“The demos are really less about exploring the technology,” said David Noyce, executive associate dean of UW-Madison’s College of Engineering. “They’re more about building trust in the technology.”
Gloria Ladson-Billings, a UW-Madison education professor and advocate for black students, said policies that don’t consider context “will always be problematic.” “Such policies ignore common sense in favor of expediency,” she said. “Educators should know better.”
Poverty continues to dog Wisconsin despite a lower unemployment rate since the Great Recession.
Tim Smeeding is the former director of the UW-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty. He spoke Tuesday in Delavan about why poverty is still an issue a decade after the recession.
“I’m trying to give people who’ve got nothing at the end of the month something at the end of the month,” said Smeeding, who supports a higher minimum wage.
Quoted: Even though most Kurds are Muslims, the ethnic group includes a subset of Christians and other religious groups. Today, conservative and politically engaged evangelicals remember the critical role America’s Kurdish allies have played in the region since 2003, including helping in the fight against the Islamic State, according to Daniel Hummel, a historian of U.S. religion and diplomacy at a Christian study center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Insofar as many evangelicals see the major confrontation of this age as American power vs. Islamic radicalism, the Kurds are a small but valiant ally,” Hummel said.
Quoted: “Yes, clearly this should have been reported to the FBI,” University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor David Canon said. “What did he expect the president to say? ‘Ah, you are right, sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.'”
Quoted: “Given that there are still a lot of democrats aren’t happy about the fact that Hillary Clinton didn’t never showed up in Wisconsin once during 2016,” said David Canon, a political science professor at UW-Madison. “I think the democrats are trying to make up for that, by not only having the convention here but, yeah, I think they probably will have one of the primary debates here as well.”
Quoted: Sarah Zurawski often debated the topic with teachers and administrators who were on both sides of the cursive issue when she worked as a school-based occupational therapist. She now teaches a clinical doctorate program and conducts research through UW–Madison’s School of Education.
“From a purely clinical perspective I’ve worked with several students who struggled with manuscript writing (reversals, illegible letters, etc.) who seemed to do better with cursive writing,” Zurawski said. “Many of the students I’ve worked with were highly motivated to learn cursive because it seemed almost like a rite of passage as a third grader.”
Quoted: “The marketplace has stabilized quite substantially in the last couple years. Insurers are making money,” explained Donna Friedsam, a health policy director for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty. “There were substantial (profit) margins in some cases. In the last year we saw a couple of the insurance carriers giving rebates to consumers.”
Quoted: Steph Tai, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that farmer protection, not consumer confusion, is at the heart of the proposed legislation.
“If a consumer knows that we can use nut-based products in the same way that we’ve been using dairy-based products, then the concern from the dairy industry is that people will be substituting,” Tai said. “The same thing with plant based burgers. If people know that they could use it as an easy substitute and it tastes kind of the same, then they might just replace that, which will lead to undercutting the profits of livestock producers.”
A UW-Madison assistant professor got to twerk with Lizzo after her #TwerkWithLizzo tweet went viral, according to WISC-TV.
Dr. Sami Schalk, an assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was invited on stage during the Lizzo concert at Sylvee Thursday night.
Quoted: Mark Stephenson is the director of dairy policy analysis with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’re about $1.30, $1.40 higher per hundredweight on milk than we were this time last year,” Stephenson says. “So we’ve had a definite improvement.”
“If I’m shinin’, everybody gonna shine.”
When Lizzo sang it, she meant it.
For one magical night last week, she shared that moment with Madison. And in that moment, we all got to shine — but perhaps no one more than Sami Schalk, an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The long-term complications from uncontrolled diabetes include the increased risk of a heart attack or stroke, nerve damage that causes tingling or numbness, kidney failure, blindness, and losing toes and feet to amputation.
Yet an estimated 17% of adults under the age of 65 who had diabetes were without health insurance before the expansion of coverage through the Affordable Care Act, according to a recent study by Rebecca Myerson, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and colleagues at the University of Southern California.
Quoted: Dr. Jerlando F.L. Jackson, Distinguished Professor of Higher Education, Department Chair and Director & Chief Research Scientist in the University of Wisconsin’s Equity & Inclusion Laboratory says that he is watching closely to see the impact of the legislation.
