Skip to main content

Author: knutson4

UW-Madison working to bring bird flu vaccine to market amid outbreaks

Posted on
CBS 58

If you’ve been paying more for eggs recently, you have the bird flu to thank, according to egg producers.

UW-Madison scientists say they are fighting back.

Across the nation, tens of thousands of birds have had to be put down in recent weeks as the bird flu ravages flocks, and farmers say while it’s already making eggs expensive, it won’t stop there.

UW-Madison scientists say this is an issue that comes and goes, which is why they’re looking to bring a vaccine for the birds to market.

“Knock on wood, we’ve been doing okay in Wisconsin. We’ve had two outbreaks here in Wisconsin,” said UW-Madison Poultry Specialist Ron Kean.

UW-Whitewater interim chancellor abruptly resigns

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater interim Chancellor Jim Henderson has abruptly resigned from his position as head of the school.

In a brief message posted on the campus website, Henderson said that one of his three goals as interim chancellor has been to “help this campus hire the best chancellor possible who will be here for the long term.”

After Foxconn’s pledges have failed to materialize, a former executive is hired by UW-Madison College of Engineering

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Former Foxconn executive Alan Yeung has been hired by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to “jump-start technology entrepreneurship efforts” within its College of Engineering.

Yeung was heavily involved in Foxconn’s failed pledges to invest $10 billion into a high-tech manufacturing hub in Racine County and donate $100 million to UW-Madison.

An announcement posted Thursday by UW-Madison’s College of Engineering announcing Yeung’s hire lists him as an author, college alum and technology executive — it has no mention of Foxconn.

UWM’s plans are delayed to demolish the century-old Columbia Hospital to reduce costs. That proposal could be blocked permanently.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s plans to demolish the century-old Columbia Hospital building in order to reduce costs are being delayed — and could be blocked permanently.

The city Historic Preservation Commission on Monday recommended permanent historic designation for the former hospital building, 3321 N. Maryland Ave.

From TYME machine to ope!, here’s why many Wisconsinites say these words and more

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: While Tom Purnell — a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of English language and linguistics — was living in Pennsylvania in the mid-1980s, he said the cash dispensing machines in that area were called MAC (money access centers).

“ATM (automated teller machine) is the generic term that is being used more widely now, overtaking the local variants,” he said in an email.

“A lot of changes and variations in pronunciation reflect things that not just happen in our mouths, but also what happens in our ears,” said Joe Salmons, a longtime professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In many languages, when there’s an “l” at the end of a syllable, it will mess with how people hear a preceding vowel, he explained, especially when the “l” is in the same syllable.

A similar example of this is pillow v. “pellow,” he noted.

The “melk” pronunciation is also heard in other parts of the Midwest, he said. And while it’s not exclusive to the state, it appears to be most common in eastern Wisconsin.

Electric vehicle experts encourage Wisconsin lawmakers, officials to prepare for expanding charging infrastructure

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Panelist David Noyce, who is the executive associate dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Engineering, said consumer worries about not being able to recharge an electric vehicle — what the industry calls range anxiety — is still one of the biggest barriers to electric vehicle adoption.

Noyce said vehicle makers are working to improve batteries as a remedy to this problem. But he said making charging stations more available is the other half of the solution.

“That’s where the emphasis is going on as we speak,” he said during the panel. “The federal government has jumped into the fray here … because of the market demand, but as well as climate goals, decarbonization, reduction in the use of fossil fuels and so forth.”

Failure to understand and share feelings with each other runs counter to our nature. So why are we in a severe empathy crisis?

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: In a 2011 study, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared the impact of enhanced, high-empathy medical care with what they called “standard care.” When patients with colds rated their care “perfect in empathy” they had shorter and less serious illness than peers who rated their care less than perfect, an indication that even the perception of empathy makes a difference.

Moreover, the body’s own chemistry reflected the difference in care. Patients who perceived their care to be high in empathy showed higher levels of neutrophils ― a type of white blood cell that fights infections ― than those given standard care.

The difference between the standard and the more empathetic care affected the doctors, too.

“When they pulled the card to provide standard care, they felt terrible. When they pulled the enhanced care card, they felt great,” said David Rakel, lead author of the study and chairman of the department of family medicine and community health at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The study was published in the journal Patient Education and Counseling.

