“It’s a mystery, and that’s one of the reasons we’re interested in it,” Bret Payseur, a genetics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells Inverse.
To make matters worse, if that seems possible, all these numbers rely on official Chinese statistics, and the government has likely been overstating them. According to an extensive examination of different sets of books by University of Wisconsin Prof. Yi Fuxian, it’s possible to find the “fudging” effects by comparing local and provincial data to that published at the national level.
Michael Wagner, a social scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was asked to observe the work and wrote a commentary accompanying the Science papers , says Meta’s business interests may have influenced the project at some points. For instance, he says Meta researchers believed that the experimental studies changing users’ feeds were unlikely to show any big effects—and they pushed to get these papers done first. “You could read it as ‘the big splash is going to be that there aren’t huge effects that are so deleterious to democracy that we need to have a bunch of new regulations on our platform.’”
“It’s a little too buttoned up to say this shows Facebook is not a huge problem or social media platforms aren’t a problem,” said Michael W. Wagner, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, who served as an independent observer of the collaboration, spending hundreds of hours sitting in on meetings and interviewing scientists. “This is good scientific evidence there is not just one problem that is easy to solve.”
Still, collaborations with platforms may not be the model for research going forward and perhaps it shouldn’t be, according to Michael W. Wagner, professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, who served as the collaboration’s independent rapporteur.
The work was not a model for future research since it required direct participation from Meta, which held all the data and provided researchers only with certain kinds, said Michael Wagner, a professor of mass communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was an independent auditor on the project. The researchers said they had final say over the papers’ conclusions.
“Meta set the agenda in ways that affected the overall independence of the researchers,” wrote Michael Wagner, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
And despite valid concerns from many of the researchers involved, in the end Meta did grant them most of the independence they were seeking. That’s according to an accompanying report from Michael W. Wagner, a professor of mass communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who served as an independent observer of the studies. Wagner found flaws in the process — more on those in a minute — but for the most part he found that Meta lived up to its promises.
We talk to an expert on early childhood media consumption about the potential harms of unregulated kids’ content on YouTube, and what parents need to be aware of. We also talk to a PBS Wisconsin education engagement specialist about what outreach is being done to help kids and parents make healthy media choices.
The Federal Trade Commission is finalizing its antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. Peter Carstensen, University of Wisconsin Law School Professor Emeritus and an antitrust expert, explains.
And yet 35% of the audience were men. What gives? “The current level of uncertainty and turbulence and anxiety accounts for part of that crossover among genders,” said Nancy Wong, a professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “People associate ‘Barbie’ with a more comfortable, simple and stable time in their lives.”
Somesh Jha, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Google researcher who specializes in A.I. security, called the new paper “a game changer” that could force the entire industry into rethinking how it built guardrails for A.I. systems.
This notion of a “DIY society” can extend to the numerous ways parents—especially mothers—are asked to “hold it all together,” the University of Wisconsin at Madison sociologist Jessica Calarco told me. For example, the rise of double-earner households was not met with policies like affordable child care or mandatory paid leave. Instead, families have been forced to navigate confusing and competitive marketplaces to acquire basic services such as day care and summer camp, and they are largely on their own to deal with any breakdowns.
“The reason that setting new temperature records is a big deal is that we are now being challenged to find ways to survive through temperatures hotter than any of us have ever experienced before,” University of Wisconsin-Madison climate scientist Andrea Dutton said in an email. “Soaring temperatures place ever increasing strains not just on power grids and infrastructure, but on human bodies that are not equipped to survive some of the extreme we are already experiencing.”
The Barbie movie has seen great success at the box office. We talk with Christine Whelan, a UW-Madison consumer science professor, about the doll’s cultural legacy and latest form.
Interview with Jonathan Martin, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW Madison, about why it’s so hot, and what this means for our climate.
Yellow perch, rainbow trout and tilapia are just a few of the fish farmed for food in Wisconsin. We break down the aquaculture industry and take a tour of a fish farm. Interview with Sharon Moen, an outreach specialist for the Sea Grant Institute at the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute.
