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Category: UW Experts in the News

Wisconsin efforts to remove Donald Trump from ballot dismissed after Supreme Court ruling

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Wisconsin State Journal

“Today’s decision appears to put an end to all the pending litigation in Wisconsin and other states seeking to remove Trump from the ballot based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s insurrection clause,” UW-Madison Law School associate law professor Rob Yablon said Monday. “The Court is quite categorical in saying that states do not have the power to enforce that provision against candidates for federal office.”

Liberal group makes U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil one of its top targets in 2024

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Wisconsin Watch

While Steil’s seat appears relatively safe, it’s actually “rather competitive,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden. Noting that Trump won the 1st District by two points in 2020 while losing the state by less than one point, “even a slight shift in political winds could bring the district into play,” he said.

Wisconsin’s Medicaid postpartum protection lags most of the country

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Wisconsin Watch

“The year following a delivery is a very important year with huge life changes and where having adequate health care is absolutely essential,” said Dr. Lee Dresang, a family medicine doctor at UW Health and a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Of the patients he followed with postpartum depression, “exactly zero magically got better at 60 days after delivery,” he said during a legislative hearing.

Explore Wisconsin history through artifacts with PBS Wisconsin Education’s new ‘The Look Back’ collection

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PBS Wisconsin

PBS Wisconsin Education announces the launch of a new education series called The Look Back, which explores eras from Wisconsin’s history through artifacts. The Look Back was made in collaboration with the Wisconsin Historical Society, University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries, UW–Madison’s Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History, Wisconsin educators and learners, and museums around the state.

Scientists have used cells from fluid drawn during pregnancy to grow mini lungs and other organs

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ABC News

Scientists have created miniorgans from cells floating in the fluid that surrounds a fetus in the womb – an advance they believe could open up new areas of prenatal medicine. Alta Charo, an emeritus professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who wasn’t involved in the study, said the new approach doesn’t raise the same ethical issues. “Obtaining cells from amniotic fluid that is already being sampled for standard clinical purposes does not appear to add any physical risks to either fetus or pregnant woman,” she said in an email.

Inside Smashmallow, Silicon Valley’s Failed Marshmallow Startup

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Business Insider

Everyone agrees that it ought to have been possible, engineering-wise, to make a machine that made Smashmallows. Everyone also agrees that, in the end, no one was able to. “The fact that Tanis said they could do it was interesting,” says Richard Hartel, a food engineer who leads the candymaking program at the University of Wisconsin. “Their engineers must have said, ’Well, this shouldn’t be a problem.’ They probably figured this was going to be easy, and it turned out to be harder than they thought.”

Scientists Debunk the Idea That Smiling Makes You Happy

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Inverse

Such rigor is admirable, but it also means one can miss things, says Simon Goldberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studies the effects of meditation, including research among people who have psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. He noted that because of Dunn and Folk’s strict criteria, they omitted hundreds of studies on meditation’s benefits. “It’s, in the spirit of rigor, throwing lots of babies out with the bathwater,” he says. “It’s really very obvious that meditation training reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression.”

Starbucks to give raises, start bargaining with union workers

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The Capital Times

Michael Childers, a business and labor education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the news may be bigger than the agreement the United Auto Workers reached with major U.S. auto manufacturers late last year, ending a nearly two-month strike that had shut down multiple plants.

“Historically, the service sector has struggled in a huge way to successfully organize and bargain contracts,” Childers said. “This is really exciting news for … workers wanting a voice at work.”

The truth about illegal immigration and crime

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The Washington Post

“Many politicians, law enforcement personnel and ordinary citizens are nonetheless incensed because this person should not have been in the country and thus capable of committing a crime,” said Michael Light, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has published several studies showing undocumented immigrants are not more crime-prone than native-born Americans. “This view that the person’s undocumented status is an aggravating factor is also likely a reason why these crimes generate such strong responses.”

The amount of frigid winter air is near a record low, and shrinking

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The Washington Post

For about a decade, Jonathan Martin, a professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, has analyzed the size of the cold pool at this level — or the area of the hemisphere covered by temperatures at or below 23 degrees (minus-5 Celsius). This winter’s cold pool will finish the winter as the second-smallest on record, Martin said.

Ice fishing obsession faces peril in changing Wisconsin climate

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The Capital Times

Olaf Jensen, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology, studies fish, fishing and fishery management. He said what’s more exciting to him is what lies under the surface.

“It’s a glimpse into that mystery of life under the ice when you go ice fishing,” Jensen said. “You realize that life goes on under the ice. Lakes don’t just go to sleep for the winter and wake up again when the ice comes off.”

Paper exams, AI-proof assignments: Wisconsin college professors adjust in a world with ChatGPT

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Eric Ely, who teaches in the Information School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has made some of his assignments more personal, asking students to write about topics that connect to their own lives. In a new assignment this semester, he has students engage with an AI chatbot and document the process. “Part of my job is to prepare students for life after college, right?” he said. “This is the world that we’re living in, and so I feel like I would be doing a disservice to students if I would not talk about this or limit or completely prohibit the use.”

