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Category: UW Experts in the News

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

In wake of global protests, UN gathers to debate climate change solutions

ABC 6

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

ESTHER CEPEDA: Why your children’s school lunches matter

Daily Freeman

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.”

There Is Such Thing as a Free (School) Lunch

Mother Jones

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.

Column: Jumping worms invaded my compost. Have you checked your garden yet?

Chicago Tribune

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.

Five signs it’s time to leave your job

NBC-15

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.

Trump’s Ukraine call, a whistleblower and the Bidens: What we know, what we don’t

PolitiFact

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.

Here comes the sun

Isthmus

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.

What Is The Ketamine-MDMA Drug Cocktail In Hustlers?

Refinery29

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.

We Know It Harms Kids to See Smoking on TV. What About Rape?

New York Times

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.”

Wisconsin Crops Continue To Lag Behind As Harvest Nears

Wisconsin Public Radio

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.”

Wisconsin clerks are looking for poll workers. If you’re a political partisan, here’s why they want you.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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.”