“If other states follow, it does address one of the chief issues in the pay to play dynamic,’’ Jackson says. “That dynamic is student athlete will own their likeness, their name and the ability to put that in the market for themselves. That is probably our best pathway forward to recognizing their contributions.’’
Noted: Brenda Plummer, professor of Afro-American studies at UW-Madison, said while some churches today are multiracial and multiethnic, King’s remark “still has some currency.”
Part of that is due to people self-segregating by race because of different worship-style preferences, Plummer said.
Noted: Joseph T. Halford and Hung-Chia Hsu, researchers from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, tested whether the appearance of a company’s CEO is related to shareholder value.
They found stock prices rose higher for businesses with attractive CEOs after positive news about the company aired on TV.
Quoted: “It’s a shake-out. This is not just a bump on a trend line. This is a pretty big change,” said Mark Stephenson, Director of Dairy Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering professor Robert Radwin studies workplace ergonomics. He was not involved in the University of Pittsburg study but he instructs students on the qualities of sit-stand desks which he feels have gotten a lot of hype. He does not have one.
“I think they have their place. If people suffer from discomfort from sitting at their desk and they feel standing is beneficial, then such a desk might be helpful but you should be careful not to expect that a sit-stand desk is going to make sedentary work much healthier than if you just got out and exercised,” Radwin said.
Noted: Wisconsin has experienced warmer temperatures, but is also starting to see an increase in total annual precipitation, according to Jack Williams, a University of Wisconsin-Madison geography professor and climate change expert.
One theory, Williams said, is a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor and is more energetic, and the energy releases bigger storms.
Quoted: In 2016, shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory, Katherine J. Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, summed up the attitudes she observed after years of studying rural Americans: “The way these folks described the world to me, their basic concern was that people like them, in places like theirs, were overlooked and disrespected,” she wrote in Vox, explaining that her subjects considered “racial minorities on welfare” as well as “lazy urban professionals” working desk jobs to be undeserving of state and federal dollars.
UW-Madison professor Barry Burden, an expert on American politics, said Walker’s stance on pardons was “exceptional” for Wisconsin, as both Republican and Democrat governors before him exercised their constitutional pardoning power.
Quoted: Jerry O’Brien, director of the Kohl’s Center for Retailing at UW-Madison, calls Von Maur, which is privately held, a “high-service, high-quality, high-touch retailer” that isn’t big into promotions like Kohl’s but is focused more on creating “a great shopping experience with personalized attention.”
UW-Madison economics professors Menzie Chinn and Noah Williams weigh in.
Noted: According to the UW-Madison College of Engineering website, Albert researches “modeling and solving real-world discrete optimization problems with application to homeland security, disasters, emergency response, public services, and healthcare.”
The research on emergency response, for example, focuses on how to match the right resources with the right needs at the right time. In one aspect of this research, Albert looks at how to get the right mix of vehicles to an emergency.
It’s no secret it’s another tight year for row crop farmers in the Corn Belt and Upper Midwest. Analysts say the uncertainty hasn’t changed.
“That’s the status of the farm economy,” said Paul Mitchell, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s waiting for results for this uncertainty while we go in to harvest.”
Quoted: “Family planning was an achievement for the People’s Republic at its 60th anniversary, there was an awkward silence at the 70th anniversary,” said Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a long-standing critic of China’s birth restrictions.
Interview with Timothy Smeeding, Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics.
A two-decade research project headed by a UW-Madison professor has shown that minor modifications to the landscape can dramatically improve the chances of plants in increasingly rare and fragmented ecosystems.
Noted: According to Constance Flanagan, author of “Teenage Citizens: The Political Theories of the Young” and an associate dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology, social movements must build momentum over time, and the urgency of an issue like the environment can be difficult to sell because the consequences are long-term and abstract. It is harder to galvanize support to stop temperatures from rising slowly over several decades than to respond to a school shooting that left numerous children dead.
“There’s no one event that grabs media attention or people’s interest,” she said. “It really has to be cumulative, and climate
Noted: Last week I was primed for a conversation with Jennifer Gaddis, the author of “The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools.” I had just eaten a lukewarm cheeseburger (the cheese was totally unmelted) and then moved on to the accompanying banana, since I couldn’t stomach the wilted iceberg lettuce that was called “salad” or the soggy, undercooked fries that came with the “meal.”
But the public-school culinary experience isn’t what makes Gaddis’ new book important. It is required reading for anyone who wants this part of our students’ school day to be nourishing — not only for the kids, but for the women who feed them.