Attorney who backs election decertification enters Attorney General race to investigate doctors who won’t prescribe ivermectin

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Patrick Remington, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Preventive Medicine Residency Program, said doctors who do not prescribe ivermectin to COVID-19 patients are upholding the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm to patients by making decisions according to the consensus of available credible medical research.

“We strive to get it right. We do the best job we can to do no harm and this is an example that would be unthinkable to me to ask a physician to prescribe a medicine that is at best, ineffective and at worst, harmful,” Remington said. “There are valid debates about the best ways to treat serious illnesses and science is iterative, that as we go along we learn by experimentation, we learn by carefully conducted research.”

Former Foxconn exec Alan Yeung hired by UW-Madison’s College of Engineering

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has hired one of Foxconn’s most prominent former Wisconsin executives.

Part of the deal former Gov. Scott Walker and Foxconn executives struck with Wisconsin included a promise to give UW-Madison $100 million. But that money never showed up. And the Foxconn project has only faltered since it was announced.

Now Alan Yeung has joined UW-Madison’s College of Engineering as an entrepreneurship consultant. He’ll be helping the college “commercialize research, and connect with industry and entrepreneurs,” said Renee Meiller, a spokeswoman for the College of Engineering.

JetBlue starts Milwaukee flights as Wisconsin airports recover from COVID-19

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Laura Albert is a professor of industrial and systems engineering with University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said business travel in particular is slower to return to pre-pandemic levels.

“We found ways to do things remotely that are quite effective,” Albert said. “There’s not a substitute for everything, but some of that, I think, will stick around, and that might affect where routes are selected, because a lot of routes follow where business travel is needed.”

Market volatility caused by war in Ukraine has Wisconsin farmers, agriculture companies on edge

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Wisconsin producers primarily grow winter wheat, which is planted in the fall and harvested in the summer, making it unlikely farmers will plant more this spring in response to potential shortages or to capitalize on higher prices, Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.

But farmers in the state will likely spend more time managing the wheat fields they do have planted this spring, he said.

“More fertilizer, maybe more concerned about fungicide applications if you’re looking at a problem with disease. That’s what we might see, is farmers more willing to spend money on managing the planted crop for winter wheat,” he said.

How a UW-Madison professor’s algorithm helps find The New Yorker’s cartoon caption

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

The New Yorker relies on an algorithm from Robert Nowak, an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Nowak said on WPR’s “The Morning Show” that the algorithm collects the ratings and over time pushes more successful captions to the top of a sorted list. It’s similar to how a search engine such as Google tracks how many times a website is chosen after a given search.’

So roughly speaking, the funnier the caption, the more ratings it receives, providing a more statistically accurate estimate of just how funny it is,” he said.

UW researcher wants to know: What does your dog like to watch on TV?

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

A new project from a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison aims to answer the question: What do dogs like to watch on television?

She’s asking dog owners to contribute to her research by sharing their own pups’ preferences.

The survey is part of a larger and more ambitious research project by Freya Mowat, a veterinary ophthalmologist and professor at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, to learn more about how canine vision degrades over time and what factors contribute to it. That research could have implications for the treatment of human eyesight, as well.

Coming together: Dairy farmers debate plans for overseeing US milk supply

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Noted: Instead of limiting milk production, the plan focuses on reducing the negative impacts of uncontrolled expansion and sending stronger market signals to farms about whether they should produce more milk. The group worked with researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create models for what a mandatory management program could look like and how it would affect farmers’ and consumers’ prices.

Fewer Wisconsin high school students are going to college. A hot labor market may be the reason.

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Aside from the babble of Brush Creek and an occasional car pulling up to the small cluster of brick buildings capped with sloping metal roofs, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Richland in rural Richland Center is mostly quiet on a February morning.

Enrollment at UW-Platteville Richland has fallen by nearly 87 percent, from a peak of 567 students in 2014 to 75 students in fall 2021. It’s the sharpest decline of any UW campus. Still, UW-Platteville officials have said there are no plans to shut the campus down.

Black households never recovered from the Great Recession, a UW-Madison report on racial wealth gaps suggests

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A new report is highlighting how much the Great Recession widened racial wealth gaps, particularly on the basis of income and homeownership.

“Racial Disparities in Household Wealth Following the Great Recession,” authored by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Fenaba R. Addo and Duke University Professor William A. Darity Jr., found that Black and Latino households continue to lag behind white households in wealth and income statistics.

