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Category: Business/Technology

Four things to know about some of the most overlooked educators in Wisconsin: child care workers

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Appleton Post-Crescent

Family child care providers make an average of $7.46 an hour, while center-based teachers make an average of $12.99. Both make less than the average Wisconsinite with a high school diploma, according to research by Alejandra Ros Pilarz, an assistant professor at the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

She found poor wages and lack of career advancement opportunities are top reasons why 18% of family child care providers and 28% of ECE teachers plan to leave the field within a few years.

State lawmakers proposed solutions to the state’s housing crisis. Here’s what to know

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

These changes would cut back on delays and roadblocks that drive up prices, said Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Housing dies a death of a thousand cuts because every change, every delay, just adds costs,” Paulsen said.

Wisconsin has seen several hospital mergers in the last year. How could they affect patients?

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Ashley Swanson, associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said hospital mergers — on average — increase prices, while having a negligible effect on patient care.

“It seems like they primarily increase prices when the merging hospitals are located close to one another,” she said. “But there is some relatively new evidence suggesting that cross-market mergers can sometimes increase prices as well.”

Wisconsin ‘prime working age’ labor force participation among best in the nation

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Wisconsin Public Radio

The rate at which Wisconsin’s “prime working age” adults are either working or looking for work is among the best in the country, according to a recent report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension.

“It speaks a lot to our work ethic,” said Matt Kures, the report’s author and a community economic development specialist for UW-Extension. “Traditionally, we have had high participation rates and I think that’s just kind of ingrained in us.”

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average cost of infant care in Wisconsin is $12,567 annually, or $1,047 per month. Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at UW-Madison, said women in the workforce feel the effects of that most.

“Moms tend to carry the burden of care disproportionately in families,” she said. “The years before the kid goes to school … are really expensive years to work.“

This Green Bay business wants to help commercialize an innovative way to recycle plastic

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Green Bay Press-Gazette

Noted: Green Bay is poised to become the home of the first commercial STRAP plant, which would take these kinds of plastics and make them into materials that can be used again.

This is done through a process called STRAP — which stands for solvent-targeted recovery and precipitation — developed from early work done by undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Now, George Huber, a professor in chemical and biological engineering at UW-Madison, is leading a team at the Center for Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics, or CUWP, working to take STRAP from the lab to a commercial setting.

The center is funded by a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and is made up of people from UW-Madison and five other universities, a national laboratory and more than 20 industrial partners.

UW-Madison hopes for further computer and data sciences innovation as new building starts

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Wisconsin State Journal

A “ground blessing ceremony” — which couldn’t accurately be called a groundbreaking ceremony, as a pit already exists where two former maintenance buildings stood — was held Tuesday, with university officials celebrating the growth of the school and emphasizing the importance of data analytics to UW-Madison and society going forward.

“That is what I’m most excited about this building and what we’re doing here,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said Tuesday. “To solve real, important problems in the world, so often we must engage across. We can’t do that if we’re siloed. We can’t do that if we’re wearing blinders.”

Wisconsin kids could see a curfew for social media use under proposed legislation

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Wisconsin Public Radio

It’s also not clear that social media use contributes to young people’s emotional struggles, said Heather Kerkorian, who researches the effects of media on children’s development and family interactions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“If we look at individual kids, some kids might benefit a lot from social media, some might be harmed by social media and most of them are not affected much,” Kerkorian said.

Wisconsin businesses want more workers, but barriers prevent many from joining the labor force

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said another approach could be addressing the issues that prevent people from joining the workforce, like child care, transportation and mental health.

“The central question is: Do we support workers and … (build a) system that supports their engagement in the labor market, and, therefore, economic development in our communities? Or do we try and pretend that there’s just a lot of lazy people?” Dresser asked.

