Above-average temperature and late-season precipitation were two major players in the outcome of the 2018 growing season, according to UW-Madison Corn Agronomist Joe Lauer. Lauer presented his highlights and summaries of last year’s growing season at eight agronomy update meetings held across the state last week.
The bad news is that they still “won’t be great,” Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the UW-Madison Center for Dairy Profitability, told agricultural bankers attending the 36th annual Western Wisconsin Ag Lenders Conference Jan. 10 in Menomonie.
Noted: Not so, according to new research from the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jihae Shin, assistant professor of management and human resources at the school, together with Katherine L. Milkman of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted a series of experiments that challenged the conventional wisdom that holds backup plans in high regard.
Quoted: “What we need to do is to figure out new weaknesses in these bacteria,” said Jason Peters, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.
Quoted: It was part of the post-WWII, Cold War era in which the Soviet Union was viewed as an expansionist threat into western Europe, said John Sharpless, newly retired professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught a class on the period.
Quoted: Jake Vander Zanden, a fisheries professor at UW-Madison, used to catch an occasional burbot in his youth while fishing on Lake Winnebago.
“It’s a species that people don’t really pay attention to, but it’s really a pretty remarkable fish,” Vander Zanden said.
Noted: On the contrary, two new companion pieces from Estanich titled “The Biggest Wail from the Bottom of my Heart” and “What Love Looks Like” enter uncharted territory for this decade-old company. Estanich — who splits his time between Chicago and Stevens Point, Wisc., where he is a professor of dance at the University of Wisconsin — approached this new work with a political bent, which, to my knowledge, he and this company have not done before. So, some of those oft-seen tendencies listed above anchor the evening, bringing some familiarity to the forefront and softening overt references to racial tension in America and, yes, even Donald Trump’s wall.
Noted: Jirs Meuris, an assistant professor of management and human resources at the Wisconsin School of Business, spoke to Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal about the financial stress that many federal workers could be feeling. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Noted: In her analysis of five million paid, issue-based Facebook ads—which covered such hot-button issues as gun rights, abortion, gay rights, immigration, terrorism, and race—during a six-week period of the 2016 Presidential campaign, the University of Wisconsin professor Young Mie Kim discovered that “the most highly targeted states—especially Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—generally overlap with the battleground states with razor thin margins.
Noted: The Nimhans researchers are not alone in their interests. Richard Davidson, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Healthy Minds, is studying Tibetan Buddhist monks to understand how long-term meditation affects the brain.
Quoted: “Products give you a lot of value in different ways,” said Liad Weiss, an assistant professor of marketing and consumer psychology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “There is the practical element but also the emotional attachment.”
Junjie Guo and Noah Williams of the Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy released their 2019 economic forecast Tuesday. They are predicting Wisconsin’s GDP will grow 2.4 percent but the unemployment rate will rise to 4.2 percent and the labor force will decline by 1 percent.
Quoted: ”A biological method of age verification doesn’t really exist yet, says Craig Atwood, a gerontologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When it comes to identity theft, you could do whole-genome sequencing of someone at birth and at death.
Noted: Jirs Meuris, of the University of Wisconsin Business School, explains why this cautious approach is even more important than it may seem. In a research paper last fall, he discussed studies showing that the more worried employees were about their personal finances, the more accident- and error-prone they were in their work.
Quoted: Charles Raison, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that exercise can provide a transient “hit” to the immune system that triggers other regulatory cytokines to dampen down the response, which may be one of the reasons exercise is such a powerful tool for improved health.
Quoted: Regarding the use of melatonin with young children, I shared your question with Dipesh Navsaria, a pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin.
Mark Stevenson, a dairy industry expert, said supply management programs like those in place in Canada and other countries can be effective.”If you restrict the amount of milk that gets to the marketplace, you can keep prices much higher, but if you do that, there has to be a lot of restrictions in place,” said Stevenson, director of Dairy Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Quoted: With the recent unseasonably warm temperatures, it’s likely many stink bugs are awakening from their winter slumber. And that means stink bugs are among the top bug complaints now rolling into the inbox and voicemail of University of Wisconsin Extension entomologist P.J. Liesch.
“From their point of view, they want to hunker down in the winter and leave in the spring,” Liesch said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It might be 30 outside but if it’s a sunny day, it might get warm enough in some spots for them to get active.”