“So much of the work of feeding children is gendered — the majority of workers in food service, especially frontline food service, are women,” Gaddis told me. “Whether it’s happening at school or in the homes of the millions of students who take lunch from home to school, feeding students is typically done by women.”
School’s back in session, and every day, 30 million kids head to the cafeteria to chow down. On this episode of Bite, Tom returns to the lunchroom at his elementary school alma mater and finds that the grey mystery meat he remembers has been replaced by tasty, fresh offerings that are free to every student. And he catches up with Jennifer Gaddis, author of the book The Labor of Lunch, who explains the economic forces that figure into school food, from “lunch shaming” to fair wages for cafeteria workers.
Quoted: He and fellow jumping worm expert Brad Herrick, a University of Wisconsin ecologist, stress that since there are not yet any proven silver bullet methods to kill off these slithery pests, information may be their worst enemy. “Since humans are the main vectors for spread, education and best management practices can go a long way to slowing the spread,” Herrick said. “Gardeners informing other gardeners” is the best weapon we have right now.
Graphic novelist, cartoonist and creativity educator Lynda Barry of Madison is one of this year’s winners of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship, commonly known as a “genius” grant.
Quoted: Of the new DTC brands, Hart Posen, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s school of business, said, “You get the sense from looking at all of them that this is not your Ikea construction set. This is a high-quality product with a superior flat-pack to construction technology.”
Jennifer Gaddis, assistant professor at UW-Madison and author of The Labor of Lunch spoke with America’s Work Force on Sept. 17 about getting better school lunches in schools.
Noted: Author Jennifer Gaddis discusses her new book about The National School Lunch Program.
Quoted: “You can see why states might think this is a good solution,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “For one it provides a kind of balance that you have representatives from both parties at the polling place so they can keep a check on one another.”
Noted: In fact, the giant Canada goose received serious consideration for protection under the Endangered Species Act when the program was created in 1973, according to Stan Temple, Beers-Bascom professor in conservation and professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: “I would not be surprised at all if I woke up tomorrow to hear that the measles outbreak had reached Wisconsin. Not surprised at all,” said Malia Jones, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied Population Laboratory.
“I would say that if a child was given the facts themselves and told what these diseases would be like to go through, they would choose to be given something that would not make them have to go through that disease,” said James H. Conway, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “Europe, the United Nations and other U.S. allies opposed the invasion and annexation,” said Yoshiko Herrera, a University of Wisconsin political scientist. “It wasn’t just Obama who opposed it.”
Noted: Sure, sometimes people do get in the way. They’re curious. What’s this thing for, anyway? They’ll follow the robots to see what they do or tap their buttons to see what happens. “People want to explore them, and they don’t know how to do that,” says Bilge Mutlu, who runs the University of Wisconsin’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab. Rarely do the interventions cause damage.
Our guests are Stan Temple, professor emeritus of forest and wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Leah Horowitz, professor of civil society and community studies in the School of Human Ecology at UW–Madison.
Quoted: “When I grew up, my mom poured a glass of milk at every meal and you were expected to drink it,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at UW-Madison. “My mother would say, ‘Drink your milk because it is good for you,’ and scientists said ‘It’s good for you’ and you believed them.”
Noted: Keith A. Findley, Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences, University of Wisconsin Law School
Easiest reforms:
If forensic science wants to claim the mantle of “science,” it must follow fundamental scientific principles, like double-blind testing. Systems should be created to at least shield analysts from domain-irrelevant but contextually biasing information. This can be complicated at times, but it can be done without disclosing the vast array of information that analysts routinely receive today. Proper case management and intake systems can ensure that analysts receive only the information they need, and only when they need it.
Noted: As political scientist and University of Wisconsin professor David Canon points out, athletes garner more media coverage than traditional candidates, which is especially advantageous when running against an incumbent, according to the Dallas Morning News. Typically incumbents dominate the media coverage, as one July 2004 study concluded, so a background in professional athletics can be a major boost for a challenger.
Quoted: Despite the publicity of CTE, doctors cannot predict whether a child will have it later on, says Julie Stamm, Ph.D., LAT, ATC, who researched the issue at the Boston University CTE Center. “We do not understand why one person gets it and the other does not get it,” adds Dr. Stamm, also a clinical assistant professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Think back to what you still remember from science class. No, there’s no need to strain your brain recalling the particulars of cellular mitosis or the periodic table. Instead, consider the idea that spanned any science class from biology to physics: the scientific method, the five-step process for analyzing problems, collecting data and coming to a well-supported conclusion.
