Wisconsin’s Primary Election is now less than a week away and if you feel like you’re being bombarded with political campaign text messages, you’re not alone. “There is a method to the madness,” UW-Madison journalism professor Mike Wagner said.
When Tracey Holloway studied Madison’s air quality last year under a contract for Madison Gas and Electric, she walked away surprised that “transportation and coal-fired power plants weren’t a bigger part of the pie.”
Holloway is a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of energy analysis and policy, and a science advisor to Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. The mayor announced the installation of the new monitors on July 22.
Allison Prasch, a political rhetoric scholar from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, thinks Walz’s approach to policy might be refreshing for voters turned off by the extremes.
“Walz has an ability to speak to voters in such a way that it brings the focus back to what we might call kitchen table issues — cost of child care, grocery budget, thinking about health care — and I think that that has a way of connecting with voters who understandably are exhausted by this looming, never-ending cycle of existential crisis,” Prasch said.
Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and experts are weighing in on how the use of social media is impacting both Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s campaign. Thomas Pyle is the Chair of College Republicans at UW-Madison. Joey Wendtland is the Chair of College Democrats at UW-Madison.
“I think Democrats have had a messaging problem,” said UW-Madison political rhetoric scholar Allison Prasch. “There is this narrative that ‘we know what’s best for you,’ and if you vote for (former President) Donald Trump, you’re stupid or you don’t pay attention. And that’s just incorrect, and the more that you communicate that to voters, the more they won’t want to listen to you.”
This finding is an exciting discovery, said Dr. Kathryn Miller, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.
“We’ve always had this idea that muscle mass matters and helps protect joints,” said Miller, who was not involved with the study. “Now here is one study that starts to build on the idea that muscle mass is important to function and also to possibly decrease the risk of developing osteoarthritis.”
Richard J. Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, notes that even modest amounts of meditation—under 10 hours of practice in beginners—can change brain plasticity. But he cautions against commercializing the jhanas prematurely. “People saying this benefits them is all well and good, but without real scientific evidence, we have no idea,” he says. “Anyone trying to monetize this should raise red flags.”
“The idea that we’re breaking heat records, having record floods — this is all consistent with what scientists have been projecting for decades. But the terminology is still what we used in the 1900s: ‘natural disasters,'” said Tracey Holloway, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a member of Science Moms. “We’re building terminology that captures the reality of what’s happening.”
Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Walz was “mostly likely to have a positive electoral impact in Wisconsin” out of the final handful of candidates Harris had considered. He said Walz “conveys more of a working-class background” that could appeal to rural voters around the Midwest.
“He is best positioned to relate to Wisconsin voters and will be a familiar figure to people who live in northwest Wisconsin and are within the Twin Cities media market,” said Burden, who is also director of UW’s Elections Research Center.
“There’s very little authority behind these positions,” said Richard C. Keller, a historian of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wrote a book about extreme heat in Europe. “They can issue recommendations, they can help establish policy, but they’re going to have a very hard time enforcing those policies.”
WRN’s Bob Hague spoke with University of Wisconsin Political Science Professor Yoshiko Herrera about the risks for Americans in Russia, and the complex negotiations leading the release of American and European hostages in exchange for Russian criminals.
The science comes together in a “balancing act for women,” according to Dr. Stav Atir, assistant professor in the Management and Human Resources Department at the University of Wisconsin School of Business, who has studied how gender affects the way we talk about professionals.
Atir was lead author of a study that found people were more than twice as likely to describe a male professional by surname in “high-status” fields, including politics. In the medical field, other research indicates that female physicians are more than twice as likely to be called by their first names instead of “doctor,” compared with their male counterparts.
It’s possible more heat waves like this will happen in future winters, which could leave the icy continent less fortified for its hottest season – summer – and more vulnerable to melting during subsequent heat waves, said David Mikolajczyk, a research meteorologist with the Antarctic Meteorological Research and Data Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Perseid meteor shower is active from about the end of July to the end of August, said James Lattis, director of the UW-Madison Space Place. Wisconsinites have the best chance of seeing the meteor shower Aug. 12-13. The moon sets just after midnight, leaving the skies dark.
