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UW-Madison Joins the Midwest Climate Collaborative

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WORT FM

If you only read the national news, you could be excused for thinking that climate change is solely a coastal problem. While hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, freak snowstorms on the East Coast and wildfires in the West grab the headlines, the flyover country in the Midwest faces its own set of challenges. Thirty local governments, academic institutions and nonprofits from the space between the Appalachians and the Great Plains have joined together to create the Midwest Climate Collaborative. The collaborative kicked off its work with a virtual summit on January 28. Here to tell us more is Missy Nergard, Director of the Office of Sustainability at UW-Madison, one of the Collaborative partners.

‘It doesn’t have to be this way’: How expanding paid leave could ease working parent woes, labor crunch

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Choosing day care doesn’t inherently harm a baby, but stress — whether related to the separation or worries about the quality or cost of care — can hinder their development, said Julie Poehlmann-Tynan, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of human development and family studies.

“Babies are often really sensitive to what’s going on,” she said.

Since babies require high-quality, lower-stress care, Poehlmann-Tynan said, policymakers should consider how best to support a child’s transition to family life.

As Wisconsin’s climate gets warmer and wetter, beloved winter activities could be in jeopardy

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Those changes can already be seen clearly by examining lake ice, said Steve Vavrus, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Climatic Research.

Scientists studying Wisconsin’s inland lakes are able to collect a wealth of information on Madison’s lakes Mendota and Monona, whose ice records stretch back close to 170 years. Lakes have ice cover for about a month less now than they did when the records began, researchers estimate.

Out of Lake Mendota’s long ice record, the five years with the longest stretch of ice cover all occurred during the 1880s or earlier, and the five years with the shortest ice cover have all been since the 1980s, Vavrus said. It “really is a very different winter climate that we’re living in nowadays compared to over a century ago,” he said.

“I think what we’re seeing is people are pushing in at the limits of the edges of the season where it is potentially more dangerous,” said Titus Seilheimer, fisheries outreach specialist for the Wisconsin Sea Grant.

New UW-Madison research shows hibernating squirrels rely on gut bacteria to recycle nitrogen, maintain muscle mass

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Wisconsin Public Radio

A new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison explains how hibernating animals use bacteria in their gut to maintain muscle density over the winter. The findings could lead to solutions for people with muscle-wasting disorders or astronauts headed on prolonged journeys into space.

Hannah Carey is a professor emeritus at UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine and an author of the study. She said scientists have known for years that ruminant animals, like cows and sheep, are able to recycle their own nitrogen as a way to build muscles while eating a low protein diet. Nitrogen is a vital building block of amino acids and proteins.

‘Here & Now’ Highlights: Erin Barbato, Mordecai Lee

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PBS Wisconsin

More than 13,000 Afghan refugees landed in Wisconsin at Fort McCoy near Tomah in August 2021 and are now being resettled across the state and nation. Not only did they face trauma in being airlifted suddenly from Kabul, but continue to face uncertainty about their futures, including the legal process for obtaining legal immigration status in the U.S. that’s described as complex.

“A lot of people specifically with this situation were hoping there would be something called an Afghan Adjustment Act,” says Erin Barbato, director of the University of Wisconsin Law School Immigrant Justice Clinic. “We’ve had before it with the Cuban Adjustment Act, which would allow everybody who came in this emergent situation to have an expedited manner to obtain their lawful permanent resident status and then have a pathway to citizenship. But so far, it doesn’t seem like there has been much movement in our Congress to make this happen.”

Election expert says unwillingness of some Republicans to accept results is unprecedented

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WUWM

Quoted: UW politics professor Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center, says, “Really in modern times, we’ve seen nothing like what has happened in Wisconsin, and nationally, since the 2020 election.”

He continues, “The unwillingness of most of one party to accept the results and to continue pushing with audits and investigations and questions and subpoenas and other efforts to try to keep their concerns alive, is really new and doesn’t have any precedent. And I think it is not well supported by the facts of the election.”

