Noted: University of Wisconsin epidemiologist Tony Goldberg is helping with the investigation. He specializes in wildlife diseases of unknown cause — and recently he’s been busy. “Along with invasive species, we’re seeing invasive pathogens,” Goldberg said. “Often it’s the coup de grace for a species that is holding on by a thread.”
Quoted: “Typically, the Saturday before Christmas is very close to Black Friday in sales,” said Executive Director of the Kohl’s Center for Retail at UW-Madison, Jerry O’Brien. “There’s a lot of people [where] it’s actually part of their tradition, you go out just before the holiday and buy the stuff.”
O’Brien says one of the advantages of having a mid-week Christmas is the potential many workers might either start their holiday next weekend, or begin a long weekend at the start of Christmas.
“Additionally, it’s the time where people are taking their returns in, and they have gift cards, so there’s a lot of traffic in the stores and there’ll still be some really great deals out there,” he said.
When Michele LaVigne’s mother died about two years ago, she gave a certain amount of money to each of her five children to be put toward some educational cause.
It was a fitting gesture by Marion LaVigne, who had taught math to middle school-age children for 49 years in New York. Michele LaVigne knew what she was going to do with her money the day she attended an event honoring jazz musician Richard Davis, where she heard how much he enjoyed being an educator and how a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools had inspired him.
LaVigne, a clinical law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who takes jazz piano lessons, said she decided to pursue a jazz residency at Sherman Middle School, hoping it would inspire students.
Noted: The Aldo Leopold Foundation subsequently began a tradition of producing an annual Wisconsin Phenology Calendar. The 2020 edition is packed with photographs and information, including monthly sidebars written by Stanley Temple, UW-Madison professor emeritus and senior fellow at the foundation.
It can take a dozen times of trying a vegetable before a child learns to like it. That’s not a risk some lower-income parents can take, no matter how many vitamins are in beets.
“That’s one thing schools can be useful for,” said Jennifer Gaddis. Parents “maybe knew over time their kids would like something,” Gaddis said. “But in the immediate term, they couldn’t afford their kids not eating.”
Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said removing voters from the rolls because they are believed to have moved would more likely affect Democratic voters because they are more likely to move frequently.
“Mainly because they are younger, supporters of Democratic candidates tend to change their residences more often,” he said by email. “As a result, their voter registrations are more likely to be out of date, and they are more likely to be targets of efforts to clean up the rolls.”
Christine Whelan, a clinical professor of consumer science at the School of Human Ecology, is the guest.
Noted: Jim Leary, emeritus professor of folklore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told PolitiFact that he hasn’t ever encountered evidence of any seasonal tradition like the one described in the Facebook post.
Leary said there are major seasonal traditions, such as the Jewish holy day, Yom Kippur, where atonement and forgiveness figure, but he is only aware of reciprocal practices, rather than one-way traditions regarding forgiveness between couples.
He called “ridiculous” the claim that “‘women’ (what women? since not all women share the same traditions) apologized so abjectly to their husbands, who the implication is had nothing to apologize for” and said it sounded more like a “patriarchal fantasy” than anything based in reality.
As impeachment hearings proceed in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, one key member could upend the fiercely partisan stalemate and fundamentally recenter the rule of law. U.S. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, R- Menominee Falls, can save our Constitution.
Quoted: “Any advance in fetal therapy, however welcome for good and important reasons, poses a risk of increasing pressure on pregnant women to sacrifice their own interests and autonomy…with women being subject to civil commitment or even criminal charges for failing to optimize the health of their fetuses,” said bioethicist Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin, now a fellow at Stanford University.
Quoted: UW-Madison professor of chemistry Bassam Shakhashiri knows both the history of the table, and its modern relevance. He says the table came about through a collaboration of a few scientists but that Dmitri Mendeleev properly gets much of the credit.
“Dimitri Mendeleev, the Russian chemist, he proposed — sometimes people say he discovered — the pattern of similar behavior [of certain elements] and arranged them,” Shakhashiri explains.
