Noted: And University of Wisconsin political science professor Howard Schweber points out that this is the first court in history in which every member had been a judge and none has held elective office. He also says that the court hasn’t had a justice who had represented a criminal defendant since Thurgood Marshall, who died in 1991.
Quoted: “Usually the population starts to go down by the middle to the end of September, but that hasn’t happened,” said Lisa Johnson, horticulture educator with the University of Wisconsin Extension. “This year we got a bump.”
Wisconsin is practically synonymous with dairy for many people, and the title of “America’s Dairyland” is even enshrined on the state’s license plates. While Wisconsinites may take the prominence of cows for granted, though, it turns out Wisconsin wasn’t always the Dairy State — at one point in history, it might have even been called the Wheat State.
I first met UW-Madison’s Soil Scientist Francisco Arriaga this summer at an Uplands Watershed Group Farm Tour in Spring Green. He demonstrated how to do a water infiltration test and, standing in a large pit, showed the difference in soils between a conventionally farmed plot and a no-tilled one with a cover crop.
Noted: It would be difficult to differentiate between bacterial colonies washed in from recent rain or bacteria that had been in the lake all along, said Richard Lathrop, a University of Wisconsin-Madison expert on freshwater lakes.
Noted: Some insurers could opt to exit the market for health insurance sold directly to individuals and families, said Justin Sydnor, a professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “Freshwater flooding poses the greatest risk to life,” explains James Kossin, an atmospheric scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And Florence could cause extensive freshwater flooding for two reasons.
Noted: Timothy Smeeding, who teaches public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin, put it more bluntly. “You can see dynasties starting to form,” he said.
Quoted: “It takes a certain skill-set to be able to do this,” says Liam Johnston, a third-year graduate student in the UW–Madison Department of Statistics.
Quoted: “People entering the system can use a talk like this because it lets them know they’re not alone if their views don’t perfectly match what’s on the parties’ menus,” Wagner said. “And it’s nice for older citizens because they can kind of think about where they’ve been in their lives.”
Noted: “Agriculture has been a positive net trade balance for the U.S. In other words, we export more agricultural products than we import,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In this month’s installment of Field Notes, Scott Bowe of Kemp Station discusses Milkweed in Wisconsin.
Rain and flooding has brought out the mosquitoes in southern Wisconsin. UW-Madison entomologist Susan Paskewitz says they bring two concerns with them — disease and the nuisance factor.
Richard Lathrop, a UW-Madison expert on freshwater lakes, said it will be months before analysis is completed to determine how much phosphorus the August storm washed into the water.
Noted: Some insurers could opt to exit the market for health insurance sold directly to individuals and families, said Justin Sydnor, a professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Story references a new working paper by Justin Sydnor and other researchers about the “gap between intentions and actions.”
Quoted: “Governor Walker has indicated that (this year) is going to be a challenging year for his campaign and for his party,” said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the university’s Elections Research Center. “The headwinds he faces might be why Walker’s style of campaigning is somewhat different in this election cycle.”
Quoted: “I think this perfectly illustrates the fundamental transformation we’re seeing in how we all communicate, and in how researchers study that communication,” University of Wisconsin communications professor Dietram Scheufele told BuzzFeed News. In the past, scholars could study newspaper articles without buying a subscription or asking for a stream of electronic articles, for example, but in an age of social media, access to data has become more fraught.
Noted: Universities typically choose to redistribute loans first because students benefit more from keeping grants and scholarships, said Karla Weber, communications manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Office of Student Financial Aid.
The number of mosquitoes caught in traps in three different locations in the area is expected to surpass the record of 500 collected in 2016, according to Susan Paskewitz, a UW-Madison entomology professor.
The UniverCity Alliance project is starting its third year trying to connect local communities to the brainpower of UW Madison. We talk to the director of the program about what they’ve accomplished and what the project will look like in this next year.
Quoted: “I think both men and women are now more accepting and open about having cosmetic procedures. They’re not so secretive about it anymore,” said Dr. Ahmed Afifi of UW’s Transformations Clinic.
Noted: Radesky and co-author Megan Moreno of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison first recommend that parents step back and think about their relationship with their phone. Instead of using it as a stress reliever, take deep breaths and go for a walk. Instead of withdrawing into a phone to avoid difficult family interactions, purposefully engage with others and potentially confront issues. Instead of losing track of time, be aware of attention hogs and notice how much time has passed when checking e-mail or social media.
