to treatment than psychopathy.”
By some estimates, 1 percent of the general population could be described as psychopathic. In prisons, however, 7 to 15 percent of female inmates and 15 to 25 percent of male inmates display psychopathic behaviors, according to researchers. Trying to alter stereotypes about this reviled segment of society has been a long and uphill road. Newman’s provocative theory has faced opposition from his scientific peers, although he has now won over many of his critics.
“In looking back, I see [Newman] as one of the preeminent research scientists in the field — his work is ingenious, meticulous, methodologically sophisticated, and driven by theory,” says Robert Hare, a leading psychopathy expert at the University of British Columbia. “I really think he’s the top man in the area.”
— Paroma Basu
COOL TOOL: The Weedometer
UW-Madison agronomist Ed Luschei often assigns his students projects with only one requirement: “Do something useful for someone.” In developing the Weedometer, a nifty tool that helps farmers seek and destroy some of their peskiest enemies, Luschei followed his own advice.
Weedometers are speedometer-like graphs that chart the emergence and flowering periods of nearly seventy species of weeds common in Wisconsin. Using the color-coordinated meters, growers can see when to expect invasions of everything from bull thistle to yellow foxtail, revealing the best times to spray herbicides.
The Weedometer is based on data collected through years of growing and observing weed species at the UW’s Arlington Research Station. To give it a spin, you can find it online at weedecology.wisc.edu/weedometer/.
— Staff
Weedometers are speedometer-like graphs that chart the emergence and flowering periods of nearly seventy species of weeds common in Wisconsin. Using the color-coordinated meters, growers can see when to expect invasions of everything from bull thistle to yellow foxtail, revealing the best times to spray herbicides.
The Weedometer is based on data collected through years of growing and observing weed species at the UW’s Arlington Research Station. To give it a spin, you can find it online at weedecology.wisc.edu/weedometer/.
— Staff
The Dream of Green Gas
Scientists move closer to a leafy substitute for oil.
Drive through southern Wisconsin in late autumn and you’ll pass acres of yellowing cornstalks, the post-harvest residue of another growing season come to a close. But what if all those remnants weren’t just symbols of summer’s end? What if a dying Wisconsin cornfield represented something as rich and plentiful as a Texas oil well?
It’s a vision shared by UW-Madison engineers and agriculturalists who believe the United States can reduce its dependence on foreign oil and find a cheap, renewable energy source by using materials left over from agriculture. And while gassing your car up on corn stover isn’t a reality yet, it’s inching closer.
“The theory is right there,” says Yuriy Roman-Leshkov, a chemical engineering graduate student and one of several dozen people on campus researching renewable energy sources. “A lot of research still has to be done to get it to be commercially viable. But I think as more people get into this field, it will become a solution.”
Making gasoline from plants is nothing new. The first automobile built by Henry Ford was designed to run on ethanol, an alcohol-based fuel typically made from corn grain. Today, about 2 percent of transportation fuel used in the United States comes from corn-grain ethanol. The world’s biggest producer of ethanol — Brazil — obtains more than 20 percent of its gasoline by converting sugar cane into fuel.
Drive through southern Wisconsin in late autumn and you’ll pass acres of yellowing cornstalks, the post-harvest residue of another growing season come to a close. But what if all those remnants weren’t just symbols of summer’s end? What if a dying Wisconsin cornfield represented something as rich and plentiful as a Texas oil well?
It’s a vision shared by UW-Madison engineers and agriculturalists who believe the United States can reduce its dependence on foreign oil and find a cheap, renewable energy source by using materials left over from agriculture. And while gassing your car up on corn stover isn’t a reality yet, it’s inching closer.
“The theory is right there,” says Yuriy Roman-Leshkov, a chemical engineering graduate student and one of several dozen people on campus researching renewable energy sources. “A lot of research still has to be done to get it to be commercially viable. But I think as more people get into this field, it will become a solution.”
Making gasoline from plants is nothing new. The first automobile built by Henry Ford was designed to run on ethanol, an alcohol-based fuel typically made from corn grain. Today, about 2 percent of transportation fuel used in the United States comes from corn-grain ethanol. The world’s biggest producer of ethanol — Brazil — obtains more than 20 percent of its gasoline by converting sugar cane into fuel.
But rather than relying on corn grain or sugar cane — crops that could feed people and animals — many researchers have long eyed other kinds of plant material as sources of energy. Grasses, fast-growing trees, and the leafy remains of agricultural crops are loaded with cellulose, a carbohydrate that stores energy in the form of carbon — the same as fossil fuels, which are essentially just the liquefied remains of long-dead plants and animals.
