After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Biden administration program for student loan relief, President Joe Biden is out with an alternative plan. The Department of Education is calling the Saving on Valuable Education plan the “most generous” repayment program of its kind. Nicholas Hillman, a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at UW-Madison, gives an update on federal student loan policy.
Other imposter content commonly takes the form of websites or social media accounts, said Mike Wagner, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wagner is the lead investigator for the NSF-funded research project in which Wisconsin Watch and the Cap Times are participating. “We’ve had misinformation since we’ve had information, and we’ve had people sharing things that aren’t true since they shared things that are true,” Wagner said.
Spongy moth populations may spike temporarily about every 10 years. Outbreaks have been trending upward in the last couple of years, according to PJ Liesch, an entomologist with the Division of Extension at UW-Madison. The DNR recorded 294 acres of spongy moth defoliation in 2021, but around 85,000 acres of trees experienced a loss of leaves last year.
UW-Madison researchers have found that black-legged ticks, commonly referred to as deer ticks, can harbor transmissible amounts of prions, the protein particle that causes chronic wasting disease in white-tailed deer.
Leonard Polzin is dairy markets and policy specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension. He told Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Central Time” that most dairy processors have ongoing recruitment efforts and continue to think about ways to compete with employers hiring from the same labor pool. But he said processors are also starting to pay more attention to advancements in technology and how automation could make jobs easier or replace them altogether.
“If they can take what once was done by 10 people and do it by one person through the advent of additional investment, that’s always a topic of discussion,” he said.
Farmers across the Midwest are again dumping volumes of milk down the drain as an oversupply floods the markets. We talk with Leonard Polzin, UW-Madison Extention’s Dairy Markets and Policy Outreach specialist, about what’s causing the milk surplus and how long it may last.
But local demand for apartment developments greatly trumps the demand for condos, said Kurt Paulsen, UW-Madison professor of urban planning. That’s especially true of Madison as it tries to increase its supply of housing units amid a dire housing shortage and an affordability crisis, he said.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin Madison associate professor of political science and legal studies Howard Schweber said given the current state of politics, it’s not surprising that the state’s high court denied the DEI education request. But he called Bradley’s comments shocking.
“Whatever tattered shreds of civility were left within the legal profession have surely vanished when you have a Supreme Court justice saying about her own state’s bar that they are effectively in a conspiracy to take over America and to make an explicit Nazi reference in doing so,” Schweber said.
Josh Kamps is a crops and soils educator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension in the southwestern region. He said crop conditions vary greatly across his area, even from farm to farm.
Kamps said producers who were able to plant early in the season got enough rain to get crops started, allowing the plants to grow deeper roots that tapped into water farther below the surface as soils dried out.
“We have areas where crops were planted a little bit later, maybe toward the end of May,” he said. “Those crops are really struggling. These last couple of rain showers this week are going to definitely help.”
Here’s what guests on the July 14, 2023 episode said about a 2% sales tax in the city of Milwaukee that comes with specific policy conditions and a surprising circuit court ruling in the Wisconsin abortion statutes lawsuit.
Includes interview with Howard Schweber, professor emeritus of political science at the UW-Madison and affiliated faculty at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Steven Deller, professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said businesses remain in “wait and see mode,” as they’ve dealt with economic uncertainty since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates more than a year ago.
“Six months ago, it was like, the Fed is raising interest rates, the sky is falling, the leading economic indicators are all pointing towards recession,” Deller said. “Now, people are going, ‘Well, wait a minute, the sky is not falling.'”
Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Goldman Sachs’ prediction might be a little rosier than that of most economists. He said economists are anticipating an economic slowdown in the latter half of 2023 or early 2024.
“While people think the chances of a recession are receding, I think the average forecaster still sees a recession coming,” Chinn said. “That being said, I think most of them also think it would be a mild recession.”
For the first time in a decade, the Wisconsin State Climatology Office is receiving government funding. A USDA grant will focus the office on rural needs, particularly those of farmers. We talk to Steve Vavrus, the Wisconsin State Climatologist and a senior scientist for the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies Center for Climatic Research at UW-Madison, about this and funding for a statewide network of weather stations.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Alliant Energy are partnering to build a solar park that will also serve as a research center to explore mixing solar and agriculture, soil impacts, water issues and more.
