Ashley Swanson, associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said hospital mergers — on average — increase prices, while having a negligible effect on patient care.
“It seems like they primarily increase prices when the merging hospitals are located close to one another,” she said. “But there is some relatively new evidence suggesting that cross-market mergers can sometimes increase prices as well.”
Allergies can make it hard to enjoy the nice weather, so Dr. Mark Moss, an allergist with UW Health, is spreading the word about easy ways to alleviate symptoms.
The rate at which Wisconsin’s “prime working age” adults are either working or looking for work is among the best in the country, according to a recent report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
“It speaks a lot to our work ethic,” said Matt Kures, the report’s author and a community economic development specialist for UW-Extension. “Traditionally, we have had high participation rates and I think that’s just kind of ingrained in us.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average cost of infant care in Wisconsin is $12,567 annually, or $1,047 per month. Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at UW-Madison, said women in the workforce feel the effects of that most.
“Moms tend to carry the burden of care disproportionately in families,” she said. “The years before the kid goes to school … are really expensive years to work.“
Noted: Green Bay is poised to become the home of the first commercial STRAP plant, which would take these kinds of plastics and make them into materials that can be used again.
This is done through a process called STRAP — which stands for solvent-targeted recovery and precipitation — developed from early work done by undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Now, George Huber, a professor in chemical and biological engineering at UW-Madison, is leading a team at the Center for Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics, or CUWP, working to take STRAP from the lab to a commercial setting.
The center is funded by a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and is made up of people from UW-Madison and five other universities, a national laboratory and more than 20 industrial partners.
Barriers to voting disproportionately affect certain racial groups, according to research from UW-Madison journalism and mass communications professor Michael Wagner.
Meanwhile, output that’s the amount of stuff we’re making is not keeping up, said Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin. “Production had jumped in the wake of the pandemic. And so what you have is the growth rate of production, which is largely determined by demand, is slowing a lot,” he said.
“I don’t think we will see people with arc reactor-powered suits,” Stephanie Diem tells Inverse. “However, I see fusion in our future.” Diem is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches experimental plasma physics for fusion energy development.
“I think this data will have an immediate impact,” said Heather Neuman, a breast surgical oncologist and health services researcher at the University of Wisconsin. She was not involved in the study. “This is an extremely important question for young cancer survivors, as family planning is a critical life event.”
Certain places like Mr Marsh’s home state of West Virginia, as well as New Jersey and Tennessee, may be more ripe for bear encounters as they have growing populations of the mammals, said David Drake, a professor and extension wildlife specialist at the University of Wisconsin.
Michael Childers from the Department of Labor Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison joins Live at Four to discuss the writers’ strike that could impact your favorite shows.
Interview with Adam D’Angelo, a Ph.D student at UW-Madison, and Scott Craven, emeritus UW-Extension Wildlife Ecologist.
Technological changes and attacks on media have eroded public trust in journalism and the news media. Sue Robinson, a UW-Madison journalism professor, joins us to share her new book on how journalists can better engage their communities and build trust with their audiences.
We talk about why First Republic Bank was seized by regulators, whether we’re in the middle of a larger banking crisis, and what individuals should know going forward. Interview with J. Michael Collins, associate professor of public affairs and consumer science at UW-Madison, where he directs the Center for Financial Security.
Quoted: “I feel like we hear about new places that have PFAS every day,” said Christy Remucal, a University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor of engineering who studies the chemicals and did not participate in the study.
Written by Allie Boldt, Legal Research Director for the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Interview with Dr. Patrick Remington, a professor emeritus in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, about the results of a new review of 107 other studies, and its conclusions about whether low-level alcohol drinking extended people’s lives.
“The pandemic has and likely will continue to disproportionately impact Black birthing people and their families,” said Dr. Tiffany Green, co-chair of the Black Maternal and Child Health Alliance of Dane County and an associate professor at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
The Walt Disney Company is suing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, accusing his administration of government retaliation for their criticism of his policies. Howard Schweber, a professor of political science and legal studies at UW-Madison, joins us to break down the case and explore what’s at stake.
Christine Whelan, a consumer science professor at UW-Madison, helps us with suggestions for how we can de-clutter and off-load belongings, while inflation may be looming over any thoughts of restocking or replacing items.
Mikhail Troitskiy, professor of practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek via email that the position of the GOP leadership has “evolved” over the last several months.
Michael Collins, Faculty director, Center for Financial Security quoted in embedded video.
David O’Connor, who studies primate genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the studies tackle deep questions.
“It’s just the wonder of biology, how we are so similar and dissimilar to all the things around us,” said O’Connor, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It’s the sort of thing that reminds me why it’s cool to be a biologist.”
