Quoted: “For our future up here, broadband is the single most important thing,” said Christopher Starks, retired from the aerospace industry and now working with University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension in the Northwoods.
Quoted: “The denominator part, or the biggest piece of that, was really that imports declined,” said Mark Stephenson Director of Dairy Policy Analysis at UW Madison.
While it’s too soon to tell now, experts believe that increase could widen because of the pandemic.
“We had restaurants and other institutional portions of sales just decline precipitously during much of 2020,” Stephenson said.
Across the state, local public health agencies are dropping their public health orders and mask mandates. The moves come as vaccination rates across the state climb, and as hospitalizations steadily decline.
But, just because public health orders have been dropped doesn’t mean we’re entirely in the clear.
For more, our producer Jonah Chester spoke with Ajay Sethi, an Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences at UW-Madison.
Quoted: Gregory Nemet, a UW-Madison professor studying innovation in climate change, said “staying home and not moving around” are not the ways to see a continued decline in emissions. The key, he said, is in applying clean technologies and digitalizing activities.
“I don’t expect that we would get the type of reduction that we saw this past year,” Nemet said, looking into next year. “But the flexibility that’s been shown and the ability to work remotely is likely to give us some improvement in the right direction.”
Wisconsin employers couldn’t require employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, and so-called vaccine passports would be prohibited under GOP-backed bills that received a public hearing at the state Capitol Wednesday.
Another proposal would prevent the University of Wisconsin System from requiring COVID-19 vaccines or testing.
Madison’s economy used to be driven by state government and UW-Madison. But the region’s technology sector has fueled much of the growth over the last decade. Young technology workers for Epic Systems, Exact Sciences and countless start-ups like to live, eat, shop and be entertained Downtown.
In a new study, researchers from the University of Wisconsin Madison asked over 800 local residents in the Madison metropolitan area to assess their attitudes towards using autonomous vehicles in the future and found that study respondents would be interested in using a driverless car about 31 percent of the time, a significant chunk more than taking the bus. Wissam Kontar, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin Madison and lead study author, says that with growing popularity and industry investment in autonomous vehicles, that this “excitement” may be “overshadowing potential environmental impacts.”
Quoted: “Cows in cities were milked every day, and people would bring milk in carts back to their neighbourhoods to sell it,” says John Lucey, food science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“As cities got bigger, milk got further away and took longer to get to the consumer, which meant pathogens could multiply.”
Noted: A 2018 study lead by University of Wisconsin, Madison professor of pediatrics Dr. Megan Moreno found that some companies were flouting regulations on marketing, with social media posts that appeal to teens and promote therapeutic benefits.
The study noted around 1% of social media posts appeared to directly target teens, with one post explicitly showing a young person in the promotion, with several others using well-known cartoon characters, Reuters reported.
ACalifornia startup developing electric vans and trucks is partnering with UW-Madison in hopes of making electric vehicles more available while reducing the use of limited natural resources.
After a year fraught with unemployment payment delays, high rates of unemployment denials, call center headaches and other issues, a new University of Wisconsin report suggests the state should outsource at least a portion of its unemployment system.
The report by conservative UW economics professor Noah Williams detailed areas the state lagged behind most other states as the wave of unemployment claims swamped the state’s Department of Workforce Development last year.
Pioneered by researchers at UW-Madison, microgrids — which can include a combination of generators and batteries — are designed to function as self-contained systems that can seamlessly disconnect from the larger system, functioning as islands during power outages.
Last year, the Army awarded the University of Wisconsin to investigate hybrid drivetrains for tactical and combat.
The keynote speaker at next month’s Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Conference owes his $1 billion company, Fetch Rewards, to an idea that came to him when he was a University of Wisconsin-Madison soon-to-be sophomore learning to do his own grocery shopping.
UWM’s Sandra McLellan and MIT’s Eric Alm are among the world’s foremost experts at detecting very small organisms in very large quantities of sewage — a useful tool during the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite their similar research capabilities, Alm’s work is having a wider impact and creating more economic value and high-paying jobs.