But the bug can be indicative of a larger pest problem and can often have a foul odor, according to the Dane County UW-Extension.
“I am getting a number of submitted photos of plants with holes in the leaves and no obvious culprit,” said Lisa Johnson, horticulture research specialist with the UW-Extension. “These are likely to be earwigs or slugs. Populations of both are high this year due to excess moisture.”
Jennifer Loewenstein joins 8 O’Clock Buzz host Tony Castañeda to discuss the assassination of two of Hamas’ senior leaders in recent days, and how the killings may affect the ceasefire negotiations underway in the 10 month Israel-Gaza war. Loewenstein is a human rights activist and freelance journalist. She was formerly (now retired) Associate Director of Middle Eastern Studies and Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
After nearly forty years of serving southern Wisconsin, UW Health’s MedFlight has expanded its services by creating a third satellite base in Janesville.
We talk with a member of the Governor’s broadband task force about hurdles to more people adopting the service. Then we discuss the tricky balance between managing pests and promoting pollinators. And a disabled UW student and advocate reflects on Disability Pride Month coming to a close.
In addition to the cost of a monthly internet subscription, other barriers exist for households that have the internet infrastructure but don’t connect. Task force member Gail Huycke said barriers include a lack of digital literacy, not knowing how to use the technology, poor reliability and fear.
Huycke is a professor of practice and broadband specialist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Division of Extension. As part of the Connected Aging Communities initiative, she worked with seniors on using the internet and found people over age 65 are the most likely to be disconnected.
Though Rust Belt states can be mapped out, Simeon Alder, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s not all about geography.
“It’s a set of industries that happened to be concentrated around the Great Lakes,” Alder said.
“Every time the numbers drift a little bit further down, it does worry me,” said Dr. James Conway, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the medical director of UW Health’s immunization program. “That means there’s that many more kids that are vulnerable.”
Without fundamental changes to the student debt system, “it’s like it’s groundhog day,” remarked Nick Hillman, an expert on student loan policy at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Howard Schweber, who for years taught political science and law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told WPR that Wisconsin once had a reputation for having “mostly apolitical courts, but that fell apart in the 2000s.” He said he believes the politicization of state Supreme Court elections started in 2007 with the election of conservative Chief Justice Annette Ziegler.
“It really took the Democrats Wisconsin a long while to realize that these were not your father’s judicial elections anymore, and they have indeed become highly politicized,” Schweber said. “Because, just as with the Supreme Court, people realize that if you can capture the court, you can promote your ideology in a very effective way.”
Karen Oberhauser, professor emeritus in entomology with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told “Wisconsin Today” this data on insecticides is “exciting” because it measures the impact humans have on monarchs and other species.
“A lot of people come up to me and say, they’re just not seeing as many monarch butterflies as they have in the past,” she said. “(This study) is really our ability to dig into the data and think about the changing practices in agriculture.”
When opposing politicians discuss immigration and crime, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Michael T. Light said they often “talk past one another.”
“Very often these tools can invent false facts,” said UW-Madison Assistant Professor Annette Zimmermann. “That’s very misleading and very dangerous, particularly in professions that impact a lot of people.”
Zimmermann researches the ethical implications of AI at UW. She says it’s crucial to give workers a seat at the table when making decisions about how to use AI.
Gregory Nemet, professor of public affairs at UW-Madison, and Morgan Edwards, associate professor of climate policy at the school, are two of the lead authors on the 222-page report. Titled “The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal,” it is the second in a series of annual reports and shows how steep the battle against climate change is.
“With global temperatures increasing, that raises the potential ‘baseline’ for the average temperatures,” said David Mikolajczyk, a research meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a result, “strong warming events such as this one can occur more frequently and have a bigger impact.”
