Noted: There are over 6,000 dairy farms in the state, he said. According to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study, dairy generates nearly half of Wisconsin’s agricultural revenue each year. Over 150,000 people work in the industry, making up 4.2 percent of the state’s total workforce.
Quoted: “We are here fighting for what Detroiters clearly said they wanted, which is property tax credits and cash compensation for the theft that happened through these illegally inflated property tax foreclosures,” said Bernadette Atuahene, a professor and property law scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
Discovery to Product (D2P) is a program that provides funding, mentorship and tools to any member of the UW-Madison community to help get their research or ideas off the ground.
Some of the top research and analysis in the country on hurricanes isn’t happening by an ocean, but instead in Wisconsin’s capital city, Madison.
The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is helping predict what will happen with Hurricane Ian.
In order to track the path and intensity of a hurricane, it takes some of the country’s top minds in science working together. Research scientist Sarah Griffin at the Institute says they do not need to be near a hurricane to analyze it. They can use satellites to provide the National Hurricane Centers forecasters with the data and predictions on Hurricane Ian.
“We give current analysis to the forecasters to help them make their forecast,” said Griffin.
Quoted: But mobile markets can struggle to stay financially afloat. One researcher who has studied mobile markets for over a decade likens them to “revolving doors” because of how frequently mobile market projects start up and then stall.
“There’s often funding to start them,” said Lydia Zepeda, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor. “The question is trying to find a model that is financially sustainable — because they’re expensive.”
Noted: Entrepreneurs interested in selling snacks have an advantage in Wisconsin. In 2017, the University of Wisconsin-Madison started what was apparently the first such university course in the world, a short course aimed at nutrition and snack bar manufacturing. The course, next offered in March, typically fills to capacity.
Quoted: The phone number shakeup coincides with a regional population boom, said David Egan-Robertson, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Applied Population Lab.
Demographers don’t typically focus on telephone area codes as units of study — they tend to be more interested in subdivisions used by the U.S. Census Bureau like political districts, Egan-Robertson said. Still, he noted, when an area grows, more residents and more businesses will probably need more phone numbers.
“When there’s a lot of population growth, there’s also a whole layer of commercial growth that may be going on,” he said.
In other words, when a region booms, the birth of a new area code could be one side effect.
According to The Sun, Shayne is a real estate broker for Chicago’s RNP Group Real Estate. He has a Business Administration and Marketing degree from The University of Wisconsin and then was a personal trainer for a period of three years after getting licensed through the National Academy of Sports Medicine.
Among them are leading medical technology firms, such as those featured during the Madison forum, which was held at the science-focused Discovery Building on the UW-Madison campus.
UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said the university — which has welcomed Japanese students since 1905 — should “open its doors a little wider” to R&D partnerships with companies that do business in Japan or have ownership ties there.
Noted: Abel and his business partner, Jordan Radke, both graduated from the University of Wisconsin. Abel said opening the Milwaukee location was a homecoming of sorts.
Quoted: “I don’t think it’s definitely a bad thing, because we need to have avenues for people to get access to credit,” said Cliff Robb, a consumer science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But some borrowers may struggle with BNPL “because they may have over-projected their ability to manage it.”
Quoted: Alexia Kulwiec, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers, said she would like to see the federal government return to providing tax incentives for employers who provide paid sick leave for people with long COVID.
Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, employers providing paid leave for up to two weeks to employees for COVID-19 could receive reimbursements in the form of tax credits, but the program ended in March 2021.
“It’s very disheartening to see that the policies that came out during COVID have essentially been reversed and undone, so they’re not there to protect employees today,” Kulwiec said.
UW-Madison School for Workers professor Don Taylor explains an agreement between UW Health and nurses to halt a planned strike and communicate amid disputes over the legal status of a union campaign.
Supporters and nurses gathered at Madison Labor Temple Tuesday evening to celebrate an agreement between UW Health and SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin. The deal announced Monday, which narrowly averted a three-day strike this week, stops short of recognizing the nurses’ union.
Quoted: Alexia Kulwiec, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers, said she would like to see the federal government return to providing tax incentives for employers who provide paid sick leave for people with Long COVID.
Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, employers providing paid leave for up to two weeks to employees for COVID-19 could receive reimbursements in the form of tax credits, but the program ended in March 2021.
