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Category: UW Experts in the News

Evangelicals in American politics

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Ever since the days of Puritan New England, American governments have struggled to define the relationship between religion and a secular nation. In recent years, that struggle has become increasingly strident with the rise of the Christian Right. What is the relationship between the Christian Right and traditional evangelicals? At what point did the Christian Right become an influence in US presidential elections? And who were the key players in that development? Historian Dan Hummel of UW-Madison will take us into the world of the Christian Right and its influence in American politics.

With mental health system under strain, more patients being transferred to facility for sex offenders

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

University of Wisconsin-Madison criminal justice professor Kenneth Streit said the new unit will allow people on the waitlist for Mendota and other state mental hospitals to get treatment at a civil facility sooner, with more access to personal space and state-trained medical professionals. Many are currently languishing in county jails.

“A person’s going to have much more contact with people who are aware of what their symptoms are and aware of how that person should be behaving,” Streit said

Now that the 2 Wisconsin referendums passed, what’s next and what don’t we know about them yet?

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School also examined the referendum language and found that Wisconsin didn’t lay out some exceptions that other states have.

“Even states that have restricted the use of private funding or resources have often included exceptions for common donations, such as private spaces for use as polling locations or food and beverages for poll workers,” staff attorney Emily Lau wrote in an analysis of the referendums.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate and the vaccine wars

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The Washington Post

Of course, even if a link to air pollution is not yet proved, that does not mean it can be ruled out. “It’s hard to disagree with the opinion that exposure to neurotoxins and air pollution is bad for our health and that we should be doing more to protect our environment and prevent these exposures,” Maureen Durkin, chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an email. “Credible research into the causal links of these exposures to autism specifically is difficult to do but should be done and critically evaluated to inform environmental policies.”

Wisconsin voters enshrine amendments that could ‘subvert’ elections in state

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The Guardian

“This really comes down to how broadly we interpret the constitutional amendment,” said Emily Lau, a staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin. The courts could, theoretically, affirm existing processes – and could even look to the amendment banning private funding as an opportunity to ensure full public funding for election offices.

Total solar eclipse: What to know if you’re viewing from Madison

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The Capital Times

The total eclipse — which occurs when the moon aligns entirely in its orbit between the sun and the Earth — will begin to be visible in Madison at 12:50 p.m. but will be at maximum coverage at 2:05 p.m., said James Lattis, the director of the University of Wisconsin Space Place.

“The basic astronomy of the eclipse is that the moon comes between us and the sun, and blocks part of the disk or all of the disk of the sun,” Lattis explained. “So if you’re at the right place, that path of totality where the alignment is right for the moon to completely cover the disk of the sun, you get the sight of the total eclipse.”

Trump pivots to general election with Midwest swing

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Washington Examiner

Trump’s wins in Michigan and Wisconsin, in addition to Pennsylvania, over Clinton in 2016 secured him that election and the White House, even as he lost them four years later. But Wisconsin might be the most competitive of the battleground states, according to University of Wisconsin, Madison, Elections Research Center Director Barry Burden.

UW Health Transplant Center marks 20,000 organ transplants

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Spectrum News

This April, which marks Donate Life Month, the UW Health Transplant Center is reflecting on a major milestone. In Feb. 2024, surgeons completed the 20,000th organ transplant in the program’s history.

“Kind of top of mind is the fact that, how many people have helped that many people receive the gift of life,” Dr. Dixon Kaufman, UW Health Transplant Center’s medical director, said. “At the top of that list are all the organ donors [and] their families — the vast majority from our community and the state of Wisconsin. That … allows us to give the gift of life to so many people.”

Once near extinction, cranes are featured in a symposium at a Door County sanctuary

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Green Bay Press-Gazette

The symposium kicks off at 6 p.m. April 12 with a keynote presentation (via Zoom) by Stanley Temple of the University of Wisconsin-Madison on “The Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Then and Now: Is it Still Working?” Temple will talk about the first century of migratory bird protection and speculate about its future, given ongoing challenges from loss and degradation of habitat, collisions with human-made structures, predation by cats, pesticide poisoning and oil spills.

