An anonymous listener in the Rhinelander area recently asked: What are snow fleas? Where do they live and what do they eat? Interviewed: P.J. Liesch, (UW) Extension entomologist and Director of the UW-Madison insect diagnostic lab.
Noted: “I expect her to win and potentially by a large margin,” Barry Burden, a UW-Madison professor of political science and director of its Elections Research Center, said in an interview last week. He speculated that the decision of outside conservative groups “not to invest in Hagedorn’s campaign tells me that they have concluded that the campaign is in trouble, and don’t want to throw good money after bad.”
Noted: Authorities have not released any additional details about Patterson’s treatment of Jayme. Soon after he was charged in Barron County, prosecutors in Douglas County — where Jayme was held — announced they had no plans to charge him for crimes there. It was a move widely seen as aimed at sparing Jayme further pain, and one that University of Wisconsin law professor Cecelia Klingele praised Wednesday.
Quoted: “With a dog, who behaves quite a lot like us, who is in a body which is not too different from ours, and who has a brain that is not too different from ours, it’s much more plausible that it sees things and hears things very much like we do, than to say that it is completely ‘dark inside’, so to speak,” says Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But when it comes down to a lobster, all bets are off.”
Quoted: It’s valued at roughly $5 billion per metric ton or more, according to Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council. (Gold’s value is roughly $42 million per metric ton.)
Quoted: His attorneys, Charles Glynn and Richard Jones, have probably advised him against pleading guilty, said Keith Findley, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and a former defense attorney.
“It’s highly unusual for anyone to plead guilty at an arraignment,” Findley said.
Quoted: Steven Deller, interim director of the Center for Community & Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the report confirms trends seen in Wisconsin as jobs shift away from manufacturing.
“It was possible to barely make it out of high school and land a job at a manufacturing firm making decent wages,” Deller said. “Many of (those jobs) are going overseas and a lot of the jobs that we’re generating now are in the service sector and they simply don’t pay those kind of wages.”
Quoted: “If the military can come to terms with the fact that despite all of their efforts they still can’t win, or if there’s a clear resistance, maybe they would stop,” said David Streckfuss, a scholar of Southeast Asian politics and honorary fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But I don’t have much hope for that.”
Quoted: Greg Nemet, professor of public affairs and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said this report makes clear what people in the industry already know about the cost-effectiveness of coal.
Quoted: “It’s a pretty straightforward cheese to make,” says John Lucey, a professor of food science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Even so, the process is time-consuming and labor-intensive. It begins with creating the curd, the lumpy matter found in cottage cheese.
Quoted: “It’s very much a matter of your perspective,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at University of Wisconsin-Madison and chairman of Dairy Task Force 2.0, a committee of Wisconsin dairy farmers and others that aims to chart a course for the dairy industry’s future.
Quoted: “There’s this underlying recognition,” said Bob Drechsel, an expert in media law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “that it’s extraordinarily important and unavoidable that librarians have a great deal of discretion to make decisions about what they think is in the best interest of their collections and their patrons.”
Quoted: Ranchan received her Masters in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, U.S.A. She commenced her teaching career at the Government College for Women, Patiala in 1964 which, however, remained a chequered one because of transfer of residence to varied locales. Excerpts from an interview with The Pioneer.
Quoted: “There are black-white achievement gaps in virtually every school district in the country, but Madison’s gaps have been, historically, among the largest in the country,” said UW-Madison professor Geoffrey Borman, whose research includes testing ways to close them. “I can’t point you to a particular district that has closed gaps.”
Column: Our Communication and Civic Renewal research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison asked 1,015 Wisconsinites who they thought should control redistricting in our state: the state Legislature or an independent, nonpartisan commission. Fifty-three percent of adults said they preferred the nonpartisan commission while only 13 percent favored the idea of state lawmakers controlling the process themselves.
“Farmers are structured to ride these waves out, but when the waves are this long they can’t ride that out,” says Steven Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: The Environmental Law & Policy Center commissioned the study by researchers from several universities, including Daniel Vimont, director of the Nelson Institute Center For Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: With a Madison school board election coming up April 2, and with conversations around charters and vouchers affecting the last several school board races, we feel it’s important that voters be fully informed. So I spoke with Dr. John Witte, an expert on educational policy at the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Witte has studied charter and voucher policies and their effects for more than 30 years.