Public, private grants add momentum to UW System Prison Education Initiative

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Wisconsin Public Radio

A two-year push to make college education more accessible to Wisconsin inmates has gained momentum with nearly $6 million in public and private grants.

The funding will help matriculate inmates and “break the back of recidivism,” Tommy Thompson, University of Wisconsin System interim president and former governor, said.

Thompson first announced his Prison Education Initiative in December 2020. The pitch was simple: build UW System degree programs at state prisons and ultimately turn one into an “educational institution.”

Will Russia invade Ukraine?

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Professor Ted Gerber is the featured expert on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Morning Show.” He discusses the current tension in Ukraine and Russia and answered questions called in from the public. Gerber is a member of the Department of Sociology faculty and is Director of the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Children of UW System alumni living outside Wisconsin would be eligible for in-state tuition under GOP bill

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Wisconsin Public Radio

People from outside Wisconsin would qualify for in-state tuition at University of Wisconsin System schools under a new Republican bill, so long as their parents are UW alumni. Authors say the bill would address declining enrollment at state schools and address workforce shortages, while opponents say it would cut college funding and raise fairness issues.

Extreme vaccine shortages in poor nations threaten to shape the evolution of the COVID-19 virus. And that can affect everyone.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “Everything we do alters the selective pressures on the virus,” said Tony Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “If you wear a mask, then it pays for the virus to sit and wait. If you go to big parties and don’t wear a mask, it will favor viruses that are more aggressive, and that make you sicker so that they can move into new people faster.”

“The virus is like a horror movie villain,” said Thomas Friedrich, a professor of pathobiological sciences at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine. “Every time you think it is dead, it comes back.”

One woman reflects on costs of alcoholism as Wisconsin loses more and more lives

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Noted: “The pandemic exacerbated a long-term trend,” said Patrick Remington, an emeritus professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Population Health Sciences, on WPR’s “Central Time.”

Alcohol is pervasive in Wisconsin culture. A 2019 report called “The Burden of Binge Drinking in Wisconsin” from the UW-Madison Population Health Institute found the state’s rate of binge drinking to be higher than the U.S. overall.

More than 1 in 5 women have irregular menstrual cycles. What does that mean for abortion access?

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the National Institutes of Health published their study late last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, in which they analyzed a total of 1.6 million menstrual cycles, using anonymized data self-reported through a smartphone app by 267,000 people.

They found 22% of the people in their study had menstrual cycles that vary by a week or more, a finding that is consistent with other research on the topic, said Jenna Nobles, a UW-Madison demographer who led the study. Nearly all the study’s subjects identified as women, she said.

“Less than 1% of cycles are 28-day cycles with day 14 ovulation, even though that is the stylized version of menstruation that we all learn about,” she said.

Nobles conducted the research with UW-Madison graduate student Lindsay Cannon and NIH emeritus investigator Allen Wilcox, who is a physician and a renowned scholar of reproductive epidemiology. Wilcox’s previous research has served as the foundation of knowledge around topics including when in the menstrual cycle people get pregnant and how likely it is that people will have miscarriages.

Michael Gableman, the former Supreme Court justice reviewing Wisconsin’s 2020 election, has a history of trouble with facts

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “He’s been I would say argumentative and somewhat belligerent,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“It’s a little bit of a sort of bull in the china shop analogy, that he’s just throwing elbows and feels, it seems, quite confident about what he’s doing. … I can’t diagnose him psychologically from a distance. I wouldn’t want to do that. But there is a pattern of him being brazen I would say and aggressive in his actions without maybe thinking about all the consequences of what he’s doing.”

Essentia Health joins study examining whether ivermectin and other drugs could treat COVID-19

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer for UW Health, said that helps eliminate a lot of the bias that may otherwise be present.

“To have folks studying medications, really any medications, within the confines and safety of a well-conducted clinical trial, that’s how we learn things in science,” said Pothof. “Those kinds of studies are welcome, although hard to do and time-consuming and resource-consuming.”

