Noted: To put the effects of storm winds into perspective, Steve Ackerman, director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, compared a brisk wind to hurricane-level gusts.
Category: UW Experts in the News
Hurricane scientists aren’t afraid to make eye contact
Noted: To put the effects of storm winds into perspective, Steve Ackerman, director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, compared a brisk wind to hurricane-level gusts.
Girl’s insanity defense in Slender Man stabbing goes to jury Friday
Noted: Michael Caldwell, a staff psychologist at Mendota Mental Health Institute and a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was hired by Weier’s attorneys to evaluate her in July 2014.
Study shows monkeys contracted CWD from infected deer meat, shows possibility to humans
A macaque monkey in the Canadian study contracted CWD after eating meat from a CWD-positive deer. It’s a scary development said Keith Poulsen with the Wisconsin Vet Diagnostic Laboratory.
Jonathan Patz: Taxing hybrid and electric vehicles doesn’t make financial sense
Noted: Patz is director of the Global Health Institute at UW-Madison
Patz: Tax on hybrids and electric vehicles is poor economic policy
Noted: Jonathan Patz, M.D., MPH, is John P Holton Chair of Health and the Environment and director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Why We Need to Revitalize Organic Seed Farming
Noted: “Public plant breeding was on life support for a while,” says Bill Tracy, chair of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Department of Agronomy and one of only two public sweet-corn breeders left in the United States. According to the Organic Seed Alliance’s 2016 report, State of Organic Seed, public and private investments in organic plant breeding and other organic seed research have increased by $22 million in the last five years. Clif Bar’s Seed Matters initiative, which Dillon directs, has raised $1.5 million for organic seed research and education.
Fire on the Mountain: 2 Forests Offer Clues to Yellowstone’s Fate in a Warming World
Noted: What will happen to these forests if a changing climate means not only old forests burn, but young ones, too? That’s what Dr. Harvey and his colleague, Monica Turner, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin, are here investigating. Yellowstone’s recent fires offer a rare natural experiment to see how forests regenerate after burning and reburning at short intervals.
UW lab urges hunters to test deer for CWD
The UW-Madison lab that checks deer carcasses for chronic wasting disease says new scientific research shows the importance of testing.
Planning for America’s Climate Migrants
Noted: Vicki Bier, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in risk assessment and analysis, believes that the subject of climate-induced relocation within the U.S. needs more attention.
Hurricane Irma left 6.5 million Floridians without power. Here’s what that looks like from space.
Noted: Some of the darkness is due to cloud cover, according to William Straka, a weather researcher at the University of Wisconsin who works on Suomi data and helped create these images.
Drones becoming an integral part of newsgathering, require responsibility
Noted: Katy Culver, director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Journalism Ethics, has done research for about five years on drone use in newsgathering. She said the use of drones in news has exploded since she first started.
Low interest credit cards
Noted: Interview with Brian Mayhew, associate professor of Accounting & Information Systems and Executive Director of the Arthur Andersen Center for Financial Reporting and Control at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Workers Wanted: Facing a worker shortage, more employers turning to robots
Rob Radwin, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at UW-Madison who studies how robots can help relieve physical stress in the workplace, sees a future in which machines will increasingly be employed to handle highly repetitive tasks, while humans will be employed in fields that require complex judgments, adaptation to unexpected events and interactions with other humans.
Wisconsin businesses grapple with a growing worker shortage
Quoted: “Having people moving into the state or even moving out or back in, it really energizes the economy,” said UW-Madison economist Steven Deller. “Wisconsin doesn’t seem to be doing a good job bringing people into the state.”
Jury to mull defendant’s mental health in Slender Man attack
Noted: Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin law professor who researches sentencing policy and the consequences of convictions, calls the case a tragedy for everyone involved. The victim suffered serious injury and the other girls clearly needed guidance that they didn’t get, she said.
What Goes Into Hurricane Forecasting? Satellites, Supercomputers And More
Noted: “We have a whole suite of numerical forecast models ranging from those at the global scale, that have less spatial resolution, to other models that cover smaller domains, but have higher resolution,” Christopher Velden, a senior researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center, tells NPR.