The report was published this month through the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty and used Survey on Consumer Finances data to come to its conclusions.

Redistricting back in Wisconsin Supreme Court’s hands following SCOTUS reversal

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Essentially, the U.S. Supreme Court was saying that the Wisconsin Supreme Court didn’t properly show its work,” said Professor Robert Yablon, a redistricting expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.

But Yablon said the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling did not close the door on the governor’s plan if he can demonstrate to the Wisconsin Supreme Court that the additional majority-Black district was necessary.

“The U.S. Supreme Court said that the Wisconsin Supreme Court was free to consider additional evidence about the governor’s map,” Yablon said. “And I expect that they will try to more fully explain why the lines in the Milwaukee area should be drawn the way that they drew them.”

Mental Health First Aid training for WI Ag Community set for April 12

Posted on
Wisconsin State Farmer

There is no doubt that farming can be extremely rewarding, yet also stressful and demanding. Various risk factors including weather, economic uncertainty, as well as, ever-evolving supply and demand changes, can take a toll on farmer’s mental health.

In order to address some of these issues, the University of Wisconsin–Madison Division of Extension will be offering virtual and in-person educational programs to help the Wisconsin agricultural community identify and respond to a variety of behavioral health challenges.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson inspires Wisconsin law student

Posted on
Spectrum News

The possibility of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson becoming the first Black woman to join the Supreme Court of the United States, is a moment that’s inspiring young Black women across the country.

Iman Davenport is a second-year law student and the president of the Black Law Students Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

When Davenport recently had the opportunity to be in Washington, D.C., she jumped at the chance to get a front row seat to history being made.

“She’s one of his country’s brightest legal minds. Yet, there are still people in this country that see her skin and assume that she’s not qualified. As a Black woman entering the legal profession, this confirmation is a literal dream come true,” said Davenport.

UW programs this spring focus on democracy and the American Dream. Watch them at our websites.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Journal Sentinel and USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin will livestream several democracy-focused programs this spring from the University of Wisconsin-Madison LaFollette School of Public Affairs.

The first, today at 5 p.m., features Harvard University Professor of Government Daniel Carpenter, who will discuss his book “Democracy by Petition,” which traces the explosion and expansion of petitioning across the North American continent.

After detecting bird flu in Wisconsin, poultry expert discusses transmission, safety steps

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

After state agriculture officials confirmed the presence of bird flu in Wisconsin, one poultry management expert shared safety tips for poultry farmers and what risk exists to humans.

Ron Kean, a faculty associate and extension specialist in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences, also explained what costs farmers can and cannot get covered if the flu hits their farm.

Pressure for changes in Kohl’s corporate operation intensifies

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Hart Posen, a professor of management and human resources at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said while concerns of negative effects from a buyout aren’t unfounded, he sees it as a positive story in an industry that has had few positive stories in the past decade.

“This is all happening because Kohl’s is, of department store retailers, one of the best positioned department store retailers,” Posen said. “This is (a) department store that has real potential. Some folks think they can pull more out of it, which may or may not be true.”

Robin Vos’ statement on voter fraud emboldens Wisconsin election deniers without delivering the ‘decertification’ they seek

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, said Vos’ statement will make it even more difficult to assuage concerns within his party over the 2020 election.

“To suggest that it was sort of endemic it was everywhere and substantial. That’s a big statement,” Burden said.

“Even if none of this other stuff had been happening, the investigations, or (Rep. Tim) Ramthun’s (decertification) efforts or anything else, but the speaker of the assembly to say there was widespread fraud in a statewide election is a real statement and a real change.”

Twin 22-year-old UW-Madison grads lead a growing startup that sells data tracking corporate jets, politicians’ stock trades

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A small Madison startup launched only two years ago to provide free alternative data for investors says it now has 340,000 registered users.

Twin brothers James and Chris Kardatzke debuted Quiver Quantitative in February 2020 while they were students at University of Wisconsin-Madison studying finance, economics, and statistics. They graduated that year and gave their full attention to running the business which now has six full-time employees, with plans to hire a few more soon.

UW-Madison engineers create method for improving 3D metal printing

Posted on
WisBusiness

Engineers at UW-Madison have created a new method for improving the quality of 3D-printed metal products.

Additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing, can create complex metal structures with greater ease than traditional manufacturing processes, a release from the university shows. But the process often introduces defects such as tiny cracks and pits in the materia

From Sturgeon Bay to sanctioned: The shipbuilding story of the ‘Lady M’ superyacht

Posted on
PBS Wisconsin

Quoted: Sanctions aimed at Mordashov and other Russian oligarchs are meant to squeeze these powerful domestic allies of Putin, according to Andrew Kydd, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The idea is that if you seize the assets of these oligarchs, then they will feel the pain of the war and lean on Putin to stop the war,” he explained.

UW-Madison treats migraines without drugs or surgery

Posted on
CBS 58

A new procedure called “radiofrequency ablation” is bringing relief to people who suffer from migraine headaches. The procedure uses heat delivered via electrical stimulation through wires and probes to nerves in the head.

Dr. Alaa Abd-Elsayed, medical director, UW Health Pain Services and Pain Management Clinic, says with one visit, patients can see relief for months.

“Around a year for most of the patients we see. It can actually for some patients go for two years,” he said.

Before 2020, they had never worn masks. Now, they plan to wear them long into the future.

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Ajay Sethi, a professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he expects to see plenty of people continuing to wear masks long into the future. In addition to COVID-19, masks can help protect against other respiratory pathogens like rhinovirus, enterovirus and RSV, Sethi said.

“If you’re around somebody who’s coughing or sneezing, it may not be SARS-CoV-2,” he said. “So wearing a mask protects against all those things that spread by large droplets and to some degree, the aerosolized pathogens too.”

Patricia Téllez-Girón, professor of family medicine at UW-Madison, remembers occasionally seeing people wearing masks before 2020, especially while traveling. She remembers thinking that was unusual, and wondering if those people were really sick. Now, she’s changed her perspective.

“No, they were smart!” she said. “They already have learned what we just learned.”

Wisconsin has fewer dairy farms. So how are they producing more milk?

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: The consolidation of farms seen across agriculture is a big part of why the state has fewer licensed dairy producers, according to Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“In many cases when farms sell out, most of their cows may go to other dairy farms. And so the remaining farms have gotten a little bit larger,” Stephenson said.

Stephenson said in 2005, the average herd size in Wisconsin was 82 cows per farm, and in 2020, that average climbed to 177 cows per farm. In other words, the average more than doubled over 15 years.

How Russia is spreading blatantly false information about the war in Ukraine

Posted on
PBS News Hour

CIA director William Burns told the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday that he believes Vladimir Putin is losing the “information war” over Ukraine, and this may chip away at his domestic support for the invasion. But what are Russian citizens hearing about the war? Anton Shirikov, who researches misinformation at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, joins William Brangham to discuss.

Carson Gulley was more than the maker of fudge bottom pie at UW-Madison; Housing official draws attention to discrimination the Black pioneer chef and media figure faced

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Scott Seyforth has read more than 100 interviews with Carson Gulley.

Not once did the culinary, radio and TV pioneer of the mid-1900s mention how proud he was of his now-famous fudge bottom pies, said Seyforth, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant director of residence life at University Housing.

“It’s one of the only things people know him for because for 40 years, it’s the only way almost that university communications has presented him to the public — as in relationship to fudge bottom pie,” Seyforth said recently on WPR’s “The Larry Meiller Show.”

Wisconsin companies, city of Madison join challenge to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Tom Eggert, a retired sustainability professor who taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said customers, employees and investors are pushing businesses to make commitments to reduce their emissions.

“You start with maybe a lot of greenwashing, but we’ve seen over time that the infrastructure gets created underneath those goals, underneath those targets, to be very credible, when people then question them on what they’re doing,” said Eggert. “I would say companies in Wisconsin, companies in the United States, companies around the world are on a continuum from complete greenwashing at one end to complete transparency and viable targets on the other.”

A change to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program could help hundreds of thousands of student borrowers. Here’s what to know.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: The Journal Sentinel talked with financial aid experts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ascendium Education Group about the top questions borrowers have asked about the changes.

“This is huge and it’s well worth (borrowers) time to look into this,” said Emma Crawford, director of financial wellness and financial aid advising at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine & Public Health.

“It’s okay to be sensitive” Sasha Debevec-McKenney, poet and server

Posted on
Isthmus

In our new feature, “Digest,” Isthmus interviews unsung or behind-the-scenes members of the service industry and lets them speak for themselves.