That could have to do with workers in service industries gravitating toward jobs that were more stable during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Nancy Wong, UW-Madison professor of consumer science.
“Perhaps these industries also do not pay as well,” she said, and salon owners are faced with the expense of raising wages and offering regular hours. That cost can be passed on to customers.
According to Newsweek, the UW Carbone Cancer Center is listed as the top cancer hospital in Wisconsin for 2023. We learn about the hospital’s latest work, including prostate MRI’s and proton therapy. Interview with Dr. Joshua Lang, associate director of translational research, and Dr. Nataliya Uboha, an oncologist and faculty leader for Cancer Therapy Discovery & Development, both at the UW Carbone Cancer Center.
A panel of scientists are saying the planet is entering a new geologic epoch for the first time in civilization’s history: the Anthropocene. It’s also the first era sparked by humanity’s planetary impact. We talk with Elizabeth Hennessy, a UW-Madison Environmental Studies associate professor, about the effects of humanity on the planet.
Jim Lattis, director of University of Wisconsin’s Space Place, said auroras are caused by charged particles from the sun interacting with gasses like nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere. He said a lot of things have to go right for that to happen.
“There are solar flares popping off on the sun every other day or daily these days, but those flares have to emit something that then crosses an awful lot of space between us and the sun, and then actually interacts with the earth,” he said.
Warmer nights can be especially concerning because the body no longer has a chance to cool down, said Elizabeth Berg, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the effect of heat in urban environments.
“If temperatures stay above a certain threshold overnight, that’s when it’s … constant stress on your system,” she said. “And that’s when things get dangerous.”
“(The) clinic is actively involved with all of the communities from which people come,” said Fred Coleman, a 20-year clinic partner and psychiatrist on the clinical faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The dry conditions come as corn is nearing its pollination phase, a critical six- to eight-day period that will help determine fall yields, said Joe Lauer, an agronomist at UW-Madison and an expert in corn research.
“It’s really a pretty critical time for just getting the kernel developing,” said Lauer, who has 14 sites around the state that hold 13,000 plots of more than 400 types of corn hybrids. “We need rain terribly. It’s just incredibly dry at this point. The corn actually looks pretty good yet, but we’re entering a critical phase.”
More than 80 years ago, the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy was founded at UW-Madison. Today, the organization supports pharmacy education around the country. We speak with Lucas Richert, the institute director, and Hannah Rose Swan, the archivist at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy, on how the history of pharmaceuticals resonates today.
John Gross, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin and the director of the Public Defender Project, said the special statute is often called “John Doe prosecution.” States with older laws, before elected prosecutor roles existed, required their laws to allow for a direct filing of criminal complaints by a citizen.
Shereen Siewert welcomes Wisconsin bestselling author Michael Perry and University of Wisconsin Center for Dairy Profitability Farm Succession Outreach Specialist Joy Kirkpatrick for a discussion on farmer well-being and mental health.
Chuck Nicholson, agricultural economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s not unusual to see some milk dumping in late spring and early summer.
“We tend to see a peak in the production of milk per cow around this time of year,” he said. “That’s based on biology of the cow and the timing of what the climate looks like to make that milk.”
Column by Laura Albert, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at UW-Madison.
Last week, the United States Supreme Court ruled against the Biden administration’s attempt to cancel or reduce student loan debt. Nicholas Hillman, a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at UW-Madison and expert on higher education finance, joins us to talk about what the decision means for millions of borrowers.
Love can be expensive, whether its dates, a wedding or even having children. Sarah Halpern-Meekin, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology, joins us to discuss the impact that costs and economics have at different stages in romantic relationships.
July is a key month for corn pollination, making the next few weeks all the more critical for the crop. That’s according to Jason Otkin, an associate research professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in drought.
“We’re entering a really important time of the year now for the corn crop — pollination in July is so critical. So if we stay dry, and if we get really unlucky and have a big heat wave, that’s going to do quite the number on the corn crop,” he told “The Morning Show.”
Astrophysicists have long predicted that the Milky Way is a source of ghostly particles called neutrinos, but haven’t been able to detect them. Until now.
In a new study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a massive detector at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory finally caught a glimpse of high-energy neutrinos being emitted from within the Milky Way.