Learning about WisconsinEye, More evictions, Advancements in kidney disease research

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Wisconsin Public Radio

The Massachusetts General Hospital recently completed the world’s first successful transplant of a genetically altered pig kidney. A pair of Wisconsin kidney specialists share their insights on this milestone. Then, we dive further into chronic kidney disease, including transplantation and dialysis. Includes interview with Dr. Didier Mandelbrot, the medical director of the UW Health Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation Program

Wisconsin dairy farms closely watching avian flu cases in cattle

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, said the case highlights the importance of immediate action by dairy farmers if they see disease symptoms in their animals, which can include decreased lactation and low appetite. He said the people working on a farm with sick animals should be monitored closely.

“We don’t think that it’s a significant public health threat at this point,” Poulsen said. “But just like in our farms with poultry (highly pathogenic) avian influenza, they’re getting a large challenge, so we need to watch them very closely, and make sure that everyone is provided with the best public health care that we have available.”

Zolper Properties warns tenants of potential rent increases if MPS referendum passes

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

University of Wisconsin-Madison public affairs assistant professor and property tax expert Ross Milton said it is hard to find academic literature with “real world evidence” of how higher property taxes are shared between tenants and landlords.

He said renters voting Tuesday should be aware that landlords can decide to make them bear the brunt of higher property taxes. However, Milton added that property companies can raise rent whenever they want in Wisconsin, regardless of a new tax. “We don’t have rent control in Wisconsin,” Milton said.

What Would A Solar Eclipse Have Looked Like to Neanderthals? Here’s What We Know

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Inverse

“It’s almost impossible to imagine that ancient hominins would have ignored an eclipse, or not noticed,” University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks tells Inverse. What’s harder to guess — and more interesting to speculate about — is what the Neanderthals would have thought and felt when darkness suddenly swallowed the day.

Deepfakes raise alarm about AI in elections

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The Hill

What might have taken a studio budget and a production team to produce a few years ago can now be put together by everyday users with just a few clicks, said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And with the ubiquity of social media platforms, fabricated content can be widely spread, with few formal checks in place.

Up to 40 percent of dementia cases are preventable, geriatrician says

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

One of the most common myths about dementia — a general impairment in thinking and memory — is that it’s a normal part of aging. But Dr. Nathaniel Chin, an assistant professor and geriatrician at UW Health, wants to bust that myth.

“There are plenty of people who live a really long and healthy life that never develop advanced thinking changes,” said Chin, the director of medical services with the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and host of the “Dementia Matters” podcast.

Wisconsin experienced its warmest winter on record. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to plant your garden yet.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

For the most part, the winter season was downright balmy, with only one small stretch of negative temperatures in January, making it the warmest on record for Wisconsin, said Steve Vavrus, Wisconsin’s state climatologist and the assistant director at the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Center for Climatic Research. The El Nino effect — which carries warm air from the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean across the U.S. — is largely to blame for the warmth.

“It was a full two degrees warmer than the previous record, which is a huge amount,” he said. “We had the warmest December on record. We had the warmest February on record and we had the 10th warmest January on record. So that really is extreme in terms of consistent warmth over a whole season.”

Trump-backed GOP leaders call for embrace of early and mail-in voting even as former president continues to cast doubt

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CNN Politics

“The [Republican] Party does not have a single message about all of this, in contrast to the Democrats, who – at least in 2020 – had a really unified message,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And they also developed the infrastructure to figure out how to navigate the 50 state laws and determine who has already voted early and how to reach out to people who have requested absentee ballots but not returned them. That’s very much a state-by-state process.”

Political divides, declining population are causing fewer people to run in rural local elections

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Appleton Post-Crescent

Reasons for the lack of candidates include the time commitment matched with lack of monetary compensation as well as declining participation in local government, according to Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The positions often entail significant time commitments, do not provide much if any monetary compensation, and subject people to complaints, criticism, and even harassment,” Burden told The Post-Crescent.

RNC may again adopt a party platform this year after not having one in 2020, Lara Trump says

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Party platforms have internal and external purposes, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center.

Internally, the platform serves to get all party faithful around the country on the same page, he said. The document is worked out in the lead-up to the convention and adopted by delegates at the event itself.

Innovative research into cover crops is helping Oneida white corn co-op restore depleted soil

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

For the members of Ohe·láku, a co-op of Oneida Nation families growing their traditional white corn together, what started as an experiment has become a success story.

A few years ago, they partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to test different cover crop mixes to restore soil they grow on, which had been depleted under prior ownership. Cover crops are left in the soil after the primary crop is harvested. The idea is to make sure the fields are never bare, increasing soil fertility, limiting runoff and keeping the soil moist.