In 1996, Congress added language to include the distribution of child pornography over the internet, not just the mail. This section is important to pay attention to, said Howard Schweber, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Let us assume, in the moment that Donald Trump wins reelection … a Trump Justice Department could choose to enforce the law and make it an actual crime to post on the internet any information about abortion,” Schweber said.
But, she cautions, more research is needed to show whether these early results hold up. “We just don’t have enough information on the full lifespan of autistic people. Understandably, I think, that creates a lot of distress among autistic people and their loved ones,” says Bishop, an associate professor of social work at University of Wisconsin-Madison
The vacuum provides cool air to help the chocolate set as creamy layers are added to create the sweet treat, said Rich Hartel, a food science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Hartel runs the university’s Candy School — also known as the Confectionery Technology Course — which started in 1963 and has become so popular that it has a waitlist of people who want to attend.
On a sunny fall morning, as he strolled to work along the Howard Temin Lakeshore Path near the Memorial Union, Jake Vander Zanden looked into the water and noticed something you don’t typically see in October: the beginnings of an algae bloom. The director of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Limnology was both fascinated and concerned.
“That’s really unusual — even for Lake Mendota, which has a lot of algae blooms — to see significant blooms late in the season,” Vander Zanden says. “We’ve been seeing that more lately.”
Somesh Jha, a computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison researching artificial intelligence, said the rapid development of AI is expected to lead to more efficiencies in the workplace. But he said it could also lead to job losses in some industries, as well as lead to the creation of new jobs.
He praised the task force for taking on “questions, like, ‘okay, what are we doing now that can be done much more efficiently using AI? And what new positions which we might need, given that new capability?’”
Madison is one of the most populous areas of the country where the local transit agency is run entirely by a city, according to Chris McCahill, managing director of the State Smart Transportation Initiative housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Madison Metro is not necessarily in a sustainable position, especially as we face population growth,” McCahill said. “But that is true of all major transit agencies across the country.”
County fairs around the state have already gone through the additional testing requirements for avian flu this summer. The Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory has received nearly 400 samples every week since June, according to director Keith Poulsen.
Poulsen said they could accommodate more tests, but there hasn’t been the demand.
Murv Seymour talks with Stephen Kantrowitz at the Wisconsin Historical Society about his writing on Black and Indigenous struggles, the politics of racism and the importance of learning about history.
The Weather Guys, Steve Ackerman and Jon Martin, are back to put into context just how hot and wet this summer has been in Wisconsin. They’ll also explain why more severe weather events are becoming the new normal.
Democrats have seen their dominance among Latino voters steadily ebb, from a three-to-one edge in the 1970s to roughly two-to-one today, said Benjamin Marquez, a University of Wisconsin political scientist.The Republican strategy now, he said, is not to win the Latino vote outright but to “shave off enough Latino votes” to prevail.
Democrats have seen their dominance among Latino voters steadily ebb, from a three-to-one edge in the 1970s to roughly two-to-one today, said Benjamin Marquez, a University of Wisconsin political scientist.The Republican strategy now, he said, is not to win the Latino vote outright but to “shave off enough Latino votes” to prevail.
A legislative study group has been formed to discuss the future of the Universities of Wisconsin. We talk to two committee members, a state senator and a UW-Green Bay professor, about what’s at stake for higher education in Wisconsin.
There is a limited number of weather reporting stations in Wisconsin, leaving some areas like New Berlin in data gaps.
A new weather station network run by University of Wisconsin-Madison is hoping to change that. It is called WiscoNet and New Berlin just got one of the newest weather stations.
Voter turnout in the last two Associated Students of Madison elections has been a measly 3%. In the Spring 2024 election, just 1,273 students out of the University of Wisconsin’s 48,557 total student body cast a vote via ASM’s online voting platform.
Currently, there are limited ways that a non-citizen immigrant can take to reach this goal, according to Director of Immigration Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School Erin Barbato.
Sissel Schroeder, professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talks with Wisconsin Public Radio host Norman Gilliland about the largest archeological site in Wisconsin, once inhabited by Mississippian mound builders.