Why we celebrate: Essayists offer reasons for hope from Wisconsin, birthplace of Earth Day

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Greg Nemet continues the tradition of environmental scholarship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison through the La Follette School of Public Affairs, studying energy, climate change and public policy. He says despite a gloomy international report, the capacity to tackle problems has never been greater:

“If there were ever a time to have optimism about our collective capacity and will to address climate change, this is it.  This idea was threaded through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which emphasized that we can still effect transformational change that could stave off the worst possible outcomes and lead to a sustainable, equitable world. Globally, we’ve made considerable progress in a broad range of technologies that are making the transition to a low-carbon economy more affordable and feasible than ever.”

Froedtert, ThedaCare plan to merge, hope to launch combined health system by end of 2023

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Wisconsin Public Radio

In December, University of Wisconsin-Madison Economist Alan Sorensen told Wisconsin Public Radio that mergers may give hospitals more leverage in negotiations with insurance companies.

“Those negotiations are enormously important for the bottom lines of these companies,” Sorensen said at the time. “A lot of times what’s driving the mergers is that (hospital systems) feel like if they’re bigger, they’ll do better in those negotiations, they’ll have more bargaining power, they’ll be more indispensable to the insurance company.”

Video games as educational tools

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Wisconsin Public Radio

The Field Day Lab in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research is creating online video games to be used as learning tools for students. We talk to Sarah Gagnon, creative director for the Field Day Lab in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the UW–Madison School of Education, about their latest games and how they work.

Following PFAs from toilet paper to the Great Lakes

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Wisconsin Public Radio

The growing research into PFAs contamination finds sources in everyday consumer goods like toilet paper and traces PFAs into Green Bay and the Great Lakes. We talk to Christy Remucal, is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of the Water Science and Engineering Laboratory at UW-Madison, about where we’re finding PFAs in Wisconsin’s waters.

Business group pulls pro-Kelly Supreme Court ads featuring a rape victim’s case

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Ads are rarely pulled in races even when they’re really controversial,” said Michael Wagner, a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor who directs the school’s Center for Communication and Civic Renewal.

“It’s not common for a candidate to ask for an ad to get pulled. But it’s uncommon for it to happen in a race,” Wagner said.

Economic impact of federal spending on Wisconsin veterans rivals the state’s beef farming industry

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Noted: A report from University of Wisconsin-Extension found that while the number of veterans in Wisconsin is declining, spending on veteran services by the U.S. Department of Veterans Administration, or VA, is increasing.

Steven Deller, a professor of applied and agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the report, said those funds return federal tax dollars to the state and inject money into local economies.

“We tend to lose money to Washington,” Deller said. “Making sure that the veterans that are in the state are taking full advantage of all the benefits that are offered to them is one way of getting some of that money back into the state.”

How the Gun Became Integral to the Self-Identity of Millions of Americans

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Scientific American

University of Wisconsin–Madison researcher and assistant professor Nick Buttrick studies the psychological relationship that millions of Americans have with their guns. Buttrick’s research builds on the historical record to show that in the U.S.—the only country with more civilian firearms than people—white Southerners started cultivating the tradition of the home arsenal immediately after the Civil War because of insecurities and racial fears. During the rest of the 19th century, those anxieties metamorphosized into a fetishization of the firearm to the point that, in the present day, gun owners view their weapons as adding meaning and a sense of purpose to their lives.

Scientific American spoke with Buttrick about the psychological roots of the gun culture that has contributed to the more than 100 mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. so far this year.

The Catch-22 for Working Parents

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The Atlantic

Quoted: If the U.S. is unwilling to help unemployed parents, then it should make a far greater effort to ensure that parenting and work are compatible. Expanding funding for the child-care-subsidy program to meet the needs of eligible families would be a great place to start, said Alejandra Ros Pilarz, who studies working families with low incomes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We have to look for solutions both on the child-care side and on the employment side,” Pilarz said.