“If you’re a millennial, you came of age during this boom and bust,” said J. Michael Collins, faculty director of the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ”You saw firsthand that it’s harder to get a job, pay raises, buy a house. It’s just harder to be economically independent when you can’t change jobs or get the kind of income like previous generations could.”
Quoted: Weibo Cai, an associate professor in biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was present at Mirkin’s presentation, says he didn’t think the heated discussion was a “big deal” and does not recall the name-calling, he writes to The Scientist in an email. “I think they probably have had the debate multiple times before,” he adds.
Quoted: Madison, home to the state’s flagship university, has seen the brunt of the flooding so far. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s center that specializes in studying lakes is itself flooded. “This is what climate change looks like,” Adam Hinterthuer, the center’s spokesperson, wrote in a blog post. On Twitter, the center posted maps of recent floods alongside projections for the worst expected floods later this century. They matched remarkably well.For Eric Booth, a climate scientist at the university, the whole thing is almost too much to comprehend.
Quoted: “It’s empowering to be able to help other people,” says Catalina Toma, an associate professor of communication science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You’re viewing yourself through other people’s eyes. If you’re the kind of person who helps others and have advice that people can benefit from… That can make people feel better about themselves.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison last week sent out contact information for experts on issues related to the annual return to school, and the range of topics covered struck us as such a good checklist we thought we’d share it with you.
Quoted: The reason Minnesota imprisons fewer people, according to Kenneth Streit, a clinical professor of law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is because Minnesota saw in the 1970s how its prison population was projected to increase.
Quoted: “by coining and investing in the Girl Effect, the Nike Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm, “gave it authority and made it catchy,” says Kathryn Moeller, an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is writing a book about the Girl Effect.
The event focused largely on “news you can use” for Wisconsin farmers. Andrew Stammer, for example, director of the UW Soil and Forage Analysis Laboratory located at the Marshfield Agricultural Research Station, described soil-sampling protocols for farmers who apply fertilizer in strips along the crop row.
A nascent labor organization held a brief media event last week to draw attention to a proposal once considered far-fetched: a minimum wage of $15 an hour. (Three UW experts are quoted.)
University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist Robert Fettiplace this week will receive a gold medal from the king of Norway, a share of a $1 million science prize, and take his place in the running for a future Nobel Prize.
Noted: A new paper by Dean Corbae of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ross Levine of the University of California, Berkeley, presented at this year’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, suggests an elegant solution to this dilemma: Regulators should push banks to become more like partnerships. Putting senior employees and executives first in line to bear losses would reduce the damage from crises by tempering their willingness to take bets with skewed risk profiles. The problem is not competition itself, but the effect of competition when bankers are playing with other people’s money.
Noted: But a study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research shows this may not be the case. The paper by Justin Sydnor, an associate professor of risk and insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Chenyuan Liu, who is pursuing a doctorate the University of Wisconsin-Madison, finds that at companies offering both a HDHP and a low-deductible plan, selecting the HDHP typically saves more than $500 a year. “High-deductible plans often have much lower employee premiums,” Sydnor said.
Quoted: Emily Stanley, a professor at UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology, says the potential for flooding in the Madison area is nothing new. But she and other scientists warn that climate change could make severe storms — and, by extension, flooding — more common.
“What’s different is double-digit inches of rainfall in such a short period of time,” she says. “When you add the water really, really quickly, it’s like if you eat Thanksgiving dinner in five minutes. It doesn’t feel the same as it would if you ate it over the course of a few hours.”
Quoted: “If CNN did tell its readers and viewers that Davis did not comment when he was indeed one of their confidential sources, that breaks a bond of trust with the public,” said Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin. “It’s deceptive and wrong. And if it is the case, CNN needs to be as transparent as possible immediately and develop practices to ensure this never happens again.”
Noted: Story includes comments from Laura Dresser, associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, Noah Williams, an economics professor, and Tim Smeeding, professor of public affairs and economics.
Interview with Hubbard, a researcher with UW’s Space Science and Engineering Center and expert in disaster response.
Quoted: Other research finds that hearing a word can help you see it thanks to a theory known as the feedback hypothesis. For instance, if you are looking for something, talking about it out loud could help you find it. “For tasks with a multi-step sequence, talking to yourself out loud can help you keep out distractions and remind yourself where you are,” said Gary Lupyan, a researcher and psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said in the New York Times.