“It’s very disheartening to see that the policies that came out during COVID have essentially been reversed and undone, so they’re not there to protect employees today,” Kulwiec said.
According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, there are two ways to know if the website you’re about to visit is considered secure: HTTPS and a padlock icon. Look at the website’s URL and check for the letter S. A secure website URL will start with HTTPS, with an emphasis on the letter S as this indicates that the website is using an SSL certificate. You may find website URLs that start with HTTP, without the S — in general, these are no longer regarded as secure.
Quoted: You should be concerned about your data privacy in general, especially when seeking an abortion, said Dorothea Salo, a professor who specializes in information security and privacy at the Information School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Be especially wary of most commercial search engines, she said.
“We know they collect and retain search data, including search queries; we know they associate that data with individual searchers; we know they share, aggregate and sell it all over creation; we know that law enforcement agencies access it,” said Salo, who uses DuckDuckGo but notes that other search engines provide similar benefits.
A proposed settlement that would avert a nurses’ strike at one of Wisconsin’s largest hospitals was reached Sunday by the negotiating teams for UW Nurses United and UW Health hospital officials in Madison.
Noted: The panel discussion, held over Zoom, was organized by COWS, the University of Wisconsin center that measures the economy from the perspective of workers. It followed the release last week of COWS’ latest State of Working Wisconsin report. The report’s key finding was that, for many reasons, Wisconsin workers have reached a turning point where they have discovered their potential power to improve the conditions of their jobs.
“It isn’t a time of retreat from work, it is a time of engagement and workers taking this moment to recognize the power they have,” said labor economist Laura Dresser, associate director of COWS and co-author of the report, as she set the stage for the discussion.
Mary Jorgensen, a nurse at UW Health involved in the three-year campaign to reinstate union representation at the health care system, agreed. “We’ve had deteriorating working conditions since we lost our contract in 2014,” Jorgensen said. “The pandemic just exacerbated all the problems that we did have.”
Noted: A University of Wisconsin economics professor estimated an annual loss of more than 6,000 jobs and roughly $5 billion in lost economic output due to reduced production or closure of refineries in the Upper Midwest. Experts for the tribe dispute those findings.
Quoted: “A lot of the companies in the United States that practice in the renewables area have shifted a lot of their efforts to large-scale solar design,” said James Tinjum, who researches environmental sustainability and renewable energy at the University of Madison-Wisconsin. “The economics has, in the last decade, made it possible.”
Led by The Water Council with core support from the MKE Tech Hub, the Wisconsin Technology Council, Marquette University and the Madison Region Economic Partnership, a “letter of intent” filed with NSF also lists some major companies — A.O. Smith, Rockwell Automation and Sentry Equipment Corp.
Others include UW-Madison’s Department of Engineering Physics, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, UW-Milwaukee, the UWM Research Foundation, the Wisconsin Center for Manufacturing and Productivity, the BrightStar Wisconsin investment fund, STEM Forward, WEC Energy Group, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, the Urban League of Greater Madison, the Business Council, state Sen. Dale Kooyenga, R-Wis., who is tied to a U.S. Army water innovation project, and the August Brown management consulting firm.
Quoted: Beth Martin is a Professor of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As Walgreens continues to struggle with recruiting pharmacists, Martin explained there has been a national decline in students interested in attending pharmacy schools. She said the pandemic has also put a strain on the system, however, that time was also used to push the field forward.
“A lot of our community pharmacists innovated,” Martin said. “They made new connections. They saw new problems to solve, so I think if we all continue to use that frame of reference, that perspective, we can get through this.”
Glendale-based Sprecher Brewing Co. may not be the first private company to land a name, image and likeness deal with a university student-athlete, but the craft beverage producer known for its Sprecher root beer as well as being the oldest craft brewery in Wisconsin since prohibition, may have produced a first-of-its-kind deal with University of Wisconsin-Madison’s football program.
Quoted: The Karles represent a group of individuals and families who have made a change and are now dealing with the financial consequences, for better or worse. “The pandemic made people really think and take stock of their living situations,” said Cliff Robb, an associate professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We saw so many different employment opportunities become flexible in their structures, so people started to reassess it all.”
