Quoted: “The story (in Wisconsin) sounds similar to the national story,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Essentially, we’re not back to where we started (before the recession). We seem to be following a hopeful pattern.”
Quoted: “It’s sort of like discovering the Game of Thrones,” John Hawks, a University of Wisconsin anthropologist, tells me. “There’s this plot that we didn’t know. These people were interacting with each other, and they survived for thousands of years with those interactions. When you put that together, there’s going to be this incredible story.”
Fact-checking has flourished since 2007, when new projects like the Tampa Bay Times’ PolitiFact launched to fact-check American politics. In the years since, more news organizations have put attention and resources toward fact-checking, so that it’s now an established part of political campaign coverage.
Fashion-designer-turned-director Tom Ford said he thinks a lot about death. Many people probably share Ford’s morbid tendencies, at least to some extent, Pelin Kesebir, an assistant scientist and psychologist at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Live Science.
APPLETON – Julie Mead, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will address the effects of private school vouchers on public education Tuesday at the Appleton Public Library.
Noted: “I think that given what we know about human Zika infection, it’s really tempting to say ‘Aha! This is really showing the same thing in a macaque,’’’ said Dave O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: “We don’t behave at all like the ideal picture of engaged citizens neutrally and dispassionately analyzing the evidence before casting their ballot,” says Lucas Graves, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism.. “It’s not how people work.”
Quoted: According to Barry Orton, professor emeritus at University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in telecommunications, some students still might not be able to get the Internet access at home, even if they’re provided a Wi-Fi hotspot — particularly in certain parts of the state.
Noted: To some who study this issue, only the critical details. “We’re in an area where information is easily twisted and distorted both on purpose and accidentally — some of it is quite complicated,” said Robert Streiffer, an associate professor of bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “The standard should be pretty narrow in terms of what kind of things are required for a candidate to disclose.”
Quoted: “We’ve had the [rear window] regulation now for 40-some years,” said Andy Milkowski, who worked in research and development at Oscar Mayer for three decades and currently teaches in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s one of those automatic things you don’t even think about. But people understand what bacon is. They understand that when they fry it up, it’s going to have a lot of fat.” Exactly. Maybe it’s time for a package that embraces that reality.
Quoted: Without a legal mechanism to force disclosure for such records, “you really need the public to hold them accountable,” said Robert Streiffer, associate professor of bioethics and medical history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
There have been developments in Miami and just this week the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control recently updates its guidelines. Dr. Katie Anthony, who is a Maternal Fetal Medicine Doctor at UW Health talks about the latest developments.
Quoted: Robert Batt, a University of Wisconsin-Madison business professor, said he liked how CMS included reporting from patients.”Surveys tend to have people with extreme opinions, but even at that, it’s real data of real patients who were there and who can say something,” he said.
Quoted: “If you look at global banking models, no countries have as many banks as we do,” said banking expert James Johannes, a finance professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. “So if you believe in the natural order, the natural order is going to be fewer banks.”
Noted: Still, it’s in Facebook’s best interest in the long run to become a reliable and reputable system for news, said Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Connie Flanagan, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies young adults and civic identity, said the most reliable predictor of volunteerism, voting and other forms of engagement are the everyday values families share with their children at a young age. But she also acknowledged the importance of reflection that begins in the mid- to late teens as young adults face leaving home and think seriously about what they want to do with their lives.
Noted: Allyson Bennett, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that these findings, which give insight into the complexity of chimpanzees, can help us even recognize what is ethical to do with the primates.
Noted: Now, 21 states include September 11 in their state standards, and two include terrorism, according to an informal poll conducted by Stephanie Wager, a board member of the National Council for the Social Studies. That’s about the same as in 2011, when Diana Hess, the dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s school of education, and Jeremy Stoddard, an associate professor of education at the College of William & Mary, found that fewer than half of states’ social studies and history standards mentioned 9/11.
Noted: Researchers Jihae Shin from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Katherine Milkman from the University of Pennsylvania recently published a study that suggested that simply thinking about a backup plan can reduce performance on your primary goal, and ultimately hurt your chances of success.
Derek Johnson, associate professor of media and culture studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison, talks about the 50th anniversary of Star Trek on Live at Four.
Noted: “This is a genomic encyclopaedia of ale yeasts that will serve researchers for years to come,” says Chris Hittinger, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Verstrepen’s team, meanwhile, is using genomics to churn out new strains of beer yeast.
Noted: My friend and colleague Dipesh Navsaria, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, is a pediatrician with a master’s degree in children’s librarianship, and the medical director of Reach Out and Read Wisconsin. He said about Ms. Dewdney: “She really hits the marks beautifully in terms of understanding the challenges of childhood that we as adults have forgotten, that bedtime is a separation, or leaving a child at preschool or being lost in a store.” He added: “And she does it beautifully in rhyme.”