Ivan Shaliastovich, associate professor of finance, quoted: “As a brief remark: the tariff wars will have a negative impact on the markets and the economy. This is a good example of a bad uncertainty:’ most market participants and business executives view tariffs as a downside risk, and are unlikely to take on substantial investment projects in light of a heightened uncertainty about the outcome. We already see an occasional upsurge in volatility as the markets attempt to interpret and respond to the news about tariffs negotiations. It’s only a matter of time when delays in investments will lead to slower growth in the US and elsewhere.”
Quoted: UW-Madison Professor of Public Affairs and Economics Tim Smeeding says this rule change won’t mean much for Wisconsin, as the State has already taken benefits away from adults without dependents.
“That is not going to affect Wisconsin very much because our former governor, [Scott] Walker, instituted that law of April, 2015,” Smeeding says. “So, we already are telling able-bodied adults without dependents, so-called ABAWDs, that they have to work or lose their benefits after three months on the program.”
Quoted: Dean “had bigger, industrywide issues with the consumption of milk products. But the loss of the Walmart business was just another thing they didn’t need,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The Evers administration is very bullish on getting people enrolled in coverage,” said Donna Friedsam, health policy programs director for the Institute for Research on Poverty at UW-Madison. “That was not the case under the Walker administration.”
Milk prices have increased slightly after almost five years at the low mark, but it’s because production decreased earlier this year with the loss of farms, along with the amount of milk cows going to the slaughter house, said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis for UW-Madison.
Adrian Treves, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and founder of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab, thinks the DNR has undercounted the number of illegally killed wolves.
Quoted: Jonathan Gray, a media studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described rewatch podcasts as a sort of virtual book club, where fans can move through a show as quickly or as slowly as they want. Podcasts also offer a “deep dive” that fans may not have gotten the first time a show aired.
“Water-cooler discussions are short,” Gray said. “You’re not meant to spend 45 minutes at the water cooler talking about last night’s episode of ‘Lost.’”
The Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame will induct Stephen Born, Jens Jensen and Stanley Temple in its 2020 class.
Noted: The high water levels are mostly caused by record-setting precipitation in the Great Lakes basin over the last five years, according to Adam Bechle, coastal engineering outreach specialist with the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute.
Quoted: Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said since the news of Dean Foods’ legal woes hit the news, his phone has been ringing off the hook.
“Dean Foods is big in the market, representing at least a third of fluid milk sales (in the U.S.) and 10% of total milk sales, so this is big news in the dairy industry,” Stephenson said.
Noted: The forum was sponsored by a Madison chapter of the liberal American Constitution Society and held at the offices of the Foley & Lardner law firm. Mike Wagner, a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor, moderated the debate.
“It’s an effort to move the balance sheet closer to reality,” said Brian Mayhew, professor of accounting at UW-Madison. “It’s them recognizing these mines aren’t worth what they paid for them.”
Quoted: “These are middle-class black kids being affected, too,” said Gloria Ladson-Billings, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison and an authority on race and education.
Quoted: Meanwhile, turnout among Republican voters in the county has barely wavered over the years, making Democratic turnout the key to whether a Democrat can win the county and ultimately the state, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center Director Barry Burden.
“In recent presidential elections, about one of out of every five Democratic votes has come from Milwaukee County, so it is essential that the party perform well there to win the state,” Burden said.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and sociologist Sarah Helpern-Meekin studies instability in peoples’ lives. This includes the role policy can play in affecting the instability around family members or financial situations.
She said for families working with a more fixed income, including those who are low income, have to make tough choices about where to cut back.
Renters can often face higher rents, but homeowners often must make the tough decision of whether to stay where they are or move.
“The options are often limited,” she said. “You need to pay your property taxes to hold onto your home, so you have to make some decisions about what it’s worth to you to hold onto your home if paying those property taxes is not feasible.”
Quoted: “For us humans, this (weather) can be a problem,” said David Drake, UW-Extension wildlife specialist and University of Wisconsin professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology. “For wildlife, the conditions might be out of the ordinary for this time, but they are well adapted to it.”
Quoted: “I think that certainly was a blow for them, but it was only one of many they’ve had,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Donald Downs, an emeritus professor of law and political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said a U.S. Supreme Court decision would give the county the ability to restrict the speech of county employees who work directly on water issues.
