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.
The phone’s ringing, your email is pinging and there are only 10 precious minutes until your next meeting. Is it any wonder that you can’t come up with even a small coherent thought–much less a big creative idea?
Maybe it’s time for an intervention. That’s why I’d like you spend the next few moments listening to Lynda Barry. Last month Barry was one of 26 people chosen as a 2019 fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. As The New York Times reported, “Known colloquially as the ‘genius’ grant (to the annoyance of the foundation), the fellowship honors ‘extraordinary originality’ and comes with a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000, to be distributed over five years.”
“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.”
Quoted: John Orrock, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the virus, which is “relatively rare on San Clemente Island,” has been found only among the island’s deer mice — just one of several rodent species on the island.
“We’ve done limited rodent sampling on San Clemente Island, but historical data and our data suggest (Sin Nombre virus) is at a very low prevalence” on the island, Orrock said during a phone interview Wednesday. “On San Clemente, the mice that (potentially) have the virus aren’t the only mice on the island.”
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.
Amy Niu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin who’s currently conducting a study on selfie taking and self-perception among college-aged women in the United States and China, isn’t as worried. “In the U.S. sample, I found there’s no correlation between selfie taking and satisfaction with physical appearance,” Niu says.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and report author Tim Smeeding said he likes parts of Ryan’s philosophy, but the government needs to play a role in helping low-income people.
Quoted: Dietram Scheufele, a social scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, says that this work can help researchers get a handle of on what worries people about new technologies, but shouldn’t replace other ways of assessing public sentiment.
Quoted: “In the old days, states could say that they needed to have earlier deadlines because it was a more difficult process to manage,” says Barry Burden, a political science professor who heads up the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But other states have proven that they don’t need 30 days.”
Quoted: Today’s southern African populations harbour a deep mitochondrial genetic line. But the details of what the latest analysis revealed remain unclear, says John Hawks, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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.
Years ago as an undergraduate student, Tomiko Jones learned from a Navajo potter that there was no word for “art” in his native language, suggesting instead that “art is how you walk into the room. It is how you move through the world.”
Now an assistant professor of art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Jones plans to actualize that idea. She learned in June of the approval of a $75,000 grant from the UW–Madison School of Education to have a high-tech and environmentally sustainable mobile research and photography studio built by students in the College of Engineering’s Makerspace fabrication facility. While the grant won’t cover the cost of a vehicle to transport the studio, Jones says she will procure one and expects to be touring national parks with the studio in three to four years.
A group of friends sees people drowning in a river. They immediately dive in to help — however, people continue to appear, drowning. One friend swims upstream to see what is pushing people into the river. This story is how we, as future physicians, are introduced to the social determinants of health.
Quoted: Turning to executive orders “is a rational reaction by an executive who finds their agenda gummed up by a state Legislature,” said University of Wisconsin 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.
Quoted: Young Mie Kim, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said the paid posts were the “best examples” she has seen of ads that “bypass transparency measures by appearing as a public education type of message when in fact the main purpose seems to be data collection.”
Quoted: Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he was surprised by the change.
Quoted: “This work on Martian landslides relates to further understanding of lunar landslides such as the Light Mantle Avalanche I studied in the valley of Taurus-Littrow during Apollo 17 exploration and have continued to examine using images and data collected more recently from lunar orbit,” added University of Wisconsin Madison’s Professor Harrison Schmitt, an Apollo 17 astronaut who walked on the Moon in December 1972 and completed geologic fieldwork while on the lunar surface.
Featured: We meet two scientists working on opposite sides of the world, both thinking creatively about rising sea levels and our changing oceans. Andrea Dutton, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Stacy Jupiter, a marine biologist and Melanesia Director with the Wildlife Conservation Society, were awarded MacArthur Fellowships this fall.
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.
Quoted: “We have patients asking very specific things related to their cultural experiences that we need to be answering,” Erin Bailey, UW-Madison community-based researcher said.Bailey works at UW-Madison Carbone Cancer Center. She recently did a study on barriers and opportunities for breast cancer screening and risk reduction among black women.