Quoted: Counties and municipalities should be experimental governments, embracing new urbanism and supporting apprenticeships to open doors to the middle-class, co-ops and work-councils to give employees an ownership stake, investments in high speed broadband, timebanks to increase neighborhood interaction, community land trusts, credit unions and private development organizations to support startups through microloans and subsidized rent. “Get as much money circulating as possible and grow local business so you have people who care about the town,” says Joel Rogers a professor of law, political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the proponent of productive democracy.
Noted: Key to Mývatn’s productivity is its huge population of midges—the small flies that give the lake its name (mý means flies and vatn means lake in Icelandic). In peak years, the amount of midges that emerge every summer equals the biomass of roughly 10 humpback whales, says Anthony Ives, a University of Wisconsin, Madison ecologist who studies Mývatn midges.
Fact-checking may have gone mainstream in recent years, but it’s still controversial. That’s according to Lucas Graves, a professor and former magazine journalist who wrote the newly released “Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism.”
Noted: On the domestic front, it’s hard to imagine legislators being keen to vote on bills to get in with a departing president. There’s “virtually no chance” of any significant legislation going through that way, says Kenneth Mayer, an expert on presidential powers at the University of Wisconsin’s Lafollette School of Public Affairs.
Noted: “It’s one-stop shopping,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You’re allowing a person who’s not registered to become registered or update their registration and cast a ballot right then.”
Noted: New gene editing tools, like CRISPR, have “so fundamentally transformed our ability to manipulate genomes that the question has quickly shifted from ‘Can we?’ to ‘Should we?’ to ‘If we do it, how can we minimize the risk of unintended consequences?’ ” Kate O’Connor-Giles, a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells The Christian Science Monitor in an email.
Noted: A new study, however, claims that much of the research underpinning that common sense notion is flawed—and that the science of predator control needs a methodological overhaul. Adrian Treves, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his colleagues examined more than 100 peer-reviewed studies, searching for ones that randomized some by removing or deterring predators while leaving others untouched. Not a single experiment in which predators were killed has ever successfully applied this randomized controlled design, they reported 1 September in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. “Lethal control methods need to be subjected to the same gold standard of science as anything else,” Treves says. He argues that policymakers should suspend predator management programs that aren’t backed by rigorous evidence.
Noted: Benjamin Marquez, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the protest a success based on the sheer size of the rally. An estimated 20,000 people showed, according to WMTV, an NBC affiliate.
Noted: Stan Temple, renowned ornithologist, Beers-Bascom Emeritus Professor in Conservation at the University of Wisconsin—Madison and Senior Fellow of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, says that the treaty was the result of a growing public awareness of the fact that unrestricted hunting was having a devastating effect on bird species.
The Zika virus is not spreading from vaccines or chemicals. It’s not a part of some big scheme by the U.S. Congress or pharmaceutical companies. Yet, rumors and conspiracy theories like these fill the screens of Facebook users.
Noted: Researchers from the Wisconsin School of Business found that group members who shared the same initials worked better together than groups that didn’t, which resulted in greater performance, collective efficacy, adaptive conflict, and accuracy.
Noted: Estimating future migration patterns is dicey. David Egan-Robertson, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of the December 2013 report that contains the current state projections, joked a little about the difficulties.
“It’s happening throughout the life insurance industry,” said Tyler Leverty, Associate Professor of Risk and Insurance at UW-Madison. “Some companies have policies that give them more flexibility. It allows them to ask for premium increases from customers.”
Wendy Hahn, clinical nutritionist with UW Health, says eating at home translates into healthier meals and quality family time, saving money and calories.
Noted: John Witte, UW-Madison professor emeritus of public affairs and political science, explained the process as when one political entity assumes responsibility and political control over another political entity.
Quoted: “We know anecdotes and perceptions don’t get us very far when we’re dealing with a problem like livestock predation,” says Adrian Treves, a conservation biologist from the University of Wisconsin who co-authored the paper. “The science of predator control has been slow and not very advanced.”
Quoted: “It doesn’t really change the landscape significantly other than insulate companies from lawsuits,” said Yaron Nili, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin who focuses on corporate governance.
Noted: Patrick Remington, a University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health professor, noted Wisconsin’s obesity rate technically has declined from last year when it peaked at 31.2 percent. But that’s not what’s considered statistically significant drop.
Quoted: Dr. Dipesh Navsaria of the Pediatric Department of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine stresses the importance of having regular conversations with kids about how school is going.
