Category: UW Experts in the News

Chinese people cheering on their country’s ascent sometimes comfort themselves with the idea that Asia’s other behemoth, India, is years from surpassing China’s population and decades from emerging as a potential economic peer. But Yi Fuxiang, a Chinese scientist based in Wisconsin, boldly challenged that assumption this week in Beijing. He laid out arguments that India may already be more populous than China, a view that has created a controversy about whose numbers to believe in forecasting China’s demographic and economic destiny.

[Spontaneous speech] “is too hard to score,” said neuropsychologist Sterling Johnson, of the University of Wisconsin, who studies brain function in Alzheimer’s disease. “But everyday speech is definitely a way of measuring cognitive decline. If people are noticing [a change in Trump’s language agility], that’s meaningful.”

Quoted: Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the state’s dairy industry has made impressive strides in expanding output since the early 2000s.

Quoted: John Hawks, a visiting professor at Wits University and an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the US, questioned the find on his blog: “Is it going too far to say that this fossil jaw is the earliest hominin?”

Claims that India may already have overtaken China as the world’s most populous nation have sparked consternation among demographers. The claims were made on Monday by Yi Fuxian, a University of Wisconsin-Madison academic who has spent years campaigning against Beijing ’s draconian family-planning laws, and picked up by newspapers in both China and India.

Quoted: “The key to a high-quality [program] is not the activities, but the way the teacher can engage with the children during all the activities and also manage behavior,” says Katherine Magnuson, a professor at the school of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Tests ask, for instance, how many words beginning with W a patient can think of, and how many breeds of dogs he can name, rather than have patients speak spontaneously. The latter “is too hard to score,” said neuropsychologist Sterling Johnson, of the University of Wisconsin, who studies brain function in Alzheimer’s disease. “But everyday speech is definitely a way of measuring cognitive decline. If people are noticing [a change in Trump’s language agility], that’s meaningful.”

Noted: China’s real population may have been about 1.29 billion last year, 90 million fewer people than the official figure released by the National Bureau of Statistics, Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said at a symposium at Peking University on Monday.

Quoted: “The biggest challenge is reducing phosphorus input, and so far there has been no reduction in phosphorus input to Lake Mendota,” says Stephen Carpenter, director of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Center for Limnology, adding that improving Mendota, the top of the Yahara chain, is the key to improving all of the lakes.

Noted: Splurging can of course be imprudent—but that’s true for everyone. Dan Hausman, philosophy professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, notes that we could all question advertisers’ message that consumption leads to satisfaction.

Noted: This is a common feeling among oncologists, said Dr. Lisa Cadmus-Bertram from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

All hospitals and doctors who were Medicaid-certified could be used by high-risk pool recipients. That included all hospitals in the state and the vast majority of doctors, said Sam Austin, a health policy analyst at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Population Health Institute and the author of a 2013 Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau report on the state’s high-risk pool.

Expensive specialty drugs — such as Sovaldi, a drug for hepatitis C, which can cost $84,000 for a 12-week course of treatment — account for a growing share of pharmacy revenue, UW Health pharmacist Joe Cesarz said at a forum in Madison last month.

Noted: “To put that in context, that’s more than three milkweed plants for every man, woman and child in the United States,” said Karen Oberhauser, professor and conservation biologist in the University of Minnesota Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology.

As the first monarchs of the year begin to arrive in Wisconsin, there’s renewed attention on the fate of the species, which has seen a significant population drop in recent decades.”What they’re looking for is good habitat,” said Oberhauser, who is also the incoming director the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. The Milkweed plant is an important part of that habitat, as it’s where monarchs will lay their eggs.

Noted: This is a common feeling among oncologists, said Dr. Lisa Cadmus-Bertram from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Most of them would like their patients to be more active, however they are not physical activity coaches,” said Cadmus-Bertram, who studies the role of physical activity in cancer incidence and survivorship. “They don’t have the training or the expertise to provide that type of support to patients nor do they have the time.”

Noted: Moving to another state comes with several costs. According to a model developed by the University of Wisconsin economists John Kennan and James R. Walker, those costs can be very high. There’s the obvious expense of moving. On top of that, a move to a more-prosperous area will likely mean a substantial increase in the cost of rent or homeownership, even if a mover’s earnings edge up only a little.

Noted: “Most of the archaeological evidence for movement is based on artifacts, but artifacts can be stolen or copied, so they are not a real good proxy for actual human movement,” says archaeologist Doug Price of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who tracks ancient migration by analyzing isotopes. “When I started doing this in 1990, I thought people were very sedentary and didn’t move around much.”

