Interviewed: According to David Canon, a political science professor at UW-Madison, after President Donald Trump’s comments confirming he did discuss Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden with the Ukranian president, the speaker felt there was enough evidence to change her stance.
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Tom returns to the lunchroom at his elementary school alma mater and finds that the grey mystery meat he remembers has been replaced by tasty, fresh offerings that are free to every student.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.”
We all have frustrating days at the office, but how do you know when it’s just that, or when it’s time to think about moving on? Wisconsin School of Business Senior Lecturer for the Weinert Center of Entrepreneurship, Dr. Phil Greenwood is in the studio — he says there are five clear signs it’s time to leave your job.
Noted: Yoshiko Herrera, a University of Wisconsin professor who previously headed the university’s Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia, said Hunter Biden’s hiring echoes the strategy common within Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, in which powerful interests try to secure influence on foreign policy by leveraging family members and associates of key leaders.
Quoted: ? Fenaba Addo , Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison
We believe that in order to address the black student debt crisis, we need to eliminate racial wealth inequality.
From Matthew T. Hora, assistant professor of adult and higher education: As a researcher engaged in a national study of internships and their relationship to student success, I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to proceed with caution when advocating for the widespread adoption of internships
Video interview: UW-Madison engineering professor Christian Franck talks about how to make helmets safer.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks, who was not involved with this research, endorsed this group’s investigation of ancient DNA methylation and called them pioneers of the technique. “It’s a line of investigation that I want to see people pursue,” he said.
Quoted: “Today we cannot predict very much about a person’s bone morphology,” says John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: According to an analysis by Shane Hubbard from the University of Wisconsin, Harvey’s 20-inch-plus rainfall footprint was about 13 times larger than Imelda, a whopping 28,949 square miles. That’s an area slightly smaller than the entire state of South Carolina.
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: This discovery, like most, raises at least as many questions as it answers. “It’s a beautiful piece of science,” says Ann C. Palmenberg, a University of Wisconsin, Madison biochemist and enterovirus expert who was not involved with the research. But “don’t throw away your chicken soup just yet,” she says
Quoted: “We’ve had a lot of issues getting crops planted on time. Many significant rainfall events in a cool growing season,” Shawn Conley, UW Crops Expert said.
Noted: UW-Madison physics professor Jan Egedal tells me that, within the community of solar physicists, “it is well known that a Carrington-level disturbance today would be devastating.” If wide swaths of the highly interconnected North American electrical grid were damaged, backup generators would conk out long before the multitude of necessary grid repairs could be made. Lack of electricity itself might hamper the manufacture and transport of the required replacement equipment.
Quoted: Karen Oberhauser, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Arboretum, said she has seen huge clusters in trees along the south edge of Curtis Prairie by the Leopold Pines.
Quoted: Carette and his colleagues have “done a tour de force here, to find this gene and characterize it,” says Ann Palmenberg, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who provided some advice and materials for the study but was not directly involved in it. “It’s a beautiful piece of work.”
Quoted: Quarantine houseplants for a time after bringing them indoors, said Diana Alfuth, an Extension horticulture educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Both MDMA and ketamine can lead to memory loss, meaning that the Hustlers storyline makes sense. But according to Lucas Reichart, Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy and author of Strange Trips: Science, Culture, and the Regulation of Drugs, the women wouldn’t be able to count on the mixture working the same every time.
Quoted: Karyn Riddle, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches the effects on children and adolescents of viewing violent media, echoes Ms. Murphy’s concerns.
University of Wisconsin Health media specialist Gian Galassi said as living donation evolves, centers including UW Health can expand options even when a relative can’t provide a best match.
Patients at Mile Bluff Center in Mauston can walk in and have a retinal photograph taken in a matter of minutes. Dr. Yao Liu is an assistant professor of opthalmology at the UW School of Medicine.
Quoted: Karyn Riddle, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches the effects on children and adolescents of viewing violent media, echoes Ms. Murphy’s concerns. “Watching sexual violence could be traumatizing,” she explains, “and that fear could stay with you for many years.”
Quoted: “What people are seeing when they are looking into their backyards and along the shores of Lake Michigan, they are seeing a part of a huge wave of monarchs that are moving south right now,” said Karen Oberhauser, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Arboretum.
Quoted: “Usually we’re (harvesting silage) pretty heavily by about the middle of September,” said Joe Lauer, agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s going to be delayed a week or two due to not only some of the cool weather we had in the spring but also due to the fact that there’s a lot of corn that was just planted late.”
Quoted: Another study, led by professor Jeremy Stoddard of the University of Wisconsin/Madison School Of Education, found that “the most popular method of teaching about 9/11 and the War on Terror was showing a documentary or ‘similar video,’” TIME reported.
What’s clear is that Americans are wrong about student debt—both in how much students borrow and how large the cumulative, outstanding portfolio of student loans is.
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.”
Quoted: The new IP value generated a big set of “deferred tax assets”—like pre-paid tax payments or credits—in the Netherlands of $6.1 billion, according to Dan Lynch, an associate professor of accounting and information systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who read the quarterly filing. The taxes would be calculated through multiplying profits by the tax rate. The rate could be either 25% or 7%, the lower number reserved for profits from IP “innovation” developed in the Netherlands, according to Dudley.