Like grain-based ethanol — and unlike fossil fuels — fuel made from plant waste releases no new carbon into the atmosphere, making it an environmentally friendly alternative to crude oil. But it has yet to break into the marketplace because it’s costly to produce in large quantities — far less efficient than converting cornstarch into fuel, or even than making diesel from vegetable oils and animal fats. But many people consider it much more promising as a long-term energy solution because there’s so much of it around.
“In the short term, it’s a good thing to turn grain into ethanol, because it’s quite easy to process, but long term, you don’t want to use grain for your fuel,” says James Dumesic ’71, a professor of chemical and biological engineering. “You want to get your hands on the abundant forms of biomass.”
Like grain-based ethanol — and unlike fossil fuels — fuel made from plant waste releases no new carbon into the atmosphere, making it an environmentally friendly alternative to crude oil. But it has yet to break into the marketplace because it’s costly to produce in large quantities — far less efficient than converting cornstarch into fuel, or even than making diesel from vegetable oils and animal fats. But many people consider it much more promising as a long-term energy solution because there’s so much of it around.
“In the short term, it’s a good thing to turn grain into ethanol, because it’s quite easy to process, but long term, you don’t want to use grain for your fuel,” says James Dumesic ’71, a professor of chemical and biological engineering. “You want to get your hands on the abundant forms of biomass.”
In recent years, Dumesic’s lab has uncovered more efficient ways to extract energy from those readily available materials. With chemical engineering researcher Randy Cortright PhD’94, Dumesic pioneered a process for converting byproducts such as corn stover and paper-mill sludge into hydrogen. That led to the creation of Virent Energy Systems, a successful spin-off company that produces hydrogen fuel for various applications.
Lately, Dumesic’s team has been examining the process for making the chemical intermediaries that go into many plastics and other products currently made using petroleum. The team has identified vastly improved methods for converting plant sugar to an intermediary known as HMF, which then can be turned either into diesel fuel or used to make commercially valuable polymers.
“It has always been very energy-intensive and very expensive to make HMF in high concentrations,” says Roman-Leshkov, who led the study. He says the new techniques may cut the cost in half, which could make it possible for companies to begin using plants as an alternative to petroleum in making things like plastic soda bottles.
Still, commercial viability remains a significant obstacle for these processes. No industrial-scale plant exists in the United States for processing cellulosic biomass into fuel, and it’s not yet clear whether farmers would benefit economically by harvesting and transporting crops for that purpose.
“I can take bales of switchgrass to the biorefinery right now, and they may be willing to pay thirty-five or forty dollars a ton for that bale. But it’s going to cost me forty or forty-five dollars a ton to bring it to their gate,” says Kevin Shinners ’81, MS’82, PhD’85, a professor of biological systems engineering. “Unless we have an economical way to do these things, it won’t be profitable for agricultural producers to do it.”
Lately, Dumesic’s team has been examining the process for making the chemical intermediaries that go into many plastics and other products currently made using petroleum. The team has identified vastly improved methods for converting plant sugar to an intermediary known as HMF, which then can be turned either into diesel fuel or used to make commercially valuable polymers.
“It has always been very energy-intensive and very expensive to make HMF in high concentrations,” says Roman-Leshkov, who led the study. He says the new techniques may cut the cost in half, which could make it possible for companies to begin using plants as an alternative to petroleum in making things like plastic soda bottles.
Still, commercial viability remains a significant obstacle for these processes. No industrial-scale plant exists in the United States for processing cellulosic biomass into fuel, and it’s not yet clear whether farmers would benefit economically by harvesting and transporting crops for that purpose.
“I can take bales of switchgrass to the biorefinery right now, and they may be willing to pay thirty-five or forty dollars a ton for that bale. But it’s going to cost me forty or forty-five dollars a ton to bring it to their gate,” says Kevin Shinners ’81, MS’82, PhD’85, a professor of biological systems engineering. “Unless we have an economical way to do these things, it won’t be profitable for agricultural producers to do it.”
That, too, may be changing. Shinners and colleagues in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences are working to drive down the cost of harvesting and processing biomass, both by finding new ways to treat and transport materials and by identifying other uses for the byproducts of ethanol production. Paul Weimer MS’75, PhD’78, a research microbiologist and associate professor of bacteriology, hit upon one such solution recently, when he discovered that the fermented materials left over from the ethanol process can be used to make a potentially valuable adhesive.
Biomass has also gotten much more attractive with recent spikes in oil prices. In the United States, the consumption of petroleum-based products required 20.7 million barrels of oil per day in 2004, and 60 percent of those barrels were imported. Beyond the political and environmental complications inherent in that equation, there’s a simple lesson of economy. States such as Wisconsin, which has no fossil fuel reserves and must purchase energy on the open market, are anxious to pin their economic growth on something they have, rather than something they lack.