Dairy industry helps offset high fertilizer costs with manure in Wisconsin

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Wisconsin State Farmer

Quoted: While other states brag big dairy and crop industries, Wisconsin’s insulation from fertilizer price spikes is thanks to having more cows per acre than corn per acre, according to Paul Mitchell, a professor in the UW-Madison department for Agriculture and Applied Economics.

“About a third of our nitrogen for corn comes from dairy manure,” Mitchell said. “And we have more cows per acre of cropland.”

However, manure isn’t easily accessible. It’s difficult to transport due to its high water content and therefore large volume, so it can’t usually go beyond it’s own farmland or crop farms neighboring dairy farms.

But it’s lack of transport ability shouldn’t dissuade you from seeking it out, according to Matt Ruark, a professor of soil science at UW-Madison and soil nutrient expert.

“We think of [manure] as a waste stream, but it is has relatively high nutrient value in terms of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Those are big three nutrient inputs into our corn production systems,” Ruark said.

PBS Wisconsin Education’s ‘Kindness in the Classroom’ in action

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PBS Wisconsin

Noted: One of the CELC’s most successful programs for students is based on the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Healthy Minds’ Kindness curriculum, supported by PBS Wisconsin Education with a series of instructional videos to help educators learn how to use it. The curriculum is a series of lessons developed and researched by the Center for Healthy Minds that has been shown to have a positive impact on academic performance, peer relationships and teacher-perceived social competence.

‘Here & Now’ Highlights: Jake Baggott, Will Cushman, Karola Kreitmair, Barry Burden

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PBS Wisconsin

Here’s what guests on the Jan. 21, 2022 episode had to say about returning UW-Madison students in the midst of the Omicron surge, whether it has yet to peak in Wisconsin, medical ethics involved in treating COVID-19 patients and why the state figures so prominently in the national politics of election practices.

UW-Madison cancer research uses sharks to study treatment

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Cancer researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are getting help from a unique partner on campus – sharks.

Dr. Aaron LeBeau, an associate professor of pathology and lab medicine, and radiology, at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, will be leading the shark-based cancer research. It is currently the only research of its kind in the world.

A rural Wisconsin syrup producer wants more to tap into the business

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Jeremy Solin’s earliest memory from his family’s longtime syrup business is with his grandma, sitting at a kitchen table, pounding a nail through the top of a metal Folgers coffee can.

They wound a piece of wire through the can so they could hang it from the spout on a tree.

“We just used whatever we had, right?” he said.

Solin is a fourth-generation syrup producer with a farm just north of Antigo. He’s the maple syrup project manager for the University of Wisconsin-Extension and he runs Tapped Maple Syrup in Stevens Point.

‘The risk to our communities has never been more dire’ as COVID-19 pandemic stretches on

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: The outcome of patients across the country depends not only on the condition they have, but also their health and the care they receive. In a widely shared social media post before Christmas, a longtime ER nurse at University Hospital in Madison described in stark terms how the facility was overflowing with sick — and mostly unvaccinated — COVID-19 patients and the toll it takes on staff and other patients.

“I know that sometimes when I say goodbye to these people, I’m never going to see them again. Because they’re going to die. They’re never going to make it out of this place,” the nurse, identified only as Sue, said. “It’s hard. We have nurses leaving this profession. They’re burned out. They’re overworked.”

From enrollment declines, to student access, to trust issues, Rothman faces array of challenges as new head of UW System

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Within hours of Milwaukee attorney Jay Rothman being named the 8th president of the University of Wisconsin System, the first online petition was making the rounds.

To be fair, it was milder than the furious petitions of a year and a half ago, when thousands of faculty, staff, students and alumni called on the system’s Board of Regents to withdraw the single — and in their eyes, deeply flawed — finalist for the job and restart the search from scratch.

Report: More Wisconsin women hold elected office. But the state is still far from equal representation.

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Victoria Solomon is a community development educator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension in Green County. She has studied women’s participation in local elected office and what barriers keep more women from running.

Solomon said one of the biggest factors affecting the number of women running for office is the fact that women are less likely to be asked to run for office.