FTC proposes banning non-compete agreements for American workers

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Wisconsin Public Radio

The Federal Trade Commission has proposed banning employers from requiring workers to sign non-compete agreements. The FTC argues they suppress wages by $300 billion annually and prevent 30 million Americans from pursuing career opportunities. Martin Ganco, a professor in the Department of Management and Human Resources at the Wisconsin School of Business and an expert on non-competes, joins us.

Tyson Foods plant closure raises antitrust concerns among US farmers, experts

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Reuters

Noted: The planned closure of the plant has left dozens of Virginia chicken growers scrambling to find new buyers in a region with few other options. It could also expose Tyson to fines under the century-old Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA), the U.S. antitrust law requiring the minimum advance warning, according to Peter Carstensen, a professor of law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School who previously served in the antitrust division at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Energy Update: Microgrids might be part of our future solution to power grid problems

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Wisconsin Public Radio

We talk with Giri Venkataramanan, the Keith and Jane Morgan Nosbusch professor of electrical and computer engineering at UW-Madison and director of the Wisconsin Electric Machines and Power Electronics Consortium, about the state of the U.S. power grid, the influence of climate change on its future and a solution being explored at UW-Madison.

Why some lawmakers want to raise the FDIC insurance limit for your savings

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CNN

It would also help eliminate the incentive for large depositors in banks we all share to take their money out at signs of unease, said J. Michael Collins, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who focuses on consumer finance.

“When we know that those big depositors won’t make a run and take all the money out, then we’re guaranteed we can get our much smaller amounts back,” Collins said.

What’s happening at the Foxconn site in Wisconsin five years after the company announced its plans

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

It signed an $100 million agreement with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and several local agreements to build “innovation centers” in Racine, Green Bay and Eau Claire. However outside of signing the agreements, not much else has been done.

The $100 million agreement with UW-Madison is to create the Foxconn Institute for Research in Science and Technology and a new interdisciplinary program in the College of Engineering.

Wisconsin layoff notices up from this time last year, showing signs of possible economic slowdown

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Despite unemployment remaining low, Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said increased layoffs are tied to the Federal Reserve’s efforts to curb inflation by raising interest rates.

“There’s federal policy focused on trying to cool economic growth,” she said. “I think it’s also the case that the economy remains — in spite of that — quite robust in terms of demand for workers. The unemployment rates are staying low and new workers are coming into the labor market.”

Steven Deller, professor of agriculture and applied economics at UW-Madison, said it remains to be seen whether the economy will experience the “soft landing” the Fed is hoping for.

“The debate is not whether or not the economy is going to slow down, it’s whether or not we’re going to go into a recession or not,” Deller said. “And the general consensus is that we probably are going to go into a recession. The debate really is, how severe will it be?”

Tomah Health, UW-Madison look to address rural pharmacist shortage through hands-on program

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WKBT

A new program for UW-Madison pharmacy students looks to help address a rural shortage while giving students a hands-on experience.

In May 2021, UW’s School of Pharmacy began the Advanced Pharmacy Experience rotation. The program rotates students in their fourth year into rural pharmacies to practice under the supervision of a pharmacist preceptor.

Wisconsin banking officials reassure customers after 2 out-of-state bank failures

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Roberto Robatto is associate professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He said the Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse is the result of two failures of the regulatory framework and serves as a warning sign for industry.

“This interest rate risk is something that banks are supposed to be careful about, and they manage that, but the type of interest rate risk that Silicon Valley Bank took was very high,” he said.

Misha Esipov Creates Nova Credit To Provide Credit Data For Immigrants

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Forbes

The family first lived in Syracuse, New York, then moved to Urbana Champaign, Illinois where his parent became professors at the University of Illinois, and later to Madison, Wisconsin for the University of Wisconsin. Esipov would later graduate from New York University with a degree in mathematics and finance, which led him to his job at Goldman Sachs before his desire to change directions, get his MBA and start Nova Credit in 2016.

