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Author: jnweaver

Morning briefing: University of Wisconsin will have huge influence in USA-Canada women’s hockey game

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Capital Times

University of Wisconsin will have huge influence in USA-Canada women’s hockey game: Gary D’Amato of USA Today Network writes: “There’s red in the red, white and blue. There’s red in the Canadian flag. And when Team USA and Team Canada face off in a women’s hockey preliminary game Thursday at the Pyeongchang Olympics, they’ll be seeing red. Or, if you want to be picky about it, cardinal. That’s the vivid shade of red associated with the University of Wisconsin, represented on the two heavyweight hockey teams by nine players — four on Team USA, five on Team Canada. That means nearly 20 percent of the players on the combined rosters are products of UW’s women’s hockey program, led by coach Mark Johnson.

Milwaukee’s new top health official: ‘The science is still out’ on vaccine, autism link

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “Unfortunately, she couldn’t be more incorrect,” said James H. Conway, a pediatrics professor at University of Wisconsin-School of Medicine and Public Health. “The science is clear and has been reviewed over and over not just by the CDC, but by NIH and numerous studies. The information is clear that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine does not cause autism.”

Also quoted: Maureen S. Durkin, a professor of public health and chairman of the department of population health sciences at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, said, “The scientific evidence is very clear at this point in showing no association between childhood vaccines and the risk of autism.”

Big Food Versus Big Chicken: Lawsuits Allege Processors Conspired To Fix Bird Prices

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National Public Radio

Noted: Because these lawsuits are private litigation, they will likely not result in structural reform to the poultry sector, says Peter Carstensen, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches competition and regulation in the meat sector. He says the lawsuits probably won’t have “much effect” on the “very serious problem” of how processors “exploit the farmers who raise their chickens.”

Vitamin D May Help Ease Irritable Bowel Syndrome

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Healthline

Quoted: Dr. Arnold Wald, a professor of gastroenterology at the University of Wisconsin, is one of many who regularly request tests of patients’ vitamin D levels. “I do check vitamin D deficiency in many of my GI patients and I’m often rewarded by finding it,” he told Healthline. “It’s very inexpensive to order and very inexpensive to treat.”

Here’s a sweet recipe for cheap, green plastic—sugar and corncobs

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Science

Plastic has a huge carbon footprint: Producing the petroleum-based material accounts for at least 100 million tons of carbon emissions each year. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has invented an inexpensive way to make plastic with a much lighter touch, from sugar and corncobs. If it can be made cheaply enough, the material could one day replace one of the world’s most common plastics—polyethylene terephthalate (PET)—found in food packaging, soda bottles, and even polyester fabric.

Milwaukee orthopedic surgeon Michael Kubly was philanthropist and jokester

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Kubly was a Wisconsin kid. He was born in Monroe on Oct. 28, 1935, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and married, Billie, his childhood sweetheart, in 1957. He followed through on his youthful desire to be a doctor by entering Marquette Medical School, now known as the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Majic Productions stages pre-Super Bowl festivities in Minneapolis

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: A husband-wife team, the Jurkens met while planning events as students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.The pair teamed up on planning all-campus parties through the Wisconsin Alumni Student Board. For one, they set up a tent dubbed “Club Bucky” and threw a 4,000-person dance party inside. The Jurkens graduated in 2010 and wed two years later.

Left behind: Who looks out for children when their parents go to prison?

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Isthmus

Quoted: “The children of incarcerated parents have been invisible for a long time because of stigma,” says Julie Poehlmann-Tynan, UW-Madison professor of human development and family studies. Poehlmann-Tynan has researched this population since 1996. She’s done the first ever observational study of children visiting incarcerated parents. Her work focuses on what will help children cope and thrive while a parent is incarcerated.

Beer school – and U.S. Brewers Academy – coming to Milwaukee

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Ryder, who teaches fermentation sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wants the class to be geared to “regular people.” Ryder doesn’t imagine he’ll make brewers out of his students. He just wants to round out their knowledge “so they won’t feel intimidated about some of these beers. People don’t know what’s a good beer and what’s a bad beer and why.”