But the county has less authority to control what other county employees could say about water issues because they would be speaking more as citizens than as county officials, Downs said. He called putting restrictions elected officials “really problematic.”
“It’s clearly a gag order,” he said.
Quoted: “All I can say is: Wow,” University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism instructor Kathleen Bartzen Culver said in an email to the Associated Press. “I am astonished that a local government would find it appropriate, much less legal, to threaten a news organization with prosecution for doing what they are constitutionally protected in doing — representing the public interest by seeking, analyzing and reporting information.
“For the life of me,” Culver further wrote, “I’m struggling to envision under what statute a journalist would be prosecuted for covering water test results released by local government.”
Quoted: UW-Madison education professor Julie Mead, who studies legal issues in the schools, said she was “not aware of research on zero tolerance policies regarding employees or the effectiveness or such policies.” Jirs Meuris, a UW-Madison professor of management and human resources, said “there’s not much research on zero tolerance in workplaces that I know of beyond some work on drug policies,” and “in that case, frequent testing and harsh penalties do deter it.”
“These frequencies are really public resources,” said Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus professor of telecommunications. “So when television stations get paid, or radio stations get paid, to rejigger their frequencies, and then cell phone companies or whoever else gets to pay to use it, there’s a complicated auction system involved, and the public gets some kind of reimbursement.”
Quoted: “We have a crisis of youth tobacco use both in Wisconsin and nationwide,” said Dr. Michael Fiore, head of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Prevention. He was one of many doctors and other medical professionals who testified in support of the measure.
Quoted: Jordan Gerth, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said some parts of the state have already seen 20 percent of their normal annual snowfall, which is unusual when compared to a normal November.
“You might get a few inches of snow, and the temperatures will be getting cooler, but it’s certainly nothing like what we’ve seen the last week of October into the beginning of this month,” Gerth said.
Quoted: “Psychedelics produce profound experiences,” said Chuck Raison, a professor at the School of Human Ecology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Psychedelics have an antidepressant effect. They do both at the same time, so they get mythically linked, because the human brain works like that. It sees causation where there’s association.”
Noted: Susan Paskewitz, chairwoman of the entomology department at the University of Wisconsin, said tick numbers throughout the state are equal to or slightly higher than last year. Numbers will increase in an area if there are more hosts, such as mice or deer, or if a region has received a lot of rain or is especially humid.
Quoted: “How trauma and stresses seem to affect people and brain development is to make them more distrustful of others,” said Ryan Herringa, a physician and assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
With smartwatch heart trackers, “if you’re trying to determine if someone’s heart rate is exactly 80 beats versus 90 beats per minute, that’s a really hard thing,” says kinesiology professor Lisa Cadmus-Bertram. “If you’re trying to determine if a heartbeat has ended, in my experience with these devices, they should be able to do that quite easily.”
Quoted: Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, warned that “every newsroom should be having discussions in advance about how they will handle all kinds of issues involving personal privacy and leaked information. This certainly isn’t the last time we’re going to see this kind of question.”
Quoted: “The Taliesin influence is strong here,” notes Anna Andrzejewski, a professor of art history at UW-Madison. Andrzejewski sees Madison’s mid-century building boom as a unique laboratory for a regionally specific form of modernism under Frank Lloyd Wright’s long shadow. She calls this process “Wrightification.”
Quoted: Given the influence “fake news” had on the 2016 elections, UW-Madison journalism professor Mike Wagner, thinks it could have similar consequences during the next election.
“I think people like to try what worked and try it again,” he said. “So I wouldn’t be surprised to see more coordinated efforts at disinformation from other countries seeking particular advantages. We only know what to prepare for based on what happened last time, so if people who provided disinformation have gotten better at it or have new strategies, media companies and people who use different kinds of media will have to learn how to react to them in real time.”
“I think it’s going to play a very similar, but equally or possibly even more pernicious relationship,” said Lewis Friedland, a Distinguished Achievement professor at UW-Madison. “After three years, with this term being actively propagated throughout the entire public sphere, now, many more people are expressing doubt about what’s true.”
