On Sept. 5, Russia’s Justice Ministry declared the country’s leading independent polling organization, the Levada Analytical Center, to be a “foreign agent.” The designation applies to nongovernmental organizations that take part in “political activities” and receive foreign funding.
In order to invest effectively in rural areas, the most important step is to listen. I am a public opinion scholar, and since 2007 I have been studying political attitudes by inviting myself into conversations among groups of regulars in gas stations, diners, etc. in communities across Wisconsin.
Noted: My own mildly surreal acquaintance with its methods began as a result of a study, published this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, under the title “Predator Control Should Not Be a Shot in the Dark.” Adrian Treves of the University of Wisconsin and his co-authors set out to answer a seemingly simple question: Does the practice of predator control to protect our livestock actually work?
Noted: MARS was the brainchild of Matthew Desmond, a Harvard sociologist whose recent book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” brought national attention to evictions. The book chronicles the lives of several poor families living in a variety of housing situations, such as crime-ridden inner-city neighborhoods and blighted trailer parks. To supplement his on-the-ground work in these communities, Desmond went searching for data. First, he looked at court records to gather eviction statistics, but there were lots of questions that those records couldn’t answer, such as what are the demographics of people facing eviction. Then he looked at the academic literature, but that search “came up empty,” Desmond said. That’s when he reached out to the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, an academic research organization that specializes in reaching understudied groups: kids in foster care, welfare recipients, the homeless.
For more than 130 years, men and woman have been attending University of Wisconsin-Madison to take the Short Course at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. A series of lectures and hands-on classes, the Short Course is a 15-week program that gives young farmers an opportunity to further their careers and learn some of the essentials of agriculture from some of the top instructors in the country.
University of Wisconsin Badger men’s basketball standout Bronson Koenig says he had no doubts about traveling to North Dakota to protest a controversial pipeline project. “My brother asked me a week or two ago to travel with him to Standing Rock Reservation to fight to protect our sacred land and water,” Koennig told The Mike Heller Show on WTSO. “I’ve been wanting to go for so long, but I didn’t think I’d have any time or a way to get there.”
One of college basketball’s most well-known Native American players is heading to North Dakota to join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe this weekend.
The recently announced discovery of the invasive starry stonewort in the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal is more extensive than previously thought.
The overcast sky is clearing as a wave of moderate thunderstorms moves off to the east. On rolling, sandy terrain northeast of Tomah, in the heart of cranberry country, rows of short shrubs called aronia have reached two feet in height.
Quoted: “It’s sort of like discovering the Game of Thrones,” John Hawks, a University of Wisconsin anthropologist, tells me. “There’s this plot that we didn’t know. These people were interacting with each other, and they survived for thousands of years with those interactions. When you put that together, there’s going to be this incredible story.”
Fact-checking has flourished since 2007, when new projects like the Tampa Bay Times’ PolitiFact launched to fact-check American politics. In the years since, more news organizations have put attention and resources toward fact-checking, so that it’s now an established part of political campaign coverage.
“These are “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) – not Drones” – proclaimed Brian Luck of the UW-Madison Biological Systems Engineering Department to the visitors seated on the three tractor drawn people movers.
This week, stories about people trying their best to turn themselves into something else—like a badger. Or a professional comedian, in a language they didn’t grow up speaking.
The University of Wisconsin has made the national Top Ten among public universities. That’s according to the annual rankings from US News and World Report released Tuesday.
A number of Wisconsin universities scored top 10 spots in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings of top colleges released Tuesday.
The worms are not like the other night crawlers. They are not from around here. When held they thrash and jump. They do not live deeply, but they are very good at sucking down their food and passing it out in a gravelly residue.
APPLETON – Julie Mead, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will address the effects of private school vouchers on public education Tuesday at the Appleton Public Library.
University of Wisconsin basketball star Bronson Koenig and his brother Miles are packing an 18-foot trailer with food, water, supplies and clothes to drive Friday to North Dakota to provide relief for Sioux tribal members locked in a showdown with an oil pipeline builder.
Noted: “I think that given what we know about human Zika infection, it’s really tempting to say ‘Aha! This is really showing the same thing in a macaque,’’’ said Dave O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Students would probably offer a multitude of answers if asked to name the best college in America. But U.S. News & World Report has delivered the same verdict for a string of Septembers. Princeton, the magazine just declared, is the top national university for the sixth straight year, Williams College the top liberal arts college for the 14th consecutive year, and the University of California at Berkeley the top public university for the 19th year in a row.
