Noted: Tony Goldberg, a veterinary epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin, said the die-offs are peculiar because of how they narrowly affect mussels.
Category: UW Experts in the News
Will cursive become a lost art form? Not if these Wisconsin lawmakers can help it
Fon du lac Reporter
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.”
Evers Administration: More Health Insurance Options On Tap This Fall
Wisconsin Public Radio
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.”
New Report Shows Extreme Racial Disparities In Wisconsin, Midwest
WORT FM
Quoted: Laura Dresser is the Associate Director of COWS, a nonprofit, nonpartisan “think-and-do tank” based at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, which partnered with the Iowa Policy Project, Policy Matters Ohio, and the Economic Policy Institute to produce the report. She says that segregationist policies hampered black communities’ ability to rebound from economic downturns.
“This inequality has gotten baked in, in very aggressive ways in the Midwest through segregation and redlining, through school citation policies [or] where people put new schools as communities grew, and where they shut schools,” Dresser argues.
Potential changes to nut milk, plant-based meat labels
NBC-15
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.”
UW-Madison assistant professor twerks with Lizzo after her tweet goes viral
TMJ4
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.
Agronomist earns UW-Madison honorary recognition
Kenosha News
A tomato plant played a huge part in launching the career of Tim Boerner, who will receive Oct. 17 the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Honorary Recognition Award. Boerner was 9 years old when his grandfather gave him a tomato plant. That gift cultivated his lifelong interest in crops and agriculture in general. That interest also has helped innumerable Wisconsin farmers.
With help from cheese, milk prices finally improving
AgWeek
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.”
Jessie Opoien: Lizzo’s magic let us all shine for a night — especially one twerking UW-Madison assistant professor
Capital Times
“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.
1.9 million people with diabetes gained insurance coverage through Affordable Care Act, study estimates
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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.
‘Our River Was Like a God’: How Dams and China’s Might Imperil the Mekong
New York Times
Noted: “I have not seen a single case in which people have been compensated fairly for the disruptions to their lives caused by dams,” said Ian Baird, a Southeast Asia expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the social effects of dams. “If governments are arguing that these projects aren’t viable without underpaying compensation, then maybe these projects aren’t right for the country.”
Illinois’ automatic voter registration delays worry experts
AP
Noted: “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.”
Hunter Biden says he will resign from Chinese company board and won’t take foreign work if his father is president
The Washington Post
Noted: “It highlights the need for the United States to make disclosure by adult children of officials more transparent,” said Yoshiko Herrera, professor of political science and international relations at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Overzealous in preventing falls, hospitals are producing an ‘epidemic of immobility’ in elderly patients
The Washington Post
Noted: Barbara King, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing, studied how nurses responded to “intense messaging” from hospitals about preventing falls after the 2008 CMS policy change. She found that pressure to have zero patient falls made some nurses fearful. After a fall happened, some nurses adjusted their behavior and wouldn’t let patients move on their own.
Wisconsin country doctor treats Amish, studies genetic diseases
Journal Sentinel
Quoted: “These changes come out of huge health care systems like Kaiser Permanente,” says Byron Crouse, who retired last September from his job as associate dean for rural and community health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How do you scale that down to a small, rural practice?”
Does solar power make sense in Southern Wisconsin?
WISC-TV 3
Quoted: “It’s growing at about 30 percent per year,” explained Greg Nemet, professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In a rural Wisconsin village, the doctor makes house calls — and sees some of the rarest diseases on earth
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Quoted: “These changes come out of huge health care systems like Kaiser Permanente,” says Byron Crouse, who retired last September from his job as associate dean for rural and community health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How do you scale that down to a small, rural practice?”
Has corporate feminism come to solve Pakistan’s social problems? Not quite
Dawn.com
Quoted: In her book The Gender Effect: Capitalism, Feminism, and the Corporate Politics of Development, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Kathryn Moeller examines why transnational US corporations such as Nike are increasingly investing in philanthropic efforts to promote the prosperity of girls and women in the Global South and finds that these corporate-led campaigns end up benefiting corporations at the expense of women in the Global South.
Fair Pay To Play Hailed As Game-Changer
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
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.’’
Why Amazon Fires Keep Raging 10 Years After a Deal to End Them
The New York Times
Quoted: “The agreement has so many holes, the deforestation is still just going on,” said Holly Gibbs, a University of Wisconsin geographer who has studied the agreement.