Shawn Conley is a soybean and small grain specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He said many farmers who just finished harvesting winter wheat brought in quality grain. Conley said soybean fields are also doing OK, but they’ll need at least an inch of rain per week until September to reach their best yields.
“If we don’t get rain, we’ll start seeing a yield hit on the soybean side of things,” Conley said. “Corn is a different matter. I think we’ve already started to see some corn yield losses out there.”
While paper converters often go overlooked, they play an important role in both Wisconsin’s paper industry and its economy, according to a recent study from the Wisconsin Paper Council and University of Wisconsin titled, “Adding Value to Our Economy – Paper Conversion in Wisconsin.” More than 145 paper converters operated in Wisconsin in 2022, according to the study.
That number gets bigger a lot faster if you factor in companies that use paper along with plastic and other types of products, Scott Bowe, a professor and wood products specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in the May 31 episode of the Wisconsin Paper Council’s “The Paper Files” podcast about the study.
Written by Chris McCahill, managing director of the State Smart Transportation Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It’s been proven that protracted hot weather can make people depressed,” said Dr. Charles Raison, who has done research on heat intolerance and summer-related depression. “It seems as if the system that modulates body temp also modulates mood.”
Raison, professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said people with mental illness often have trouble with thermal regulation. “From our data, we know that people with depression tend to run body temperatures higher than average, and they don’t sweat as much. So being depressed could set you up to not be able to tolerate heat well.”
Considering those factors, Madison needs to build its way out of the housing crisis, experts said. That means building units at all price points to stabilize rent prices, said Kurt Paulsen, urban planning professor at UW-Madison.
“It’s a hard sell, but it works,” Paulsen said. “Housing is mostly a private business. We cannot force a developer or a landlord to provide low-cost affordable housing.”
The economic impacts of the proposal could be significant because parents typically buy baby items right before and right after birth, which is around the time that parental income falls the most, said Jessica Pac, a UW-Madison assistant social work professor.
“If you spend $100 per month just on diapers, and you remove this 5% sales tax, that would be $5 per month, which alone amounts to $60 per year,” Pac said. “But then when you consider all the items covered in the proposal that are purchased in the same time period, it would modestly offset expenses in the first few years of life.”
That’s a problem, said UW-Madison assistant professor Dr. Christopher Nicholas, who researches how psychedelics and other psychoactive compounds can be used to treat addiction, trauma, chronic pain and depression. “Trauma doesn’t discriminate … and those who are suffering often don’t have the resources to pay for ketamine,” Nicholas said.
Gavin Dehnert, emerging contaminants scientist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, helped write the Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ statewide PFAS standards in drinking water. He told the Cap Times the bill provides much-needed funding for testing and cleanup efforts in both public and private water sources.
“Before we can actually remediate it, we have to know where it is,” Dehnert said. “This does a pretty good job at saying, ‘OK, here is where the PFAS are. Let’s find out where the PFAS are so we can go about doing our best to remediate it.’”
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, anesthesiology professor Matthew Banks is tinkering with something in between leaving the trip alone and anesthesia: What if you let people have their full-on psychedelic experience, but then erase their memory of the trip altogether? Do you need to remember a trip for the benefits to stick?
Limnology experts will pay especially close attention to algae growth in Madison’s lakes this week, according to Emily Stanley with the UW-Madison Center for Limnology. Excessive heat and calm water are both good ingredients for algae blooms, she said.
Stanley is expecting algae and weeds to get “slightly greener” but isn’t anticipating anything extreme. The lack of rain has slowed the growth of algae blooms this summer, so a few hot days shouldn’t make much of a difference.
A strike could cost the U.S. economy more than $7 billion, according to research firm Anderson Economic Group, and it would have negative impacts across southern Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin-Madison distinguished lecturer Peter Lukszys said.
Leonard Polzin tracks dairy markets at the UW-Madison Division of Extension. He said the state is feeling the effects of a post-pandemic lag in milk demand.
“Total supply is up, and demand is down. We’re increasing inventory, cows keep producing every day, and we just can’t turn it off. Our inventory numbers of all dairy products are increasing, and buyers know that. Buyers are not hungry for product,” explained Polzin.
For 37 years, the Center for Dairy Research (CDR) has helped innovate the dairy industry.