For UW-Madison professor Dietram Scheufele, the big question isn’t what AI can — or cannot — do for college students. “What I’m much more concerned about is the fundamental disruption to our social system and how we prepare students for that,” said Scheufele, whose research includes technology policy, misinformation and social media. “The question for universities right now is why this degree will be worth something 40 years from now.”

John Zumbrunnen, the vice provost of teaching and learning at UW-Madison, said the most-asked question he gets about AI is whether the university has or will have a policy on it. UW-Madison does not, meaning students navigate at least four different class policies per semester. In some cases, individual assignments will have their own AI expectations. That’s why it’s important, he said, for instructors to offer grace in this new world.

“The answer in the teaching and learning space cannot be one-size-fits-all,” he said earlier this month at a UW Board of Regents meeting.

Planned Parenthood asks Wisconsin Supreme Court to rule on constitutional right to abortion

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Miriam Seifter, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Law, said similar cases have been brought before state supreme courts across the country since the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections in their 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“At least a dozen state high courts have expressly held that these types of provisions protect abortion, at least to some extent,” Seifter said. “There are a number of others that have reached those types of rulings at the lower court level, but haven’t fully resolved them in the high courts yet.”

Fact check: Yes, the price of an inhaler in the U.S. is massively higher than overseas cost

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

David Kreling, professor emeritus in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the U.S. price quoted by Baldwin sounds about right.

“The $500 number may be in the ballpark for U.S. patented (brand-name, newer) drugs,” Kreling said in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin. “That would be consistent with my understanding of market data on sales by firms in the U.S. Things in the $7 range, here, only reside within the off-patent generic drug market (where we have low prices, sometimes at or near lowest in the world).”

How the polar vortex could deliver one last blast of wintry weather

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The Washington Post

“What is remarkable is we have a second disruption to the stratospheric vortex happening right now,” Andrea Lang, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said in an email. “Two major disruptions to the polar vortex in one season is not common. It has happened before, but it is not something that you expect to happen in any given winter season.”

Presidential candidate age, Nursing home staffing requirements, Wisconsin as a hub for video games

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Joe Biden and Donald Trump would be the two oldest candidates to ever be nominated for President. We talk to Allison Prasch, a political rhetoric professor from UW-Madison, about how age plays in the race and how previous candidates have faced similar questions.

Barbara Bowers, a UW-Madison nursing school expert, explains why nursing homes in Wisconsin would benefit from bigger changes to how they operate, in addition to simply complying with a new federal requirement to increase staff size.

UW-Madison’s Missy Nergard and Paul Robbins discuss new sustainability initiative

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WORT-FM

UW-Madison’s new Sustainability Research Hub is scheduled to launch this spring – as part of a campus-wide initiative Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced earlier this month.

The initiative’s stated goals range from promoting collaborative research to achieving net-zero emissions by 2048. WORT News Producer Faye Parks spoke to Missy Nergard, UW-Madison’s director of sustainability, and Paul Robbins, dean of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, to learn more.

Delayed FAFSA information has kept Wisconsin colleges, universities waiting

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Wisconsin Public Radio

UW-Madison pushed its decision date from May 1 to May 15 to give families more time to weigh financial offers.

Helen Faith, director of the office of student financial aid at UW-Madison, said the “new and major” change to the application had a big impact on students. “Of course, they’re very anxious. They really want to know whether they can afford to come here,” Faith said.

Wisconsin Democrats introduce a proposal to ban conversion therapy

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WKOW-TV 27

LB Klein, an LGBTQ+ Health Expert & Associate Professor at UW-Madison, says, statistically, society sees a lot of LGBTQ+ community members who face depression and anxiety. Klein believes this isn’t because they’re a part of the LGBTQ+ community, but because they’re living in cultures where people are trying to change who they are.

“If we provide access for folks to have supportive therapies, and to live in on a state local level, in a way where they’re affirmed and supported, we actually see those disparities around health and mental health go away,” Klein said.

Monarch population dwindling with second lowest numbers on record

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Karen Oberhauser is the founder and director of the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project and former director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. To put 2.2 acres in perspective, she said that’s less than two football fields.

“So that means that all of the monarchs from this huge area in the northern part of the United States — imagine the northeastern quarter of the United States — all of those butterflies are in an area in Mexico right now smaller than two football fields,” Oberhauser told WPR’s “The Morning Show.”

Is Bryan Steil correct that households are spending $11,400 more per year because of Biden?

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the GOP calculations seem to be right, except for one aspect:

“They calculate numbers for ‘a household’ when it’s unclear how many people are in a household,” Chinn said in an email. Chinn previously analyzed the report for a Wisconsin Watch fact-check of an ad that said Wisconsinites are spending $10,000 more per year compared to 2021.

Physical therapy: How to improve your sense of balance

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Several systems govern our body’s sense of balance: the muscles, joints, inner ears and more. Our physical therapists are back. They’ll share the exercises you can do to bolster your balance and decrease your risk of falling. Interview with Jill Thein-Nissenbaum, a professor in the Physical Therapy Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Lori Thein Brody, a physical therapist at UW Health Spine Physical Therapy Clinic.

Do California’s High Road worker training programs offer a step up?

