Quoted: “I have to take it all at once, which is what makes it incredibly difficult to model,” said Jean-Luc Thiffeault of the University of Wisconsin, who studies turbulence.
Mathematicians Prove Batchelor’s Law of Turbulence
Quanta Magazine
Category: UW Experts in the News
Patients Often Get Antibiotics Without a Doctor Visit, Study Finds
Wall Street Journal
“Everybody knows it’s out there, we just didn’t know how big of a piece of the pie it was,” said Michael Pulia, whose research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focuses on better use of antibiotics. Dr. Pulia wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s very, very problematic.”
After ‘Varsity Blues’ scandal, will there be action on college admissions?
Hechinger Report
Quoted: While elite college admissions grab headlines, speakers also acknowledged that only a small proportion of Americans actually attend such schools. Some 40 percent of undergraduate students attend public two-year or for-profit institutions; only 55 colleges in the country admit fewer than 20 percent of their applicants, noted Nick Hillman, an associate professor in the education school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
California Is on the Brink of an Owl War
Gizmodo
Quoted: “[The barred owl] is larger and more aggressive so it can directly out-compete spotted owls,” Connor Wood, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Earther. “And they are also more flexible with what they eat and where they live, so the landscape can support more barred owls.”
Patients Often Get Antibiotics Without a Doctor Visit, Study Finds
Wall Street Journal
Noted: “Everybody knows it’s out there, we just didn’t know how big of a piece of the pie it was,” said Michael Pulia, whose research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focuses on better use of antibiotics. Dr. Pulia wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s very, very problematic.”
Evers administration threatened prosecution of journalist over child abuse case reporting
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Quoted: Robert Drechsel, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in media law and constitutional issues, said the agency is free to ask the reporter not to publish but cannot legally compel them to do so.
“I don’t know how common it is for a Wisconsin state agency to tell a reporter to ‘cease and desist’ and threaten prosecution this way. No other examples come to mind in all the years I’ve lived in Wisconsin,” Drechsel said after reviewing the agency’s letter to NBC News. “Any formal legal cease and desist order issued against the news media would be a prior restraint that is almost certainly unconstitutional.”
Breaking it down: How the Iowa Caucuses work
NBC-15
Quoted: David Canon, a UW-Madison professor of political science, said the Iowa caucuses start a months-long process that ultimately leads to the selection of 41 delegates.
The Iowa caucuses are Monday, but in 2020 the center of the political universe is Wisconsin
Wisconsin State Journal
“Wisconsin has a track record of extremely close statewide elections over the past several years that I don’t think any state can match,” UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said. “You don’t need any more evidence than that (to show) that Wisconsin is on the knife edge and could go either way in 2020.”
The social cost of carbon: Bill would require consideration of economic impacts for new power plants
Wisconsin State Journal
Greg Nemet, a professor with UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs who studies environmental policy, said $50 is in line with the broader climate impacts.
Read all about it: The ‘reading wars’ are back in America’s education salons
The Washington Post
Quoted: Calkins’s approach “is a slow, unreliable way to read words and an inefficient way to develop word recognition skill,” Mark S. Seidenberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said in a blog post.
Prosecution in China of student for tweets he posted while studying in U.S. raises free speech concerns
Inside Higher Ed
Quoted: Kris Olds, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on the globalization of higher education, said on Twitter that the case raises a number of questions for international universities hosting Chinese students.
Snow is the only thing keeping some plants and animals from freezing to death
Popular Science
Quoted: “It’s a warm, stable pocket,” says ecologist Jonathan Pauli, a professor of forest and wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He coined the term along with his colleague Ben Zuckerberg in 2013.
Could the coronavirus scare have been avoided? One leading health authority thinks so.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Quoted: “I think his perspective is overlooking all of the work that has been done on coronaviruses,” since SARS, said Robert N. Kirchdoerfer, assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“One of the challenges with designing vaccines for emerging viruses is that it is incredibly difficult to predict which virus is going to cause the next outbreak.”
You may have more Neanderthal DNA than you think
National Geographic
Quoted: Scientists have long speculated about Neanderthals’ relationships to modern humans. While the exact question shifted over the years, it’s a debate that goes back to Neanderthals’ initial discovery, says John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study.
Republican VP Mike Pence boosts private school vouchers in a Democratic stronghold
Wisconsin State Journal
“It’s an election year in a battleground state. Of course it’s political,” said UW-Madison journalism professor Mike Wagner. “It’s not that he doesn’t believe in the issue; I think he does. But he came to Wisconsin because that’s a super-important state for his side.”