Did Reagan and H.W. Bush issue actions similar to DACA, as Al Franken said?
Noted: Using executive authority this way is not so unusual among modern presidents. As Kenneth R. Mayer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told us in a previous fact-check, “Presidents going back to at least Reagan have made unilateral adjustments to immigration law — adding exemptions, extending protection to classes not covered by existing statutes such as children and spouses, making discretionary decisions about what constitutes ‘unlawful presence’ or what categories of people here illegally will be the focus of enforcement action.”
Zircons: How tiny crystals open a window into the early
Quoted: “We have no rocks that are older than 4 billion years,” says John Valley, a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. (The Earth itself is 4.543 billion years old.) “[Zircons] are what we study if we want to analyze things that formed that far back.”
Unified breakup forum held
Quoted: Julie Underwood, a professor of education law, policy and practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, presented a comparison of census data from Unified and the surrounding villages, she said, could create segregation with a district split.
Far from actual storms, UW scientists provide indispensable data on developing hurricanes
While Hurricane Harvey washed through neighborhoods in and around Houston last week, a small group of University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists noticed something unusual off the coast of Africa.
The science behind the U.S.’s strange hurricane ‘drought’ — and its sudden end
Atlantic hurricane seasons over the years have been shaped by many complex factors, explained Jim Kossin, a hurricane scientist with NOAA and the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Those include large scale ocean currents, air pollution — which tends to cool the ocean down — and climate change, which does the opposite.
By Executive Order, Trump Seemingly Determined to Undo Everything Obama Accomplished
Noted: For all of that, though, Trump has been “unusually aggressive in his use of unilateral powers,” says Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist and expert on presidential powers and executive orders.
Marshfield study: Kids raised on dairy farms less likely to get allergies, rashes
A study of rural children in the Marshfield area suggests that kids raised on dairy farms are much less likely to suffer severe respiratory illnesses, allergies and chronic skin rashes, according to the University of Wisconsin.
Christine Seroogy, associate professor of pediatrics, and James Gern, professor of pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, worked with researchers at the Marshfield Clinic on the study.
Purpose over pain
“Meditation can help foster a mindful, rather than automatic or reactive response to chronic pain. Mindfulness builds awareness of the differences between pain sensations itself (i.e., sharp, shooting, stabbing) versus patterns of unhelpful reactions to pain such as emotional reactions or patterns of behavior. It disrupts the autopilot way of responding that isn’t effective and often causes additional suffering by giving us greater freedom to make healthier choices. Since difficult situations and painful stressors will always be a part of life, mindfully learning how to handle them can make all the difference,” says Shilagh A. Mirgain, UW Health Senior Psychologist.
In Milwaukee op-ed, Donald Trump overstates economic impact of Ronald Reagan corporate tax rate cut
Noted: Said University of Wisconsin-Madison professor emeritus of applied economics Andrew Reschovsky, who worked in the Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury: “The problem is, economies are complex things. It is really impossible to attribute any change” in the economy to a single tax cut.
Japan Is No Place for Single Mothers
Noted: In 2011, only 20 percent of divorced mothers were receiving child support, according to James Raymo, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has published a number of papers on single mothers in Japan.
UW-Madison Scientist: Nothing In Historical Record Rivals Hurricane Harvey’s Flooding
Hurricane Harvey was a 1-in-1,000-year flood event, according to new calculations by the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center at UW-Madison. The research scientist who mapped this calculation explains why Harvey’s record shattering rainfall over Southeast Texas and Louisiana was so devastating.
IBM pitched Watson as a revolution in cancer care. It’s nowhere close
Noted: Pilar Ossorio, a professor of law and bioethics at University of Wisconsin Law School, said Watson should be subject to tighter regulation because of its role in treating patients. “As an ethical matter, and as a scientific matter, you should have to prove that there’s safety and efficacy before you can just go do this,” she said.
UW-Madison Continuing Studies announces ‘Eloquence’ speakers
“The series is a testament to the Wisconsin Idea, sharing UW-Madison expertise with the community,” Auerbach said. “The retired faculty members appreciate the chance to speak on subjects close to their hearts, and attendees enjoy seeing eminent scholars they may have only heard about.”