Quoted: So far, the most common complaint against the new rules is how broadly Facebook applies them. If you spend enough time on the ad archive, you’ll find news stories and even random events like a comedy show – but also, of course, the never-ending flood of political ads. University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim studied divisive advertising in 2016. And she says Facebook’s new archive still does not address one common tactic – multiple groups coordinating to push the same agenda.
Quoted: Volker Radeloff, a forest ecologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is one of those voices. He was one of the scientists behind the 2018 study that measured growth of the WUI through a combination of census data and satellite images. He believes that certain fires are inevitable and thinks municipalities should prevent building on risky lots rather than just try to perform damage control afterwards.
Quoted: Self-driving cars already have LIDAR systems for direct imaging and could conceivably someday also be equipped with SPADs for seeing around corners. “In the near future these [laser-SPAD] sensors will be available in a format that could be handheld,” predicted Andreas Velten, the first author of Raskar’s seminal 2012 paper, who now runs an active-imaging group at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The paper didn’t include healthier nursing home residents who are strong enough to undergo outpatient surgery, said Dr. Heather Neuman, a surgeon and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. These women might fare better than those who are very ill.
Quoted: What does the economy have to do with violence? “For decades, we’ve seen poverty, unemployment, segregation and lack of economic opportunities strongly correlate with higher violent crime and murder rates,” says sociologist Emily A. Shrider, a research associate at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Without economic options, for some people, desperate times call for desperate measures. You commit an armed robbery and maybe murder someone in the process.”
Quoted: “(Even) if we get a little bit more rain,” said University of Wisconsin assistant research scientist and hydrologist Eric Booth, “It’s still going to add to this massive water that is slowly moving through the system and creating more problems.”
Noted: UW associate professor and retail expert Hart Posen joined Wisconsin’s Morning News with his analysis. You can hear the full interview below.
In the paper, economists Dean Corbae, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Ross Levine, of the University of California at Berkeley, found that while intense competition among banks indeed spurs greater efficiency, it also tends to squeeze profit margins and encourage riskier investments.
Quoted: Jeff Smith, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies job programs, said a major quandary is that worthwhile training programs for the poor seldom yield stunningly positive results. “Work force development is very hard, and the results you see aren’t always great,” he said. “If these populations were easily employable, they would already have jobs.”
Quoted: According to Steve Vavrus, senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research, a combination of high humidity and a very slow-moving storm is what caused the huge amount of rainfall.
Quoted: Farmers will face a learning curve in figuring out how to take advantage of the insurance with the changing markets, said Brian Gould, professor of agribusiness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Standing water could be a health threat in the wake of the flooding and rising water levels seen over the past week. Standing water in backyards, puddles, and along roads could be contaminated with chemicals such as fertilizers and even waste and debris, leading to the potential of bacteria and other viruses in the water, said UW Health infectious disease doctor Jeannina Smith.
Noted: Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, are guests on WHA radio (970 AM) at 11:45 a.m. the last Monday of each month.
Recent flooding and lake swelling may prove to be a watershed moment for University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology.
Noted: Nationwide, the number of CSA farms fell from more than 12,000 in 2012 to about 7,000 in 2015, said Lydia Zepeda, a consumer science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Farmers will face a learning curve in figuring out how to take advantage of the insurance with the changing markets, said Brian Gould, professor of agribusiness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “There’s a lot people can do to benefit wildlife, even in a relatively small space,” said David Drake, UW-Extension wildlife specialist and UW-Madison professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology. Drake will lead an “Urban Wildlife Workshop” on Sept. 15 at the Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee.
Quoted: “The highest state of branding is iconicity, and Harley’s an iconic brand,” said Thomas O’Guinn, a marketing professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is co-author of a highly cited 2001 research paper on communities that form around specific brands.
Noted: The financial situation of those borrowers, while it shapes marketing choices today, is also an outcome of policy decisions made years ago. Nick Hillman, an associate professor in the school of education at the University of Wisconsin Madison, said the game is a product of failed education policies. The appeal of the game should force people to think about the kinds of outcomes the U.S. higher ed financing system creates, Hillman said.
Noted: In the paper, economists Dean Corbae, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Ross Levine, of the University of California at Berkeley, found that while intense competition among banks indeed spurs greater efficiency, it also tends to squeeze profit margins and encourage riskier investments.
