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Author: knutson4

Meta’s move to end fact-checking reflects turn toward freewheeling internet

Posted on
Al Jazeera

Lucas Graves, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches misinformation and disinformation, said that arguments about the alleged bias of fact-checking initiatives were made in bad faith.

“In any healthy democratic discourse, you want people offering evidence in public for what kind of statement and what kind of claims should be believed and what shouldn’t, and of course it’s always up to you to make a judgement on whether to believe what you hear,” Graves told Al Jazeera.

‘Pleasure activism’ is the excuse you need to have more sex this year

Posted on
HuffPost

We know that pleasure, even non-sexual pleasure, is political because some people’s pleasure is encouraged, valued and protected, while others’ pleasure is shamed, criminalized or policed, says Sami Schalk, a professor of gender and women’s studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“I think about how many times the police are called on people who are experiencing pleasure in public ― sleeping on a bench in the sun, BBQing, listening to loud music ― simply because other people don’t take pleasure in it,” she said.

Why do birds make so many different sounds? 100,000 audio recordings offer clues.

Posted on
Popular Science

While ornithologists, citizen scientists, and birders alike are familiar with this large repertoire, some of the environmental conditions that contribute to these sounds are less understood. To help, a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently used over 100,000 audio recordings from around the world to study some of the factors that influence bird sounds. They found some patterns of how habitat, latitude, beak size, body size, and the landscapes can influence birds to create certain noises and at what frequencies. The findings are detailed in a study recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Three-fourths of homeowners may not have enough insurance to fully cover losses after a disaster, study says

Posted on
Fortune

Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Wisconsin-Madison looked at insurance contracts, focusing on nearly 5,000 policyholders who filed claims after the fire.

They found that 74% were underinsured, meaning they weren’t fully covered for total losses. And of that share, 36% of them were severely underinsured, meaning they were covered for less than 75% of their home’s replacement cost.

How to live better in 2025: the power of giving

Posted on
The Guardian

Analysing the data up to 2004, Prof. Jane Allyn Piliavin and her colleague, Erica Siegl, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that people who were regularly involved in these activities tended to report better physical and mental health. This might be expected: if you are feeling well, you are more likely to have the capacity to help others.

First human death from avian flu sparks calls for stricter hygiene, more testing

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Tom Friedrich, professor of virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, said more details are needed to understand what led to the patient’s death. But he pointed out that other countries have already seen deaths caused by similar H5N1 viruses, especially in people who are sick enough to be hospitalized.

“There’s over 50 percent case fatality when people have these severe infections,” Friedrich said. “So it’s not unheard of in other parts of the world, even though this is the first time it’s happened in the United States.”

Crawford, Schimel set to square off in another high-profile Wisconsin Supreme Court race

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

“The court continues to be a place in Wisconsin politics where big issues are decided,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist and elections expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The state still has a Democratic governor and Republican Legislature who don’t get along and don’t do much productive lawmaking together … so a lot of the disputes between the parties end up being settled in the courts and eventually in the state Supreme Court.”

Missing all the political ads? With no primary, Supreme Court race will kick into high gear

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The same issues that animated the 2023 race in which liberal Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly are likely to come up again this year, said Howard Schweber, professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Some Texas business leaders are apprehensive about Trump’s pledged deportations

Posted on
The Texas Tribune

A recent paper from researchers at the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin-Madison explored the aftermath of the deportation of more than 300,000 undocumented immigrants nationwide from 2008 to 2013. In the places where deportations happened, the study found, homebuilding contracted because the local construction workforce shrank and home prices rose. The researchers discovered that other construction workers lost work too because homebuilders cut back on new developments.

‘Debí Tirar Más Fotos’ is Bad Bunny’s most determined and resonant work yet: Album review

Posted on
Variety

The songs on the album were released with visualizers on YouTube, each one of them including historic messages written by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, highlighting different eras of Puerto Rico’s political past and its social justice heroes.

Jean Milant, founder of Cirrus Gallery and Cirrus Editions, dies at 81

Posted on
Los Angeles Times

Milant was born in Milwaukee in 1943, and earned a degree in fine art from the University of Wisconsin before beginning his career as a painter. He spent time in a master’s program at the University of New Mexico in 1967, before heading to Los Angeles to begin his printmaking work at Tamarind. He founded Cirrus with $1200 in a Hollywood space that Ruscha helped him find near his studio. The collector Terry Inch later bought shares of Cirrus, becoming a behind-the-scenes partner.