That is the background. Researchers Ike Brannon at the Jack Kemp Foundation and Russell Kashian and Matthew Winden, both professors of economics at the University of Wisconsin, said that ultimately subsidies didn’t seem to deliver what they promised.
According to Alfred McCoy, a historian and Philippine political expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, neither the United States nor the Philippines “has reason to recall the troubled chapters in this century-long relationship.”
“A lot of learning has to do with how many you build,” said Gregory Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison and author of How Solar Energy Became Cheap.
Both the study and the statements at the congressional hearing don’t give the full picture, said Steve Vavrus, assistant director at the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the interim state climatologist.
“This is a quality issue, not a safety issue,” said Gina Mode, a butter researcher at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Dairy Research. Butter will eventually go rancid but that won’t make people sick, she said. Ms. Mode in an informal survey of her colleagues found that 24 of 31 keep butter out, a telling data point among experts.
David O’Connor, who studies primate genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the studies tackle deep questions.
One of the genes edited out in MEDUSA cells ― SLC8A1 ― “can impact the ability of heart cells to contract,” said Timothy Kamp, director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Still, he added, “I think the concept of editing these genes is powerful. Perhaps a simpler combination [of edits] may work.”
As a clinical professor at the UW-Madison School of Nursing, (Gina) Bryan said she also sees many parts of the state struggle to attract psychiatric advanced practice nurse graduates, who go instead to Minnesota or Iowa where they can work independently. “Why would our students stay here and practice?” she said.
Bunmi Kumapayi, a UW Health nurse practitioner who has treated urologic conditions for more than 20 years, said the doctor she collaborates with allows her to work very independently. But for many newer advanced practice nurses around the state, that is not the case, she said.
What low-income students really need is help with other expenses, such as housing, books and transportation – things free college programs don’t often cover. Those essentials account for about 80% of the cost of attending community college, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Free college often is “a false promise,” Del Pilar said. “I don’t think equity is at the heart of these programs, because if it was, they would be designed a bit differently than what we see.”
“This is one of those drop-the-mic revelations,” said Christine Whelan, who studies the wellness industry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science and law professor Howard Schweber said if Kaul’s lawsuit is successful, the 20-week abortion law would go back into effect along with the waiting periods and mandatory ultrasound requirements.
Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin, told CNET in 2021, when scientists were first getting a grip on long COVID, that the key to discerning the condition is to pay attention to new symptoms that develop or ones that never go away, starting about 30 days post-infection. This separates long COVID from the initial viral infection itself.
Dr. Greg DeMuri, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at UW Health, also spoke in favor of eliminating the mandate, saying that “almost the entire population has some form of immunity to COVID, whether it’s the vaccine or natural infection.” The number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 are now “very, very low,” he said, adding that complications are “very rare.”
A $2.5 million federal grant was also awarded last month to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to fund research for a cure.
Tom Yuill, a University of Wisconsin professor and wildlife disease expert, provided health testing of the birds.
The White House unleashed on House Republicans this week after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced his conditions for raising the debt ceiling. But as he tries to coalesce his conference, a very narrow majority, around his proposal before putting it to a vote on the House floor next week, the country’s borrowing authority “is not of much concern to the public, at this point,” according to Director Barry Burden of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center.
“Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body” by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson. This 2017 title was written by Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and science journalist, and Richard Davidson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds.
“If you have a traditional lawn, letting the grass grow to a foot tall or whatever it would be at the end of May is no value whatsoever,” says Susan Carpenter, native plant garden curator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. Grass that long could be harmful to lawn health and become a mowing nightmare.
Our story begins in Africa, where our species and its close relatives evolved; even the Flores hominins are descended from a species called Homo erectus that arose in Africa before spreading across most of the world. Most of the hominin sites in southern Africa tend to be in caves, like the Rising Star Cave System, where University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks and University of Witwatersrand anthropologist Lee Berger have studied the remains of a species called Homo naledi, first discovered in 2013.
I read several papers on peer effects on fertility with Angrist’s caveats in mind. One, by Jason Fletcher and Olga Yakusheva, looked at American teenagers and found that a 10 percentage point increase in pregnancies of classmates is associated with a 2 to 5 percentage point greater likelihood of a teenager herself becoming pregnant. Disentangling causality is “a really hard problem,” Fletcher, an economist at the University of Wisconsin’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, told me.
To find out which cheeses freeze well, I spoke with Luis A. Jiménez-Maroto, assistant coordinator of cheese and dairy applications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Dairy Research. It turns out that the answer isn’t quite that simple. “A hundred years of research have been put into freezing cheese, and it really is very granular,” he said. “It depends on the cheese that you’re talking about and what is important about it.”