“Having people who are thinking about who to ask to consider running for office, having those people think about starting with strengths and perspectives and experiences, and looking at diversity amongst those,” Solomon said. “We know that having diverse voices at the table helps build better decisions.”

A fireball lit up the sky above Wisconsin on Thursday morning. More than 100 sightings were reported across the Midwest

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison astronomy professor James Lattis said the southwest direction of the object means it was likely a meteoroid and not a piece of space junk, which generally travels east.

He said it’s common to see meteors in the early morning hours in the Midwest because the region is facing forward in the earth’s obit around the sun.

“It’s like looking out the windshield of your car,” he said. “You get more bugs on your windshield because that’s the direction you’re moving.”

Wisconsin Senate committee passes bills to help armed forces and vets, and curb foreign influence on campus

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A Senate committee passed seven bills Wednesday related to the state colleges, including two that would expand eligibility for in-state tuition and three that are aimed at preventing foreign influence in higher education.

The only bill to pass the Senate Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges with unanimous support was Senate Bill 557, which expands the ability of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents and the UW System to invest certain revenues.

Poll: Climate change, budget deficit, income distribution are top concerns for Wisconsinites

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Wisconsin Public Radio

A new poll of Wisconsin residents shows that climate change, the federal budget deficit, income distribution and race relations are among the top concerns heading into the 2022 midterms, although many of the same respondents felt issues were a larger problem at the national level.

University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs sent an eight-page survey to 5,000 residents between July and September 2020. Nearly 1,600 individuals from all over the state except Menomonee County responded, with a response rate of 33 percent.

UW-Madison researchers using Tai Chi, video games to improve balance among adolescents with autism

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Wisconsin Public Radio

New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows balance training using video games changed the brain structure of adolescents with autism and helped improve balance, posture and the severity of autism symptoms.

Brittany Travers, a UW-Madison occupational therapy professor and Waisman Center lead researcher, said she and her colleagues are interested in finding ways to better interventions that improve the motor skills of individuals with autism. She said prior research has shown balance control appears to plateau earlier in kids with autism than those without. As people age balance becomes more of a challenge for everyone, Travers said.

“But the speculation is that autistic individuals may be more at risk for falls and later in life if these balance challenges are not addressed,” Travers said.

UW-Madison researchers studying more targeted alternative to pesticides

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are digging into a different, more targeted method of controlling crop-attacking pests, a tactic that could prove to be less harmful to the environment than traditional pesticides.

Russell Groves, professor and chair of the university’s entomology department, recently joined Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Larry Meiller Show” to explain the present and future of RNA interference.

Wisconsin’s Chris McIntosh hires two deputy athletic directors, one of them a UW grad

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

University of Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh is redesigning his administrative team.

UW officials announced Friday that Marcus Sedberry, the senior associate athletic director for student-athlete success at Baylor, and Mitchell Pinta, the National Football League’s director of business development and partnership management, are joining the UW athletic department as deputy athletic directors.

The snow season is shortening in Wisconsin, forcing the snowshoe hare north in search of a landscape to blend into

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: According to data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research, Wisconsin’s average winter temperature rose about 2 to 6 degrees between 1950 and 2018, depending on the part of the state. And in the coming years, those temperatures could rise another 6 degrees, greatly impacting the amount of snow the state sees, and the areas where snow is present for the entire winter season.

But what is really impacting the hares isn’t the amount of snow falling in Wisconsin — that has largely stayed the same, said Michael Notaro, the associate director for the Nelson Institute. It’s the amount of snowpack, or snow on the ground, that is impacting animals.

As the Earth’s temperature increases, snow melts quicker, meaning the snow season doesn’t last as long.

“In the future, as it keeps getting warmer, eventually (precipitation) is going to be more in the form of a liquid, but so far that hasn’t necessarily occurred, but (snow) is just not staying on the ground very long,” Notaro said.