Carr promises improvements and new action from Gov. Evers on criminal justice reform
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Noted:
Conor Williams, an economist and policy analyst from Community Advocates, hosted the panel featuring Sylvester Jackson, a community organizer for EX-incarcerated People Organizing; Christine Apple, chief psychologist at Wisconsin Department of Corrections’ Milwaukee Community Corrections; Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin Law School professor; and Carr.
Klingele said a piecemeal release of prisoners won’t reduce prison costs.
“There will be no cost savings anywhere unless we shut down prisons, and that is going to take large-scale change,” she said.
doctor was charged with abusing his baby. But 15 medical experts say there’s no proof.
NBC News
Quoted: Keith Findley, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who co-founded the Wisconsin Innocence Project, said that when physicians work in concert to shape the message sent to investigators, “it undermines the legal system’s access to full truth.”
“What they’re really doing is shaping the evidentiary record, and in fact deliberately hiding from the legal system inconsistent opinions that might be useful to the legal fact finders who are working to determine what actually happened,” Findley said. “It’s deeply problematic.”
Regulators Probe Potential Dean Foods Merger
Wall Street Journal
Quoted: Absorbing Dean’s operations could give DFA more than 60% share of fluid-milk sales in upper Midwestern markets like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, said Peter Carstensen, a University of Wisconsin Madison law professor emeritus and former antitrust attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.
60 miles from college: Lack of education, a way out of poverty, could ‘kill rural America’
USA Today
Noted: America’s education desert zones are generally less populated than those with easy access to a college, with the average population of a commuting zone desert approximately 72,100, according to a study done by Nicholas Hillman and Taylor Weichman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But not all are — 15 commuting zone deserts across the nation have populations of more than 250,000.
Where does all our poop go?
Live Science
Quoted: It turns out that the stuff we flush down the toilet is surprisingly useful. A significant portion of flushed poo, in fact, ends up fertilizing crops that we eventually eat, said Daniel Noguera, a civil engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Some of our poop gets used as fuel, heating the very facilities that process our waste. And the rest eventually reaches landfills. But before the fate of your poop is sealed, a long series of steps ensures it’s free from disease, and safe for farms and waterways.
New Emails Reveal that the Trump Administration Manipulated Wildfire Science to Promote Logging
Mother Jones
Quoted: Monica Turner, a fire ecology scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said “it is climate that is responsible for the size and severity of these fires.”
Fact-checking Pete Buttigieg’s Fox News town hall in Des Moines, Iowa
Politifact
Quoted: “Setting aside instances where an incumbent president is running for re-election, Democrats in the modern era have fared better when nominating new faces rather than Washington insiders,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Dipesh Navsaria: Child opportunity is our opportunity
Capital Newspapers
Column by Dr. Navsaria, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Tony Evers’ nonpartisan redistricting commission to offer courts an alternative to GOP maps
Wisconsin State Journal
“If the Republicans hang on to both chambers, it’s unlikely — not impossible — but unlikely that these alternative maps that would be proposed would do much to change what happens,” said UW-Madison political science professor Kenneth Mayer, who has served as an expert witness in gerrymandering cases.
CRISPR Has The Potential To Improve Lives. But At What Cost?
On Point
Quoted: Alta Charo, member of the WHO’s advisory committee on developing global standards for governance and over-sight of human genome editing. 2019-2020 Berggruen fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. (@CASBSStanford)
CRISPR Has The Potential To Improve Lives. But At What Cost?
On Point
UW–Madison bioethicist Alta Charo featured in a national radio program’s show on gene editing.
‘Blatant manipulation’: Trump administration exploited wildfire science to promote logging
The Guardian
Monica Turner, a fire ecology scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said “it is climate that is responsible for the size and severity of these fires”.
‘Irresistible’: Everything we know so far about Jon Stewart’s political comedy set in purple-state Wisconsin
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Noted: Stewart basically pulled back from entertainment work after leaving his gig hosting “The Daily Show” in 2015. But in 2017, he reached out to Kathy Cramer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and author of “The Politics of Resentment,” to get insights on the political climate in Wisconsin for a possible feature film.
Cramer’s book, published in mid-2016, looks at the role disaffected rural voters had in Wisconsin’s shift to the right after the Great Recession — a shift that some believe contributed to Donald Trump’s winning the state in 2016.
Greta Thunberg Turns 17: A Look Back at Her Year
Newsweek
Quoted: In sum, she has become “a symbol of future generations whose lives will be impacted by the failure of older generations to act today,” Connie Flanagan, a professor at the school of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert in youth politics, told Newsweek.