Noted: While a case could be made that the editors should have known about Washington’s NRA work when they hired her and handled her column accordingly, Katy Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said debating that misses the point.

Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said there typically needs to be a lot of public dissatisfaction with both of the major party candidates for an independent or a third-party candidate to succeed. Burden said he doesn’t think those conditions exist in Wisconsin.

“We are getting more and more requests from patients who say, ‘I want to avoid sedation if it’s not necessary,'” said Dr. Mike Ford, an anesthesiologist at UW Health. “Some patients don’t like the idea of losing complete control.”

Noted: That’s when his producer, Scott Rudin, proposed a playwriting method you might call dial-a-feminist. Hnath reached out to several academics, including Susan Brantly, who teaches Scandinavian literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: But Brian Gould, professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, isn’t so sure.

Noted: “The whole purpose of protest is to be rude,” said Pamela Oliver, professor of sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s not like they hadn’t warned the college that they (the students) were upset about it.”

Noted: At 18 months, Avi had an airway the size of a 24-week fetus, the size of a pin. About 75 percent of her airway was obstructed, said Tony Kille, a pediatric otolaryngologist and associate professor at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health.

Noted: The stickiness of erroneous beliefs such as a connection between autism and vaccines is often cited as proof of a growing mistrust of science, as an institution, in American culture, but that’s probably not the most useful framing, said Dominique Brossard, professor of science and technology studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Nathan Gibson, ethno-American music curator at the University of Wisconsin Madison, discussed his research on the Starday record label, which originated in Beaumont in the 1950s.

Noted: “The jury’s still out,” said Dr. Michael Fiore, founder and director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, a 25-year-old program.

Quoted: Local architecture historian and UW-Madison professor Anna Andrzejewski described the meatpackers’ presence as “transformative” for the city. “To have meatpacking and a big company come (to the east side) and create such a presence really locked in the idea of this working class industrial east side,” said Andrzejewski, who is also a member of the Madison Landmarks Commission.

Quoted: “When you have farmers themselves saying there’s too much milk out there, you know that’s a problem,” said Steven Deller, a University of Wisconsin-Madison agricultural economist.

Noted: Martha Maurer, a policy program manager and researcher at the Pain and Policy Studies Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agreed that opioid abuse in the United States was an epidemic.

Quoted: “A fairly high proportion who get sick and go to the doctor end up with permanent neurological damage,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison Entomology Professor Susan Paskewitz.

Quoted: “In Wisconsin, I think we can rest relatively well assured that Zika virus transmission is pretty unlikely,” said Dr. Kathleen Antony, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist with UW Health.

Noted: “Now that I think back, there was no evidence for the assumption that he was retiring except that it was called a retirement celebration,” said Mark Hill, a PhD student of Patterson’s in 1987, and one of the speakers at his party.

Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison entomology department chair Susan Paskewitz said other less common tick-borne diseases like Ehrlichiosis, Babesiosis, Anaplasmosis and Powassan virus have been on the rise as well.

Noted: “But it had kind of been bothering me that nobody looked at how energy use on hot days also contributes to ozone,” said study author Tracey Holloway, a researcher at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How do you control air pollution on the dirtiest days? And how much are our power plant emissions changing when we have those hot chemically reactive days?”

Noted: The magazine’s promotional materials are directed more at adults shopping for young people than at teenagers themselves. That’s because nostalgia is an important ingredient in the magazine’s relaunch, said Susan B. Ridgely, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: But a top U.S. toxicologist disputes that assessment, noting that “trace amount” isn’t a scientific term, and is often used subjectively to play down any problems. Minute levels of chemicals can have dangerous effects on the body, said Dr. Warren Porter, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Another expert told The Globe that levels above 1 ppm are not considered trace amounts.

Noted: Karen Strier, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin who has studied monkeys in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil since the 1980s, said she had never seen monkeys die from disease in such high numbers. She described a “sense of emptiness” in a reserve near Caratinga in Minas Gerais State, where howler monkeys had largely vanished.

Noted: The magazine’s promotional materials are directed more at adults shopping for young people than at teenagers themselves. That’s because nostalgia is an important ingredient in the magazine’s relaunch, said Susan B. Ridgely, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: Interview with Alfred McCoy.

Noted: Hilary Dugan, the study’s lead researcher and an inland water researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said that eventually the chloride will kill plants and animals that aren’t able to adapt.

Noted: “This is a big deal, it’s a big deterrent if other cities follow suit. But Airbnb isn’t dead, it certainly has more to its business model,” said Andra Ghent a professor of real estate and urban land economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.