The FFI was founded in 2013 and is part of the University of Wisconsin System’s Institute for Business & Entrepreneurship. The organization focuses on building and funding profitable businesses in the food, beverage and value-added agriculture sector through training, coaching, resources, tools and mentoring programs.
Noted: Foxconn has worked to try to create goodwill with other parts of the state by signing agreements with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and local governments in Racine, Eau Claire and Green Bay to establish “innovation centers.”
The company has signed a $100 million agreement with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create Foxconn Institute for Research in Science and Technology within the College of Engineering.
’I think it’s important to understand the relationships between these forms of activism — online and on the streets — and how they are building towards justice together,” Communication Arts professor says
The Taiwanese company has had a controversial reputation in Wisconsin since their introduction to the state in 2018. In February, Foxconn was sued by a developer due to a breach of contract involving a project that was supposed to bring 13,000 jobs to the state.
Quoted: According to Lori Kido Lopez, an associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison, the reduction of that identity to “something that can be consumed in a mainstream way erases the radical roots of that history,” which was born out of anti-imperialist and civil rights activism in the 1960s.
UW-Madison recently hired a former Foxconn Technology Group official to lead the university’s Office of Business Engagement.
Quoted: It’s a step in the right direction, according to Barry Orton, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor who has helped local governments with telecom issues.
“The words are good,” Orton said, but the proof will come in the details.
Research out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that training educators helps improve whether they feel well-qualified to teach personal finance. Among a 2020 survey of teachers — mostly instructors likely to teach such a course — those who said they would feel very confident teaching it reached 70%, up from 9% in 2009.
Created in 1925, WARF handles patent and license issues for the UW-Madison, returning money to the campus research cycle and often making it possible for young companies to get a start. WiSys is doing much the same for four-year UW campuses outside Madison and Milwaukee while engaging students in research and entrepreneurism.
Noted: An increasing number of studies support the effectiveness of financial literacy education when taught by well-trained teachers, said Nan J. Morrison, chief executive of the Council for Economic Education. And more teachers now say they feel confident teaching the material. A study released in March by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Montana State University found significant increases in teacher participation in professional development.
Yesterday, President Joe Biden unveiled a massive, two trillion dollar plan to improve the nation’s infrastructure. For more on what the plan entails, and what it means for Wisconsinites, WORT Producer Jonah Chester spoke with Greg Nemet, a Professor of Public Affairs at UW-Madison.
Quoted: Basically, capital and investment are the main ingredients in economic growth, said Charles Engel, a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But capital and investment can only take you so far. Simeon Alder, a visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said exponential economic growth requires exponential new ideas, as new ideas are the fundamental engine of growth. (Think about the economic growth and improvement in standards of living that occurred during and since the Industrial Revolution.)
“The challenge with that is the more ideas you already have, the more new ideas you need to create in order to sustain that growth rate,” he said. “To get these extra ideas, you just need more and more people as sort of a general result.”
Noted: Wes Schroll founded the consumer loyalty and reward app while he was a business student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013. Schroll thought it made more sense for brands to reward customer loyalty than most store-based models. He dropped out of college to work on Fetch Rewards full time.
Quoted: Buying products with racial equity in mind can make some people feel absolved from doing harder anti-racism work, like attending protests or advocating in their workplaces, says Aziza Jones, an incoming business professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But Jones says other people respond differently. “Other people will see what they’ve done, this purchase of a product from a Black-owned business and take that as a signal to themselves, as a symbolic signal, of how important this cause is to them,” she says.
Quoted: Moses Altsech, an expert in consumer behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business, said if the price increases are small enough, some consumers might not even notice.
Altsech added that the company might also not have to worry about their customers buying different products because Kimberly-Clark’s competitors might take the opportunity to increase their prices, too.
“If commodity prices are the reason, the same reason that hurt Kimberly-Clark hurt its competitors, too,” Altsech said. “So everybody’s motivated to increase.”