“Cheese-making has been around, there are lots of different guesses right now, but probably somewhere in the region of 8000 years,” CDR and University of Wisconsin Madison Professor of Food Science John Lucey said.
UW-Madison Chief Information Officer and Vice Provost for Information Technology Lois Brooks describes how the university is managing the use of generative AI among students, faculty and researchers.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Biden administration program for student loan relief, President Joe Biden is out with an alternative plan. The Department of Education is calling the Saving on Valuable Education plan the “most generous” repayment program of its kind. Nicholas Hillman, a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at UW-Madison, gives an update on federal student loan policy.
Another aspect of heat waves that disproportionately affects certain communities is the urban heat island effect, where cities are warming because of buildings and lack of trees and greenspace, said Dr. Jonathan Patz, a professor of health and the environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Mary Ehlenbach, the medical director of the Pediatric Complex Care Program at the University of Wisconsin, who interviewed 44 families with institutionalized children and submitted a report on her findings for the case, said that many families were told incorrectly that their children were medically unfit to live at home or that the family wasn’t eligible to bring their child home because of the size of their house.
“We behave differently if we know we’re being watched. We get timid, we get shy, we spend a lot of our cognition on what people are going to think. … That’s not what we want” in higher ed, said Dorothea Salo, a teaching faculty member at University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Information School. This is especially the case in today’s political climate, where exploring topics like gender identity and abortion can put people in danger.
Other imposter content commonly takes the form of websites or social media accounts, said Mike Wagner, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wagner is the lead investigator for the NSF-funded research project in which Wisconsin Watch and the Cap Times are participating. “We’ve had misinformation since we’ve had information, and we’ve had people sharing things that aren’t true since they shared things that are true,” Wagner said.
Spongy moth populations may spike temporarily about every 10 years. Outbreaks have been trending upward in the last couple of years, according to PJ Liesch, an entomologist with the Division of Extension at UW-Madison. The DNR recorded 294 acres of spongy moth defoliation in 2021, but around 85,000 acres of trees experienced a loss of leaves last year.
UW-Madison researchers have found that black-legged ticks, commonly referred to as deer ticks, can harbor transmissible amounts of prions, the protein particle that causes chronic wasting disease in white-tailed deer.
Leonard Polzin is dairy markets and policy specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension. He told Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Central Time” that most dairy processors have ongoing recruitment efforts and continue to think about ways to compete with employers hiring from the same labor pool. But he said processors are also starting to pay more attention to advancements in technology and how automation could make jobs easier or replace them altogether.
“If they can take what once was done by 10 people and do it by one person through the advent of additional investment, that’s always a topic of discussion,” he said.
Farmers across the Midwest are again dumping volumes of milk down the drain as an oversupply floods the markets. We talk with Leonard Polzin, UW-Madison Extention’s Dairy Markets and Policy Outreach specialist, about what’s causing the milk surplus and how long it may last.
Another aspect of heat waves that disproportionately affects certain communities is the urban heat island effect, where cities are warming because of buildings and lack of trees and greenspace, said Dr. Jonathan Patz, a professor of health and the environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But local demand for apartment developments greatly trumps the demand for condos, said Kurt Paulsen, UW-Madison professor of urban planning. That’s especially true of Madison as it tries to increase its supply of housing units amid a dire housing shortage and an affordability crisis, he said.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin Madison associate professor of political science and legal studies Howard Schweber said given the current state of politics, it’s not surprising that the state’s high court denied the DEI education request. But he called Bradley’s comments shocking.
“Whatever tattered shreds of civility were left within the legal profession have surely vanished when you have a Supreme Court justice saying about her own state’s bar that they are effectively in a conspiracy to take over America and to make an explicit Nazi reference in doing so,” Schweber said.
Josh Kamps is a crops and soils educator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension in the southwestern region. He said crop conditions vary greatly across his area, even from farm to farm.
Kamps said producers who were able to plant early in the season got enough rain to get crops started, allowing the plants to grow deeper roots that tapped into water farther below the surface as soils dried out.
“We have areas where crops were planted a little bit later, maybe toward the end of May,” he said. “Those crops are really struggling. These last couple of rain showers this week are going to definitely help.”