Quoted: When we create the image of ourselves that we want to share online, we’re more likely to craft that persona to fit a certain standard, said Christine Whelan, a clinical professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Social media has definitely upped the ante … to enhance ourselves to fit what we think is the cultural ideal.”
Quoted: “We’re looking at 18 different varieties from around the world and which ones can maybe produce the best grain or the best for future use if industrial hemp becomes more of a mainstream crop,” UW-Madison Extension Chippewa County Agricultural agent, Jerry Clark, said.
UW-Madison Extension Buffalo County Agricultural Educator, Carl Duley, says the fiber and grain produced from industrial hemp has many different uses.
“Right now they are approved for human food, not for animal feed at this point, but they are used a lot in health food stores like granola,” Duley said. “There’s a lot of flour made after the oil is squeezed out.”
Quoted: “We’re seeing an increase in activity and I don’t think it’s a blip,” said Alexia Kulwiec, professor and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers – Department of Labor Education.
“I think that it is forward movement and traction toward improving working conditions. Whether it will be truly transformational and create the kind of economy that we would rather see, I’m not convinced of, but it’s certainly possible.”
Medtronic this summer rolled out a program to pay all undergraduate college tuition costs for employees in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
Since the program started in early June, the company has seen more than 1,100 applicants from 44,000 eligible employees. They can choose any course or degree program at six universities, including Arizona State University and University of Wisconsin-Madison, with online learning.
Quoted: The timing of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and other government grants is good for companies like Charter as they transition from legacy cable television service to broadband, according to Barry Orton, professor emeritus of telecommunications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Cable television isn’t going to last forever. People are cutting the cord like crazy,” Orton said. “But what they’re not cutting is their broadband connection.”
Guests include assistant scientist Tyler Lark and Yanhua Xie, a postdoctoral research associate, both at UW-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE).
Quoted: Steve Deller, ag economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said agriculture experienced the same supply chain issues that almost every industry faced in 2021.
“A lot of the stuff that farmers need to operate were in very low supply. So essentially it’s more expensive for farmers to operate,” Deller said. “It’s like any business. You know, I need to buy a new piece of equipment, but I can’t find it and prices go up.”
Interview with Steve Deller, Professor, Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Quoted: “As we talk about inflation, I think sometimes we hear about the price of houses or the price of big things, but little stuff that really hurts low-income families,” said J. Michael Collins, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs who studies consumer decision making. “If you think about an extra $2.50 for a gallon of gas or an extra dollar for a gallon of milk, those things just start to add up because you buy them so frequently.”
Quoted: Jennifer Van Os researches animal welfare on dairy farms for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said cow-calf separation is standard for dairy farms across the U.S. and the world. She said the practice started as a way to prevent newborn calves from contracting diseases from other cows in a herd.
“Newborn dairy cows are vulnerable to disease because their immune system is still developing,” Van Os said. “Their immune system develops in a way that’s a little bit different from that of humans. So it came from good intentions, and it was done for the sake of the animal.”
Quoted: “The first place you should look is the human resources department of the prior employer,” says Anita Mukherjee, an assistant professor of risk and insurance at the University of Wisconsin—Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business. “There, they should have all of the information as to the whereabouts of the 401(k) account you had with them.”
Noted: In the summer, peak energy demand is pretty well matched with peak solar generation, as University of Wisconsin at Madison professor Gregory Nemet notes. People crank up the AC most when it’s sunny out.
Noted: A University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate, his background was in health care technology and music. And like Deshpande, he’d been a diligent saver for years.
On Friday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order seeking to firm up some abortion protections, including data privacy. According to data experts, the reversal of Roe v. Wade opened up more cracks for sensitive information to fall through.
“The reversal of Roe, the Dobbs decision, just again brought lots and lots of new people to the realization that we don’t actually have much data privacy and that can be a problem,” said Dorothea Salo.
It’s been on the mind of Salo, Distinguished Faculty III at UW Madison’s Information School, before the Roe decision.
“Right now the legal landscape really doesn’t control this,” she said. “Here in Wisconsin, there have been a couple of bipartisan data protection bills in the Senate and the Assembly and they just haven’t gone anywhere.”
At the second Dairy Exchange of the year sponsored by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, cheesemakers and allied industry people gathered to hear a dairy market update from Mark Stephenson.