HMPV cases are rising across Asia, but experts say not to panic

Posted on
Scientific American

“The virus has circulated for at least 60 years, and genetic evolutionary studies suggest that it diverged from a bird virus between 200 to 400 years ago,” says John Williams, a pediatrician and infectious diseases professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who has studied HMPV for more than 20 years. “HMPV causes regular annual seasonal epidemics, similar to the more widely recognized influenza virus and RSV. The typical HMPV season is late winter to early spring. So this isn’t totally unexpected.”

Student loan debt: How to pay off loans faster

Posted on
Newsweek

Dr. Nick Hillman, school of education professor and director of the Student Success Through Applied Research Lab (SSTAR) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek: “Leaving college with debt but no degree is one of the biggest factors that makes it hard to repay loans. Say a student borrows $10,000 for college but then has to leave before earning a credential. They don’t have the degree to show for it, but they have the debt. This can make it really hard to get established in the labor market and, as a result, to stay on top of monthly loan payments.”

First U.S. fatality from bird flu reported in Louisiana

Posted on
Los Angeles Times

Yohishiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo, said the the death “highlights the need for vigilance in avoiding contact with the virus wherever possible.”

At the same time, however, Kawaoka said it was “important to note that the individual was over 65 and had underlying health conditions, which may have contributed to the severity of the illness.”

Fewer men in rural Wisconsin participating in the workforce, citing lack of respect on the job

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

A lead researcher on the study, Sarah Halpern-Meekin, who’s a professor in the School of Human Ecology and director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said at the end of the day, people want to feel like the work they’re doing is meaningful.

Fact check: Poll shows Trump won 18-24 year-olds in Wisconsin voting, but there’s a caveat

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Barry C. Burden, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of political science and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, said there is not sufficiently reliable data to conclude which candidate got more votes among young people — or any other age group – in Wisconsin.

“Exit polls such as the one Gagnon references are the most immediate source for understanding how groups voted in the election, so they are widely used to explore voting patterns,” Burden said in an email. “But exit polls are known to have systematic errors, especially for estimating vote choices in subgroups such as 18-24 year olds, who make up a small share of the sample and can be a difficult group to survey. There is also a margin of error to consider, as in any other survey. As a result, it is not reasonable to conclude at this point that Trump won over young voters in Wisconsin.”

Why you shouldn’t ‘heat up’ your car’s engine in cold weather

Posted on
Mental Floss

In 2016, Business Insider spoke with former drag racer Stephen Ciatti to get to the bottom of this widespread myth. Ciatti has a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has worked on combustion engines for nearly 30 years, so he knows a thing or two about how to best treat your car. According to Ciatti, idling your machine in the cold only leads to a shorter lifespan for your engine.

They’re Adorable. And endangered. Meet the world’s smallest monkey: the Pygmy Marmoset

Posted on
Smithsonian Magazine

When de la Torre began her doctoral work in the mid-1990s, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the renowned primatologist Charles Snowdon, she thought she would study how tamarin habitats affect their vocalizations, but she soon switched to pygmy marmosets. Their smaller home ranges—often less than 2.5 acres—made it easier to collect data.

He dropped out of UW in 1999. A new program covering college costs for Native students brought him back

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Schuyler, who is an enrolled Oneida Nation citizen, earned a scholarship to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1990s. He dropped out when he was 21 credits short of earning his bachelor’s degree.

The radio broadcast described a new UW-Madison program launching in fall 2024.It would cover not only tuition but room and board, books and other expenses, to enrolled members of Wisconsin Native American tribes.

 “That was my sign,” Schuyler said.

‘The only thing you need is your own mind’: how to start meditating

Posted on
The Guardian

“When we engage in this practice, our physical brains change,” says Dr Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With regular meditation, the complex networks in our brain that control our emotional responses and executive functioning can be rewired. “This enables meditation to produce effects that are enduring,” Davidson says.

UW-Madison researchers use AI to identify ‘sex specific’ risk factors in brain tumors

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Pallavi Tiwari, a radiology and biomedical engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has spent the last 18 years developing artificial intelligence models to help study cancer.

Much of that work includes using machine learning to find ways to help predict cancer diagnosis, outcomes and drug responses, she said.

The economists’ word of the year

Posted on
MarketPlace

“Almost all aggregate economic indicators indicated strong macroeconomic economic fundamentals for 2024, and yet there was substantial discontent. Even disaggregate measures for slices of the income distribution suggested pretty good conditions (wages exceeding inflation).” — Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Scientists track changes at the Yellowstone supervolcano. Could it blow again?

Posted on
USA Today

The mapping was done using magnetotellurics that measure the electrical conductivity of what lies below the Earth’s surface. Melted rock, magma, is extremely good at conducting electricity, so it makes precise mapping of areas where magma is stored possible. The testing was conducted over several months by scientists from the USGS, Oregon State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Doomed to be a tradwife

Posted on
The Atlantic

Allison Daminger, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin who studies the division of household labor, told me Fair Play is the program she tends to refer people to when they tell her they’re struggling with chore management. But people who seek it out, she said, often struggle with “overload, maybe some conflict in the relationship.” These are the very things that become hurdles to doing Fair Play.