These State Birds May Be Forced Out of Their States as the World Warms
The New York Times
Quoted: “There’s a lot we don’t know about how certain species might adapt to novel climate conditions,” said Benjamin Zuckerberg, an associate professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We might see bird species shifting their nesting times or changing their diet.”
Adjustable Desks: Health Benefit Or Hype?
Wisconsin Public Radio
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.
Every Single Living Thing Is Part of an Ecosystem. Here’s How They Work
HowStuffWorks
Quoted: “The ecosystem concept ecologists now use has been refined since it was first introduced by Tansley almost a century ago,” says Stephen Carpenter, a scientist in the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Ecosystem science studies the interactions of all the living and non-living entities in a specified place. This definition is consistent with modern concepts of energy, nutrient flow and biogeochemistry, which barely existed during Tansley’s career.”
Is a vaping-linked lung illness a public health crisis? That depends on who you ask
PBS News Hour
Quoted: Communication scholar Dietram Scheufele at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said that at any point in time, roughly five issues tend to dominate a person’s memory. A constantly shuffling set of concerns struggle endlessly for one’s attention.
Expert breaks down online dating deception
WKOW-TV 27
Quoted: Catalina Toma is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She studies how people communicate online, and has recently been investigating self-presentation and deception in online dating profiles.
‘A church that stands for something that is vitally needed’: Black and white churches form alliance
Wisconsin State Journal
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.
11 scientific reasons why attractive people are more successful in life
Business Insider
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.
Wisconsin farmers coping as dairy herd declines
Fox 11 News
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.
Adjustable Desks: Health Benefit Or Hype?
Wisconsin Public Radio
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.
Excelling at Endurance Running Has Little to Do With Our Ancestors’ Need for Meat
The Wire
Noted: Henry Bunn, a paleoanthropologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has said more than once that a person would have to be “incredibly naïve” to believe the persistence hunting theory. Bunn recalls that he first heard discussion of the theory at a conference in South Africa, and he realised almost immediately that if you are going to chase an animal that is much faster than you, at some point it will run out of sight and you will have to track it. Tracking would require earth soft enough to capture footprints and terrain open enough to give prey little place to hide and disappear.
Lake Michigan reached record high levels this summer. Is climate change the cause?
Green Bay Press Gazette
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.
In the Land of Self-Defeat
New York Times
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.
Iraq War veteran to receive pardon from Tony Evers: ‘That felony is not who I am’
Wisconsin State Journal
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.
Major void to be filled at West Towne Mall with Von Maur
Wisconsin State Journal
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.”
Uncertainty growing in Wisconsin’s manufacturing sector as survey finds job cuts
Wisconsin State Journal
UW-Madison economics professors Menzie Chinn and Noah Williams weigh in.
Is California ignoring the science on wildfire-prone housing?
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Quoted: “Certainly, there were areas where just everything got torched,” said Anu Kramer, co-author of the report and researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But it was not uncommon to see areas where the trees were still intact and the houses were gone.”
UW sports analytics, bracketology and solving the opioid crisis
Bucky's 5th Quarter
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.
Trump Asked China to Investigate the Bidens Because It’s Thursday
Vice
Quoted: “Discussion of the Bidens is part of a deflection strategy,” said Yoshiko Herrera, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and former director of the Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia. “It’s like breaking into someone’s house and then saying, ‘That person had bad credit.’”
National Academy of Sciences pulls video on possibility of designer babies
New York Post
Quoted: “I am disappointed by this,” said Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin, Madison ethicist involved in past academy panels on gene editing. She said the tweet and video could further misunderstanding about editing’s most important uses or wrongly suggest that it’s possible now to bestow traits like intelligence.
Wisconsin manufacturing hub asks, ‘what factory recession?’
Christian Science Monitor
Quoted: “We have pretty much tapped out the labor market,” says Steve Deller, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We have companies that are saying that that’s causing part of the slowdown. It’s a bottleneck.”
What electronic games can teach us
Knowable Magazine
Quoted: Green, now a cognitive psychologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, admits that the benefits of playing hours upon hours of Call of Duty may be limited in real life.
Analysis: 8 Percent of Wisconsin’s Corn Crop Is Mature
Ag Pro
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.”
A Big Question About Prime Numbers Gets a Partial Answer
Wired
Noted: The new proof, by Will Sawin of Columbia University and Mark Shusterman of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, solves the twin primes conjecture in a smaller but still salient mathematical world. They prove the conjecture is true in the setting of finite number systems, in which you might only have a handful of numbers to work with.
