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Category: UW Experts in the News

Summer nights are getting warmer in Wisconsin. Here’s why that’s a problem.

Wisconsin Public Radio

Warmer nights can be especially concerning because the body no longer has a chance to cool down, said Elizabeth Berg, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the effect of heat in urban environments.

“If temperatures stay above a certain threshold overnight, that’s when it’s … constant stress on your system,” she said. “And that’s when things get dangerous.”

Wisconsin schools that went remote for longer saw expanded gaps in graduation rates

Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin schools that had a longer period of virtual or hybrid learning during the pandemic saw graduation rates rise among wealthier students and fall among those at an economic disadvantage, a new study found.

The study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published in the journal Educational Researcher, analyzed data from 429 public high schools in the state during the 2020-21 school year and two years before then.

Some sweet corn crops worst in 40 years as drought leaves farms in dire need of rain

Wisconsin State Journal

The dry conditions come as corn is nearing its pollination phase, a critical six- to eight-day period that will help determine fall yields, said Joe Lauer, an agronomist at UW-Madison and an expert in corn research.

“It’s really a pretty critical time for just getting the kernel developing,” said Lauer, who has 14 sites around the state that hold 13,000 plots of more than 400 types of corn hybrids. “We need rain terribly. It’s just incredibly dry at this point. The corn actually looks pretty good yet, but we’re entering a critical phase.”

How the history of pharmacy resonates today

Wisconsin Public Radio

More than 80 years ago, the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy was founded at UW-Madison. Today, the organization supports pharmacy education around the country. We speak with Lucas Richert, the institute director, and Hannah Rose Swan, the archivist at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy, on how the history of pharmaceuticals resonates today.

With full plants, dairy industry experts say reports of milk dumping are unsurprising amid spring flush

Wisconsin Public Radio

Chuck Nicholson, agricultural economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s not unusual to see some milk dumping in late spring and early summer.

“We tend to see a peak in the production of milk per cow around this time of year,” he said. “That’s based on biology of the cow and the timing of what the climate looks like to make that milk.”

Climate change ratchets up the stress on farmworkers on the front lines of a warming Earth

LA Times

Climate change makes extreme heat more likely and more intense. Farm work is particularly dangerous because workers raise their internal body temperature by moving, lifting and walking at the same time they’re exposed to high heat and humidity, said Dr. Jonathan Patz, chair of health and the environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Supreme Court rejected student loan forgiveness—what does that mean for borrowers?

Wisconsin Public Radio

Last week, the United States Supreme Court ruled against the Biden administration’s attempt to cancel or reduce student loan debt. Nicholas Hillman, a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at UW-Madison and expert on higher education finance, joins us to talk about what the decision means for millions of borrowers.

Extreme drought threatens Wisconsin corn crop

Wisconsin Public Radio

July is a key month for corn pollination, making the next few weeks all the more critical for the crop. That’s according to Jason Otkin, an associate research professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in drought.

“We’re entering a really important time of the year now for the corn crop — pollination in July is so critical. So if we stay dry, and if we get really unlucky and have a big heat wave, that’s going to do quite the number on the corn crop,” he told “The Morning Show.”

UW-led team of astrophysicists identifies invisible ‘ghost particles’ in Milky Way using AI

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Astrophysicists have long predicted that the Milky Way is a source of ghostly particles called neutrinos, but haven’t been able to detect them. Until now.

In a new study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a massive detector at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory finally caught a glimpse of high-energy neutrinos being emitted from within the Milky Way.

Greece migrant boat disaster: Mapping a tragedy on coast guard’s watch

Washington Post

Till Wagner, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Navid Constantinou, a physical oceanography research fellow at the Australian National University and Ian Eisenman, a professor of climate science and physical oceanography at the University of California at San Diego, used weather and ocean current data obtained from MarineTraffic to estimate the drift velocity using a method described in a 2022 study.

‘Institutionally refusing to accept science’: Wisconsin DNR at center of lawsuit against beaver management program

Wisconsin Public Radio

David Drake, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and Extension wildlife specialist, teaches a class on wildlife damage management. He said that the beaver population is not at risk of being endangered or threatened. Rather, he said, beavers, which are a rodent species like mice or rats, breed regularly.

“The beaver population is healthy in the state of Wisconsin, as it is throughout the United States. And I think the management is justified and I think it’s responsible and I think it’s ethical and professional,” Drake said.

Letting 14-year-olds serve alcohol not a big change, legislators say

The Capital Times

Timothy Smeeding, a labor economist and social welfare policy analyst at the University of Wisconsin-Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs, said the bill could bring up concerns if young people actually had to serve alcohol at the bar. However, he said that if they’re already serving food at a restaurant, allowing them to carry alcohol shouldn’t make a big difference.

Supreme Court strikes down Biden administrations’ student loan forgiveness plan

Wisconsin Public Radio

Nicholas Hillman is the director of the Student Success Through Applied Research lab at UW-Madison. He said there were thousands of borrowers behind on payments when they were suspended in March 2020.

“So during this pause, we’ve had kind of an artificial view of the significance of student loan repayment,” Hillman said. “And now we’re going to turn the system back on here in a few months, and we’re going to have the same exact problems all over again.”

Wisconsin home prices have more than doubled over the last decade

Wisconsin Public Radio

The median home price in Wisconsin has more than doubled over the last decade, as supply has failed to keep up with demand after homebuilding slowed during the Great Recession. That’s according to new data from the Wisconsin Realtors Association, or WRA, and a new report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension.

Steven Deller, professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison, authored the report. He said many were hoping to see downward pressure on prices in response to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, but that hasn’t happened yet. Deller said high mortgage rates have had a modest effect on demand for homes, but a greater influence on those who currently own a home to postpone older couples from downsizing or young families upsizing, keeping some homes off the market.

