Category: UW Experts in the News

Noted: “A warmer climate is making more favorable conditions for heavy rainfalls,” explains Steve Vavrus, senior scientist at the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin. Warmer air can hold more moisture, and climate models also predict storms will move more slowly, dumping rain for longer and resulting in more floods.

Noted: David Schwartz, professor of chemistry and genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, doesn’t think that’ll stop Barron: “She could walk through rock.” The two scientists met 19 years ago at a Gordon Research Conference and have remained close friends.

Noted: Jacob Stampen, a University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus professor of educational leadership and policy analysis, said his research reveals a growing partisanship that has made state lawmakers more indebted to party bosses than to the public. Stampen has been tracking voting in the Wisconsin Legislature since 2003. His first analysis of voting was as a graduate student at UW-Madison in the mid-’60s.

Quoted: “A warmer climate is making more favorable conditions for heavy rainfalls,” explains Steve Vavrus, senior scientist at the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin. Warmer air can hold more moisture, and climate models also predict storms will move more slowly, dumping rain for longer and resulting in more floods.

Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison professor David Baum is a botanist who has studied boabs and baobabs for more than 30 years and he says that despite decades of research we still cannot say how boabs came to be in Australia.

Noted: While many commenters on Chinese social media speculated that the limit would be raised to three, Yi Fuxian, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison—and longtime critic of China’s birth policy—went further.

Noted: Eating crickets can be good for your health, according to a new clinical study from UW-Madison. Just ask Valerie Stull, a recent doctoral graduate from the UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. She was 12 when she ate her first insect.

Quoted: “Know what items you’re looking for to buy and what the limits might be on those items,” said Cliff Robb, associate professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Jacob Stampen, a UW-Madison emeritus professor of educational leadership and policy analysis, said his research reveals a growing partisanship that has made state lawmakers more indebted to party bosses than to the public. Stampen has been tracking voting in the Wisconsin Legislature since 2003. His first analysis of voting was as a graduate student at UW-Madison in the mid-60s.

Noted: UW–Madison engineering professor Dan Thoma, who is also the Director of the Grainger Institute for Engineering, has worked in the field and with 3D printing technology for around 25 years. He said there’s a lot more that goes into creating 3D printed items than simply hitting a button.

Noted: Amy Achter, director of partner development for Nature’s Bounty, a vitamin and nutritional-supplement manufacturer, will become managing director of the Office of Business Engagement at the University of Wisconsin at Madison this month.

Noted: “When people are moving to places they bring diseases with them that the home population might not be immune to, and on the flip side these people are moving into places where they might not have immunity to the diseases in the new place,” says Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin.

Noted: “Some of this may reflect the availability of the reinsurance program. As well, it may be that the carrier’s substantial increases last year occurred based on an overly-pessimistic expectation, given the relatively robust ACA enrollment that ended up occurring regardless — thanks largely to the ability of the federal premium subsidies to offset the rate increases for many people,” Donna Friedsam, health policy programs director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Population Health Institute.

Interviewed: Barbara Mergen Alvarado currently serves as the volunteer board president of the Madison Arcatao Sister City Project and has led numerous delegations to El Salvador. She is an honorary fellow at UW–Madison’s Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies program researching migration, human rights, and cross-border organizing in Latin America.

Noted: Eleanor Powell, University of Wisconsin-Madison political science associate professor, said that if it weren’t for the help of one particular GOP donor, Nicholson might still be a political unknown.

Noted: Experts like UW-Extension Horticulture Educator Vijai Pandian said Japanese Beetles are going to be horrendous this year, with a bigger population than years past.

Noted: Yodelers such as Johnson, who sing the country western warble made popular in the 1930s and ’40s, are aging out of performing. “It is uncommon to hear it in Minnesota,” said former folklore professor James Leary, who wrote a book on yodeling and Swiss music in Wisconsin.

Noted: The industry was barely starting to recover when the tariffs came, Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin, told Xinhua. “So farms are now looking at another period of time with low prices,” he said.

Quoted: “At a minimum, you want to have open communication,” advises Dr. Luke Funk, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before beginning a weight-loss program or having surgery, couples should discuss why the overweight partner wants to lose weight, what lifestyle changes will be needed and how they both will benefit from new habits.

Quoted: “I once heard a senior number theorist, who I will not name, say that Scholze had kind of ruined his to-do list for the next 20 years,” said Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin.

Quoted: “This is a site that had an enduring importance to people for 12,000 years,” said Sissel Schroeder, a UW-Madison anthropologist who in 2001 began studying the 37 acres that rises over the river a few miles south of McFarland.

Quoted: Steph Tai, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, framed it this way: An environmental violation is noncompliance with environmental law, whereas environmental fraud is concealing the fact of that noncompliance. They are different legal categories.

Quoted: Ian Baird, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has done research in the area, said the 3S basin was highly multiethnic, with most villagers subsisting on food from rivers and forests.

Noted: “What they’re showing through some fairly sophisticated modeling is that the temperature increase over next 100 years will be fairly significant if we continue business as usual,” said Benjamin Zuckerberg, associate professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology. “I think its concerning because this is a species we’d expect to be relatively resilient. But even a resilient and fairly widespread species is going to be impacted in this increasing temperature.”

Quoted: “It’s all types of water: Frozen water, calm water or more turbulent water. It has an effect on us. It’s one of the basic needs,” said Kirstin Thorleifsdottir, who teaches planning and design in the UW-Madison school of human ecology.

Quoted: Gwen Drury, an expert on the Wisconsin Idea who articulated the genesis of this guiding philosophy above, said these three events in 1894 pointed to what is at its heart: “truth, trust and transparency.” Although the philosophy “sounds like this very general thing,” she said it actually refers to something very specific.