As it turns out, it will be the last market update Stephenson will present as he will be retiring from his post as director of Dairy Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin. Fortunately he was able to impart some good news to dairy farmers.
With funding from organizations such as WARF (Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation), CUNA Mutual Group, Dane Arts, and the Morgridge Center for Public Service, Karanja and her team were able to bring important conversations to the forefront regarding women of color in STEM fields. These are conversations that Karanja and the Represented Collective look to continue at an event tonight at the Goodman Community Center on Madison’s near east side titled “Legendary: An Evening of Celebration.” It will be a night of cocktails and conversation and commemoration of women in the STEM fields.
With a focus on women of color, the event will feature a group of panelists including Ana Hooker (Senior Vice President & Chief Laboratory Officer at Exact Sciences), Angela Jenkins (Technology Project Manager at American Family Insurance), Ponmozhi Manickavalli Sathappan (IT Manager at CUNA Mutual Group), and Dr. Jasmine Zapata (Chief Medical Officer for Community Health at Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Division of Public Health, and Physician and Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health) who will lead a community discussion regarding issues of representation, professionalism, visibility, microaggressions, macroaggressions, and many other topics that affect the experiences of women across the STEM fields.
Along with being able to hear from the panelists, event-goers will also be able to partake in celebrating the accomplishments of Erika Bullock and Maxine McKinney de Royston who are both assistant professors in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education.
Quoted: Peter Carstensen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, who specializes in antitrust law and energy law, predicts the situation will improve but change will be slow.
“My expectation is prices are going to stabilize in a downward trend,” he said. “It’s not going to be a huge drop, but it’s going to continue to go down.”
Carstensen said that’s because domestic production is increasing and drivers will likely decrease their miles, slowing demand. Despite that, he said other problems will keep costs high.
“The capacity to do things inexpensively is just not there,” he said. According to Carstensen, supply chain issues, the need for new wells, limited refinery capacity and the crisis in Ukraine will be roadblocks to easing the burden on drivers.
Fish is a popular food in Wisconsin whether it’s part of a Friday night fish fry or a staple for Wisconsin tribes. However, a new study finds around only half of people surveyed in the Great Lakes region know about fish advisories that set limits on how much is safe to eat.
The study was published in June in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Researchers from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and University of Wisconsin-Madison found around 5 million people ate more fish than recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency recommends no more than two meals or 12 ounces of fish per week.
A Supreme Court ruling will limit the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon emissions. We learn more about the legal and environmental impacts.
Interview with Steph Tai, law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Only about half the people living in the Great Lakes region are aware of fish consumption advisories that warn people to limit their meals of fish, according to a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, also found that an estimated 5 million people across the region exceeded the general recommended fish intake of two meals, or 12 ounces per week, as suggested by the Environmental Protection Agency for all fish, including those purchased in stores.
All three majored in engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where their mother and older sister had also studied. Ryley Karl, 36, chose aerospace engineering. Keegan Karl, 34, opted for mechanical engineering. River Karl, 32, became an electrical engineer.
Wisconsin Public Media and the Educational Communications Board joined broadcasters from around the state to celebrate the life and career of former WPM Director Gene Purcell who was one of four people inducted into the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame on June 23, 2022. Purcell was a longtime WPR reporter, regional manager, and former director of the ECB before becoming director of WPM at UW-Madison in 2018. He was killed in a traffic collision in August 2021.
Quoted: Peter Carstensen, an emeritus law professor at the University of Wisconsin, said he was skeptical that the drivers would get traction with their claims that Uber and Lyft were illegally setting the price drivers could charge.
But Mr. Carstensen said a state judge might rule in the plaintiffs’ favor on other so-called vertical restraints, such as the incentives that help tie drivers to one of the platforms by, for example, guaranteeing them at least $1,000 if they complete 70 rides between Monday and Friday. A judge may conclude that these incentives largely exist to reduce competition between Uber and Lyft, he said, because they make drivers less likely to switch platforms and make it harder for a new gig platform to hire away drivers.
“You’re making it extremely difficult for a third party to come in,” Mr. Carstensen said.
A federal program will give Wisconsin and 10 other states a $20 million boost to help farmers, cheese makers and other dairy processors develop new products and new markets to help stabilize the embattled dairy industry.