Molinaroli left his mark on Johnson Controls in his brief, tumultuous tenure as CEO
Quoted: And CEOs should always be evaluating their businesses, said Brad Chandler, the director of the Nicholas Center for Corporate Finance and Investment Banking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “They should understand whether their portfolio makes sense today and for the future,” said Chandler, a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley.
10 Years After Historic Floods, Wisconsin Communities Focus On Preventing Future Damage
Noted: But focusing on mitigation is a good strategy for communities experiencing recent flash floods, because they’re likely to continue, said Steve Vavrus, senior scientist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research.
U.S. current account imbalance unlikely to diminish: researcher
Noted: University of Wisconsin, Madison, professor Menzie Chinn’s research also suggests lawmakers in the United States should look to domestic fiscal policy if they want to reduce external imbalances.
America’s Political Scientists Come in for a Reckoning
Noted: Some scholars focused on the growing sense of geographical—not just cultural—separation between Republicans and Democrats. In a series of in-depth interviews with rural Republicans in Wisconsin, Katherine Cramer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said she had found a sense of “distributive injustice” that ran through their concerns: Rural voters thought political resources flowed disproportionately to those in cities—and vice versa.
Baraboo National seeks to become a state bank
Quoted: University of Wisconsin finance professor James Johannes said the move makes sense. “It’s pretty common for smaller banks to want to be state-chartered,” he said.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, reporters made serious mistakes. Here’s what to avoid this time around
Quoted: But there are differences between the ways in which reporters are covering a hurricane this time around. Hurricane Katrina was later seen as “a real black mark on journalism,” says Kathleen Bartzen Culver, the assistant professor and James E. Burgess Chair in Journalism Ethics and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Harvey is a 1,000-year flood event unprecedented in scale
A new analysis from the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center has determined that Harvey is a 1-in-1,000-year flood event that has overwhelmed an enormous section of Southeast Texas equivalent in size to New Jersey.
Economists send estate tax repeal letter to congress
Noted: David Brown of the Wisconsin School of Business was mentioned as a signatory of a letter sent to the Trump administration by a group of economists advocating repeal of the inheritance tax.
United States: danger of fake news
Noted: (translated from French) “Sponsored links redirect to manufactured stories, pure fake news,” says Tom O’Guinn, a marketing professor at the Wisconsin School of Business. If the traditional way of campaigning in the United States remains to bomb Americans from political spots on TV between two pubs for laundry or pizza, “these field spots are very, very expensive,” O’Guinn said, ‘conversely, buying links is cheap at all. Pubs are always more accurate, more targeted through social media and more advanced analytics. “
UW professor weighs in on Harvey’s impact on Wisconsin food
CW News at 9 talked with UW Professor of Animal Sciences Dan Schaefer about what he expects for the beef, poultry and produce industries.
As vaping grows in Wisconsin, adherents and skeptics abound
“Our stance is to go with what we know to be approved for smoking cessation,” said Amy Skora, an outreach specialist for UW-CTRI. “We see e-cigarettes as more of a harm reduction. We don’t want anyone on nicotine for the long term.”
Ask the Weather Guys: Is UW-Madison involved in hurricane forecasting?
It may surprise you to know that UW-Madison is a major contributor to national efforts to monitor and predict these powerful storms.
Harvey marks the most extreme rain event in U.S. history
The Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison determined that many areas of Southeast Texas have received rain that is expected to come around only once every 1,000 years (or having a 0.1 percent probability of occurrence), assuming a stationary climate.
Ideas for coping with back to school anxiety
UW Anxiety Disorders Program Director Dr. Marcia Slattery talks about what parents can do to minimize the anxiety students feel when it’s time to go back to school.
1 Simple Trick that Will Make You Insanely Creative
Noted: Jihae Shin, Professor at the University of Wisconsin, designed an experiment to prove the most creative ideas come after procrastination. She asked people to come up with business ideas: one group shared ideas immediately, while another group was asked to play a simple computer game for 5 minutes before sharing their idea.