What are health care-associated infections? Nasia Safdar: These are infections that occur as a result of exposure to the health care system. People coming in for care are typically quite sick, so they’re at risk of acquiring bacteria that can then cause an infection while they’re in the hospital, or shortly after they’re discharged from the hospital.
Crucially, the rule explicitly applies to a scenario in which Vance voluntarily steps aside, says Kenneth Mayer, a recently retired political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He told BI there was no precedent for forcibly ripping the nomination away from a vice-presidential candidate after the convention.
Dr. Nathan P. Kalmoe, the executive administrative director of the University of Wisconsin — Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, explained to Salon that groups which are told they are under attack — much as Trump told his audience that the person who tried to shoot him was really attacking all of them — are more likely to commit violence.
Mauriel Rodriguez Curras and UW-Madison ecology professor Jonathan Pauli collected DNA from foxes’ and martens’ scat and hair to investigate spatial, dietary and behavioral habits before wolves were introduced, within the first year of introduction and as packs coalesced on the island.
“Repeated messages tend to be stickier than things you only see once,” Dr. Michael Wagner, director of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told The Daily Cardinal. “Seeing the same kind of misinformation over and over, is more likely to have a sustained effect on somebody’s attitudes.”
The Wisconsin turkey reintroduction was a partnership of the DNR and NWTF. Tom Yuill, a University of Wisconsin professor and wildlife disease expert, provided health testing of the birds.
Christine Remucal, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UW-Madison, graduate student Sarah Balgooyen and other researchers looked at foam and surface water samples collected between 2020 and 2023, from areas across the state.
As a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wicks created ice cream that doesn’t melt even after four hours at room temperature. While her concoction isn’t ready for consumption, her work could change the way we eat, store, and transport the beloved dairy treat.
Barbara Bowers, a long-term care researcher and professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing, said she is “astounded” by the medical complexity of the people in assisted living today.
“They look a lot like, 10 years ago, the people in nursing homes,” she said.
“I just always wondered: Does the money really get where they’re telling me it’s going?” Grimm asked Public Investigator. “Do they get a tax break?”
The short answer is yes and no.
Yes, the money customers donate at the cash register does go to the appropriate organization or cause, said Ross Milton, assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and tax expert.
“Assuming that they are following the law,” Milton added. And no, businesses can’t receive a tax break for donations raised by customers, Milton said. If the donations aren’t made with the business’s money, it can’t collect the tax benefits, Milton explained.
Dr. Apple Bodemer, a board-certified dermatologist and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, told us that she’s a fan of this deodorant since it won’t cause irritation, as it’s free of baking soda. Instead, it uses arrowroot powder and cornstarch to help you stay dry. The creamy formula is also infused with nourishing ingredients like coconut oil, castor seed oil and blueberry leaf extract
Jeffrey Hadachek, a UW-Madison economist who studies agriculture, called the case a milestone in the state’s oversight of a growing sector in farming. Nationwide, researchers estimate 90% of American livestock is now raised at a CAFO with each having over 1,000 animals.
“This sets a precedent, not only for the DNR, but for the public in general that these are cases which can be brought forward,” Hadachek said. “These regulations, laws and policies are in place for a reason.”
A partnership led by the Great Lakes Intertribal Food Coalition and the University of Wisconsin-Madison received $10 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Sustainable Agricultural Systems program earlier this summer.
It used to be that mainstream news media would develop narratives about who candidates were, and those narratives shaped attitudes about the candidates. But social media has upended that model, according to Michael Wagner, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“We have two candidates who use social media well, but in different ways: Trump uses it to get attention. Harris uses it to shape attitudes,” Wagner said.
Co-authored by Morgan Edwards, an assistant professor with the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison. She also leads the Climate Action Lab and holds an affiliation with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Zachary Thomas is a graduate student in UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and member of the Climate Action Lab.
Jaime Goldberg, a clinical assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has observed the growth of green burials throughout her decades of hospice social work. Green burials were slowly added to pamphlets she shared with patients.