Noted: “We don’t behave at all like the ideal picture of engaged citizens neutrally and dispassionately analyzing the evidence before casting their ballot,” says Lucas Graves, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism.. “It’s not how people work.”
Quoted: According to Barry Orton, professor emeritus at University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in telecommunications, some students still might not be able to get the Internet access at home, even if they’re provided a Wi-Fi hotspot — particularly in certain parts of the state.
Noted: To some who study this issue, only the critical details. “We’re in an area where information is easily twisted and distorted both on purpose and accidentally — some of it is quite complicated,” said Robert Streiffer, an associate professor of bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “The standard should be pretty narrow in terms of what kind of things are required for a candidate to disclose.”
Quoted: “We’ve had the [rear window] regulation now for 40-some years,” said Andy Milkowski, who worked in research and development at Oscar Mayer for three decades and currently teaches in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s one of those automatic things you don’t even think about. But people understand what bacon is. They understand that when they fry it up, it’s going to have a lot of fat.” Exactly. Maybe it’s time for a package that embraces that reality.
Quoted: Without a legal mechanism to force disclosure for such records, “you really need the public to hold them accountable,” said Robert Streiffer, associate professor of bioethics and medical history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When a young man or woman goes off to college, it’s in society’s best interests for him or her to be encouraged in development of critical thinking, to be expected to use research and investigation to examine points of view and beliefs.
Noted: Still, it’s in Facebook’s best interest in the long run to become a reliable and reputable system for news, said Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Connie Flanagan, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies young adults and civic identity, said the most reliable predictor of volunteerism, voting and other forms of engagement are the everyday values families share with their children at a young age. But she also acknowledged the importance of reflection that begins in the mid- to late teens as young adults face leaving home and think seriously about what they want to do with their lives.
Never one to crave the spotlight, Kelsey Card found herself front and center this weekend as the guest of honor at a two-day community event in Carlinville.
Noted: Allyson Bennett, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that these findings, which give insight into the complexity of chimpanzees, can help us even recognize what is ethical to do with the primates.
Noted: Now, 21 states include September 11 in their state standards, and two include terrorism, according to an informal poll conducted by Stephanie Wager, a board member of the National Council for the Social Studies. That’s about the same as in 2011, when Diana Hess, the dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s school of education, and Jeremy Stoddard, an associate professor of education at the College of William & Mary, found that fewer than half of states’ social studies and history standards mentioned 9/11.
State Rep. Robin Vos has made news of late for saying Wisconsin’s public universities don’t offer enough conservative speakers on their campuses.
Noted: “This is a genomic encyclopaedia of ale yeasts that will serve researchers for years to come,” says Chris Hittinger, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Verstrepen’s team, meanwhile, is using genomics to churn out new strains of beer yeast.
Noted: My friend and colleague Dipesh Navsaria, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, is a pediatrician with a master’s degree in children’s librarianship, and the medical director of Reach Out and Read Wisconsin. He said about Ms. Dewdney: “She really hits the marks beautifully in terms of understanding the challenges of childhood that we as adults have forgotten, that bedtime is a separation, or leaving a child at preschool or being lost in a store.” He added: “And she does it beautifully in rhyme.”
StartingBlock Madison, a still-to-be-built entrepreneurial center just east of downtown in Wisconsin’s capital city, took another major step forward this week. The nonprofit organization says it has met its $3 million fundraising goal and, with that piece in place, can continue working toward a groundbreaking planned for later this year.
Students and community members continue to voice their concerns about an inappropriate banner hung near the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus last week.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Serving on the U.S. Supreme Court has been both a blessing and a curse and reaching decisions is harder than she ever expected, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Thursday during a visit to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Counties and municipalities should be experimental governments, embracing new urbanism and supporting apprenticeships to open doors to the middle-class, co-ops and work-councils to give employees an ownership stake, investments in high speed broadband, timebanks to increase neighborhood interaction, community land trusts, credit unions and private development organizations to support startups through microloans and subsidized rent. “Get as much money circulating as possible and grow local business so you have people who care about the town,” says Joel Rogers a professor of law, political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the proponent of productive democracy.
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is launching a rural residency program in its Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The goal is to give new physicians a glimpse into what it’s like to provide care for women in rural Wisconsin and to address a shortage of OB-GYNs in rural areas.
If you want to get your hands dirty next week you can get some food for yourself and benefit local food pantries. The UW-Madison Agricultural Research Station east of Rhinelander, along with the Wisconsin Potato & Vegetable Growers Association and area food pantries host a ’A Night On The Farm’.
