Doug Erickson, a university relations specialist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has been in a co-ed seven-person book group for 12 years.
How to host a better book club
The Washington Post
Category: UW Experts in the News
How the coronavirus ‘jumped’ to humans is a story as old as evolution
Philadelphia Inquirer
Quoted: “This has been happening for a long time,” said Tony L. Goldberg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.
The Struggle to Mend America’s Rural Roads
The New York Times
Noted: A legally loaded semi-trailer truck can produce 5,000 to 10,000 times the road damage of one car according to some estimates, said Benjamin J. Jordan, director of the Wisconsin Transportation Information Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Roads and bridges have not kept up.
She Didn’t Want a Pelvic Exam. She Received One Anyway.
New York Times
Noted: “The formalization of the sensitive-exam policy provides clear, specific and universally employed standards for consent processes for breast, pelvic, urogenital, prostate and rectal exams,” said Dr. Laurel Rice, Chair of University of Wisconsin Health’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Native American tribe says Pentagon failed to consult on border wall construction
NBC News
Quoted: Richard Monette, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a tribal law expert, said it’s rare for federal agencies to seek waivers in cases related to tribes and that the government simply doesn’t consult with them as it should.
The Struggle to Mend America’s Rural Roads
The New York Times
Quoted: A legally loaded semi-trailer truck can produce 5,000 to 10,000 times the road damage of one car according to some estimates, said Benjamin J. Jordan, director of the Wisconsin Transportation Information Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Roads and bridges have not kept up.
Project in the works to save the Kenosha Dunes
Kenosha News
“Our dunes here is a glacial till,” said (UW–Madison professor of civil and environmental emgineering) Dr. Chin Wu. “Once it is eroded, it will not come back. … Based on my estimation, there will be no Kenosha Dunes in five years if nothing is done.”
The pressure teens face when it comes to sexting each other
NBC-15
Quoted: “I think it’s important for us to realize that this behavior is unusual,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Educational Psychology Professor Bradford Brown said.
Study: Increase in online dating users
NBC-15
Quoted: “We’re just hardwired for loving and emotional connection. So I think online dating can be a great way to really effectively meet that need,” says Dr. Shilagh Mirgain, a distinguished psychology at UW Health.
Madison’s Don Voegeli’s Electronic Switch Influenced The Sound Of Public Radio
Wisconsin Public Radio
As a public radio listener, you’re probably familiar with the theme song for NPR’s “All Things Considered.” It’s had a few variations over the decades.
But did you know it was originally composed in Madison in 1971?
It was written by Don Voegeli, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and the longtime music director at WHA (now known as Wisconsin Public Radio).
Wisconsinites received 515 million robocalls last year — up more than 80% in three years
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Instead of just hanging up or letting the calls go to voicemail, Barry Orton attempts to shame phone scammers into seeking another line of work.
The retired University of Wisconsin-Madison telecom professor gets the usual mix of calls peddling everything from back braces to extended car warranties. When it’s a scam and there’s a real person on the line and not a robot, he makes the call a bit personal.
“I tell them that their parents or grandparents would be ashamed if they knew what they were doing. And can’t they get an honest job?” Orton says.
‘This is a dangerous time’: Doctors warn of cold weather risks
NBC-15
Quoted: “You could go outside on a cold, windy day and you could get frostbit within 30 seconds,” says Dr. Apple Bodemer, UW Health.
Scientists find evidence of ‘ghost population’ of ancient humans
The Guardian
Quoted: “It is always interesting and useful to see researchers applying new methods to try to get a better idea of what ancient populations might have been like,” said John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the study.
Ghost population of humans found in DNA of West Africans, study says
USA Today
Quoted: John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the newspaper that studies like this one, “Open a window showing us that there is much more than we thought to learn about our ancestors.”
New group seeks fundamental shift in the way Wisconsin teaches children to read
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Quoted: There has been a resurgence of interest among educators in recent years, driven in part by people like Mark Seidenberg, a University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist whose 2017 book “Language at the Speed of Sight” argued that the current approaches to reading instruction were out of sync with the latest research into how children learn.
Speaking at the Capitol Wednesday, Seidenberg said DPI “has done little to address literacy issues that have existed for decades.”
“We know the best ways to teach children to read,” he said. “Wisconsin is simply not using them, and our children are suffering.”
Far from U.S. politics, Wisconsin troops work with Ukrainian military in war with Russia
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Russia has always seen Ukraine as its own backyard and sphere of influence, said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Yoshiko Herrera. When Ukraine considered having a relationship with the European Union, though not joining the EU, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials got nervous.
What’s the Difference Between a Samurai and a Ninja?
HowStuffWorks
Quoted: Hindsight has a way of glamorizing warfare. Just ask Sarah Thal, a historian of “early modern and modern Japan” who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Coronavirus fuels racial discrimination across the country
NBC-15
Quoted: “One of the problems with the way in which xenophobia tends to cling to these kinds of outbreaks, is that we tend really to focus on the wrong things,” says Richard Keller, Professor of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin.
Coal Shipping In Twin Ports Drops To Lowest Level In Decades While Wind Cargo Surges
Wisconsin Public Radio
Quoted: The transition is something people would not have thought possible until recently, said Greg Nemet, a public affairs professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches energy and policy.
Nevada Democrats Canceled Their Caucus App. But That Poses Its Own Problems.
FiveThirtyEight
Quoted: If the number of people who vote early is small, folding the early votes into the process on caucus day should be fairly easy for the volunteers in charge of the caucuses to handle, according to Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
What ‘Normal’ Weather Is Will Change
Wisconsin Public Radio
“Any number of those societal things,” said Jordan Gerth, a research meteorologist who recently left the University of Wisconsin-Madison to join the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington, D.C.
More than tortoises: UW-Madison professor writes about the real Galapagos
Wisconsin State Journal
When it comes to tortoises and the Galapagos islands, most people know of the connection with Darwin and have a vague knowledge of breeding efforts to repopulate the species thanks to randomly watched nature documentaries, but that’s about it. UW-Madison assistant professor Elizabeth Hennessy says this is not unusual.
9 years after telecom deregulation, 911 results in busy signal for some Frontier customers
Wisconsin State Journal
Those who track the telecommunications industry say Frontier’s problems largely stem from the industry’s push beginning about 20 years ago to, as UW-Madison professor emeritus and telecommunications expert Barry Orton put it, “hollow out the regulation state by state.”
OneWeb Launches 34 Satellites as Astronomers Fear Radio Chatter
The New York Times
Quoted: “It’s very similar to when you have two apartments next to each other,” said Jordan Gerth, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “To some extent, the sound in one unit is confined, but if it gets too loud, it bleeds over.”
Drop in UW water use attributed to ‘cumulative effect’ of transition to efficient fixtures
The Capital Times
Nathan Jandl, assistant director of the UW-Madison Office of Sustainability, said he believes the drop in water usage reflects active efforts on campus to be more sustainable, such as upgrading water fixtures.
Modern Humans May Have More Neanderthal DNA Than Previously Thought
Smithsonian Magazine
Quoted; Could we find out later that modern humans have even more Neanderthal ancestry than we think? The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist who was not involved in the study, tells National Geographic that he certainly thinks so.
Phonics Gains Traction As State Education Authority Takes Stand On Reading Instruction
Wisconsin Public Radio
Noted: People such as Humphries and Mark Seidenberg — a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a cognitive neuroscientist who has studied language, reading and dyslexia — say phonics are part of an overall approach to reading education known as the “Science of Reading.”
Mathematicians Prove Batchelor’s Law of Turbulence
Quanta Magazine
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.
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.