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March 8, 2024

Top Stories

Research

The Era of the Much Older Sibling

The Atlantic

This new norm of spaced-out siblings seems to be a by-product of the changing American family. The reasons are difficult to parse, but “we know that partner switching explains some of it,” Christine Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who co-authored that 2020 study on the phenomenon, told me.

Higher Education/System

Universities of Wisconsin lays out direct admissions structure

Channel 3000

The Universities of Wisconsin announced the Wisconsin Guarantee, which admits the state’s top performing students to state’s 13 public universities. Under the Guarantee, students who rank in the top five percent of their class at the end of 11th grade will be eligible to be accepted into UW-Madison. While students who rank in the top 10 percent are eligible to be accepted into the state’s other public universities.

Campus life

Health

Fact check: Claim that pregnancy can be detected the day after conception is false

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Fertilization, which happens when the sperm and egg unite, is what most people refer to as “conception,” said Dr. Abigail Cutler, an OB-GYN at UW Health and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

About five to 10 days after fertilization, the fertilized egg implants in the lining of the uterus. HCG is produced shortly afterward, Cutler said, first in low levels which rise rapidly over time. “The very earliest someone can confirm whether they are pregnant is following implantation, the timing of which varies but can take a week or more,” she said

Athletics

Opinion

Think your ‘beer buddy candidate’ will represent your interests? Think again. 

The Hill

After the minimum qualification benchmark is met, we can move down the list to consider similarities in everything from policy to favorite baseball teams. As far as shared emotion, the fact that a candidate’s level of anger appears to match one’s own reveals little about whether they are fit for office, possess sound judgment or will improve our lives or the state of the country. All it means is that two people are angry.

-Paula Niedenthal is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she directs the Niedenthal Emotions Lab. She is the past president of the Society for Affective Science and is the author of the textbook “Psychology of Emotion” (2nd edition).

Business/Technology

UW Experts in the News

House passes immigration bill named for murdered Georgia student

The Washington Post

“Many politicians, law enforcement personnel and ordinary citizens are nonetheless incensed because this person should not have been in the country and thus capable of committing a crime,” Michael Light, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has published several studies showing undocumented immigrants are not more crime-prone than native-born Americans, told The Washington Post last month. “This view that the person’s undocumented status is an aggravating factor is also likely a reason why these crimes generate such strong responses.”

UW-Madison Related

$30 million residential substance abuse treatment center coming to Milwaukee near west side

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The development’s financing includes $4.9 million Meta House received from the state’s share of a 2022 opioid lawsuit settlement; a $775,000 grant from University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health via American Rescue Plan Act funds; private philanthropy, and federal New Markets Tax Credits − which help finance new commercial buildings in lower-income neighborhoods.