Here’s what guests on the July 14, 2023 episode said about a 2% sales tax in the city of Milwaukee that comes with specific policy conditions and a surprising circuit court ruling in the Wisconsin abortion statutes lawsuit.
Includes interview with Howard Schweber, professor emeritus of political science at the UW-Madison and affiliated faculty at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Steven Deller, professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said businesses remain in “wait and see mode,” as they’ve dealt with economic uncertainty since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates more than a year ago.
“Six months ago, it was like, the Fed is raising interest rates, the sky is falling, the leading economic indicators are all pointing towards recession,” Deller said. “Now, people are going, ‘Well, wait a minute, the sky is not falling.'”
Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Goldman Sachs’ prediction might be a little rosier than that of most economists. He said economists are anticipating an economic slowdown in the latter half of 2023 or early 2024.
“While people think the chances of a recession are receding, I think the average forecaster still sees a recession coming,” Chinn said. “That being said, I think most of them also think it would be a mild recession.”
The fourth number to keep an eye on is any metric of smoke. The U.S. has been in a relative lull, but more smoke is expected this weekend from wildfires in Canada. As of Friday, it was already evident on weather satellite imagery. The tweet below from the University of Wisconsin-Madison CIMSS site provides great perspecive on current and near-future status of vertically integrated smoke.
“The modest benefits would likely not be questioned by patients, clinicians, or payers, if amyloid antibodies were low risk, inexpensive and simple to administer,” wrote UCSF’s Dr. Eric Widera, SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Dr. Sharon Brangman and the University of Wisconsin’s Dr. Nathaniel Chin. “However, they are none of these.”
For the first time in a decade, the Wisconsin State Climatology Office is receiving government funding. A USDA grant will focus the office on rural needs, particularly those of farmers. We talk to Steve Vavrus, the Wisconsin State Climatologist and a senior scientist for the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies Center for Climatic Research at UW-Madison, about this and funding for a statewide network of weather stations.
Francisco Ley, a graduate student in the UW-Madison Department of Astronomy, talks about how and why we might be able to see the Northern Lights this evening around Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Alliant Energy are partnering to build a solar park that will also serve as a research center to explore mixing solar and agriculture, soil impacts, water issues and more.
That could have to do with workers in service industries gravitating toward jobs that were more stable during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Nancy Wong, UW-Madison professor of consumer science.
“Perhaps these industries also do not pay as well,” she said, and salon owners are faced with the expense of raising wages and offering regular hours. That cost can be passed on to customers.
That level of influence is “sort of like Walmart, in a way,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center and a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Prigozhin is wielding more power in Russia now than he was previously assumed to have, Mikhail Troitskiy, professor of practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek via email.
“It’s been a constant increase, it seems, with these national surveys, every time they measure it, it seems to go up,” said Maureen Durkin, chair of University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Population Health Sciences.
“If all these challengers are finding is inconsequential errors that do not affect election results on the whole, but they’re placing real and harmful burdens on voters, then you have to wonder why they’re really doing this,” said Derek Clinger, a senior staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “It’s doing more harm than good.”
According to Newsweek, the UW Carbone Cancer Center is listed as the top cancer hospital in Wisconsin for 2023. We learn about the hospital’s latest work, including prostate MRI’s and proton therapy. Interview with Dr. Joshua Lang, associate director of translational research, and Dr. Nataliya Uboha, an oncologist and faculty leader for Cancer Therapy Discovery & Development, both at the UW Carbone Cancer Center.
A panel of scientists are saying the planet is entering a new geologic epoch for the first time in civilization’s history: the Anthropocene. It’s also the first era sparked by humanity’s planetary impact. We talk with Elizabeth Hennessy, a UW-Madison Environmental Studies associate professor, about the effects of humanity on the planet.
Jim Lattis, director of University of Wisconsin’s Space Place, said auroras are caused by charged particles from the sun interacting with gasses like nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere. He said a lot of things have to go right for that to happen.
“There are solar flares popping off on the sun every other day or daily these days, but those flares have to emit something that then crosses an awful lot of space between us and the sun, and then actually interacts with the earth,” he said.