Quoted: “The nightmare for the companies is having 50 different state proceedings, which could indeed wind up commanding different results,” said Peter Carstensen, a former attorney at the antitrust division of the DOJ and a professor of law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
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: Ryan Owens, a professor of political science and affiliate faculty at the University of Madison-Wisconsin law school, told The Hill that while Ginsburg’s travel is not unusual, it is consistent “with her desire to let people know she is still out there and doing her thing.”
Quoted: Simone Schweber at the University of Wisconsin-Madison cautions against teaching the Shoah in terms of moral certainties. Learning about the genocide shouldn’t foster an us-versus-them mentality, she says.
Quoted: Currently, mostly families from higher incomes are able to help their autistic high school students succeed. According to an article by University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Adityarup “Rup” Chakravorty, “Children living in census tracts with lower socioeconomic development [are] less likely to be diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder than children living in areas with higher socioeconomic indicators.”
Quoted: The lung illness “gets worse really quickly,” said Jeffrey Kanne, a radiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which has had patients. On scans, “these are like what you see with acute lung injuries,” such as inhaling toxic substances in an industrial accident.
The investigators appear to have been afflicted with tunnel vision, a form of cognitive bias that is common in wrongful convictions and especially in high-profile cases. Tunnel vision, writes Keith Findley of the University of Wisconsin Law School and the Wisconsin Innocence Project, “leads investigators, prosecutors, judges, and defense lawyers alike to focus on a particular conclusion and then filter all evidence in a case through the lens provided by that conclusion.
Quoted: “Most young people graduating college in Wisconsin are going to be going into work where they are covered by a defined contribution plan, what is also known as a 401(k) plan. Unless they are working for a state entity or some other collectively bargained organization, they are probably not going to have a pension,” said Gordon Enderle, an actuary at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business.
Quoted: The sky’s colours resulted from an effect known as “scattering,” which sees molecules and small particles change light rays’ direction, according to Steven Ackerman, professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin — Madison
Quoted: Shane Hubbard, a researcher with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the overall cost in damages from hurricanes in that time span for the U.S. Is more than $335 billion
Quoted: “There is going to have to be some sort of agreement between the telecommunications and weather enterprises on what is a viable strategy on what protects the interests of atmospheric observing compared to delivering data via 5G,” Jordan Gerth, an Honorary Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center, told Salon.
Quoted: Though a measles outbreak has yet to hit the state, many are concerned that with immunization rates this low, it’s only a matter of time. “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.
Quoted: Even glimmers of good news come these days with a sobering twist. Milk prices have rebounded a little, but partly because enough farmers have quit that it has reduced milk production, said Matt Lippert, a University of Wisconsin-Extension agricultural agent in Wood County.
“Some of them are supportive of the president and say, ‘We just have to be patient. We’ve not been (treated) fair and the president is going to fix it.’ Then some of them are like, ‘We’ve given him enough time already.’ And there are others who are like, ‘No this wasn’t the way ever to do it.’ But they all uniformly think that loss of markets and the tariff thing is hurting them.”
Noted: Focusing on increasing shareholder value has not benefited society overall, said Joel Rogers, director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The theory itself was wrong,” said Rogers, who also is a professor of law, political science, public affairs and sociology.
“Markets drive firms to be short-sighted and make insufficient investments in their workers and communities,” he added. “We know that. Unfettered markets are not the recipe for a happy society. That was the great Freidman lie.”
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.
Another BIG announcement from the Wisconsin Leadership Summit: Madison Common Council president Shiva Bidar will moderate the panel titled “Together We Stand: Building Community Across Ethnic Lines.”
In her role as the first Chief Diversity Officer for UW Health, Shiva provides vision, coordination and strategic leadership for the design and implementation of UW Health’s initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Quoted: “But that kind of very simple approach isn’t very good at sorting out the complexity” of how those lost populations interacted, said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Nor does it allow researchers to test specific hypotheses about how that interbreeding unfolded.
Quoted: Financial capability specialist Peggy Olive breaks it down like this: half of all people who have a credit card balance pay it off entirely each month. Another quarter carry a balance a few months of the year, and the rest regularly owe money on their cards.”Definitely, there’s different ways that people handle that credit card debt,” said Olive, who works with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology’s Center for Financial Security and UW-Extension.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology Clinical Professor Christine Whelan says that’s okay.
Quoted: “If you buy soybeans that have been raised in the Amazon, you can be almost certain that it is deforestation free,” Lisa Rausch, an agricultural land use researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told Mongabay.
Quoted: David Williamson Shaffer, a UW- Madison Professor of Learning Science, says it sometimes takes a trying a few different methods before a student starts doing well in school.
Featured: Throughout the 1970s, a biologist named Howard Temin became convinced that something wasn’t right in science’s understanding of viruses. His colleagues dismissed him as a heretic. He turned out to be right — and you’re alive today as a result.
Quoted: “But that kind of very simple approach isn’t very good at sorting out the complexity” of how those lost populations interacted, said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Nor does it allow researchers to test specific hypotheses about how that interbreeding unfolded.
Quoted: “I don’t think that the information coming out of the state should be used by the federal government in its decisions on gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act,” said Adrian Treves, professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “If a parent gets health insurance through their employer, then, through the Affordable Care Act, their kids are covered through their parents at some level,” says Marjorie Rosenberg, a professor of actuarial science, risk, and insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business.
Quoted: Because information about the past informs predictions of global change in the future, in terms of climate and land use, hard evidence of past land use is invaluable, experts say. “It’s an important paper,” said John Williams, a paleoecologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the project.
