“The water table isn’t very deep to begin with,” said Jean Bahr, a professor of geology and geophysics at UW-Madison. “It doesn’t have to go up very much before you start having trouble.”
“It’s important to recognize there’s a pattern here,” said UW-Madison journalism professor Dhavan Shah. “We see this with (U.S. Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell right now. He’ll probably slow walk any legislation regarding gun control for it to end and the calls to fade, and it’ll have a vote in the Senate and it’ll fail.”
The proposed actions should alleviate much of the long-term risk of lake flooding, said Ken Potter, a retired UW-Madison professor of civil and environmental engineering who has studied the impact of extreme rains on the Yahara lakes and helped draft a list of recommendations for the county.
Quoted: The changes will have no effect on animals currently on the federal list of endangered or threatened species, but species added in the future — including at-risk animals in Wisconsin that could get added — may have less stringent protections, said Adena Rissman, associate professor in the Forest and Wildlife Ecology Department at UW-Madison.
Quoted: “A child, even an adolescence, doesn’t just need 8 hours of sleep… A developing children needs anywhere form 12 to 9. So the recommendations for adolescence are still higher than they are for adults,” Dr. Stephanie Jones, UW Health Sleep Clinic expert, said.
Quoted: The reason is obvious, said Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin political scientist and an expert on gerrymandered maps: Nonbinding referendums and resolutions — even those with overwhelming public support — are the equivalent of Nerf guns in a political battle that demands heavy artillery.
Noted: Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the numbers make up a significant amount of the state’s typical corn and soybean production.
Noted: The reason is obvious, said Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin political scientist and an expert on gerrymandered maps: Nonbinding referendums and resolutions — even those with overwhelming public support — are the equivalent of Nerf guns in a political battle that demands heavy artillery.
Noted: Monarchs can serve as reminders of the others, says Karen Oberhauser, director of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, and a conservation biologist who has studied monarchs since 1984.
Noted: Not all earthworms are created equal when it comes to helping soil and gardens,” says Brad Herrick, a University of Wisconsin ecologist who studies the worms. “There are definitely worms that are beneficial for gardens and have been around a long time, but the difference is that the beneficial ones are the ones that work vertically in the soil, creating pore spaces and mixing the soil.”
Noted: “Low-road capitalism,” the University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist Joel Rogers has called it.
Interview with Dr. Mark Juckett.
Noted: When Americans declare that “we live in a capitalist society” — as a real estate mogul told The Miami Herald last year when explaining his feelings about small-business owners being evicted from their Little Haiti storefronts — what they’re often defending is our nation’s peculiarly brutal economy. “Low-road capitalism,” the University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist Joel Rogers has called it.
Written by Matthew Desmond, a professor of sociology at Princeton University and a UW alumnus.
Noted: Patrick Iber is an assistant professor of Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America.
American transplant surgeon Joshua Mezrich is a fun guy with a love of all things British. His disarming humour belies his gruelling work, creating life from loss. The 48-year-old, who is based at the University of Wisconsin, confesses to growing up on a diet of M*A*S*H and dinnertime tales from the ER, told by his engineer dad, who was training to become a doctor.
Interviewed: UW Health psychologist Shilah Mirgain talks about strategies for new school year success.
More and more women are building successful startups. Wisconsin School of Business Senior Lecturer for the Weinert Center of Entrepreneurship, Dr. Phil Greenwood, is in the studio to take a look at the trends — based on characteristics that are both similar to and different from male-founded companies.
Quoted: “The cows did not go away. They were bought up by other farms,” said Steven Deller, a UW-Madison agricultural economist and author of the report.
Quoted: “The biggest financial mistake prospective parents make is thinking they have to buy everything new. For large baby items associated with a particular life stage (e.g., bassinets, baby swings, exersaucers, etc.), parents can find good deals on secondary markets, such as online neighborhood buy-and-sell groups, consignment shops, or yard sales,” says Amber M. Epp, Associate Professor of Marketing, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The life of these products is much longer than the time period the baby will use it, so parents can buy many of these items in excellent used condition at a fraction of the price.”
Noted: Professor Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a guest.
Quoted: “There’s something to be said for that,” said James P. Leary, co-founder of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The vitriol is saved for the Illinoisans.
Quoted: Mark Seidenberg, a neuroscientist who specializes in the study of language and reading at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, calls those arguments offensive and indefensible, saying they “set up a false competition between children who have reading problems for different reasons.”
Quoted: Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematician and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, devised his own way of calculating a book’s unreadability, which he dubbed the Hawking Index.
Quoted: “If meditation just produces changes when you’re meditating, it’s like a drug, and it would wear off — and what would be the point of that?” Dr. Richard Davidson, PhD, the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds, tells Bustle.