It’s also not clear that social media use contributes to young people’s emotional struggles, said Heather Kerkorian, who researches the effects of media on children’s development and family interactions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“If we look at individual kids, some kids might benefit a lot from social media, some might be harmed by social media and most of them are not affected much,” Kerkorian said.
“We hadn’t really seen prices that high for a while, if ever,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison dairy researcher Charles Nicholson, an associate professor of animal and dairy sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Other researchers led by Robert Enright, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, have also focused on forgiveness for programs for young people. Their workbooks and teacher training programs have been shared with thousands of educators worldwide.
Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said another approach could be addressing the issues that prevent people from joining the workforce, like child care, transportation and mental health.
“The central question is: Do we support workers and … (build a) system that supports their engagement in the labor market, and, therefore, economic development in our communities? Or do we try and pretend that there’s just a lot of lazy people?” Dresser asked.
“The reality is that most traffickers groom their trafficking victims… it could even be someone that someone knows for a while in terms of the dynamic,” said Dr. Sara McKinnon, an associate professor in rhetoric, politics and culture at UW-Madison.
Jenny Higgins, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Collaborative for Reproductive Equity and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, said the biggest takeaway from the report was that these declines were not balanced out by increases in the number of abortions happening in states where abortion access is less restricted.
“One of the things that people had expected after Dobbs was that states like California would get an influx of people … states with relatively few restrictions,” Higgins said. “What the #WeCount report shows is that we haven’t seen the flooding into those states.”
Greg Nemet continues the tradition of environmental scholarship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison through the La Follette School of Public Affairs, studying energy, climate change and public policy. He says despite a gloomy international report, the capacity to tackle problems has never been greater:
“If there were ever a time to have optimism about our collective capacity and will to address climate change, this is it. This idea was threaded through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which emphasized that we can still effect transformational change that could stave off the worst possible outcomes and lead to a sustainable, equitable world. Globally, we’ve made considerable progress in a broad range of technologies that are making the transition to a low-carbon economy more affordable and feasible than ever.”
Nancy Wong, a consumer psychologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, sees the irony in trying to make money with an app for free stuff.
“As a marketer, I just find that evolution very interesting. It was borne out of a desire to escape the marketplace, but then they find themselves coming back to the marketplace,” she said. “It’s almost a victim of its own popularity.”
“The US has done poorly in teaching kids to read for a long time,” says Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And the problem isn’t confined to English-speaking countries: there is also confusion about how to teach children to read other languages.
And in one study of university students by University of Wisconsin researcher Patricia Devine, unconscious bias training attendees were able to notice and distinguish bias in others more than their colleagues who had not taken the training after two weeks, and they were still able to do so two years after training. This particular training included awareness training, testing, and training on strategies to identify and overcome bias when they recognize it.
Jessica McCrory Calarco, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, weighed in on the little-known history, too. “As I teach my students, kids’ clothing only became gendered when capitalists realized they could double their money by selling separate clothes for girls and boys,” she tweeted. “Before that, kids wore gender-neutral dresses, which better accommodated growth spurts and toilet training.”
With its direct connection to the heart, its vivid hue (from wine-dark to cherry bright and cobalt blue), and its spilling in both birth and death, blood has historically served as a metaphor for humanity, as Susan Lederer, a professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argues in her 2008 book, Flesh and Blood. “Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in the 1880s. “All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood,” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in 1921. “Blood is memory without language,” added Joyce Carol Oates, more recently.
A survey of Wisconsin citizens shows the state’s political divides are disrupting social relationships and personal bonds. Michael Wagner, a UW-Madison journalism professor, said the center embarked on this research to understand problems of a divided state to help articulate a solution. Its report shows results of what are described as “civic fractures.”
“I saw this post where somebody said, ‘Reading wars are over, science of reading won,’” said Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive scientist at the University of Wisconsin.
Keeping global warming under control will require the removal of between 450 billion and 1.1 trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2100, according to the first global report dedicated to the topic, released in January. That would require the CDR sector “to grow at a rate of about 30 percent per year over the next 30 years, much like what happened with wind and solar,” said one of its authors, Gregory Nemet.
“Deflation is rare in America for any time longer than a year,” says Menzie Chinn, economics professor at the University of Wisconsin. “But over the last 30 years, we’re more accustomed to low inflation, rather than the inflation we’ve been seeing.”
Another sudden drought happened in the U.S. Southeast in 2016 and was a factor in devastating wildfires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, said Jason Otkin, a study co-author and an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