The guest is Laura Albert, associate professor of industrial and systems engineering
Mark Stephenson, chairman of the task force and director of dairy-policy analysis for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said at the end of the meeting, “We’re kind of stuck in the red zone and have a little bit of clean-up work yet to do.”
Quoted: This can be seen in what the University of Wisconsin bioethicist Alta Charo, an author of the 2017 NASEM report, both observes and endorses as the “yellow light” approach to regulating “technology [that] innovates faster than the regulatory system can adapt.”
Quoted: A supermoon is when these two cycles match up and we have a full moon that’s near its perigee. The result is that the full “super” moon appears slightly larger and slightly brighter in the sky. This occurs about one in every 14 full moons, Jim Lattis, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin Madison, notes.
Quoted: “The anonymous nature of even the sponsor of the bill is something that really does fly in the face of democratic accountability,” says UW-Madison political science professor David Canon. Introducing a Motion 999 at the end of the budget process has since become a common way for Wisconsin lawmakers to avoid public scrutiny. “It leads to laws getting passed that don’t have any kind of public vetting.”
UW-Madison is a “liberal bubble,” according to long-time history professor John Sharpless.
Quoted: Shane Hubbard is a research scientist in the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He explains what to expect for future flooding.
Quoted: UW limnologist and assistant professor Dr. Dugen says you can think of salt affecting lakes like salt affects humans; some of it is okay, but lots of it starts causing problems.
Quoted: According to Paul Barford, an internet topology expert at the University of Wisconsin who worked on the Internet Atlas, Russia’s plan is almost certainly part of an attempt to defend itself against what he calls a “cyber cold war.”
Quoted: Steve Carpenter, director emeritus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology, said blooms of toxic cyanobacteria come from high levels of phosphorus pollution, which often comes from manure spread on farm fields. These blooms are more likely to occur after floods.
University of Wisconsin professor and industrial and systems engineer Laura Albert uses bracketology to make her predictions.
Quoted: These lawsuits are “a reminder of the perils of speaking out,” said Tyrell Haberkorn, a researcher on Thai state violence from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Randy Shaver, a UW-Madison professor in the Department of Dairy Science and Extension dairy nutritionist, will be honored as the Industry Person of the Year.
Quoted: Francis Halzen, the principal investigator of IceCube at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and not involved in this study, prophetically said that the Big Bird result is an exciting hint of things to come.
Noted: The study — released last month by Republican lawmakers at a news conference at the state Capitol — was by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and the Center for Research On the Wisconsin Economy, or CROWE, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Some things make so much sense they simply demand attention. That’s what we call “common sense.” And when a policy will save Wisconsin millions of dollars, put people and businesses to work, and enhance the dignity of our citizens, policymakers should take heed.
Quoted: “I think there is this exceptional pressure for what they call enhancement strategies, where there’s test preps, there is cover letter and admission letter consulting firms or consultation services, as a whole range of ways that families are enhancing their services of getting into these schools,” noted associate professor Nick Hillman.
Quoted: “We have declining trust in news, but we have declining trust in other institutions as well and I think they’re connected,” said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Journalism Ethics and a guest speaker at the March 5 event.
Quoted: “There isn’t a direct link between the slowly changing climate and this event,” Jonathan Martin, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the media.
UW-Madison bioethicist Alta Charo and Kris Saha, a UW-Madison biomedical engineer, are quoted.
Noted: But, says climate scientist Jonathan Martin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “There isn’t a direct link between the slowly changing climate and this event.”
Administered by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the program consists of a full-time staff of experienced professionals dedicated to ensuring thoroughness and impartiality in inspection and certification procedures.
“In 2016, the Democrats had one of the most experienced candidates ever. That failed,” said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist who has written about the advantages governors hold in presidential races. “That might cause the party to rethink the value of experience, and especially Washington experience.”