Noted: Associate Scientist Stephanie Jones studies how too little sleep affects kids at the Wisconsin Institute for Sleep and Consciousness at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. She says a good night’s sleep is like a re-set for your brain. It can improve problem-solving, fact retention and muscle memory. Plus, it preps the brain for the next day of learning.
Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks posted an essay about why Kappelman’s analysis is problematic, especially given that he and his colleagues didn’t compare the fractures in her bones to other fossils from the same era. Hawks points out that there is a much simpler explanation for Lucy’s “injuries” than a severely traumatic fall: “becoming a fossil.” The process of fossilization often fragments bones in exactly the way that Lucy’s bones are broken, and animals who were fossilized at the same time as Lucy have similar fractures. So Hawks isn’t discounting the idea that Lucy died of a fall, but he believes that we need more evidence before confirming it.
Noted: On Wednesday, UW Health Registered Dietitian, Julie Andrews stopped by Wake Up Wisconsin to share a few recipes.
Quoted: “Just as an example, maybe 20 years ago we had between 250 and 275 students applying for our elementary education program,” said Jeff Hamm, associate dean of academic services at the UW-Madison School of Education. “Last year we had 105 students apply to that same program.”
Noted: But they and University of Wisconsin-Madison sociology professor Pamela Oliver, whose research work includes the Wisconsin Racial Disparities Project, told us there simply isn’t city-level data nationally in order to rank Milwaukee.
Quoted: “The new regulations remove the requirement for a pilot’s license with a new license called the remote pilot command license, which is really just a written exam,” said drone expert Chris Johnson, a University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering professor and pilot. “It’s not actually flight training, which has been the requirement up to now.”
Noted: Dominique Brossard, a professor and chair of UW-Madison’s Life Sciences Communication Department: “People are super confused right now because they hear things about genetically modified foods being controversial and a risk.”
Noted: Neeraj Arora and Thomas O’Guinn from the Wisconsin School of Business are quoted.
Quoted: According to Alta Charo, professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the idea of embryo adoption is morally acceptable to most people. Even those who consider in vitro fertilization objectionable often consider the leftover embryos as humans deserving dignity and life. The Catholic Church, for example, has been at the forefront condemning in vitro fertilization, but has no official position on embryonic adoption.
Noted: While some economists think a big hike in the federal minimum wage would kill jobs, two UW-Madison economists (Andrew Reschovky of the La Follette School of Public Affairs and Tim Smeeding, past director of the Institute for Research on Poverty) didn’t see much danger in raising county workers’ living wage.
Noted: So, along the way, Maniilaq got in touch with UAF’s Kodiak Seafood and Marine Science Center, and Dr. Eric Johnson, a botulism specialist and professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Quoted: “I don’t expect it to have much actual impact on prices,” Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told us in an email. “The Chicago Mercantile Exchange spot prices for cheddar cheese were down following the announcement.”
In 2013, the National Academy of Sciences hosted a forum on the influence of global environmental change on infectious diseases. In his keynote speech, Dr Jonathan Patz stood in front of a large slide of a mosquito and warned: “Global warming’s greatest threat may also be the smallest.”
“Doing both – traditional media and social media – is more powerful in boosting citations than doing just one of the two,” says Dominique Brossard, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication, who demonstrated a link between “h-index” – a measure of the quality and influence of a researcher’s work – and whether the researchers in question interacted with journalists and were mentioned on Twitter.
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Noted: Nike didn’t invent the idea that tapping into the earning potential and selfless spending patterns of impoverished women can ignite economic development. It’s been promoted by the World Bank and other international development organizations since the 1980s; before that, attention to girls was substantially absent in global development efforts. But 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. “Without them, we wouldn’t hear poverty and development experts talking all the time about the importance of prioritizing girls in development.”
Noted: In the early part of the 20th century, states tried to step in and provide grants to districts so that school funding was equitable, according to Allan Odden, an expert in school finance who is a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But then wealthier districts would spend even more, buoyed by increasing property values, and the state subsidies wouldn’t go as far as they once had to make education equitable.
Quoted: R. Alta Charo, professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin Law School, co-chairs the National Academies study group looking at human gene editing, and was also part of the study focused on mitochondrial replacement therapy. She says the use of the term “heritable” in the bill’s language that refers to the genetic modification being banned could prove important to the fate of mitochondrial replacement therapy.
Noted: Are you squirming a little? Curiosity piqued? If you’re still reading to find out the answer to the riddle, you may exemplify a form of motivation identified in many psychology research findings, more recently a study led by Evan Polman, Ph.D., an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Interview with Professor Cecelia Klingele. Private prisons are less safe and less effective than government-run prisons, according to the United States Department of Justice, and will soon no longer be used by the federal government.