But what if the scientific method is actually inaccurate—or at best reductive? What if spending so much time on this framework is giving students the wrong idea about how rigorous work is done by scientists?
That’s the unusual hypothesis being made by John Rudolph, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “How We Teach Science: What’s Changed, and Why It Matters.”
Noted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at UW-Madison, said while Duffy’s district heavily leans Republican, it’s not impossible for Democrats to win it in a special election.
He said before the 2011 map making that redrew the district in Republicans’ favor, former President Barack Obama won the district by 13 points in 2008 when he won Wisconsin by 14 points. In 2012 — after the new maps were drawn — Obama lost the district by 3 points, Burden said.
Quoted: If a new sixth-grader has no one to sit with in the lunchroom one day or bombs a test, “they may start to question whether they fit in socially or can succeed academically,” notes Geoffrey Borman, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Borman and Rozek conducted research to see whether it was possible to bolster kids’ sense of belonging by underscoring that all students have difficulty at the start of middle school but eventually feel better.
Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the district tends to favor Republicans.
“It really is a combination of the drawing of the district lines in a way that was intentional to favor Duffy and Republicans who were in charge of that process, but also just really migration of that district in the Republican direction,” he said.
New pencils, notebooks and backpacks may be on the checklist as the summer winds down and kids gear up for a new school year, but Dr. Shilagh Mirgain says it’s also an important time of year to check in with kids on how they’re feeling about heading back to school.
“We spend a lot of time preparing our kids for school by buying them school supplies or back-to-school clothes, but our families should equally spend time preparing kids mentally for the start of the school year and pre-school jitters and anxiety,” said Mirgain, a clinical psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
Quoted: “Deforestation was a well-known problem in the classical world,” said Dr. Paul Robbins, Director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “For example, the historian Strabo wrote in the 1st century B.C.E. that the lowland areas of the island of Cyprus were once covered with forests that prevented cultivation, but these had all given way to farming and other activities.”
Quoted: “We know that most cities on average are warmer than rural areas. Trees tend to humidify the air,” said Ankur Desai, UW professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.
UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said “it’s not impossible” for a Democrat to win, but that structural factors, particularly the way the district was drawn in 2011, favor Republicans.
Prof. Steve Wright talks about the Wisconsin Innocence Project.
“When you meet the exonerees…someone who lost 20 yrs like Robert Lee Stinson, whose life is forever changed & destabilized…we all should work hard to ensure wrongful convictions don’t happen”
Quoted: Throughout the country, 10-year storms, which have a 1 in 10 chance of happening in any given year, are occurring about 40% more often than in the 1950s, said Daniel Wright, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the eastern half of the U.S., 100-year storms are happening 85% more often.
It’s very clear that climate change is increasing the number of storms we’re seeing, Wright said. “If we continue to ignore these problems, the cost of ignoring these problems is going to increase as the planet continues to warm.”
Noted: Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin are professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
It’s a common misconception that immigrants to the United States automatically gain citizenship status when they marry a U.S. citizen, said Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the UW Law School. Barbato said the process to citizenship even after marriage is time-consuming, expensive and complicated.
“The process of obtaining (lawful permanent residence) is often expensive, costing thousands of dollars in government and attorney fees, is stressful on the entire family, and is a demanding process for many couples who are still in the first stages of their marriage, all while they are simply attempting to build their lives in the U.S.,” Barbato said.
The guest is Sarah Halpern-Meekin, associate professor of Human Development and Family Studies at UW-Madison’s School of Human Ecology.
Noted: Susan Paskewitz, Ph.D., professor and chair of the of the Department of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and senior author on the study, says checking out mouse nests was a logical choice. “We were developing an agent-based model that explored mouse behavior and blacklegged tick numbers on the mice,” says Paskewitz, who conducted the research alongside Wisconsin graduate students Ryan Larson and Tela Zembsch and research associates Xia Lee, Ph.D., and Gebbiena Bron, Ph.D. “The model suggested that mice spend so much time in nests during the day that ticks should be detaching and ending up in that environment at greater rates than we had suspected. So, we decided to look in nests, which turned out to be more difficult than you might imagine.”