Quoted: “The data suggests very few women look at the lay of the land and say, ‘I’m not going to marry,’” says James Raymo, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has written extensively about marriage in Japan. Rather, he says, they “postpone and postpone and wait for the right circumstances, and then those circumstances never quite align and they drift into lifelong singlehood”
Quoted: According to Bill Tracy, an agronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, none of the canned or frozen corn at the grocery store is GMO. (Because labeling standards established by the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law aren’t compulsory until January 2022, stores don’t have to indicate which corn on the cob is GMO.) As of 2018, only about 10 percent of the sweet-corn acreage planted in the United States and Canada was genetically modified.
A 2018 study written by Limaye and his former colleagues found that climate change would lead to thousands more heat-related deaths in the eastern United States by the middle of the century.
Noted: To find out, for nearly a decade, Ozioma Okonkwo, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and his colleagues have studied a unique group of middle-aged people at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Through a series of studies, the team has been building knowledge about which biological processes seem to change with exercise. Okonkwo’s latest findings show that improvements in aerobic fitness mitigated one of the physiological brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s: the slowing down of how neurons breakdown glucose. The research, which has not been published yet, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association on Aug. 9.
Quoted: Erin Barbato, the director of the Immigrant Justice Law Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School: “In Madison, we’re seeing a lot of people who are frightened and often confused about whether ICE is conducting a raid or whether local police are just doing their job. It’s become a prominent issue,” she said. “Even my clients that have lawful status or are in the process of obtaining lawful status are scared.”
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor Michael Wagner, who specializes in political communication, said it’s unclear whether the episode will matter to voters should he seek another political office.
“It’s pretty cut and dry that he lied and that usually doesn’t sit well with the voters,” said Wagner. But the impact in a polarized electorate is unknown, he added.
“We’ve seen lots of scandals at statehouses that were electrifying at a time that seem to fade away,” Wagner said. “In the Trump era, politicians can choose to try to ride it out and hope the news cycle changes.”
Howard Schweber, a law school and political science professor UW-Madison, and Robert Dreschel, a journalism professor at UW-Madison, weigh in.
Quoted: “It’s practically a slam dunk,” said Howard Schweber, a law school and political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Jeff Glazer, an attorney and clinical associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic, said state law creates a straightforward process for how to legally grow hemp, but it doesn’t provide enough clarity on manufacturing and retail of hemp products.
Interviewed: Lisa Cadmus-Bertram, assistant professor of kinesiology and epidemiology at UW-Madison, explains what fitness trackers can — and can’t — accurately tell you.
Quoted: Dr. Steve Garlow works in the psychiatric ward at UW Hospital and says while we can be genetically predisposed to conditions like depression, anxiety and schizophrenia, a diagnosis doesn’t determine your destiny.
Quoted: Keith A. Findley, Center for Integrity in Forensic Science, University of Wisconsin Law School: I would urge some caution on the idea of court-appointed experts. While independent, court-appointed experts can sometimes be helpful to minimize the bias inherent in the adversarial process, it is dangerous to think that a court-appointed expert or experts will necessarily reflect true neutrality or truth in science.
Quoted: “If he’s trying to encourage jobs and producing things here by taking away from other countries, the tariff could in principle do that, but it’s got to inflict pain upon somebody,” says Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: Professor Dhavan Shah, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, is a co-author of a study that did a deep dive into those conversations to find out how social media impacted the discussions that come right after a mass shooting.
Quoted: “Figure out which items your child needs at the start of school and which items can wait a month or two,” Peggy Olive, a financial capability specialist at the Center for Financial Security at the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology, said in an email.
Noted: A recent study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison of social media reaction to mass shootings points to one of the obstacles that proponents of gun control face in marshaling political support for new gun restrictions even after the most horrific of these events.
Dhavan Shah, the UW-Madison professor who oversaw the study, said in an interview Monday that with each new shooting now, it is his sense that expressions of sympathy are increasingly seen as inadequate.
“I do think there is more of an immediate recoiling at the notion of (just) ‘thoughts and prayers.’ … There is a sense of the emptiness of that,” said Shah, director of the school’s Mass Communication Research Center. “Whatever side it is, I don’t think there is a lot of people who don’t think this a problem at this point.”
Avocados, however, are a different story. They are a good that many Americans purchase regularly, and whose cost, therefore, they know intimately. While consumers can ignore abstract line charts about trade wars, they can’t ignore the price in the supermarket of their favorite fruit. Telling the stories about tariffs through everyday objects allows consumers to understand how such dense policies might impact them, and just might change the political calculus.
Sarah Anne CarterSarah Anne Carter teaches material culture in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is author of “Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material World.”
Quoted: “The data suggests very few women look at the lay of the land and say ‘I’m not going to marry,’” said James Raymo, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has written extensively about marriage in Japan. Rather, he said, they “postpone and postpone and wait for the right circumstances, and then those circumstances never quite align and they drift into lifelong singlehood.”