New bipartisan efforts to protect Wisconsin youth from vaping
NBC-15
Quoted: Dr. Vivek Balasubramaniam with UW-Health’s Pediatric Pulmonology department says most recently, the death toll is up to 60 from incidents linked to vaping.
Panicking About Your Kids’ Phones? New Research Says Don’t
The New York Times
Quoted: Dr. Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin, said that in her own medical practice, she tends to be struck by the number of children with mental health problems who are helped by social media because of the resources and connections it provides.
Rural Montana Had Already Lost Too Many Native Women. Then Selena Disappeared.
The New York Times
Quoted: “Why does nobody care about this?” asked Grace Bulltail, one of Kaysera’s aunts and an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’re not being given any information.”
Goodwill Sparks Deep Division, at Least on Balance Sheets
Wall Street Journal
Quoted: Thomas Linsmeier, a former member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, said he thinks there is “momentum on the board to move toward amortization.” A “driving factor of concern … is the amount of cost in the impairment test,” Mr. Linsmeier, a professor of accounting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.
‘It’s global warming. Simple as that’: Expert predicts extreme weather impacts on Lake Mendota ice activities
NBC-15
Quoted: According to John Magnuson, professor of limnology at the UW-Madison, Lake Mendota froze over on January 12.
China’s 2019 birthrate lowest in 70 years of communist rule
Al Jazeera
US-based academic Yi Fuxian, senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the AFP news agency that even though China has abolished its One Child Policy, there has been a shift in the mindset of the population, with people now used to smaller families.
Study: Madison city with the best work-life balance in the country
NBC-15
Quoted: “Madison, because it’s a university town and because it’s a state capitol, has that wonderful mix of lots of opportunities, lots of highly educated people, lots of ideas, lots of energy,” says Dr. Christine Whelan, School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: Madison.
Women Make Up Less Than 8% Of Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Inductees
Quoted: A nominating committee of about 30 artists, scholars and record industry insiders draws up the ballot each year. Craig Werner was on that committee for 18 years. An Emeritus professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Werner is also a music writer and he has no problem with the nomination process.
“The issues are much more what happens to that ballot once it goes to the larger electorate,” Werner says. Then he sighs. “Well, I’m just going to say it: I think that the electorate makes dumb decisions on a regular basis.”
Good news: USDA scientists are recalculating calorie counts
New Food Economy
Quoted: “That’s useful information to have and important to indicate on food labels,” says Bradley Bolling, an assistant professor of food science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who wasn’t involved in USDA’s nut research.
Brain Parasite Strips Rodents of Fears of Felines—and So Much More
Smithsonian Magazine
Quoted: If confirmed, the findings widen the scope of Toxoplasma’s effects. Just because the parasite isn’t as targetted as previously thought, doesn’t mean it’s no longer considered a master manipulator, says Laura Knoll, a parasitologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who wasn’t involved in the study,
How sports fans respond to their teams’ wavering odds of winning
EconoTimes
Quoted: Sundays, then, are spent watching win probabilities bounce around like an errant onside kick. This made me and my colleague Evan Polman, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wonder about how people interpret predictions that change.
How The ‘Phase 1’ US-China Trade Deal Will Affect Wisconsin Agriculture
Wisconsin Public Radio
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Jon Pevehouse said even if all tariffs are lifted, there’s no guarantee Wisconsin farmers will get their Chinese markets back.
Jo Handelsman on the Surprising News That the Earth is Running Out of Dirt
Alda Communication Training
That’s Dr Jo Handelsman, who studies microbes at the University of Wisconsin – not only the vast array of microbes that live on and in us, but also the even greater number that lurk in the soil beneath our feet. I talked with Jo about why both the microbes within and below us are so important to our survival. But we began our conversation, which took place last fall, talking about the weather…which—these days—often leads to talk that’s far from small.
Are wolves partly to blame for the dairy crisis? No. Tiffany misses the mark.
PolitiFact Wisconsin
Quoted: Mark Stephenson, director of the Center for Dairy Profitability at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin that wolves haven’t come up as a factor in his conversations with milk producers.
Horse ranch near the Dells blames ‘heartbreaking’ loss of 14 horses on toxic beetles
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Noted: After Kolb told Kanarowski-Peterson it looked like blister beetle poisoning, she began picking through the alfalfa hay and found what looked like beetles. Samples were sent to PJ Liesch, an extension entomologist and director of the Insect Diagnostic Lab at UW-Madison.
While Liesch has seen blister beetles in Wisconsin yards on occasion — usually in late spring or early summer — it’s a “fleeting phenomenon” for a few days, and he’s not aware of any other cases of beetles being found in hay in Wisconsin.