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San Francisco Chronicle

The High Road program is an improvement compared to many other workforce programs, which often prioritize training people for jobs regardless of the quality, said Laura Dresser, the associate director of the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She helped coin the term “high road” and served as a consultant to California’s workforce programs in 2017.

Deceptive AI campaign ads could target Wisconsin. Lawmakers have a plan to fight them.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“There has not been a line in terms of what modifications are okay,” said Dietram Scheufele, who studies misinformation and social media at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Public opinion about what’s acceptable in altering content has changed, such as editing photos of ourselves on Instagram or LinkedIn, he said.

“If some deepfake comes out of Biden falling down repeatedly right before the election in key states, and it all turns out to be fake five days later, that’s completely irrelevant,” Scheufele said. “We don’t have video-assisted review like we have in in football, which means the game will have ended and the result will stand.”

A game-changing moment for Wisconsin Democrats. New maps put legislative majorities within reach

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Michigan and Minnesota — two Midwestern states where Democrats took control in 2022 for the first time in many years — could serve as examples of what Wisconsin Democrats would do with a legislative majority, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center.

Democrats in those states have “eagerly legislated in new directions on issues such as criminal justice and environmental protection,” Burden said. Given the chance, Wisconsin Democrats would likely pursue a variety of policy changes unavailable to them under GOP control, he said.

Wisconsin weighs anti-obesity drug coverage for state workers

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Wisconsin State Journal

Dr. Samantha Pabich, a UW Health endocrinologist who treats many patients with obesity, said the newer drugs can help obese people lose a higher percentage of their body weight than older drugs. That can help control diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, pain and other conditions, and prevent the need for treatments such as home oxygen therapy and liver transplants, she said.

Wisconsin’s nursing home industry could struggle with new federal staffing requirements

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Barbara Bowers, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Nursing who has studied the long-term care industry, also said innovation is needed. Bowers said her research has found that the majority of resident concerns center around the lack of staff at facilities. On top of being short-staffed, she said the typical nursing home model is “stuck in the past,” with nurses and aides working separately instead of utilizing a team approach to patient care.

“If we had more staffing just by itself and didn’t do anything else, I don’t think we’d see the improvements we’re looking for,” she said.

Wisconsin parents of young kids more likely to struggle with bills

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The Capital Times

Conducted by the UW Survey Center and analyzed by UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, the survey went to around 3,500 people across the state. Researchers compared the responses of participants who have children under age 6 with those who don’t.

None of those findings are really “huge surprises,” said La Follette School professor Sarah Halpern-Meekin, who analyzed the results.

What’s going on at the US-Mexico border, and what are asylum and parole? Here are answers to key questions

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“If you say, ‘I have a fear of return,’ it triggers a protection under our laws that ensures that a government official will review your case to see if you are likely to be successful with qualifying for asylum in the U.S.,” said Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin.

How rising import prices could affect inflation

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Marketplace

Not every type of import is raising a red flag right now. For instance, imports of industrial supplies, materials and other intermediate goods got more expensive. But those are just a small part of what goes into a finished product that a consumer buys, says Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin on track to have warmest winter ever recorded

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Steve Vavrus, a senior scientist at UW-Madison and the state’s climatologist, said the weather is already causing economic impact, especially on the tourism industry in northern Wisconsin.

“They depend on snow and ice for skiing and skating and ice fishing and so forth,” Vavrus said.  “There’s been closed snowmobile trails. There’s been winter festivals that have been canceled, unsafe ice conditions for fishing and so on.”

Wisconsin lost 10% of farms, 30% of dairies in 5 years, U.S. agriculture census shows

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Slightly more Wisconsin farmers reported taking steps to protect soil and water quality in 2022. They planted nearly 754,000 acres of cover crops — plants that protect the soil and keep it in place during the offseason — about a 23% increase from 2017. The number of acres that were not tilled also increased, from about 2.2 million in 2017 to about 2.4 million in 2022. No-till practices reduce soil disturbance.

Those acres are still just a small portion of Wisconsin’s total farmed acres. “I would have hoped to see that pick up a bit faster,” said Erin Silva, a professor of organic and sustainable agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Six Most Amazing Discoveries We’ve Made by Exploring Venus

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Smithsonian Magazine

Sulfuric acid clouds circle the entire planet at a height of 25 to 37 miles above the surface. They contain tiny acidic aerosols that are about a hundred times thinner than human hair. Together the droplets resemble the air pollution in highly populated cities on Earth. “It’s like a haze that you find when you fly into, say, New Delhi or Beijing,” says Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Valentines for your dog? It’s one way we treat pets like family

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Valentine’s Day reminds us to show our love to the important people in our lives. We usually declare our romantic love, but sometimes all the hearts and flowers remind us to express our love to others who are important in our lives as well. For a lot of us, this could mean our dogs. About half of U.S. households keep dogs as pets. Not only in word, but also in deed, many people express their love for their dogs not merely as pets, but as family.

Written by David L. Weimer is the Edwin E. Witte Professor of Political Economy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is coauthor with Aidan R. Vining of “Dog Economics: Perspectives on Our Canine Relationships” (Cambridge University Press 2024).