Sasha Debevec-McKenney, 31, is a poet, an instructor at UW-Madison, and the current artist-in-residence at StartingBlock. She’s also a part-time server. She has worked at restaurants in New York City and Madison, including Willalby’s Cafe, Settle Down Tavern and Diner in WIlliamsburg, Brooklyn. Currently she works a couple lunch shifts a week at Morris Ramen.

The fight over chronic Lyme disease in Wisconsin

Posted on
Isthmus

If life had gone as planned, Maria Alice Lima Freitas would be in medical school, inspired by the career of her father, a surgeon who practiced in Brazil. But instead of changing careers, the 49-year-old therapist retired from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Researchers in Wisconsin continue to study the spread of black-legged “deer” ticks and the long-term impact of Lyme disease. In a recent presentation, Susan Paskewitz, a medical entomologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said ticks have “invaded our state entirely” and, as the climate warms, are marching into Canada.

Xia Lee, a tick biologist in Paskewitz’s lab, has studied the insects for more than a decade. Lee says Lyme-bearing ticks “are always born uninfected,” but they pick up infections as they feed on animal hosts.

Lee notes that Wisconsin never got the proper recognition as the site of the first case of the disease.

“We like to joke about it and say that Wisconsin was actually the first state where Lyme disease was detected,” he says, “but we never got the glory for naming (it).”

The history of Lyme disease has a Wisconsin chapter. It’s still being written.

Posted on
Wisconsin Watch

Quoted: Over the past three decades, Susan Paskewitz, a medical entomologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, has documented the growing prevalence of ticks in Wisconsin.

Paskewitz found that deer ticks, also called black-legged ticks, have moved steadily from northwest to southwest, and then into the central and eventually slowly into the eastern and southern Wisconsin.

“They invaded our state entirely,” Paskewitz said in a 2021 Wednesday Nite @ The Lab episode. She said the regeneration of forests decimated by logging in the early 1900s and rebounding of the deer population are the main drivers in Wisconsin. Paskewitz said warming temperatures caused by climate change are expected to lengthen the tick season and accelerate their northward march into Canada.

UW-Madison extends program to pay tuition and fees for teachers who start their career in Wisconsin

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

For Maddy Rauls, teaching is a family business.

The fourth grade bilingual English language arts teacher in Waunakee has several aunts who are teachers, and her dad was her high school’s chemistry teacher.

When she started school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in September 2017, a career in teaching was on her radar, especially because she loved babysitting and working with kids at summer school. When she liked the education classes she took her first couple of years, that sealed the deal.

Nitrogen pilot program bill passes Senate

Posted on
Wisconsin Examiner

A bipartisan bill to create a nitrogen optimization pilot program to aid farmers in reducing nitrogen pollution passed the state Senate Tuesday and will now head to Gov. Tony Evers’ desk. The measure, SB-677 creates a commercial nitrogen optimization pilot program and provides crop insurance premium rebates for planting cover crops, which farmers may use  to improve soil health. The bill also creates a new state hydrogeologist position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison extension, tasked with aiding local communities in tackling areas with high concentrations of contamination.

Wisconsin Watch named finalist in 12 Milwaukee Press Club categories for coverage in 2021

Posted on
Wisconsin Watch

Wisconsin Watch has been named a finalist in 12 categories in the Milwaukee Press Club’s 2021 Excellence in Journalism contest.

Whether the entries won gold, silver or bronze will be announced in May. Three of the awards are shared with news partners and one award is shared with students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

Alumni Ventures Group to repay $4.7 million and pay $700,000 SEC penalty. The group created Bascom Ventures for UW-Madison alum.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered venture capital fund Alumni Ventures Group to repay $4.7 million to certain funds, and a $700,000 penalty, for making misleading statements about fees and breaching operating agreements.

The New Hampshire-based firm has funds with names pegged to universities, such as Bascom Ventures for University of Wisconsin-Madison alum, but doesn’t have any formal affiliation with the schools.

Appeal asks SCOTUS to replace Evers’ redistricting plan with map drawn by Republicans

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor and redistricting expert Rob Yablon said while it’s not especially likely, he “would not be surprised at all” if the U.S. Supreme Court decides to hear the Legislature’s appeal in some form.

“This is an area of law that is in flux right now,” Yablon said. “The approach that the Wisconsin Supreme Court majority took is essentially in line with the way that these claims have been handled for the last few decades, but the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled interest recently in revisiting some of that case law.”