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Category: UW Experts in the News

The backlash to Butler: Who will pay for the attempted assassination attempt on Trump?

Salon.com

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.

Misinformation surrounds us. Is it more dangerous than we think?

The Daily Cardinal

“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.”

Inspired by Doritos as a child, a UW-Madison scientist cracked the secret of no-melt ice cream

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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.

People in assisted living are getting sicker. Wisconsin isn’t ready to keep them safe.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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.

What really happens when you donate to charity at checkout? You asked, we answered

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“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.

The best pregnancy-safe deodorants, according to experts

NBC News

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

Why Wisconsin’s court order against a CAFO farm was so unusual

The Capital Times

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.”

What to know about Kamala Harris, coconut trees and ‘Brat Summer’

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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.

Climate change needs action. UW survey shows even Republicans want that.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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.

‘It feels like a new day’ with Harris on the ticket, Wisconsin Democrats say

Wisconsin State Journal

Allison Prasch, a UW-Madison associate professor of rhetoric, politics and culture, said Harris will likely seek to highlight the contrast with Trump in coming days.

“More than anything I think she is going to really lean into the broad concerns about what another four years of a Trump presidency would do to institutions of U.S. democracy, and make a case that we can be concerned about issues and policy, but also now is the time for unity amongst the Democratic Party to fight together to defeat Trump.”

UW-Madison one step closer to harnessing the power of the sun through fusion research

Wisconsin Public Radio

For the first time, a fusion device at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has generated plasma, inching one step closer toward using nuclear fusion as a a new source of carbon-free energy.

The university’s physicists and engineers have been building and testing the device at a lab in Stoughton for the last four years, which is referred to as the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror or WHAM. The magnetic mirror device became operational on July 15.

UW scientists break new ground on nuclear fusion, which could be the future of energy

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists has taken a major step toward creating a clean, reliable and powerful source of energy.

Four years in the making, it is part of a broader approach to using nuclear fusion energy that, unlike existing nuclear technology, does not create large amounts of radioactive waste.

‘Entirely unprecedented’: Biden’s exit, Harris’ rise scrambles race in Wisconsin

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“In the short run, I think it trips up the Republicans, who have had a really wonderful week (with the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee),” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.”(Biden’s) age, his feebleness, his mental capacity, those were the things that the public had major concerns about. … that’s now gone as an issue.”

Do Wisconsin Democratic delegates have to vote for Biden? Your delegate questions answered

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“It seems like Biden has released (the delegates from their pledges). He didn’t say that formally, but they’re also not formally bound to him,” Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Democrats fight to retain ‘Blue Wall’ following RNC in Milwaukee

Chicago Tribune

Wisconsin has remained a closely divided state that gets an outsized share of attention from the national political parties, evenan outsized share of attention from the national political parties, even as other once-purple states have tipped more reliably in one direction — Colorado toward the Democrats and Ohio toward Republicans, for example.

“I don’t think there’s been another state that has stayed at that kind of knife-edge point for so long,” said Barry Burden, a political science knife-edge point for so long,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

 

‘There’s no way this is anything other than massively disruptive’: President Biden drops out of presidential race

WKOW-TV 27

“The suddenness with which this announcement was made, the lack of preparation or ceremony and the lack of institution that is there aren’t senior Democratic Party leaders making this announcement or gathering with him somewhere. It wasn’t a press conference. The almost casual way it was done feels very personal, very much like he woke up this morning and said,  that’s it,” said Howard Schweber, political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Group alleges discrimination after being denied service at Waunakee business

WMTV - Channel 15

Federal and state laws prohibit discrimination of public accommodation on the basis of religion. But Volkman-Bascome Professor of Law at UW-Madison Anuj Desai says it is legal to refuse some services based on the owner’s beliefs. “That’s where this gets tricky because those views might well overlap with certain religions,” he said. “And so they’re going to say ‘this is actually discriminated against me based on my religion, not just on my views.’”

‘My Property, My Trees’: New Tree-Cutting Law Divides N.Y. Town

New York Times

The debate over how to balance environmental concerns and property rights is becoming more common, said Max Besbris, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in housing and climate change. “There’s a very real anxiety” over best practices, he said, especially since a house is the biggest purchase many people will ever make.

New housing permits in Madison metro area down from 2021 peak amid housing crisis

Wisconsin State Journal

A dwindling amount of undeveloped land and an inability to expand puts limits on new single-family home construction in Madison. But in the broader metro, high land and construction costs, labor shortages and changing bank lending standards have stifled new building, said Kurt Paulsen, a professor of urban planning at UW-Madison.

Land trusts to seek more Stewardship funds after state Supreme Court decision

Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin had become a national outlier in the authority that it gives to legislative committees, according to Miriam Seifter, a UW-Madison law professor and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative.

Steph Tai is also a UW-Madison law professor and associate dean for education and faculty affairs at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. They said the ruling gives more free rein to agencies.

The GOP Convention Kicks Off in a City Where Republicans Don’t Want People to Vote

Mother Jones

After the election, registered voters in Milwaukee County and Madison’s Dane County were surveyed about why they didn’t cast a ballot. Eleven percent cited the voter ID law and said they didn’t have an acceptable ID; of those, more than half said the law was the “main reason” they didn’t vote. According to the study’s author, University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kenneth Mayer, that finding implies that between 12,000 and 23,000 registered voters in Madison and Milwaukee—and as many as 45,000 statewide—were deterred from voting by the ID law. “We have hard evidence there were tens of thousands of people who were unable to vote because of the voter ID law,” he said.

Wisconsin sees promise in ‘housing first’ support of domestic violence survivors

Wisconsin Watch

“It opens up a whole new world of possibilities,” said Kate Walsh, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and part of a team assessing the effectiveness of the statewide pilot project.