“Overall I would say that (blister beetles) are not uncommon if you know when and where to look for them,” he said. “To have them occur in hay or animal feed, that seems to be a very rare occurrence.”
Hay tainted by toxic beetles kills 14 horses in Wisconsin
AP
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab director PJ Liesch said blister beetles comprise an entire family of beetles that can be found worldwide, including nearly 30 species in Wisconsin that aren’t typically on hay and alfalfa during harvest.
Lake experts, city crews encouraging community to use less salt in an effort to help environment
WISC-TV 3
Quoted: “We put about 500 tons (of salt) a year into Lake Mendota in an average winter. It’s gone from a background concentration of 1 mg of salt per liter to about 50, so it’s about 50 times higher than it was back in the 1940s,” said Hilary Dugan, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and limnologist.
Winter is missing from much of the Northern Hemisphere this year. When will it show up?
The Washington Post
Although the cold lodged over the frozen north is intense, it covers a historically small area for this time of year. Jonathan Martin, a professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, wrote in an email that the size of the “cold pool” over the Northern Hemisphere, which is indicated by temperatures of 23 degrees or lower a mile above ground, ranks as the smallest on record for December and early January.
Cambridge Analytica used these 5 political ads to target voters
Quartz
Quoted: “Facebook allowed [Cambridge Analytica] to combine different data sources in a way that allowed them to understand voters maybe better than voters themselves did,” Dietram Scheufele, a science of communication professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Quartz when the scandal first broke.
The Virtuous Midlife Crisis
Wall Street Journal
Quoted: “The midlife journey will be more difficult for a good chunk of them because of heightened problems of inequality,” says Carol Ryff, director of the Institute on Aging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and principal investigator of a large study on midlife in the U.S. She pointed to a recent rise in “deaths of despair” among middle-aged adults driven in part by drug overdoses, alcohol abuse and suicide.
Making a better school lunch from scratch
Wisconsin State Journal
UW-Madison Professor Jennifer Gaddis believes the answer to school lunch reform is, in part, making lunches free for every student and returning to made-from-scratch cooking in cafeterias. She explores these ideas and more in her book, “The Labor of Lunch — Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs In American Public Schools,” published in November.
Small but toxic beetles kill 14 horses on Mauston horse ranch
Wisconsin State Journal
Quoted: According to PJ Liesch, director of the UW-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, blister beetles comprise an entire family of beetles that can be found worldwide.
Dairy Margin Coverage
Farm and Dairy
Quoted: But the only major difference between MPP and DMC, says Mark Stephenson, is the cost and coverage levels, not the basic concept. Stephenson is the director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
Meditation can better the brain. Are we morally obligated to meditate?
Vox
Quoted: “A little bit of empathy is important, because we need to be able to detect another person’s suffering in order to be helpful,” Richard Davidson, a prominent University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist who’s spent decades studying meditation in the lab, told me. “But empathy by itself can be toxic.”
Yes To recalls unicorn face masks after complaints of burns
Today
Quoted: “They can look very similar,” Dr. Apple Bodemer, an associate professor of dermatology at The School of Medicine and Public Health at University of Wisconsin-Madison, told TODAY. “With an irritant reaction that can happen to anybody who puts the product on their skin.”
Autism’s genetic drivers may differ by sex
Spectrum News
Quoted: The findings support the idea that women can sustain a larger genetic hit than men without having autism, a phenomenon called the ‘female protective effect,’ says Donna Werling, assistant professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the work. But the mechanisms that might protect women are a mystery.
Wisconsin egg production hits record-high: USDA report
NBC-15
Quoted: Ron Kean, a poultry specialist with UW-Extension, said the industry is changing.“I think the egg demand has been increasing over the past 10 to 15 years,” he said.
Number of people dying from cancer falling in Wisconsin
NBC-15
Quoted: Dr. Howard Bailey, Director at the UW Carbone Cancer Center, says when it comes to cancer research the national numbers mirror what doctors are seeing locally.
Cybersecurity expert warns of threat
NBC-15
Quoted: Dave Schroeder, UW-Madison Cybersecurity Expert, said Iranian cyber bots or other foreign actors could still retaliate following the recent attacks.
Lawyers fight over $6.75 million estate of Terrill Thomas, the man who died of thirst in the Milwaukee County Jail
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Quoted: Howard Erlanger, a University of Wisconsin law professor, said that while an 11th-hour claim may raise eyebrows it could be legitimate.
“It’s not implausible as a fraud but it’s also not implausible as a genuine story,” Erlanger said.
What U.S. State Population Changes Mean for American Elections
Newsweek
Quoted: Professor Barry C. Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek the changes will not be large but probably give Republicans a “slight boost.”