David Drake, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and Extension wildlife specialist, teaches a class on wildlife damage management. He said that the beaver population is not at risk of being endangered or threatened. Rather, he said, beavers, which are a rodent species like mice or rats, breed regularly.
“The beaver population is healthy in the state of Wisconsin, as it is throughout the United States. And I think the management is justified and I think it’s responsible and I think it’s ethical and professional,” Drake said.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and a Green Bay company are working together to upscale a new recycling technique that could help keep flexible plastics out of landfills.
Timothy Smeeding, a labor economist and social welfare policy analyst at the University of Wisconsin-Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs, said the bill could bring up concerns if young people actually had to serve alcohol at the bar. However, he said that if they’re already serving food at a restaurant, allowing them to carry alcohol shouldn’t make a big difference.
New data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s IceCube neutrino detector has led to the first ever image of our Milky Way galaxy using the subatomic “ghost particles.” An international team of researchers also found the Milky way is a neutrino desert compared to others.
Nicholas Hillman is the director of the Student Success Through Applied Research lab at UW-Madison. He said there were thousands of borrowers behind on payments when they were suspended in March 2020.
“So during this pause, we’ve had kind of an artificial view of the significance of student loan repayment,” Hillman said. “And now we’re going to turn the system back on here in a few months, and we’re going to have the same exact problems all over again.”
The median home price in Wisconsin has more than doubled over the last decade, as supply has failed to keep up with demand after homebuilding slowed during the Great Recession. That’s according to new data from the Wisconsin Realtors Association, or WRA, and a new report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
Steven Deller, professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison, authored the report. He said many were hoping to see downward pressure on prices in response to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, but that hasn’t happened yet. Deller said high mortgage rates have had a modest effect on demand for homes, but a greater influence on those who currently own a home to postpone older couples from downsizing or young families upsizing, keeping some homes off the market.
“The normal churn in the housing market, the new supply of housing or the increase of existing homes going on the market is actually dropping a little bit more than the decline in demand,” he said.
“When we think of both climate and air quality, we often think of it as something that happens to other people,” said Tracey Holloway, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. “As climate changes, it’s changing everything for everyone.”
Anuj Desai, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor who specializes in issues including free speech and statutory interpretation, agreed that those laws probably don’t apply to organizers or people responsible for children participating in the Naked Bike Ride.
“If the whole point (of the Naked Bike Ride) is that bodies are not sexual items, it’s not likely to satisfy a legal standard that requires it to be appealing to the prurient interest of children,” Desai said.
“It is remarkable how hard-nosed tactics have become in Wisconsin politics,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Burden said, under state law, “It seems to me that the commission took no action on Wolfe as administrator.”
“The median loan payment in Wisconsin is $152 a month. So, it kind of gives a little bit of a sense of how big this is,” Nick Hillman, Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis at UW-Madison said. “So, what a quarter, one in four people you see walking down the street are now gonna have to pay probably about 150 a month that they haven’t been paying for the past few years.”
Column by Russ Castronovo, director of the Center for the Humanities and the Tom Paine professor of English at UW-Madison.
“As research extensively documents, racial disparities in wealth accumulation are systemic, of which historic public policies and private practices sustain,” said Melody Harvey, UW-Madison assistant professor of consumer science in the School of Human Ecology.
Black communities are likely to be what Harvey called “banking deserts,” meaning there are few, if any, mainstream financial institutions. They are also more likely to have concentrations of high-cost alternative financial services such as payday and auto title lenders, Harvey explained, asking “Where does one begin when even the most basic of financial services may not be readily available and accessible?”
Dr. Tracey Holloway, a professor at UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, says we likely haven’t seen the last of smoky skies from Canada this year.
“Since usually we have more smoke in July and August, where we’re just getting into that part of the year, it would not be surprising to have more smoky days ahead,” Dr. Holloway said.
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a Harvard and University of North Carolina policy of considering a student’s race when accepting applications. We talk with Anuj Desai, a UW-Madison Law professor, about what the ruling means for Wisconsin’s public and private universities.
Professor of Political Science Emeritus at UW-Madison Howard Schweber referred to Thursday’s decision as a ‘sweeping giant statement principle.’ But he says an exception is equally notable.
