Noted: As it turns out, fact-checking experts tend to agree with Clinton’s campaign on this one: To have the highest impact, moderators should fact-check the debates live, Lucas Graves, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison and author of Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism, tells me.
Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara from the UW-Madison Department of Afro-American Studies talks to News 3 This Morning about what’s to be learned from the new African-American History Museum opening in Washington D.C.
Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Kathy Cramer also found discontent among Wisconsin’s mostly white, rural residents while researching her 2016 book, “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.”
Droughts, floods and heat waves are becoming more common in various parts of the world thanks to climate change. As part of our weeklong look at climate change, Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks with Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about the public health impacts of global warming.
Noted: This was reiterated by Professor Cameron Currie of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, one of the scientists involved in the ant research.“Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem,” he said last week. “However, pinpointing new antibiotics using the standard technique of sampling soil for bacteria is tricky. On average, only one in a million strains proves promising. By contrast, we have uncovered a promising strain of bacteria for every 15 strains we have sampled from an ant’s nest.”
Voters trying to discover what’s true in the political landscape can have a difficult time of it, especially this year, said UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication Professor Mike Wagner.
Quoted: The public letter was daring, said Fuxian Yi, a Chinese medical scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a book on Chinese demographics, “Big Country, Empty Nest.”
Three of University of Wisconsin’s top political and media experts covered the potential implications social media is playing in the current election in an ever-more divided electorate during a panel Tuesday evening.
Anne Basting, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee theater professor who responds to the challenges of aging and dementia with creative engagement, is one of this year’s winners of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship, commonly known as a “genius” grant.
Noted: Dr. Michael Caldwell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology lecturer who authored that article, found that the recidivism rate among juvenile sex offenders has dropped by 73 percent since 1980. The exact cause of that drop is hard to pinpoint, but it appears that better treatment and interventions with offenders at earlier ages — as opposed to prison sentences — are factors, he said.
Noted: “Right now the bigger states are more sway-able,” said Ken Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But I caution to say that most of the rules that govern political campaigns have this year been broken.”
Quoted: “This wholesale loss is unusual,” study researcher Sean Carroll, a professor of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said in a statement. “It’s not just run-of-the-mill, ordinary variation.”
Noted: Mark Craven, a professor of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has used the previous iteration of Poon’s work for research on genes potentially related to breast cancers that are resistant to the most common types of treatments, called triple-negative breast cancer.
Quoted: There are plenty of ugly apples in Wisconsin this fall because of the hard frost that struck last May. But, overall, the quality of the apples is excellent across the state and the harvest is on schedule, according to Amaya Atucha, an assistant professor in horticulture for UW-Madison and the state fruit specialist for UW Extension.
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.
Noted: Marian Mateling is a graduate student and research assistant in the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: My own mildly surreal acquaintance with its methods began as a result of a study, published this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, under the title “Predator Control Should Not Be a Shot in the Dark.” Adrian Treves of the University of Wisconsin and his co-authors set out to answer a seemingly simple question: Does the practice of predator control to protect our livestock actually work?
Quoted: The new law will likely raise the cost of production on farms, said Paul Mitchell, associate professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.“When you have to harvest quickly, you work more than the standard work week,” he said. “Now that’s all of a sudden going to get more expensive.”
Noted: MARS was the brainchild of Matthew Desmond, a Harvard sociologist whose recent book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” brought national attention to evictions. The book chronicles the lives of several poor families living in a variety of housing situations, such as crime-ridden inner-city neighborhoods and blighted trailer parks. To supplement his on-the-ground work in these communities, Desmond went searching for data. First, he looked at court records to gather eviction statistics, but there were lots of questions that those records couldn’t answer, such as what are the demographics of people facing eviction. Then he looked at the academic literature, but that search “came up empty,” Desmond said. That’s when he reached out to the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, an academic research organization that specializes in reaching understudied groups: kids in foster care, welfare recipients, the homeless.
Quoted: David Williamson Shaffer, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in educational psychology, said if used correctly tablets have proven to boost test scores, help kids learn faster and make school more enjoyable.
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.