Article by Sarah Kemp, a researcher with the school enrollment projections program at the University of Wisconsin Applied Population Laboratory and the UW-Madison Department of Community and Environmental Sociology.
Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School, agreed. She said when it comes to immigration, expungement “doesn’t help at all.”
Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of certain extreme weather events, said Stephen Vavrus, a weather researcher at the University of Wisconsin. With the warming climate, we’re likely to see more heavy rainfall, storms and extreme heat, all of which affect travel, said Vavrus.
Quoted: But as we enter the late summer months and the unfriendly guests begin to show up in full force, it’s time to rethink the yellow jacket, said P.J. Liesch, manager of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab.
Quoted: “They are far from the only source of revenue,” said Andrew Reschovsky, professor emeritus of public affairs and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When the Islamic State started to use social media heavily a few years ago, big platform companies such as Facebook and Twitter responded with efforts to track and remove its content. Now politicians are calling on social media companies to use those tools to regulate all kinds of terrorist content. Social media companies’ responses have been uneven.
Quoted: The company also hasn’t detailed how it defines “quality” or “educational” videos. So one of the best barometers for YouTube’s metric is its Kids app, which places videos front-and-center once a viewer logs in. The educational merits of these choices are up for debate. Heather Kirkorian, an early childhood development professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, opened the app this week and found Baby Shark and Lucas the Spider, two global hits. “I wouldn’t consider them educational. I would consider them wholesome,” she said. “The term ’educational’ is used as an umbrella for ’non-harmful.’”
Quoted: Heather Kirkorian, an early childhood development professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, opened the app this week and found Baby Shark and Lucas the Spider, two global hits. “I wouldn’t consider them educational. I would consider them wholesome,” she said. “The term ‘educational’ is used as an umbrella for ‘non-harmful.’”
“There’s usually a perfect storm, or a constellation of events all happening at once in a young adolescent’s life when they get to middle school,” Geoffrey Borman, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher and the lead author of the paper, said in an interview. “We usually notice a very pronounced decline in student performance when they hit middle school, and it usually has something to do with the transition to a new school that is much more complicated.”
Quoted: Alfonso Morales, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and researcher of public marketplaces, said public markets help those with fewer resources to build wealth and carve a place in their community.
But he said community support sours with public markets when they do not meet expectations set forth by those who envision them.
“If you over-promise, right, you’re gonna be in trouble,” Morales said.
Quoted: Baltimore has faced struggles in recent years, with a high homicide rate of more than 300 killings for four consecutive years, per the Associated Press, but historian Paige Glotzer says that Trump’s comments touch on a number of misconceptions about the city. Glotzer, a former Baltimore resident and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose research has included looking into the effects of housing segregation, spoke to TIME about how a long history of discrimination and segregation has contributed to effects still felt today.
Quoted: Rueckert recently wrote about her experiences in a book, “Outspoken: Why Women’s Voices Get Silenced and How to Set Them Free.” Speaking with Anne, she shared other ways women are silenced and offered advice for how to best tap into the power of their voice.
Quoted: Baltimore’s 1910 try at legalizing racial segregation did not survive in courts, but it survived in other ways. University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor Paige Glotzer recently wrote for CityLab.
Quoted: Azam Ahmed, a thrombectomy specialist at the University of WisconsinHospital, said delays in stroke treatment are widespread because hospital systems are not cooperating with each other. If a doctor in one system refers a patient to another system, that system might miss out on revenue that could come from the patient’s care.
“Sometimes the best care isn’t being provided — knowingly,” Ahmed said. “It sounds unpalatable to say hospitals are competing for patients but the fact of the matter is they are.”
Quoted: Dr. Joshua Lang of the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center said he hopes the merger would mean more practical tools for oncologists.
“As we’ve learned more, we’re starting to understand just how many different types of cancers there are,” he said. “We need better tests. And if (I’m) smarter as a clinician, because I have better information, it means I’m going to be able to deliver better care.”
Quoted: “You’d like to think you’ve got seven people sitting there and looking over the law and being fairly dispassionate about it. (Their decision) shouldn’t be predictable by someone who knows nothing about the law,” said Frank Tuerkheimer, an emeritus University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor who studies judicial ethics. “As we become more polarized why shouldn’t appointment of judges be polarized, too? I would be surprised if it were otherwise.”
Dr. Petros Anagnostopoulos, the chief surgeon at American Family Children’s Hospital, spoke to the Cap Times about his work, its challenges and how he strives to improve outcomes for patients.
Quoted: “You’d like to think you’ve got seven people sitting there and looking over the law and being fairly dispassionate about it. (Their decision) shouldn’t be predictable by someone who knows nothing about the law,” said Frank Tuerkheimer, an emeritus UW-Madison law professor who studies judicial ethics. “As we become more polarized, why shouldn’t appointment of judges be polarized, too? I would be surprised if it were otherwise.”