The UW-Madison team is gathering survey data from 68 housing recipients across the program’s nine pilot sites. More than half of the participants across the nine sites reported a reduction in exposure to domestic violence and higher satisfaction with their living situations, according to preliminary findings.

2 cranes try their hand at parenting despite species difference

Wisconsin Public Radio

Anna Pidgeon, an avian ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said cross-fostering is used in many different ways among domestic and wild species. In this case, a common species chick — a sandhill crane — is raised by a vulnerable species — blue cranes — to help them gain parenting skills.

“Figuring out how to work as a pair, as coparents, is something that just like in humans or other species where it takes two, they get better with time and with practice,” Pidgeon said.

Winds from black holes are speeding up, UW-Madison study says

The Daily Cardinal

Eight years and 130 observations: that’s all it takes to prove the winds coming from supermassive black holes have accelerated.

Led by University of Wisconsin-Madison Assistant Astronomy Professor Catherine Grier and recent graduate Robert Wheatly, a team of researchers compiled years of data to find that quasars, the cores of galaxies where supermassive black holes are messily feeding, are emitting winds that are speeding up over time. This research may mark the first step in understanding how black holes communicate with the galaxies they’re in, according to Grier.

UW-Madison professor and PhD candidate counter white-nose syndrome

Channel 3000

The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced Thursday one of its professors, along with a PhD candidate, have made scientific gains in studying how a type of invasive fungus kills North American bats.

UW said Prof. Bruce Klein and PhD candidate Marcos Isidoro-Ayza worked to shed light on the mystery of how the fungus initiates infection and causes “white-nose syndrome,” which has devastated several North American bat species over the years. The pair discovered how the fungus covertly hijacks cells at the surface of bats’ skin.

The dairy farm of the future could employ robotics

Wisconsin Public Radio

Dennis Hancock is center director at the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center, which will administer the new facility in partnership with the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. He said part of the decline in Wisconsin dairy farms can be attributed to workforce shortage and a possible solution is replacing some of the workforce with technology.

“One of the ways to save smaller farms, in my opinion and those that have actually made the conversion would agree, is through the use of robotics,” Hancock recently said on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “Robotics are quite expensive, but they do save a lot of labor.”

Wisconsin farmers face profitability challenges with wet weather and soggy field conditions

Wisconsin State Farmer

“We had the warmest February on record and our soil moisture was down to 16% in some areas. And now we’ve gone from one of the most severe deficits to one of the most severe surpluses (of moisture) in just a couple of months,” said Kevin Jarek, University of Wisconsin Division of Extension Crops and Soils educator for Outagamie County. “In my 25 years with Extension, this is unbelievable.”

Just how ‘horrible’ is Milwaukee’s crime? A look at the midyear stats.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“When people talk about crime and the proliferation of crime among some communities rather than others, there often is an attempt to explain it very simplistic,” said Alvin Thomas, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s more than just that. There’s racism. There’s the historical impact of racism and race, and how that affects policy, how policy impacts access to resources, impacts access to social mobility, impacts where people live, what kind of schools people go to, the perception of any kind of personal agency, the ability to rise beyond where you’re born.”

Republican convention: GOP hopes to swing Wisconsin

The Hill

“Wisconsin is one of the handful of states that has flipped back and forth between the last two presidential elections, so for a party that’s concerned about winning the Electoral College, this is a state where they would naturally look,” explained Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Court rulings risk Wisconsin’s air and water protections, scholar says

The Capital Times

In the last week of June, back-to-back U.S. Supreme Court rulings curtailed the power of federal agencies and restricted the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations of air and water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s the view of Steph Tai, an environmental law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who says Wisconsin will feel the rulings’ effects on issues like drinking water quality differently than other states because some policies make Wisconsin an “unusual state.”

Biden’s press conference will be a key test for him. But he’s no master of the big rhetorical moment – Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The debate, rather than helping Biden reset the race against Trump, confirmed voters’ preestablished fears about him, said Allison Prasch, a professor of rhetoric who researches presidential communications at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.“The president is a symbol,” she said, adding that Americans often look to the president as a mirror to reflect on their hopes and their fears.

Rain, humidity lead to an increase in mosquitoes in southern Wisconsin

Channel 3000

“This summer, all those mosquitoes that were waiting in the ground for water have found it,” says Dr. Lyric Bartholomay, who works in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences at UW-Madison. “So, the nonstop rain that we’ve had, and the warm temperatures just make them for the perfect storm, for the mosquitoes to have a place to grow and reproduce. And then come out hungry to feed on us.”

UW-Madison researchers find high PFAS levels in natural foam on Wisconsin lakes, rivers

Channel 3000

“We sampled several dozen different lakes and rivers in Wisconsin, and so we were looking at PFAS in foam,” said Christy Remucal, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and interim director of the University of Wisconsin Aquatic Sciences Center. “It’s the white stuff you sometimes see on the side of the lake or in the river.”

Study finds foam on Wisconsin rivers and lakes has higher PFAS levels than waters below

Wisconsin Public Radio

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that naturally occurring foams on state waterways have PFAS levels as much as thousands of times higher than waters that lie below.

The findings are part of a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. She said the PFAS concentrations in foam were “jaw-dropping.” Samples of foam collected from Lake Monona showed PFAS levels up to roughly 328,000 parts per trillion.

A rural church’s vision: Be essential to the whole community, focus on more than just Sundays

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Whether a church is involved in the broader community is a predictor of its success, said Steven Deller, a professor of applied economics and an expert in rural economic development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Congregations that are internally focused and closed off to new ideas and newcomers are “going to struggle,” Deller said.

“Is this the kind of community that the common response is, ‘Well, you’re not from here, so you don’t understand?'” Deller said. “That kind of attitude can be the kiss of death.”