New partnership between WEDC and Korean UW alumni aimed at boosting Wisconsin exports

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Wisconsin Public Radio

A new partnership aims to expand opportunities between Wisconsin and one of the state’s biggest foreign trade partners.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., or WEDC, and the Wisconsin Alumni Association in Korea signed an agreement last month to promote the state both as a good place to do business and as a welcoming destination for Korean students.

Varying temperatures mean different maple syrup seasons for northern, southern Wisconsin producers

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Dane County resident Dominic Ledesma is one hobbyist who jumped on the early warm weather. Ledesma, who is chief diversity officer for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension, started tapping trees at his home and his family’s cabin in Jackson County last year after learning about the craft from his colleagues. He said sap was flowing in when he first tapped his trees in February, but collection slowed down in Jackson County as the weather turned cold again.

“The season really didn’t take off,” he said. “In talking with other colleagues in Extension, I certainly noticed some very significant differences between the southern part of the state and Jackson County.”

Can new, sweeter beets defeat stigmas? Wisconsin breeders hope so

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Wisconsin Public Radio

“It’s no longer your grandmother’s pickled beets,” said Adam D’Angelo, a UW-Madison graduate student and plant biologist. “You go to the grocery store, and you find beet juice, beet chips, beet this and beet that.” D’Angelo and UW-Madison horticulture professor Irwin Goldman recently appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Larry Meiller Show” to discuss their work redesigning beets for modern tastes. Goldman said people often complain “about the fact that they taste like dirt.”

“You look at it, and you think of the huddled masses of our ancestors and their old-style foods,” Goldman said. “But there’s something about its earthiness, about its color and its beauty that I find has grown on me over the years I’ve worked on it.”

Wisconsin no longer leads the nation in farm bankruptcies

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: At the 2023 Wisconsin Agricultural Outlook Forum this week, Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said part of the decline is likely from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s move to stop past-due debt collections and farm foreclosures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Most Wisconsin businesses think a recession is coming, but it’s still too soon to tell

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Steven Deller, professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said U.S. and global economic activity is expected to decline in 2023. Deller cited the Wall Street Journal’s Monthly Survey of Economic Forecasters, which averages 68 economic forecasts from individuals, organizations and universities, in a recent presentation.

“There’s pretty much consensus that we’re going to go into a slowdown, and that, if we go into a recession, it is going to be a very mild recession,” he said. “There’s actually a significant number of economists that are actually saying, ‘No, we’re not going to go into a recession. We’re going to go into a serious slowdown.'”

Some Wisconsin shoppers are paying $8 for a dozen eggs. Here’s why prices have soared.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Chicken flocks are still down 5% to 6%, said Lou Arrington, an emeritus professor of poultry sciences at University of Wisconsin-Extension who works with the Wisconsin Poultry & Egg Association. That may not seem a lot, but it has an outsized impact because demand for eggs is “inelastic” — it doesn’t vary much as prices rise or fall, he said. Bakeries and other food producers’ need for eggs hasn’t changed, and consumers have sucked it up and continue to pay prices that may make them gasp, Arrington said.

“I don’t think the individual producer has a lot to say about it,” he said of the nationwide forces that have driven up prices.

‘We’ve lost track of who we are’: How one group is helping people support farmer mental health

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Wisconsin Public Radio

The group (Farm Well Wisconsin), founded in 2020, is funded through a five-year grant associated with the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. Through trainings, community members work on building empathetic listening skills, connecting people with resources and discussing issues related to farm culture.

Legislation by Sen. Tammy Baldwin requires more transparency around foreign owners of US farmland

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Andrew Stevens, assistant professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said this percentage has been fairly consistent over time and includes forestland, pasture and cropland.

“The analyses that have been done with the data that are currently available really show that foreign ownership of agricultural land in the United States is a pretty miniscule issue, if it’s an issue at all,” he said. “There are no systematic differences across communities with more or less foreign ownership. Land prices don’t seem to systematically differ.”