From Google to Stablecoins – How this founder left his cushy job to pursue entrepreneurship

Posted on
Entrepreneur

Siva’s journey into entrepreneurship reads like a Silicon Valley dream turned into crypto reality. After earning his Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Siva began his tech career at Oracle in India, later interning at Amazon during his graduate studies. His pivotal role at Google Cloud’s Sunnyvale office marked the start of a promising corporate career.

How to tactfully ask your child’s friend’s parents if they have guns at home

Posted on
Scientific American

While non-gun owners might think that asking about guns feels overbearing, research, perhaps surprisingly, shows that gun owners welcome the conversation, says Nick Buttrick, a psychologist who studies the symbolism of gun ownership at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. People in focus groups who own guns say that talking about gun safety is actually really important to them. “The anticipated friction stops people from having the conversation,” Buttrick says, “but when they actually have it, they’re received with a lot more positivity than they might have imagined.”

Fact Check: Wisconsin video miscaptioned as showing New Jersey drone sightings

Posted on
Reuters

The video shows “a recognizable part of the western sky” including the bright star Altair that is consistent with the sky around 7 p.m. in early December, James Lattis, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison astronomy department’s Space Place, said in an email.

Lattis said the “vast majority” of the objects are satellites that are visible because they are reflecting sunlight to the observer, and “the rest of the objects are probably a mixture of satellites in higher inclination orbits and aircraft.”

What a college admissions deferral really means and what to do next

Posted on
Forbes

Colleges are deferring more students than ever before, partly due to record application numbers and changing admissions policies. Schools like Clemson University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have deferred tens of thousands of early applicants in past years, reflecting a competitive and ever-evolving admissions landscape. A deferral doesn’t mean your student wasn’t good enough—it means they’re still in the running. And with the right approach, they can turn that “maybe” into a “yes.”

Public money for higher education benefits everyone. Restore funding levels.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

When UW leaders asked for $845 million, a fraction of the total amount cut from the UW budget under his watch, Assembly Speaker Vos said, “I just know that some of these numbers, where they ask for the moon, are unrealistic.”

When Vos graduated from UW-Whitewater in 1991, Wisconsin’s higher education appropriations per student were $11,028. In 2023 it was $9,277. So the “moon” was realistic when he personally benefited from taxpayer support, but is unrealistic when it is your turn to benefit?

Archaeologists are finding dugout canoes in the American Midwest as old as the great pyramids of Egypt

Posted on
Smithsonian Magazine

It might seem remarkable that she recognized the find for what it was: Dugout canoes, the world’s oldest boat type found to date, are simply hollowed-out logs. In 2018, however, Thomsen had teamed up with Sissel Schroeder, an archaeologist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to help an undergraduate student catalog Wisconsin’s extant dugout canoes. When the project began, historians believed 11 existed in collections across the state. Less than a year later, after scouring private collections, supper clubs, local museums and more, the team had counted 34.

What’s at stake in Wisconsin amid government shutdown fights

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin universities and college students could also be impacted by a shutdown. University of Wisconsin-Madison spokesperson Kelly Tyrrell told WPR in a statement that college officials are monitoring the situation.

“We would expect the largest impacts to be on research, since agencies can’t start new programs, issue new grants, or review existing applications during a shutdown,” Tyrrell said. “There may also be some impact to students, staff or faculty applying for changes in visa status during the shutdown period.”

Dredging up the ghost of Scott Walker doesn’t help guide future of UW System

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

I would be correctly described as a member of that committee with a partisan background. I did not, however, vote in “lockstep” with other members who might also be so categorized. Furthermore I would suggest many of the questions were more nuanced than the authors claimed. Additionally there were members of this committee (including some UW employees and past Regents ) who did not show, nor do I believe they have, strong partisan leanings. Instead their clearly expressed concern was for the future of the system. That was also my concern.

Coal demand is up. Thank data centers and industrialization.

Posted on
MarketPlace

In China especially, coal is sticking around largely because demand for electricity is growing so fast, said Greg Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

“And it’s been driven by very rapid uptake of electric vehicles in China, in addition, rapid uptake of using electricity for industrial heat in China and also for data centers,” he said.

Gen Z says ‘no’ to drugs

Posted on
Newsweek

Dr. Ritu Bhatnagar, associate clinical professor of psychiatry and addiction psychiatrist, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health:

“As an addiction psychiatrist, I am keenly aware that people can become dependent on not only substances but also technology. Technology use really increased during the pandemic, especially among adolescents.”