Category: UW Experts in the News

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.”

Noted: Some of the Madison centers’ success may be due to the convenience they offer in a city that Gloria Ladson-Billings, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Education, describes as ”asset-rich and access-poor.”

Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral student Valerie Stull didn’t make it to the fairgrounds in West Allis to try the cricket nachos, but she’s eaten crickets – and other insects – prepared in a myriad of ways.  And she believes the world would benefit if the rest of us would open our minds to the nutritional value of entomophagy – the practice of eating insects.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) has started a two-year “virtual dairy farm brain”project that will use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze data in real time helping dairy farmers improve their management decisions.

Quoted: The average American consumes more than 23 pounds of ice cream per year, according to the International Dairy Foods Association. That said, Bill Klein, dairy plant manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Babcock Dairy, sees a growing interest in adding “good for you” ingredients to ice cream. “We recently came out with a cherry-flavored ice cream, Frozen Fuel,” he added. “That has additional ingredients that are considered good for you, such as whey and milk proteins, probiotics, Omega 3.”

Noted: On the whole, there isn’t enough data to show whether or not specifically dog saliva is healthy for humans or not, said Kimberly Kelly, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It has been nearly a century since a total solar eclipse crossed the United States as it did Tuesday, according to UW-Madison’s Department of Astronomy.

Noted: Sanjay Limaye is a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin Space Science and Engineering Center.

Noted: In two unpublished research papers, Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist with the department obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s medical school, said China’s actual population at the end of last year should have been about 1.28 billion, and not the 1.38 billion calculated by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Noted: Jim Lattis, director of the University of Wisconsin Space Place, cautions people in the strongest terms to not look directly at the sun during the eclipse.

Stephen Kantrowitz, a history professor at UW-Madison who specializes in the Civil War era, said he believes a replacement marker is appropriate to explain the historical context of the Confederate soldiers’ burials. But he takes issue with how the plaque “celebrates their actions as heroic.”

Noted: But the kids of color aren’t the only ones who benefit from more diverse teachers. In 2015, Gloria Ladson-Billings, a well-respected education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, broke it down:“I want to suggest that there is something that may be even more important than black students having black teachers and that is white students having black teachers! It is important for white students to encounter black people who are knowledgeable,” she wrote. “What opportunities do white students have to see and experience black competence?”

Noted: Katy Culver, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and associate director of the Center for Journalism Ethics, helps explain the meaning of “alt right” on Live at Four.

Noted: So, what drives some community members to call upon ordinary citizens to solve crimes or mediate? Pamela Oliver says a lack of trust in a police department. Oliver teaches sociology at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

Noted: In Charlottesville, the mainstream media coverage has generally been responsible, according to Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Beginning with reports on the hundreds of torch-bearing alt-rightists marching around the University of Virginia on Friday night, the situation grew increasingly intense and violent, and the reporting reflected that.

Noted: “I don’t think this has too much to do with trade negotiations that are about to start,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “It’s more means of providing some relief for those few plants who made this product and had been selling it into Canada. Now, [the United States has] the possibility of selling it domestically.”

Researcher Paul Moberg with the University of Wisconsin School of Public Health says the crisis concept is certainly borne out here in Wisconsin, where in 2015 there were 614 deaths from opiods. “In 2016, we had 588 traffic deaths, so we now have surpassed the number of traffic deaths with our number of deaths due to opioid drugs,” Moberg said.

Noted: In a recent story in the Atlantic about the lack of men in college, the education expert Jerlando Jackson of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, noted that one of the reasons more wasn’t being done to encourage boys to go to college was that a lot of them were white and so not considered at a disadvantage. “It’s a tough discussion to have and a hard pill to swallow when you have to start the conversation with, ‘White males are not doing as well as one might historically think,’” he said. “We’re uncomfortable as a nation having a discussion that includes white males as a part of a group that is having limited success.”

Quoted: “I think the biggest thing to know is that you can potentially hurt your eyes if you watch the solar eclipse without protective eyewear,” said Dr. Kimberly Stepien, a retina specialist with UW Health.

Noted: “We’ve moved from a high-quality independent news ownership structure to one where a few companies have outsized influence,” said Lewis A. Friedland, a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

However, heifer calves born as twins with a bull have about a 92 percent chance of being sterile, according to a 2001 review on twinning in dairy cattle written by Paul Fricke from the Department of Dairy Science, UW-Madison.

Interviewed: Pamela Oliver is a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She says this advisory combines two tactics that have been successful in the past.

Noted: Psychology professor Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin–Madison has strong U. S. data showing no meaningful differences in math performance among more than seven million boys and girls in grades 2 through 12.

Noted: Many think there are three kinds of corn — white, yellow, and bicolor — and that sweetness depends on the color. It doesn’t. “It’s not the color, it’s the quality of the variety,” says Bill Tracy, a corn breeder and professor and chair of the agronomy department at UW-Madison. “Color doesn’t have any effect on quality.” There are sweeter varieties within all colors, he says.

Noted: Barry Orton, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications policy professor, said the public/private partnership made meeting federal requirements difficult.

If you got rid of the 7 percent of calories consumed through soda, would that be enough to affect weight?” asks Jason Fletcher, Ph.D., a professor of public affairs and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has studied the issue. “The answer is yes, if you take all those calories and just remove them from your diet.” But, he says, “If you substitute those beverages with other high-calorie drinks, then you haven’t reduced your calories at all.”

Noted: Many boys beyond that point perceive little benefit to college, especially considering its cost, said Jerlando Jackson, the director and chief research scientist at Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has written about this. To them, he said, it means a lot of sacrifice for a vague payoff far in the future.

Noted: In many parts of Rwanda, local authorities appointed by the national government recruited Hutu men into groups that burned and looted homes of their Tutsi neighbors, killing everyone they encountered, says political scientist Scott Straus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In his 2016 book Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Straus describes how Rwandan recruitment efforts coalesced into a killing machine. Politicians, business people, soldiers and others encouraged Hutu farmers to kill an enemy described as “cockroaches” in need of extermination. Similarly, Nazis portrayed Jews as cockroaches and vermin.