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: “One out of three bites you take you can thank an insect for,” said Christelle Guedot, assistant professor in the entomology department at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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: Liz Binversie, agricultural educator for University of Wisconsin-Extension in Brown County, said she has heard farmers describe silage as like pickling vegetables.
“You’re kind of pickling the feed, right? You’re preserving it long term. And what’s doing that is the microbial population,” Binversie said.
Noted: The study, titled “Impact of Real Estate on Wisconsin’s Economy,” was authored by Mark Eppli of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Graaskamp Center for Real Estate and uses wage data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for the 2001 to 2017 period.
Quoted: Judi Bartfeld, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies food security and policy, said she doesn’t think society will ever be able to eliminate food insecurity, but we can ease it.
“As long as there are families who are struggling with poverty and limited resources, I think we’re going to have struggles with food insecurity. I think we can certainly reduce it if we focus on tackling the root causes,” she said.
Noted: Don Stanley, a faculty associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies social media techniques and explored the reasons for Mel and Ben’s online success.
Noted: “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.
Noted: Diana Hess, dean of UW-Madison’s School of Education, is a big fan of the approach used by Middleton’s Legislative Semester, which is a spawn of an innovative civics program developed by a former social studies teacher in a Chicago suburb. “I think it’s hard to teach people how to be engaged without giving people opportunities to be engaged,” says Hess, a national expert on civics education and the author of several books on the topic. “The analogy I often use is we would not teach people how to swim by lecturing them about various strokes. We would have them in the pool.”
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.
Quoted: Don Stanley, a faculty associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies social media techniques and explored the reasons for Mel and Ben’s online success.
Quoted: While some research points to lower numbers of people of color seeking treatment, Steve Quintana — professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — says those communities are showing up to appointments, not getting what they need and dropping out.
“The treatment that’s provided tends to be culturally loaded with white, middle-class culture and social norms, as well as people,” Quintana said.
Quoted: “The thing about tipping points is you never know you’re in one, until you’re actually in one,” said Ken Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Are we at least likely moving toward a tipping point? It’s more likely today than it was a few months ago.”
Quoted: The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Ellie Powell reiterated that opinion, saying that groups classified under this tax code include “local volunteer fire departments and homeowner associations.”
“What’s so unusual and bold about this arrangement is that they’re taking litigation and day-to-day decisions about litigation, which are usually thought of as quintessential executive power, and giving them to a legislative committee,” said Miriam Seifter, a UW-Madison law professor. “Wisconsin would become an outlier in allowing this.”
Quoted: Richard Kijowski, a professor of radiology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, wrote an editorial accompanying the recent study saying the objective of the journal’s special report was “to educate radiologists that the intra-articular corticosteroid injection they routinely perform with little, if any, thought about long-term safety may cause more harm than benefit.”
Enrollment at the University of Wisconsin dropped 2.6 percent compared to last year.
“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.”
Quoted: UW-Madison food science professor Bradley Bolling says it’s not true.
“A microwave is a perfectly find way to warm up food,” he said. Bolling says the microwave’s heating speed is actually better.
“The short amount of time that it takes to heat up the product can actually preserve a little bit of the nutrition.”
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: 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.
Quoted: “We’re having negative consequences from rapid stopping of individuals with opioids who have legitimate needs for these prescriptions. So it’s finding that balance,” Cody Wenthur, UW-Madison Assistant Pharmacy Professor said.
Quoted: Kenneth Streit, UW clinical professor of law, said incarceration rates for THC are not as prevalent as it may seem.
Quoted: “It’s helpful to have that come out in a midterm year or odd year where election officials have an opportunity to make fixes without the pressure,” said Barry Burden, a director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center. “The presidential (election) puts the most stress on any system than any other contest.”
Quoted: “When it comes to diversity in STEM studies, we act clueless. We don’t take our scientific mindset or approach to these issues,” said Angela Byars-Winston, the first black woman to become a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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.”
