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February 1, 2022

Research

As Wisconsin’s climate gets warmer and wetter, beloved winter activities could be in jeopardy

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Those changes can already be seen clearly by examining lake ice, said Steve Vavrus, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Climatic Research.

Scientists studying Wisconsin’s inland lakes are able to collect a wealth of information on Madison’s lakes Mendota and Monona, whose ice records stretch back close to 170 years. Lakes have ice cover for about a month less now than they did when the records began, researchers estimate.

Out of Lake Mendota’s long ice record, the five years with the longest stretch of ice cover all occurred during the 1880s or earlier, and the five years with the shortest ice cover have all been since the 1980s, Vavrus said. It “really is a very different winter climate that we’re living in nowadays compared to over a century ago,” he said.

“I think what we’re seeing is people are pushing in at the limits of the edges of the season where it is potentially more dangerous,” said Titus Seilheimer, fisheries outreach specialist for the Wisconsin Sea Grant.

New UW-Madison research shows hibernating squirrels rely on gut bacteria to recycle nitrogen, maintain muscle mass

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

A new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison explains how hibernating animals use bacteria in their gut to maintain muscle density over the winter. The findings could lead to solutions for people with muscle-wasting disorders or astronauts headed on prolonged journeys into space.

Hannah Carey is a professor emeritus at UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine and an author of the study. She said scientists have known for years that ruminant animals, like cows and sheep, are able to recycle their own nitrogen as a way to build muscles while eating a low protein diet. Nitrogen is a vital building block of amino acids and proteins.

New Reports Shine a Light on Rural Colleges

Posted on
Inside Higher Ed

What is a rural college? And where can such institutions be found? The questions seem simple, but in higher education, the answers are surprisingly complex. Now two new reports aim to clarify them.

The first, released in December, comes from the University of Wisconsin and is titled “Mapping Rural Colleges and Their Communities.” Nicholas Hillman, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin who spearheaded the report, says the research was born out of the question “Where are rural colleges located?”

Higher Education/System

Public, private grants add momentum to UW System Prison Education Initiative

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

A two-year push to make college education more accessible to Wisconsin inmates has gained momentum with nearly $6 million in public and private grants.

The funding will help matriculate inmates and “break the back of recidivism,” Tommy Thompson, University of Wisconsin System interim president and former governor, said.

Thompson first announced his Prison Education Initiative in December 2020. The pitch was simple: build UW System degree programs at state prisons and ultimately turn one into an “educational institution.”

‘I built too many prisons’: Tommy Thompson, UW System want more inmates to get degrees

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

The details are fuzzy, but Tommy Thompson’s idea to “turn a prison into a university” is starting to take shape. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. late last year awarded the University of Wisconsin System and the Department of Corrections a $5.7 million grant to expand college pathways for inmates. The grant provides a much-needed boost for the project, which Republicans declined to fund in the state budget passed last summer.

Campus life

State news

‘Here & Now’ Highlights: Erin Barbato, Mordecai Lee

Posted on
PBS Wisconsin

More than 13,000 Afghan refugees landed in Wisconsin at Fort McCoy near Tomah in August 2021 and are now being resettled across the state and nation. Not only did they face trauma in being airlifted suddenly from Kabul, but continue to face uncertainty about their futures, including the legal process for obtaining legal immigration status in the U.S. that’s described as complex.

“A lot of people specifically with this situation were hoping there would be something called an Afghan Adjustment Act,” says Erin Barbato, director of the University of Wisconsin Law School Immigrant Justice Clinic. “We’ve had before it with the Cuban Adjustment Act, which would allow everybody who came in this emergent situation to have an expedited manner to obtain their lawful permanent resident status and then have a pathway to citizenship. But so far, it doesn’t seem like there has been much movement in our Congress to make this happen.”

Election expert says unwillingness of some Republicans to accept results is unprecedented

Posted on
WUWM

Quoted: UW politics professor Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center, says, “Really in modern times, we’ve seen nothing like what has happened in Wisconsin, and nationally, since the 2020 election.”

He continues, “The unwillingness of most of one party to accept the results and to continue pushing with audits and investigations and questions and subpoenas and other efforts to try to keep their concerns alive, is really new and doesn’t have any precedent. And I think it is not well supported by the facts of the election.”

Crime and safety

Health

‘It doesn’t have to be this way’: How expanding paid leave could ease working parent woes, labor crunch

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Choosing day care doesn’t inherently harm a baby, but stress — whether related to the separation or worries about the quality or cost of care — can hinder their development, said Julie Poehlmann-Tynan, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of human development and family studies.

“Babies are often really sensitive to what’s going on,” she said.

Since babies require high-quality, lower-stress care, Poehlmann-Tynan said, policymakers should consider how best to support a child’s transition to family life.

UW Experts in the News

Will Russia invade Ukraine?

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Professor Ted Gerber is the featured expert on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Morning Show.” He discusses the current tension in Ukraine and Russia and answered questions called in from the public. Gerber is a member of the Department of Sociology faculty and is Director of the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

MGE looks to buy share in gas plant, says fuel switch will speed carbon reduction

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

Greg Nemet, a UW-Madison professor who specializes in energy policy, said utilities need to begin shutting down gas plants, and acquisitions like this cast doubt on ambitious decarbonization goals. “We want to see less demand for gas-fired electricity, not new purchases of it,” Nemet said. “If we are trying to reduce emissions by 80% in the next eight years, we should be investing rapidly and heavily in clean energy and energy efficiency.”

What Is a Bomb Cyclone? A Winter Storm Explained

Posted on
WSJ

If traveling by vehicle, pack a winter survival kit, and in the event of getting stranded in the snow, stay with the vehicle. Laura Albert, an industrial engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies emergency response and preparedness, recommends packing such a kit with jumper cables, a small shovel, a flashlight, warm clothes, blankets, bottled water and nonperishable snacks, and a bag of sand or cat litter to regain traction on snow or ice.

What Does Endemicity Mean for COVID?

Posted on
The Atlantic

Pretty much all we can say for sure about the flu is that—as Malia Jones, a population-health expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told us—it is “a huge pain in the butt, but also not a global pandemic, most of the time. Unfortunately, there is not a single word for that.”