“The giant loophole comes quite close to the end of the opinion when Chief Justice Roberts says ‘of course, a college or university may still continue race as it applies to a particular student’s individual life story described in their application essay.’ So what really happened here is a shift from one way to think about it is a shift from race consciousness in admissions to race consciousness in application,” Dr. Schweber said.
Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning at UW-Madison, wouldn’t say that Dane County has made true progress in the last decade in terms of how people of color experience mortgage and rent cost burdens compared to their white counterparts.
It’s more like “slightly less bad but measured from a very bad starting point,” he said.
“The Senate’s attempt to initiate a confirmation hearing for Wolfe does seem to rest on very shaky legal ground,” UW-Madison Law School associate professor Robert Yablon said.
“When the commission met earlier this week, only three of members voted to re-appoint Wolfe,” Yablon said. “Notably, after this vote, the commission didn’t take the position that it had successfully reappointed her. It’s odd for the Senate to claim there’s been an appointment that the commission itself didn’t purport to make.”
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a Harvard and University of North Carolina policy of considering a student’s race when accepting applications. We talk with a UW-Madison Law professor about what the ruling means for Wisconsin’s public and private universities.
It’s a seemingly simple decision, but UW-Madison political science professor Howard Schweber says the repercussions are a lot more complicated.
In Wisconsin, the decision will likely have the largest effect on the University of Wisconsin System’s most selective campus, UW-Madison. While the school has long struggled to attract students of color, it recently ushered in its most diverse freshman class in the institution’s history. About one-third of last fall’s freshmen, or 2,695 total, identified as students of color.
American officials are saying a Russian general knew ahead of time about a mercenary group’s attempted rebellion. We talk with Mikhail Troitskiy, a UW-Madison professor of Practice in Russian Studies, about the fallout of the Wagner mercenary group’s attempted mutiny and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.
“If the (North Carolina legislators’) position in this case had prevailed, it would have meant that the Legislature in Wisconsin could have done congressional redistricting any way it wanted, without the Wisconsin Supreme Court being able to engage in any review of that based on the state constitution,” said Rob Yablon, a professor and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “Now the door remains open, as it has been, to the state court making sure that whatever the state Legislature does is state constitutionally compliant.”
“There’s a real irony there … that Republicans finally got what they wanted, in a way, after more than 50 years since Roe v. Wade, but it is costing them electorally,” UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said. “The Dobbs (v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization) decision helped keep Democrats competitive in an election cycle where they should have suffered pretty significant losses.”
As part of a $9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Wisconsin’s state climatology office will get $1.25 million over four years to reinvent itself. The goal is to raise the profile of the office and make it the go-to spot when people want weather and climate information, said Steve Vavrus, who became the state climatologist this year and heads up the office. Vavrus, also a senior scientist at UW’s Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research, had worked with the office frequently in past years.
Column by Jenny Higgins, PhD, MPH, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and director of the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity (CORE), and Amy Williamson, MPP, the associate director of CORE.
Wisconsin hasn’t seen a clear trend of more drought conditions, according to Steve Vavrus, director of the Wisconsin State Climatology Office and a climate scientist with UW-Madison.
“In fact, if you look at the past 20 years or so since 2000, we had more drought episodes in the first half of that period than the last half,” Vavrus said.
Lyric Bartholomay, a professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies integrated pest management and public health entomology who was not part of the study, said “increasingly tailored genetic approaches” will be necessary in the future to protect crops and people from pests, especially as insecticide resistance increases.
On this week’s political podcast, Milfred and Hands talk all things housing with UW-Madison professor of urban planning Kurt Paulsen.
A mesonet is a network of weather and environmental monitoring stations that observe mesoscale meteorological events — that is, local events that affect certain areas more than others. That can include extreme weather like heavy rain, hail, flooding and wind gusts. The key is they happen over a few miles to a few dozen miles, said Chris Kucharik, director of the mesonet project and professor and department chair of agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Some doctors are urging the return of masking mandates at hospitals. Dr. Kaitlin Sundling is a UW Health pathologist and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health. She is trying to gather public support for overturning UW Health’s decision in early May to scale back its mask mandates.
“It really is a mistake to take that protection away and to put both patients and health care workers at risk,” she said.