China’s ‘awkward silence’ as lack of family planning slogans from 70th anniversary parade could signal policy shift
South China Morning Post
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.
Census Finds Widening Income Inequality In US
Wisconsin Public Radio
Interview with Timothy Smeeding, Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics.
How the sharing economy is changing lives
WISC-TV 3
UW-Madison professor Christine Whelan explains how clothing rental companies are changing the way some people live.
As the economy teeters, Trump’s ‘eighth wonder of the world’ wobbles with it
The Washington Post
Quoted: “Every couple of months there’s been a different plan,” said Steven Deller, an economist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “First it was 13,000 jobs. Now it might be 1,000 jobs. They’ve really scaled back on what they plan to do.”
Science history: Going back in time
Cosmos
Quoted: A study guide titled “Robert Hooke, Hooke’s Law & the Watch Spring”, written by Shusaku Horibe from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, explains that “the determination of longitude was a major problem by the mid-seventeenth century … One needed a clock able to keep accurate time on long voyages at sea … The development of portable and jerk-resistant watches that could be taken on ships and could keep accurate time for extended periods was an obvious economic concern.”
UW study shows connecting habitat fragments leads to species growth, slows extinction
Wisconsin State Journal
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.
Flash drought declared in Washington due to abnormally hot and dry weather
The Washington Post
Quoted: Jason Otkin, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin who published a study on the characteristics of flash droughts, wrote in an email that the D.C. area “is on the northern edge of large region centered on the southern Appalachians” that has seen sudden drought onset due “to a prolonged period of much drier and warmer than normal conditions.”
Rudy Giuliani’s role in Ukraine’s investigation of Joe Biden
Politifact Wisconsin
Quoted: Soliciting help or anything of value from foreign officials in an election is unusual and could be illegal, said Yoshiko Herrera, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It’s also uncommon for a president’s personal attorney to communicate with foreign officials on matters that could influence White House policy, she said.
At Yale’s Singapore college, a canceled course on dissent triggers censorship claims
The Washington Post
Quoted: Most U.S. universities that pursue such growth “recognize that their assumptions about academic freedom will need to be adjusted,” said Kris Olds, an expert on the globalization of public education, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “How far will they bend, though?”
Rates of Autism and ADHD Are Increasing Significantly for U.S. Kids
24/7 Wall St
Quoted: It isn’t clear whether the greater prevalence of reported ADHD and ASD cases is necessarily a bad thing. According to Maureen Durkin, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, in an editorial appearing accompanying the study in Pediatrics, greater awareness of the disorders and better diagnosis might be largely responsible for the higher numbers.
Harry Potter’s Broadway Box Office Tactic Cloaks Drop in Demand
Forbes
Quoted: “When supply is fixed (as in this case), a decrease in demand requires a decrease in price to clear the market,” stated University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Alan Sorensen.
Climate change: Landmark UN report warns sea levels will rise faster than projected by 2100
CNN
Quoted: “It drives home the message that policies that curb greenhouse gas emissions can have a strong effect on future sea level rise,” said Andrea Dutton, an associate professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin Madison. “What we do today can decide which of those pathways we’re on.”
How To Help Save Our Oceans If The New UN Climate Report Scares You
Bustle
Quoted: “It drives home the message that policies that curb greenhouse gas emissions can have a strong effect on future sea level rise,” Andrea Dutton, associate professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin Madison, said to CNN.
How Trump’s Presidency Looks from Rural Wisconsin
The New Yorker
Quoted: “Is it backfiring?” Mark Hagedorn, a dairy expert at the University of Wisconsin-Extension, asked about farmers’ decision to back Trump. “I think we can argue that six ways to Sunday.”
UW-Madison scientist earns ‘genius’ grant as she seeks 125,000-year-old clues about climate change
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is looking back at least 125,000 years to try to figure out how climate change might impact humanity’s future.
Andrea Dutton and her work have been recognized with a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, otherwise known as a ‘genius’ grant.
Harry Potter’s Broadway Box Office Tactic Cloaks Drop in Demand
Forbes
“When supply is fixed (as in this case), a decrease in demand requires a decrease in price to clear the market,” stated University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Alan Sorensen.
Community discusses pros, cons in vaccination debate at State Capitol
NBC-15
Quoted: “People that have a medical reason they can’t be immunized, they may have a religious reason they can’t be immunized or they may just choose not to be vaccinated, They benefit solely because there are firewalls around them of people who are immunized,” said Dr. James Conway, a UW Health immunization specialist.