More than 1,100 Wisconsin nursing home workers test positive for COVID-19, the highest weekly total of the pandemic

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “We’re likely to see more infections, and those breakthrough infections can be quite serious,” said Patrick Remington, a former epidemiologist for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s preventive medicine residency program. “I think any place where outbreaks are likely to happen – and certainly long-term care facilities are places where that can happen – we should be concerned.”

Bice: U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson blames LBJ and Great Society for high percentage of out-of-wedlock births

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “Correlation does not mean causation,” said Timothy Smeeding, professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In other words, if two variables run parallel historically, it doesn’t mean the one is causing the other.

A number of factors have contributed to the rise in out-of-wedlock births, he said.

There has been a rise in cohabitation, more permissive sexual mores, a decline in shotgun weddings, easier divorce laws, a drop in manufacturing jobs for males without college degrees and greater financial independence for women.

Road salt threatens Michigan lakes and rivers. Can an alternative take hold?

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Michigan Radio

Quoted: Last month, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Michigan State University released results of a study revealing that society’s reliance on rock salt is salinating Lake Michigan.

Even small increases can trigger unknown ecosystem changes and secondary effects such as drinking water pipe corrosion, said Hilary Dugan, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology and lead author of the study.

Lake Michigan is still “extremely fresh” water, Dugan said. “There’s no cause for alarm. But I think people should be aware that it is rising and that is fully because of human-derived salts.”

Ron Johnson’s decision on Senate run sets up an expensive battle to be Wisconsin’s next governor

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “If the GOP primary becomes a three-way race, it will likely quickly become one of the most costly in the country,” said Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center.

“The funding will need to emerge quickly because the primary is only seven months away and two of the prime candidates have not even officially entered the race.”

‘We’re just a sitting duck’: UW Health pediatrician says child COVID-19 vaccination rates are too low

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Wisconsin Public Radio

The American Academy of Pediatrics says in its latest report that COVID-19 cases among children have reached the highest case count ever reported since the start of the pandemic — and hospitalizations are rising across the country.

In Wisconsin, 13 pediatric patients on average are being admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 every day, according to federal data for the week ending Jan. 5. That’s a 71 percent increase from the previous week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That number is concerning to UW Health pediatrician Dr. James Conway.

“You know we’re certainly seeing more hospitalizations in adults. But kids, we’re still worried that we’re actually on the front end of the curve,” Conway said.

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson uses God in one of multiple attempts at sowing doubt over the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Ajay Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained that “viruses like SARS-CoV-2 evolve as they replicate in a person with infection and as they spread from one person to the next. When that evolutionary process yields a strain that has a genetic make-up which is very different from the original virus, it is considered a ‘variant.’ ”

He added that “a virus is a ‘variant of concern’ if it has the potential to threaten the pandemic response in some way. It may be more infectious than other variants, cause more severe illness, not be detectable by current tests, less affected by current treatments, partially escape immunity provided by current vaccines, or a combination of these.”

Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt, Pewaukee native and former Wisconsin Badgers star, ties single-season NFL sack record vs. Ravens

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Pewaukee native T.J. Watt has entered rare NFL company. His name is now at the top of the NFL single-season sack list.

The Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker and former University of Wisconsin star tied Michael Strahan’s mark of 22½ sacks in a season when he wrapped up Baltimore quarterback Tyler Huntley for a loss on  a 1st-and goal from the 3-yard line with 23 seconds left in the second quarter Sunday in Baltimore.

Some private colleges, universities delaying start of spring semester classes, requiring vaccinations amid COVID-19 surge

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Some private colleges and universities in Wisconsin are delaying the start of spring semester classes, requiring negative COVID-19 tests or vaccinations and boosters for students and employees amid a rapid surge of new COVID-19 infections. At the same time, the University of Wisconsin System says students “will return on-time and as normal” for classes starting this month.

Omicron variant drives new, faster spread of COVID-19 in Wisconsin

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Wisconsin Examiner

Quoted: “This current increase is being fueled by the new omicron variant, which is more infectious than delta” — until recently, the predominant variant of the virus in Wisconsin, said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and faculty director of the master’s degree in public health program at the University of Wisconsin  School of Medicine and Public Health.