Some of Wisconsin’s leading and most politically connected business executives are behind Badger Advocates’ new strategy to increase lobbying of the Republican-led Wisconsin Legislature to address their concerns that UW-Madison’s world-class status is being hurt by budget cuts and weakening the tenure system for professors.
State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says UW System schools don’t invite enough conservative speakers to give talks on campus, but UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stout contend they seek presenters with expertise, not political affiliation.
United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor made the nation’s highest court seem much more human during her remarks Thursday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Key to Mývatn’s productivity is its huge population of midges—the small flies that give the lake its name (mý means flies and vatn means lake in Icelandic). In peak years, the amount of midges that emerge every summer equals the biomass of roughly 10 humpback whales, says Anthony Ives, a University of Wisconsin, Madison ecologist who studies Mývatn midges.
Fact-checking may have gone mainstream in recent years, but it’s still controversial. That’s according to Lucas Graves, a professor and former magazine journalist who wrote the newly released “Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism.”
State Assembly Republicans unveiled their goals for the next legislative session on Wednesday, focusing on the economy, education and public safety.
Many Americans have been noticing that local police and sheriff’s departments have become more and more militarized over the past decade. More and more, students are worried that this is starting to occur in police departments on college campuses, too. The UW Blackout Movement will host an event tonight on East Campus Mall in hopes of starting a conversation with students and to encourage the UW-Madison police and police nationwide to be more transparent about the military-style equipment they have access to.
Noted: On the domestic front, it’s hard to imagine legislators being keen to vote on bills to get in with a departing president. There’s “virtually no chance” of any significant legislation going through that way, says Kenneth Mayer, an expert on presidential powers at the University of Wisconsin’s Lafollette School of Public Affairs.
Noted: “It’s one-stop shopping,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You’re allowing a person who’s not registered to become registered or update their registration and cast a ballot right then.”
Noted: New gene editing tools, like CRISPR, have “so fundamentally transformed our ability to manipulate genomes that the question has quickly shifted from ‘Can we?’ to ‘Should we?’ to ‘If we do it, how can we minimize the risk of unintended consequences?’ ” Kate O’Connor-Giles, a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells The Christian Science Monitor in an email.
There are many barriers that keep college students away from the polls. They include registration and voting requirements that vary from state to state, difficulty with obtaining the proper ID or proving residency, lack of familiarity with local issues and local candidates and uncertainty about how or where to vote — at home or at school.
StartingBlock has hit its $3 million fundraising goal as it looks to become a startup hub on Madison’s East Washington Avenue.
Trigger warnings and safe spaces on college campuses have sparked a debate in the academic community recently, with some universities embracing the concepts while others refuse to support them.
BEIJING — On Aug. 8, cutesy graphics and laconic messages of blocked content replaced 12 years of flourishing conversation about China’s intrusive family planning policies on the home pages of Fuxian Yi’s social media accounts.
Noted: A new study, however, claims that much of the research underpinning that common sense notion is flawed—and that the science of predator control needs a methodological overhaul. Adrian Treves, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his colleagues examined more than 100 peer-reviewed studies, searching for ones that randomized some by removing or deterring predators while leaving others untouched. Not a single experiment in which predators were killed has ever successfully applied this randomized controlled design, they reported 1 September in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. “Lethal control methods need to be subjected to the same gold standard of science as anything else,” Treves says. He argues that policymakers should suspend predator management programs that aren’t backed by rigorous evidence.
Noted: Benjamin Marquez, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the protest a success based on the sheer size of the rally. An estimated 20,000 people showed, according to WMTV, an NBC affiliate.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, officials have put together a diversity presentation as a pilot program this year for 1,000 freshmen — whom some colleges refer to with the gender-neutral term first-year students. That program, expected to cost $150,000 to $200,000, follows incidents on campus last year. In one, a racist note was slipped under a black student’s door, prompting Patrick Sims, the university’s vice provost for diversity and climate, to post an emotional video on YouTube titled “Enough Is Enough.”
Noted: Stan Temple, renowned ornithologist, Beers-Bascom Emeritus Professor in Conservation at the University of Wisconsin—Madison and Senior Fellow of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, says that the treaty was the result of a growing public awareness of the fact that unrestricted hunting was having a devastating effect on bird species.
The face-off between the University of Wisconsin-Madison Badger football team and Louisiana State University Tigers at Lambeau Field on Saturday was an economic shot in the arm for Green Bay, city officials say.
If you’ve ever studied higher education in this state, you’ve likely heard of the “Wisconsin Idea.”