Psychedelic drug being looked at to treat PTSD
The Food and Drug Administration has deemed MDMA a “breakthrough therapy” in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, putting it on a fast track for possible approval. MDMA is also known by the street name Ecstasy. “MDMA opens up a space where people feel safe, they feel better about themselves, and they feel better about other people…,” said Dr. Charles Raison, a psychiatrist and member of the scientific advisory board of MAPS, which stands for Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
UW Study Examines How Air Pollution Affects Birds
Interview with Tracey Holloway.
Writing Your Way Through Cancer
Quoted: Expressive writing is about emotional disclosure, said Dr. Adrienne Hampton, an assistant professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Wisconsin. “It can be trauma-focused, or it can be aspiration-focused,” Hampton said. “Really, the key is just that it involves either conscious or subconscious emotional processing around a given topic.”
Stressful Events Can Age the Brain by up to 4 Years
Quoted: While the study didn’t look for dementia symptoms specifically, the authors point out that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease is rising—and that minority communities are affected at disproportionate rates. “Adversity is a clear contributor to racial disparities in cognitive aging, and further study is imperative,” said lead author Megan Zuelsdorff, PhD, a research associate at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, in a press release.
Back to School: Healthy Lasagna Cup Lunch
As the kids get back to school, lunches need to be packed again. Chef Julie Andrews RD of UW Health shows us a healthy, easy and delicious recipe for the kids — and maybe even you too — lasagna cups.
Helping Your Child Beat Back-To-School Anxiety
Quoted: Dr. Marcia Slattery, director of the UW Health Anxiety Disorder Program, said you’ll likely notice that younger school-age children may become more irritable as the onset of school approaches. “The grade school kids definitely start asking more,” she said. “They start wanting to have detail about what’s going to happen, basically trying to say, ‘What are the unknowns that I need to know about?’So, more questions, more seeking information.”
U.S. current account imbalance unlikely to diminish: researcher
Noted: University of Wisconsin, Madison, professor Menzie Chinn’s research also suggests lawmakers in the United States should look to domestic fiscal policy if they want to reduce external imbalances.
If Recession Hits US Tomorrow, Will Trump’s Economic Policies Help?
Noted: In a separate study, Professor Menzie Chinn from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said that the Trump administration will likely not be able or willing to reduce the US foreign debt, as, amongst other reasons, the Treasury notes’ safe-haven status supports capital inflows in the US.
Science Proves That Gifts Are Better When The Gift Giver Gets One For Themselves, Too
Noted: The study was conducted by Evan Polman, marketing professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Sam Maglio, marketing professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
VIDEO: UW professor Jonathan Martin explains Hurricane Harvey
Noted: UW professor and chair of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, Jonathan Martin, explains the potential damage that hurricane Harvey could cause to the coast of Texas.
Wisconsin communities work to prevent future flood damage
Noted: Steve Vavrus is the senior scientist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research. He says flood mitigation is important for communities that have experienced flash flooding because floods are likely to continue.
Foxconn tied to internet of things, a technology that’s changing all of our lives — but with risks
Quoted: “We are not quite there yet, but that’s what the next level will be,” said Raj Veeramani, founding director of the Internet of Things Systems Research Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW Professor Tapped To Write History Of Counter-Terrorism For Pentagon
John Hall, a military historian from UW-Madison has been tapped to write the on-going history of United States counter-terrorism efforts for the Pentagon. We’ll talk with him about his new task and what it means to act as an official record of history.
‘Celebrate Agriculture’ During Badger vs. Atlantic Owls Football Game
“There is so much to celebrate about Wisconsin’s $88 billion agricultural industry, which encompasses dairy, livestock, field crops, fruit and vegetables and so much more,” says Kate VandenBosch, dean of the UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
Writing through pain: A cancer survivor guides patients with pen and paper
Noted: Expressive writing is about emotional disclosure, said Dr. Adrienne Hampton, an assistant professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Wisconsin. “It can be trauma-focused, or it can be aspiration-focused,” Hampton said. “Really, the key is just that it involves either conscious or subconscious emotional processing around a given topic.”