Category: UW Experts in the News

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.

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.

When opposing politicians discuss immigration and crime, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Michael T. Light said they often “talk past one another.”

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.

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.”

“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.”

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.”

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.

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.

“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.”