Quoted: “There’s an innate survival system in humans,” said retired University of Wisconsin communications professor Joanne Cantor. “It’s sort of like driving by a car wreck — you don’t want to see it, but you can’t help looking at it.
“Then there are others who like to play with those emotions and take risks,” said Cantor, who has spent 30 years researching the emotional reactions of adults and children to mass media, including fright.
“How to pay for her version of ‘Medicare for all’ is complicating things for Warren at the moment, just as other aspects of her campaign appears to be thriving,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center Director Barry Burden. “In keeping with her identity as having a ‘plan’ for most everything, there is an extra incentive to nail the broad parameters of how her healthcare expansion will work.”
Noted: Yi Fuxian, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pieces together birth estimates from other available data, such as the number of childbearing women and school enrollment. Using this method, he has arrived at estimates of only around 10 million births last year and a belief that the population is dropping.
Quoted: Joe Lauer, agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he started advising farmers to start buying propane over the summer after wet weather caused major planting delays across the state.
“Whenever that occurs, we typically have some fairly wet corn,” Lauer said. “We just haven’t gotten a break this year in terms of the weather. It’s been really cold and wet through most of the season.”
“It’s an insidious slow-moving disease that we don’t have very many effective treatments for,” said UW-Madison Professor of Forest and Wildlife Ecology Tim Van Deelen “Given our current understanding of the disease, we can slow it down, but we can’t stop it.”
Noted: The problem lies in a behavioral economics problem that differentiates this industry from solar power, electric cars and other profitable tech sectors, said Gregory Nemet, professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Namely: There’s not really any reason to pay for CCS other than combating climate change. Turns out that saving the world, on its own, isn’t necessarily a good enough reason to save the world.
Quoted: “This isn’t a one and done with 24GHz. We could be having similar discussions about a few other important bands,” says Jordan Gerth, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. That’s because satellites use other high-frequency bands to study things like clouds and air temperature.
Quoted: “It is always challenging for universities from countries such as the UK, US and Australia to open campuses overseas, particularly in countries with more authoritarian systems,” said Kris Olds, an expert in the globalisation of higher education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: To learn more, we sat down with slime mold aficionado Anne Pringle of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Check out the video above to learn everything you’ll ever need to know about the strangest blob on Earth.
David Egan-Robertson, a demographer for UW-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory, estimates Wisconsin may see deaths overtake births by the early 2030s.
Turning to executive orders “is a rational reaction by an executive who finds their agenda gummed up by a state Legislature,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden. To be able to show voters what they’ve accomplished, governors “start to look at things they can do unilaterally,” he said.
Interview with clinical nutritionist Cassandra Vanderwall.
Quoted: “The theory here is that repetitive activity, performing these repetitive sport-specific tasks over and over again, will stress the tissue … and then eventually lead to a breakdown in that tissue overtime,” Dr. David Bell, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who led one of the studies, said in a press conference.
Quoted: “I’m not trying to dumb it down too much here,” says Jeffrey Sindelar, professor of meat science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, “but a truly uncured hot dog is just loose ground meat in a casing.”
Quoted: Tony Goldberg is an infectious disease epidemiologist and a veterinarian from the university of Wisconsin, Madison Veterinary School. “We’re at ‘ground zero.’ This, the Clinch River is the best studied example of this. But throughout the world there are muscle populations that are experiencing what we’re calling mass mortality events where you’ll walk out onto the river and you’ll see unusually large numbers of fresh dead mussels.”
Quoted: The production increase comes after several months of declines from 2018 levels. Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he was surprised by the change.
“(There were) fewer cows than we’ve had in all of our earlier months of the year, so a continued decline there, but milk production per cow had a strong growth,” Stephenson said. “That usually doesn’t happen unless we have pretty good quality feed and a real strong incentive to produce milk.”
Noted: Since these programs often don’t pay much (or sometimes at all), many low-income students cannot afford to take an internship, said Matthew Hora, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “This is an incredibly stressful time to be a teenager,” says pediatrician Megan Moreno, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “The concern is that the flu season in Australia was very intense and a month and a half to two months earlier than usual,” said Jonathan Temte, associate dean for public health and community engagement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