Klement’s Sausage names industry veteran as new CEO

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “Being a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate and a resident of Wisconsin for most of my life, I understand the passion and dedication that the Klement family and all our current and former employees have shared to make Klement’s one of the leading sausage brands in the U.S.,” Danneker said in the statement. “I look forward to continuing to grow Klement’s strong position in Milwaukee and Wisconsin and to sharing our love of sausage with consumers throughout the country.”

Acidic soil won’t make your green spruce blue

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: I searched my resources and the internet and found nothing on St. John’s wort susceptibility or resistance to verticillium wilt. So I consulted Brian Hudelson, director of diagnostic services for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Plant Disease Diagnostic Clinic. He did find one report of verticillium wilt on Hypericum from Poland. So he is assuming Hypericum is technically susceptible but feels it might be more like serviceberry (Amelanchier) that is technically susceptible but seems to be quite resistant.

Clayton Chipman survived Iwo Jima, taught school children American history

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: He returned to West Allis in 1946, went to college but dropped out to play professional baseball. Chipman was still a catcher in the minor leagues when his father died in 1950 and he felt he needed to help his mother at home. After earning a degree at Milwaukee State Teachers College in 1952 — plus a master’s degree in education in 1957 at University of Wisconsin-Madison — he was hired by Milwaukee Public Schools.

Lower birth rates among Millennials following the recession is one reason school enrollments are dropping in the Milwaukee suburbs

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: The Applied Population Laboratory is a group of researchers and outreach professionals within the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison which provides enrollment projections. Many factors go into student population counts, according to Kemp, but births and migration — families moving from one district to another — are the two main ones.

CEOs’ Risk Jobs if Taxes Differ Too Greatly from Competition

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CPA Practice Advisor

Noted: Enacted in 2002 in response to jolting financial scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other major companies, SOX instituted a considerable tightening of federal corporate regulation. In the words of the study, by James A. Chyz of the University of Tennessee and Fabio B. Gaertner of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the “post-SOX period coincided with increased IRS scrutiny of aggressive tax positions and legislation that led to increased regulatory scrutiny over the tax function. Consistent with increased pressures to be less tax-aggressive, we find that being in the lowest quintile of benchmarked tax rates [became] influential in predicting CEO turnover… This is consistent with boards responding to…increase[d] political and reputational costs surrounding tax avoidance.”

Gerit Grimm turns ceramic figures into storytellers

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Grimm, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a meticulous and accomplished ceramicist. Her work reflects an accumulation of influences and interests that date back to her childhood in the former German Democratic Republic, her years as a production potter, and her early fascination with the California Funk ceramic movement. She is a voracious consumer of art history and a determined boundary-pusher at the potter’s wheel.

Centers and Facilities

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BizEd

The Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has embarked on a US$11 million construction project to convert three floors in its facility into a vertically connected educational space called the Learning Commons. The Learning Commons will become the heart of the building, connecting its east and west wings, with ample natural light to open the space. The first floor will house the school’s finance and analytics lab, and the second and third floors will feature the business library and business learning center with five active learning classrooms equipped with wireless displays for collaboration. The upper floors will include ten breakout rooms, as well as collaborative and casual seating. Construction on the 33,000-square-foot space is due to be completed this spring.

How the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ can retool Wisconsin

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Guri Sohi and Jignesh Patel of the University of Wisconsin-Madison computer science department, one of the nation’s highest-ranked programs, talked about how computing is disrupting industries such as manufacturing, insurance, financial services, agriculture, biotechnology, healthcare and transportation — all part of the Wisconsin economic fabric.

Cincinnati Bengals great Tim Krumrie’s brain: A work in progress

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Such terrors are symptoms of a damaged frontal lobe, which resulted from a 12-year NFL career with the Cincinnati Bengals, two years of wrestling and four years of football at the University of Wisconsin that put him in the College Football Hall of Fame and playing linebacker and wrestling in his youth.