Quoted: The lack of data on queer BIPOC farmers is also prevalent in academia, said Jaclyn Wypler, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies queer and transgender sustainable farmers in conservative rural communities. Wypler was recently hired as the Northeast project manager of the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network at the National Young Farmers Coalition.
“There is discrimination for BIPOC folks and queer folks within academia, including within the environmental and rural and agricultural departments,” Wypler said. As a result, research studies that highlight their experiences are difficult to adequately fund.
Quoted: Sarah Botham teaches agriculture and life sciences marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said the Cheeselandia campaign is a successful example of the way that agriculture is trying to “market smarter” and with a new customer in mind.
“They are reaching, first of all, people who are really interested in Wisconsin cheese and secondly people who are of a younger demographic,” Botham said. “That generation is interested in not just eating but in understanding where their food comes from, in experiencing the food and sharing it with friends.”
After layoffs, morale tanks and turnover increases. As Charlie Trevor, a professor of management and human resources at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, previously told HuffPost, how layoffs are handled can tell “a survivor a great deal about the company’s priorities and about the type of treatment one might expect moving forward.”
Steve Deller, ag economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he agrees that many traditional lenders like banks and credit unions have remained conservative about investing in new projects since the Great Recession.
“We were really humbled by this failure,” said Mr. Chen, who met Mr. Huang at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they both studied computer science two decades ago.
Today, Barnett runs Pyran, a 3-year-old startup providing plant-based materials to replace fossil fuels in plastics and paints. He subleases a lab space at University Research Park and runs a team of “young, scrappy chemical engineers … surrounded by some really good advisors,” including George Huber, the professor he once worked for, who co-founded the company.
Even with three COVID-19 vaccines authorized in the U.S. and others possibly available soon, two UW-Madison spinoff companies continue to pursue coronavirus vaccine candidates they say could find a niche.
Quoted: “It clearly has some impact on transmission,” said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In August 2018, Foxconn and its chairman and founder, Terry Gou, announced plans to invest $100 million in engineering and innovation research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Whether a registration requirement complies with open-meetings statute has not been tested in the Wisconsin court system, said attorney Philip Freeburg, with UW-Madison Division of Extension’s Local Government Center.
“The main thing about open meetings is to provide open access,” he said. “If you’re putting up barriers to that, I think you may be at some risk.”
Noted: The number could rise as climate science advances, said Paul Kelleher, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in climate change economics. Advances in translating temperature increases to economic damage have enabled more precise measurements of climate impacts. And the Biden administration has emphasized equity considerations to take into account low-income areas and communities of color, which new modeling makes more possible.
Quoted: “At a time when we want to encourage saving and investment in the state, the Evers budget would sharply raise the cost of capital by increasing capital gains taxes,” Noah Williams, Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, told the Institute for Reforming Government (IRG), a Wisconsin-based think tank that recently published an analysis of Evers’ budget. “I also think it’s unlikely that the capital gains tax would raise the projected amount of revenue, as past episodes of capital gains increases have found that people either realize the gains before the tax takes hold or delay realization.”
Quoted: Repeated, daily acts of racism at work — like those some employees described last year — can wear people down, said Jerlando Jackson, director and chief research scientist at Wisconsin’s Equity & Inclusion Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In workplaces where employees of color see that harassment is not handled well by supervisors, they might not speak up about their experiences, Jackson said.
The issue is two-fold, he said: most workers face both organizational and internal barriers to success. So even if companies work to address some of the structural hurdles, employees might be struggling silently if they aren’t given a chance to be heard.
Each person carries their burden differently. Many people in hostile work environments eventually quit or are fired, he said.
“Usually there’s no good end to it, for those people,” Jackson said. “Individuals leave opportunities they spent their whole lives trying to get.”
Noted: Zone designation led to job growth in urban but not rural zones, according to a study led by Alina Arefeva, an assistant professor of real estate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. Her study didn’t look at activity in 2020.
Growing cow numbers and increased milk production have dairy experts walking on a knives edge when predicting the trajectory of milk prices for the coming year.