The funds, announced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) Monday at a Jefferson County cheese producer, will expand the Dairy Business Innovation Initiatives program in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
USDA is giving the money to the Dairy Business Innovation Alliance, a joint project of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association and the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The groups will provide grants and support programs so that farms, dairy processors and related businesses can “modernize, reach new markets and create economic growth,” said Baldwin.
Quoted: “Time is really of the essence here,” said Justin Boutilier, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Survival from cardiac arrest decreases by between 7 to 15% for every minute that you go without treatment.”
Boutilier describes obstacles to emergency response —such as traffic or difficult-to-reach rural locations — as “the perfect storm.” He has been designing a prototype drone that takes off as soon as someone calls 911.
“This is sort of like a perfect storm for a drone-based delivery system,” he said. “They’re able to, you know, remove the issues caused by traffic and things like that. So they’re able to get these devices there much quicker than an ambulance could.”
In the spring of 2013, just before she was confirmed as the next UW-Madison chancellor by the Board of Regents, Rebecca Blank was criticized by some Republican state legislators for her “radical policies.”
Quoted: Bob Cropp, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said high demand for milk is what drove prices up in 2014. But he said this year’s record prices are due to farmers cutting back on production.
“Milk production for several months, starting actually the last quarter of last year, has been running below a year ago,” Cropp said. “Cow numbers have declined and production per cow has been below normal, so we have resulted in a tightness of the supply-demand situation.”
Quoted: Hart Posen is an expert on business strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business. He said he was surprised to see Kohl’s move forward with Franchise Group, Inc. because the holding company runs such a different set of retail businesses.
“There are two reasons one firm acquires another firm. One reason is they believe that the firm’s assets are undervalued, they think they’re getting a good deal on it,” Posen said. “More often than not what we would like to see in these situations is what we would call a strategic buyer — a buyer that brings specific assets or knowledge or expertise to bear — that we believe may add value within Kohl’s. And it’s not at all clear to me that this buyer is a strategic buyer in that sense.”
Quoted: Dr. Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health and study lead, said their findings show just how important parents are when it comes to teens and technology.
“Parents serve as such role models, and I think that when kids are young, the role-modeling includes a lot of instruction and talking; and I think when teens are older, parents teach more through their own behavior than through their own words,” she said.
Quoted: John Hendrickson, farm viability specialist for UW-Madison’s Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, helped develop the tool for the Grassland 2.0 project. Started in 2020 using a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the collaboration between researchers from UW-Madison and other universities, farmers and agriculture industry leaders is working to encourage farmers to adopt the use of grasslands.
“We want farms to be financially viable and sustainable for the long term,” he said. “But of course the Grasslands 2.0 project also has this larger look at the entire landscape and climate change and soil erosion and what can we do to have a more sustainable agricultural system on the landscape.”
Quoted: “We’ve built a supply chain system that includes factories, that includes distribution centers, that includes transportation methods and all that stuff. We’ve built that to handle a certain capacity that we thought was coming at us,” said Jake Dean, director of the Grainger Center for Supply Chain Management at the University of Wisconsin School of Business.
Quoted: Our reliance on the internet quadrupled during the pandemic, said Barry Orton, professor emeritus of telecommunications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The bar keeps getting raised higher,” Orton said, with increased demands for faster speeds, especially in uploads.
According to a UW-Madison professor, there’s a big return to work in Wisconsin right now. Laura Dresser is an assistant clinical professor with the university’s Institute for Research on Poverty.
“There are more workers in the labor force today than there were in February of 2020 before the shutdowns,” she said.
She added the labor force participation rate is about 66% in the state.
“That doesn’t mean women’s lives aren’t really stressed by the pandemic, but I think we haven’t seen a kind of permanent shift in work as a result at least here in Wisconsin,” Dresser said.
Noted: On May 24, the Wisconsin Technology Council is hosting a luncheon at the Sheraton Hotel, on John Nolen Drive in Madison, to learn more about the Dairyland project and the larger debate over nuclear power. Panelists will include Ridge, who’s also the CEO of the cooperative; Jeffrey Keebler, chairman, president and CEO of Madison Gas & Electric; and Paul Wilson, Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering, and chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s department of engineering physics.