 

Here are experts’ predictions on what 2023 holds for inflation, employment and housing in Wisconsin

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Appleton Post-Crescent

Quoted: Brad Tank, an investment management expert and University of Wisconsin-Madison alumnus, thinks federal officials will be successful in limiting inflation in 2023.

Tank explained in a recent UW Now livestream, “Predictions for 2023,” that he expects inflation to remain above 4% up until the middle of 2023. The rate most likely wouldn’t hit 2% until 2024.

Invasive snails become gourmet meal in Wisconsin episode of cooking show

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

There might be a new way to think of one particular species of invasive snail being found in Wisconsin’s water: as a part of a gourmet meal.

At least that’s the approach Minneapolis chef Yia Vang and Titus Sielheimer, a fisheries outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant, made this summer, when they filmed themselves harvesting and cooking up Chinese mystery snails in northern Wisconsin.

Ethical College Admissions: ‘I Am Not a Robot’

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Inside Higher Ed

Noted:  I was interviewed for a Forbes article with the title “A Computer Can Now Write Your College Essay—Maybe Better Than You Can.” Forbes fed ChatGPT two college essay prompts, one the 650-word Common Application prompt—“Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story”—and the other the “Why Wisconsin?” essay from the University of Wisconsin at Madison supplement. According to the article, each essay took ChatGPT less than 10 minutes to complete. That is both far less time than we hope students would spend composing essays and far more time than most admissions officers spend reading essays.

Wisconsin will ban TikTok on all state devices over cybersecurity concerns, Gov. Tony Evers announces

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin will join the growing list of states to ban the use of the popular social media site TikTok on all state-issued devices over cybersecurity concerns.

Gov. Tony Evers said Friday he would issue an executive order by early next week. As of Friday, it wasn’t immediately clear what the executive order would include or if the University of Wisconsin System would have to abide by the TikTok ban

Wisconsin dairy farm losses hit a three-year high as more call it quits. What is the path forward?

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Soaring prices for cattle, land, and everything else, have made it difficult for someone to get started in dairy farming.

And soon there will be one fewer educational resource available as University of Wisconsin-Madison shuts down its School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers, which has graduated around 600 budding farmers since the 1990s.

The non-degree program has offered instruction in what’s called “grazing,” a type of dairy farming where cows graze on pastures for most of their food rather than consuming a diet of grain and spending most of their time indoors. In addition to classroom instruction, the program has offered on-farm internships, business planning assistance and mentoring.

‘It landed in the checking account’: Wisconsin farm economist, lender say 2022 was a good year for ag

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Even after a year of record high inflation, economic forecasts show 2022 was a good year to be farming.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service estimated that national net farm income will reach $160.5 billion for the year. That’s 13.8 percent higher than in 2021 and roughly 50 percent higher than the 20-year average, according to ag economist Paul Mitchell.

Mitchell, who leads the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said part of the prosperity comes from COVID-19 aid from the federal government, which helped kick-start demand after an initial downturn at the start of the pandemic.

“We’ve had unprecedented levels of commodity support for agriculture for a couple years and then really good prices,” he said.

UW-Madison researcher says drone-delivered defibrillators can save lives

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Wisconsin Public Radio

When a heart stops, survival rates fall with every passing minute. A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher thinks minutes and lives can be saved in rural areas with fleets of autonomous drones equipped with defibrillators.

And saving lives is in UW-Madison assistant professor and researcher Justin Boutilier’s blood. When he was growing up in Canada, his mother was a nurse and his father was a paramedic and firefighter.

Wisconsinites feel the effects of national veterinarian shortage

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Mark Markel, dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, said many vets are no longer willing to work the brutal hours they did in the past.

“If veterinarians used to work 70 hours a week or 80 hours a week, and now they’re working 40, we’ve got a workforce shortage by almost half — even if we’re seeing the same number of patients,” he said.