Mark Stephenson, director of Dairy Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Center for Dairy Profitability and Bob Cropp, emeritus professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, delved into the factors impacting milk prices for 2021 during the February “Dairy Situation and Outlook” podcast this week.
Amigo, a social media app designed to help students make friends on college campuses, launched Monday at the University of Wisconsin.Co-founders Paa Adu and Sophia Huard came up with the idea to reconcile the hardships college student are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Noted: Demand for electricity goes up when temperatures drop, said Dr. Line Roald, an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The surprising part of what happened in Texas was that so many generators — from nuclear and natural gas plants to wind turbines — stopped producing energy due to the freezing temperatures, she said.
Quoted: The rate has stayed consistent in the state with the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Workers earning minimum wage who work 2,000 hours a year — 40 hours for 50 weeks — make about $14,500 before taxes and work expenses.
“That’s just about enough to keep one single person out of poverty,” said economist Tim Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s business school jumped 27 spots this year to No. 19 in the Economist’s ranking, which could put the program on the radar of prospective students, said Assistant Dean Blair Sanford.
“To be top 20 in a respected ranking, that has some extra clout for us,” she said.
A new report shows output from UW-Madison is to thank for about 9% of Wisconsin’s $345 billion economy.NorthStar Analytics found UW-Madison is responsible for more than 230,000 public and private sector jobs. That’s the equivalent of one in 13 jobs in the state and puts the university on par with major Wisconsin industries like dairy, food processing and tourism.
University of Wisconsin- Madison makes up a nearly $31 billion impact on Wisconsin’s $345 billion economy, a new report finds Thursday.
A new report highlighting UW-Madison’s economic impact finds the flagship university generates more than $30 billion annually for the state, or nearly 9% of Wisconsin’s economy.
Quoted: “Sometimes incorrect information is a simple data entry error, and other times, it could be a sign of fraud,” says Peggy Olive, University of Wisconsin-Madison financial capability specialist. “It is up to each individual to look over his or her own credit report for old information that should be removed, common mistakes or signs of identity theft. Better to discover an error yourself than to have a creditor find it first.”
UW-Madison and its affiliated entities are an economic engine contributing $30.8 billion a year to the Wisconsin economy, according to a new report commissioned by the university and funded by UW Foundation.
The Nicholas Recreation Center is home to 30,000 square feet of fitness space, eight courts, five studios and an Olympic size pool. But while the facility continues to operate at 25% capacity due to COVID-19, these spaces can fill up fast, resulting in long lines and even longer wait times. Ethan Lim, a junior majoring in computer engineering and computer science, set to work to create a practical solution to this impractical situation.
First, education is king. Don’t ever allow UW-Madison to be anything but a premier, world-class institution. State and private dollars invested now will be leveraged considerably by virtue of the fact that most of the federal investment will go to expanded research at universities such as UW.
Bjorn Eraker, a finance professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said those high numbers point to a bubble, not long-term stability of the stock.
“It’s a speculative bubble more than it is a safe investment,” Eraker said. “There’s no way of knowing what they might do because the stock is trading way, way above its fundamentals. It is a game more than it is an investment.”
Quoted: The idea of removing names — let alone an entire article — from a newspaper’s digital archive is traditionally anathema for many journalists. “For a long time the instinct was, ‘Nope, we’re not even going to think about this. We are about seeking the truth and reporting it and we don’t go back and unreport it,’ ” said Kathleen Culver, the James E. Burgess Chair in Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: As customers make their way through shelves, they may move or pick up items in ways that can make the location and quantity of inventory difficult to to gauge, said Hart Posen, professor at the University of Wisconsin school of business.
“It leads to lots of mistakes and errors because what the computer system says is on the shelf might not be there, because a customer has it in their cart, or…picked it up and moved it someplace else,” he said. “So mostly using store shelves for e-commerce fulfillment is not a scalable and efficient way to do it.”
Quoted: Melissa Kono is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who works in community development and is raising a family on a farm. “Work-life balance,” she said, is not a farming staple.