“Agricultural states and universities have a great opportunity to contribute to developing the fuels of the future,” says Patrick Walsh JD’77 of the UW biological systems engineering department. “Most of the money spent on energy in Wisconsin leaves the state, but we have renewable [sources] that could help take the edge off demand.”
— Michael Penn MA’97
Biomass has also gotten much more attractive with recent spikes in oil prices. In the United States, the consumption of petroleum-based products required 20.7 million barrels of oil per day in 2004, and 60 percent of those barrels were imported. Beyond the political and environmental complications inherent in that equation, there’s a simple lesson of economy. States such as Wisconsin, which has no fossil fuel reserves and must purchase energy on the open market, are anxious to pin their economic growth on something they have, rather than something they lack.
“Agricultural states and universities have a great opportunity to contribute to developing the fuels of the future,” says Patrick Walsh JD’77 of the UW biological systems engineering department. “Most of the money spent on energy in Wisconsin leaves the state, but we have renewable [sources] that could help take the edge off demand.”
— Michael Penn MA’97
Deep-Fried Fuel
Want fries with that fill-up? A new collaboration between UW-Madison and the Madison Area Technical College (MATC) is exploring that possibility — that the same cooking oils that fill our foods may someday fill our cars.
At the request of MATC’s diesel-technology program, UW-Madison engineering students have designed and built a small reactor for processing biodiesel — a form of diesel fuel derived from the fats in vegetable and animal oils. The reactor will help MATC students learn about and test various forms of biodiesel, which is growing in popularity as an alternative to fossil fuels and currently powers many small engines on UW-Madison’s campus.
“Biodiesel is an environmentally friendly fuel,” says Stephanie Britton MS’04, a materials science graduate student who is completing a teaching internship at MATC. “Because the oils used to make biodiesel come from agricultural crops, combustion of the fuel has zero net carbon dioxide emissions. This reduces greenhouse gases and helps address global warming.”
At an August ceremony to inaugurate the reactor, students and faculty from the two colleges demonstrated how the reactor purifies cooking oil recovered from a restaurant’s deep fryer and blends it into a fuel that can operate a diesel-powered vehicle. They then drove a semi running on fry power around MATC’s campus.
— M.P.
At the request of MATC’s diesel-technology program, UW-Madison engineering students have designed and built a small reactor for processing biodiesel — a form of diesel fuel derived from the fats in vegetable and animal oils. The reactor will help MATC students learn about and test various forms of biodiesel, which is growing in popularity as an alternative to fossil fuels and currently powers many small engines on UW-Madison’s campus.
“Biodiesel is an environmentally friendly fuel,” says Stephanie Britton MS’04, a materials science graduate student who is completing a teaching internship at MATC. “Because the oils used to make biodiesel come from agricultural crops, combustion of the fuel has zero net carbon dioxide emissions. This reduces greenhouse gases and helps address global warming.”
At an August ceremony to inaugurate the reactor, students and faculty from the two colleges demonstrated how the reactor purifies cooking oil recovered from a restaurant’s deep fryer and blends it into a fuel that can operate a diesel-powered vehicle. They then drove a semi running on fry power around MATC’s campus.
— M.P.
WISCONSIN IDEAS
Studying how bodies regulate the growth of new blood vessels, a researcher in the School of Medicine and Public Health has discovered a chemical link that may help halt the growth of cancer tumors. The study, led by Emery Bresnick, a professor of pharmacology, shows how a particular chemical in the nervous system helps to regulate the formation of blood vessels, which can sprout when wounds heal or in pregnancy, but also are key to the growth of tumors. The new research suggests that the chemical may hold promise as a way to stop new blood vessels from forming, thus cutting off tumor development.
Maps for the people:
UW–Madison assistant professor Mark Harrower creates tools that allow virtually anyone to design a map. Why is that important? Maps are becoming increasingly critical for categorizing and interpreting all kinds of data, but Harrower says that the skills to create maps have long been held by only a small class of cartographers. His public-domain software programs offer map-making help such as selecting colors, filtering data, and designing features — and they have been used by architects, publishers, regional planners, and federal agencies. “I’m building tools that can be accessed online — anytime, anywhere — that will help people do one small piece of the puzzle,” he says.
Maps for the people:
UW–Madison assistant professor Mark Harrower creates tools that allow virtually anyone to design a map. Why is that important? Maps are becoming increasingly critical for categorizing and interpreting all kinds of data, but Harrower says that the skills to create maps have long been held by only a small class of cartographers. His public-domain software programs offer map-making help such as selecting colors, filtering data, and designing features — and they have been used by architects, publishers, regional planners, and federal agencies. “I’m building tools that can be accessed online — anytime, anywhere — that will help people do one small piece of the puzzle,” he says.