Right now, Goldman is the nation’s only plant breeder at a public institution who works on table beets, making UW–Madison a key resource for all things beet research and breeding. This includes the development of new and improved varieties and serving as a repository for one of the world’s best collections of beet seeds.
If you are concerned about tar spot this year but haven’t been able to get to a winter meeting to learn more on how to control it, the University of Wisconsin has a solution.
Quoted: There’s the expense. The costs of implementing small classes are significant, said Beth Graue, professor of early childhood education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Dr. Claudia Reardon, a psychiatrist at University Health Service, said mental illness can affect athletes of all levels, especially elite athletes. Last week, 23-year-old Olympic cyclist Kelly Catlin died by suicide in her college residence, shedding more light on how mental illness impacts this group of people.
Larson is an assistant professor in the Biological Systems Engineering Department at UW-Madison and a biowaste specialist with UW-Extension. She performs research and extension/outreach applications of biowaste management including handling, treatment and processing of biological waste streams, including manure.
Quoted: “Judge Hagedorn represents a Christian position but not the Christian position. Challenging him does not call Christianity itself into question,” said Charles Cohen, an emeritus professor of religious studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison and an advisory board member of “We Are Many-United Against Hate.”
Quoted: Howard Schweber, a constitutional law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, went a step further, saying Hagedorn’s past writings on this issue represent a “radical position and one far outside the mainstream.”
“These are fringe views even among conservatives,” Schweber said.
Quoted: The costs of implementing small classes are significant, said Beth Graue, professor of early childhood education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Class-size reduction is a huge investment. It costs a lot of money, requires a lot of space. In places that have done wholesale class-size reduction, like California, they had unintended consequences because of that, where they ended up having to emergency certify teachers to be able to cover all the classes, and those teachers weren’t well-educated to be able to take advantage of (small class sizes),” she said.
In one of our earlier items, we cited the perspective of Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He noted that Trump earned almost the same number of votes in Wisconsin as did Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee.
Futures prices are relatively flat and may be too pessimistic toward the end of this year, UW-Madison dairy market experts Bob Cropp and Mark Stephenson said in their February dairy outlook podcast. Price improvement is coming, and Cropp looks for Class III to reach the $16s by the fourth quarter.
Hartz said they are grateful to have worked with Professor Denise Ney and Bridget Stroup from the Department of Nutritional Science at UW-Madison and Dr. Tracy Bibelnieks, professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UM-Duluth.
Quoted: In addition, as noted by Bob Enright, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has studied forgiveness for decades, true forgiveness includes empathy and compassion toward the injuring individual before you can forgive completely.
When is a farm not just a farm?
Monica M. White’s new, impressively researched book Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (University of North Carolina Press, $28) highlights historical examples of black farmers using agricultural cooperatives “as a space and place to practice freedom.” And White explains how similar strategies are helping today’s underserved communities pool resources and alleviate poverty.
Noted: Van Deelen is the Beers-Bascom professor in Conservation and professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at UW-Madison. Much of his work relates to conservation of wildlife populations in the face of human influences.
Quoted: One major factor is that fewer teens are having babies. Teen births have dropped 60 percent over a decade, said David Egan-Robertson, of the UW-Madison Applied Population Laboratory.
“And in 2017, for the first time, teen births fell below 4 percent of total births,” he said. “So that’s quite a significant change. It’s been a very long-term process, but that’s a noticeable change in that age group.
Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will discuss public distrust of the media and a host of related topics during a lecture Tuesday at UW-La Crosse.
Quoted: Timothy Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin, said the study is incomplete because it only counts the benefits and not the drawbacks.
Quoted: “This is a fantastic discovery because the torsion measured in spider dragline silk is huge, a full circle every millimeter or so of length,” says Pupa Gilbert, a professor of physics, chemistry, and materials science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was not involved in this work.
Quoted: The issue, according to Kathleen Bartzen Culver, the director for the Center of Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is disguising conservative activism as journalism. “I have no problem with advocacy organizations creating content that reinforces the positions they take on public policy issues on the left, right or center. The issue comes in when they’re not transparent about that advocacy,” Culver told us via phone.