Noted: While milk prices were bleak to end the year, UW-Madison dairy analysts Bob Cropp and Mark Stephenson are optimistic that 2019 will be better, with only weak increases in milk production forecast and, hopefully, a resolution to trade issues with Mexico and China, which both are big buyers of U.S. dairy products.
Quoted: Another eminent scholar of forgiveness, Robert Enright, Ph.D., a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of The Forgiving Life, tells Thrive: “Forgiveness does not invalidate the quest for fairness. Justice and forgiveness should grow up together.” By saying he was sorry and modifying his behavior over the last decade, Toussaint says Hart has “balanced the scales of justice.”
Noted: During the ’80s, the difference in the number of women legislators who were Republicans and Democrats wasn’t big, said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, who serves as director of the of the Elections Research Center. However, a partisan difference began to emerge after the first so-called “Year of the Woman” in 1992. Since then, women in the state Legislature have increasingly been Democrats.
Quoted: “The implications are huge,” Omar Ohrens, a postdoctoral scholar in environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and lead author of a study on the findings, said in an interview.
Noted: Interview with Majid Sarmadi, a professor of textile science.
Noted: Nearly 19 percent of those 65 and older are working full time, according to Anita Mukherjee, an assistant professor of business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Early retirees have helped Wisconsin’s rural and vacation communities, said Steven Deller, a professor and community development specialist with UW–Madison’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
Noted: Hart Posen, an associate professor of management and human resources, is the guest.
Quoted: “Everything just grinds to a halt,” said Mike Ballweg, a University of Wisconsin Extension agent in Sheboygan County.
The rules and policies to put the massive piece of legislation in place are largely written by USDA employees at many levels.
“And that’s a mad scramble. They really work hard to get all that in place as quickly as possible,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The shutdown is “coming at a bad time, for sure,” Stephenson said.
USDA isn’t “writing the checks or doing the things to get payments out to dairy farmers, corn and soybean growers. So that’s a problem,” he added.
Quoted: One divide has been evident in the state for years: the rural-urban split. It was most recently studied by Katherine J. Cramer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist and author of “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.”
“There have always been tensions between rural Wisconsin and Madison and Milwaukee,” she said. “What changed is now those tensions are on the surface and very obvious to people. I think Governor Walker, depending on where you stand, he either exacerbated that divide or he drew attention to some of the injustices a lot of people have been feeling for a while in rural Wisconsin.”
Quoted: “It’s always a little tough to tell exactly where rates are going to go in the near future,” said Clifford A. Robb, associate professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I do think 2019 will see a little bit more rate increases.”
Quoted: While there’s no “actual” conflict of interest because Overberg isn’t using his position to influence a personal matter, there could be a “perceived” conflict, said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin. “It would be easy for people to assume his activism makes his journalism suspect,” she said.
University of Wisconsin political science professor Barry Burden: “He will be remembered for presiding over the longest stretch of single-party control of state government since the 1950s, and a highly productive stretch at that.”
Noted: University of Wisconsin Madison economics professor Bruce Hansen said the economy could see signs of a slowdown in the coming months based on the last major shutdown the country faced in 2013.
Noted: Authors Yi Fuxian from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Su Jian of Peking University contend that inaccurate census results since the 1990s have skewed Chinese population estimates.
Noted: Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in the South China Morning Post that China’s population crisis would be even worse than Japan’s—and last year told a conference in Beijing China had already passed the mantle of most populous country to India.
“Three…two…one…engine ignited, and we have liftoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket and Dragon.”
On Dec. 15, 2017, Simon Gilroy listened to that countdown as he gazed across a river separating a mass of scientists from the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida. He was a couple of miles from the site, but as close as you could get without being inside the rocket.
Quoted: Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, called the results “a beautiful gerrymander” because Republicans were protected even in a bad year for their party.
Noted: Mr Yi, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a long-term critic of the one-child policy and his work has previously gained traction among the country’s leadership.
Noted: Yi Fuxian, a research fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Su Jian, director of the National Center for Economic Research at Peking University, also told the Global Times that the figures for the number of newborns in 2018 would decrease by more than 2 million, which failed to meet the health authority‘s expectation.