China’s Older Job Seekers Expose Scale of Unemployment Crisis

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Newsweek

“Relative to China’s consumer market, China has a surplus of about 100 million laborers. In the past, China relied on exports to ensure employment. But now, due to the economic downturn and the “de-risk” policy of the West, China’s exports are falling and unemployment pressure is rising,” University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Yi Fuxian told Newsweek.

Why Do Colors Change during a Solar Eclipse?

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Scientific American

For other animals, an eclipse-induced Purkinje effect may be even more intense, says Freya Mowat, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. Birds have a fourth cone that lets them see ultraviolet light. It’s difficult to say exactly how the sudden light change during a solar eclipse would affect avian vision, Mowat, says but it’s possible that the shades of purple would be extra vivid and disorienting

Milwaukee Bucks, Deer District community benefit deal seen as model for more development

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Wisconsin Examiner

“From Community Benefits, to Collective Bargaining, and Back” was written by researchers Pablo Aquiles-Sanchez and Laura Dresser of the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The center describes itself as a “think-and-do tank” promoting solutions to social problems that focus on shared growth and opportunity, environmental sustainability and resilient democratic institutions as “necessary and achievable complements in human development.”

Viral Genetics Confirms What On-the-Ground Activists Knew Early in the Mpox Outbreak

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Scientific American

David O’Conner, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told me that COVID initially increased the collaborations between researchers and public health officials. He worries that in our supposedly post-COVID world, we’re returning to a baseline with public health and academics working with “less overlap than during the early [SARS-CoV-2] pandemic.”

What are the fastest growing counties in Wisconsin? Here’s what census data shows

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The official U.S. Census is only taken every 10 years, so estimates like these are “ballpark figures” determined by “symptomatic indicators of population change,” including births, deaths, and domestic and international migration, said David Egan-Robertson, a demographer with the University of Wisconsin’s Applied Population Laboratory. Still, they’re likely to closely reflect reality.

The new estimates reveal that, in the 2020s, some Wisconsin counties have seen significant population growth while others have seen steep declines.

US housing market faces biggest shakeup in years – here’s what we know

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The Guardian

“The decoupling of seller agent and buyer agent fees allows for a lot more flexibility and novelty in how agents are going to get paid,” said Max Besbris, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The possibilities are more open now than ever before. We’re really going to see, generally, a lot more transparency.”

Bizarre ‘Hot Jupiter’ Planets Keep Surprising Astronomers

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Scientific American

The next step in fully understanding hot Jupiters is to use these discoveries to establish the relative likelihoods of the three possible migration mechanisms in order to determine which systems formed which way. Jupiter-sized planets are the rulers of their planetary system because of their dominant gravitational influence and the way their migration pathway sculpts the architectures of their system. Understanding these worlds is the first step to constructing a unified theory of planet formation that scientists have been seeking for centuries.

-JULIETTE BECKER is an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is also a founding member of the new Wisconsin Center for Origins Research (WiCOR).

The End of the Eclipse

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Eos

“To reconstruct the [long-term] Earth–Moon history, we need to see how those periods change,” said Margriet Lantink, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Milankovitch-based reconstructions are more robust” at showing that change than other current methods, especially for the older part of the geological record, she said.

Wisconsin eclipse chasers plan to drive a thousand miles for total solar eclipse

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Wisconsin Public Radio

James Lattis, director of the UW Space Place, said a partial eclipse is a rare site. They are an opportunity for scientific discovery. Lattis said people can watch the progression by facing away from the sun and looking at the image of the sun made by a pinhole, leaves on a tree or holes in a kitchen colander.

“You see the distant shadow of the moon rushing up on you,” Lattis said. “The crescent of sunlight that’s left is getting gradually thinner and thinner. You start seeing lighting effects in the environment around you.”

Older Wisconsinites have the highest suicide rate of any age group. Why don’t we talk about it?

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Green Bay Press-Gazette

There’s a disconnect in how we respond to older people struggling with their mental health, said Dr. Sarah Endicott, a clinical professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison focused on geriatrics. Some of that, she suspects, may be chalked up to ageism, which the World Health Organization defines as the stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination toward others based on age.

“I don’t think it’s intentional, but the lower value we place on older adults in general, especially when it comes to end-of-life, I’m guessing that’s part of the cause,” said Endicott, who also works as a geriatric psychiatrist at Stoughton Hospital in Dane County.