Quoted: “I am not surprised that the DASH and Mediterranean diets have been No. 1 and No. 2 for several years. They are more lifestyle diets than fad type of diets,” Samantha Gollup, a registered dietitian at the University of Wisconsin Health, told TODAY. She was not involved in the list. “You are limiting processed foods and you are increasing the amount of vegetables.”
Noted: First, we hear from Aaron Bird Bear (assistant dean of student diversity programs) and Omar Poler (American Indian curriculum services coordinator) from the UW–Madison School of Education to discuss the tremendous success of the First Nations Cultural Landscape Tour.
Quoted: Rather, it noted in its informed consent form that there are “no known improvements” directly related to young plasma infusions. In fact, the form contained “an appalling lack of detailed explanation of what the actual effects of this intervention are supposed to be,” said Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who reviewed Ambrosia’s form at HuffPost’s request.
“There is something intimate about sharing—think of sharing a meal or a bed or watching a movie together,” says Evan Polman, assistant professor of marketing at Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author on the study. “The same thing happens when people share a material item. It brings the giver and receiver together and gives them something to talk about.”
Noted:
Noted: Nehemiah’s program includes lectures by Gee and his sister, Lilada, as well as UW-Madison faculty Christy Clark-Pujara, Alexander Shashko, Steve Kantrowitz and Neil Kodesh.
Noted: Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences
Noted: Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, MPH, MSLIS, MD, FAAP, is an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and also holds master’s degrees in public health and children’s librarianship.
Noted: Annie Stumpf is a medical student at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine
Noted: Brad Pierce, who directs the Space Science and Engineering Center at the UW-Madison, says you could also try to understand the difficulty by considering the mathematical models and resulting graphs that became known as the Lorenz Butterfly.
Noted: Lindsey Day Farnsworth, a postdoctoral researcher at the UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, said such a facility would reduce the barriers to entry for small- and medium-size growers to getting their products into the Madison area.
Panelists include Monica White, an assistant professor of with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Community and Environmental Sociology.
Anti-trust laws have been on the books for decades in the United States, but their enforcement has been lax, said Peter Carstensen, law professor emeritus, University of Wisconsin Law School.
Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, said Georgia’s 3 percent rejection rate is significantly higher than the national rate. More troubling is the variation by county, he said. Some counties reported rejecting 10 percent of their absentee ballots, while others reported almost no rejections. “The variation … indicates that different standards are being applied across the state,” he said.
Quoted: But face-to-face contact is different. “You realize the humanity,” says Dominique Brossard, chair of the department of life sciences communication at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “It reminds you that those of us who don’t agree are actually alike in so many ways. They’re real human beings.”
Quoted: “The one-child policy for the past few decades completely changed people’s birth concept. From kindergarten, they think one child is very normal,” said Yi Fuxian, a population expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Now it’s hard to restore the family value and respect for life.”
Noted: Rikhil R. Bhavnani and Mark Copelovitch, associate professors of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, say:
Noted: Although school and residential zoning is a critical segregation issue, it is not the only perpetuator. Dr. Walter C. Stern, a historian of education at University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained that, historically, cities like New Orleans allocated resources and protections disproportionately to white communities, and these practices continue today despite anti-discrimination laws.
Quoted: “It’s a new way to study this,” said structural geologist Randy Williams of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He added that he’d be interested in seeing a comparison to actual rock.
Quoted: Dennis Dresang, UW-Madison emeritus political science professor, Tom Oliver, a population health sciences professor at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, and UW-Madison transportation expert Eric Sundquist, director of the State Smart Transportation Initiative.
Quoted: Gifts you already own and like. Recipients liked gifts better when the giver owned them, too, according to six studies published together last year in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. “There is something intimate about sharing—think of sharing a meal or a bed or watching a movie together,” says Evan Polman, assistant professor of marketing at Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author on the study. “The same thing happens when people share a material item. It brings the giver and receiver together and gives them something to talk about.”
Includes interview with Karen Holden, Professor Emerita of Consumer Science, School of Human Ecology and of Public Affairs, Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs, Affiliate: Center for Financial Security,.
“In plant pathology, we talk about the disease triangle,” says Damon Smith, an associate professor of plant pathology at UW-Madison, who led development of apps and models focused on diseases of turf, soybean and corn.