“The normal churn in the housing market, the new supply of housing or the increase of existing homes going on the market is actually dropping a little bit more than the decline in demand,” he said.

Midwest states, often billed as climate havens, suffer summer of smoke, drought, heat

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“When we think of both climate and air quality, we often think of it as something that happens to other people,” said Tracey Holloway, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. “As climate changes, it’s changing everything for everyone.”

A young girl’s participation in Madison’s Naked Bike Ride didn’t violate state law, police say. Here’s why.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Anuj Desai, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor who specializes in issues including free speech and statutory interpretation, agreed that those laws probably don’t apply to organizers or people responsible for children participating in the Naked Bike Ride.

“If the whole point (of the Naked Bike Ride) is that bodies are not sexual items, it’s not likely to satisfy a legal standard that requires it to be appealing to the prurient interest of children,” Desai said.

Meagan Wolfe finds herself back where she started as elections chief: In the middle of a firestorm

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“It is remarkable how hard-nosed tactics have become in Wisconsin politics,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Burden said, under state law, “It seems to me that the commission took no action on Wolfe as administrator.”

Nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites will be impacted by rejected student loan forgiveness

NBC-15

“The median loan payment in Wisconsin is $152 a month. So, it kind of gives a little bit of a sense of how big this is,” Nick Hillman, Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis at UW-Madison said. “So, what a quarter, one in four people you see walking down the street are now gonna have to pay probably about 150 a month that they haven’t been paying for the past few years.”

Madison project helps Black women build financial literacy, wealth

Wisconsin State Journal

“As research extensively documents, racial disparities in wealth accumulation are systemic, of which historic public policies and private practices sustain,” said Melody Harvey, UW-Madison assistant professor of consumer science in the School of Human Ecology.

Black communities are likely to be what Harvey called “banking deserts,” meaning there are few, if any, mainstream financial institutions. They are also more likely to have concentrations of high-cost alternative financial services such as payday and auto title lenders, Harvey explained, asking “Where does one begin when even the most basic of financial services may not be readily available and accessible?”

A.I. Is Coming for Mathematics, Too

The New York Times

These days there is no shortage of gadgetry for optimizing our lives — diet, sleep, exercise. “We like to attach stuff to ourselves to make it a little easier to get things right,” Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said during a workshop break. A.I. gadgetry might do the same for mathematics, he added: “It’s very clear that the question is, What can machines do for us, not what will machines do to us.”

The air over Madison is clearing, but does the future hold more air quality concerns?

Channel 3000

Dr. Tracey Holloway, a professor at UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, says we likely haven’t seen the last of smoky skies from Canada this year.

“Since usually we have more smoke in July and August, where we’re just getting into that part of the year, it would not be surprising to have more smoky days ahead,” Dr. Holloway said.

‘Extraordinarily ambiguous standard:’ SCOTUS decision on affirmative action leaves many with questions

NBC-15

Professor of Political Science Emeritus at UW-Madison Howard Schweber referred to Thursday’s decision as a ‘sweeping giant statement principle.’ But he says an exception is equally notable.

“The giant loophole comes quite close to the end of the opinion when Chief Justice Roberts says ‘of course, a college or university may still continue race as it applies to a particular student’s individual life story described in their application essay.’ So what really happened here is a shift from one way to think about it is a shift from race consciousness in admissions to race consciousness in application,” Dr. Schweber said.

Neutrinos from the Milky Way finally detected

Popular Science

In 2013, IceCube detected the first cosmic neutrinos. In the years since, they’ve been able to narrow neutrino sources down to individual galaxies. “We have been detecting extragalactic neutrinos for 10 years now,” says Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin and a member of the IceCube collaboration.

Astronomers Just Detected An Important High-Energy Particle In the Milky Way for the First Time

Inverse

“We now hope to have established the multi-messenger techniques that will allow us to pinpoint the cosmic ray sources in the galaxy which, arguably, represents one of the oldest problems in astronomy,” Francis Halzen, IceCube principal investigator and physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, tells Inverse.

In a First, Scientists See Neutrinos Emitted by the Milky Way

Scientific American

IceCube had already definitively detected neutrinos streaming in from outside the Milky Way, but it couldn’t be said with certainty that any of them came from within the galaxy, says Francis Halzen, lead investigator of the project and a physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. This was rather strange, considering the proximity of the Milky Way’s disk (in fact, our solar system is embedded in it) and the high likelihood that neutrinos form there.

A ‘loneliness loop’: How the American culture of busyness can increase isolation

MarketWatch

Christine Whelan, clinical professor of Consumer Science at the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says an individual’s work ethic is at the core of what it means to be an American. You demonstrate to other people you are pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and are busy, indicating a sense of success. “Affluence and busyness seem to go together as status symbols,” Whelan said in a telephone interview. “It is easy to criticize it, but the culture demands it from us. We need to be careful about individual actions versus cultural norms.”

Many Black residents have been shut out of house market — one realtor is trying to change that

Wisconsin State Journal

Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning at UW-Madison, wouldn’t say that Dane County has made true progress in the last decade in terms of how people of color experience mortgage and rent cost burdens compared to their white counterparts.

It’s more like “slightly less bad but measured from a very bad starting point,” he said.

In private email, Devin LeMahieu says Senate has ‘no power’ to dump top election official before reappointment

Wisconsin State Journal

“The Senate’s attempt to initiate a confirmation hearing for Wolfe does seem to rest on very shaky legal ground,” UW-Madison Law School associate professor Robert Yablon said.

“When the commission met earlier this week, only three of members voted to re-appoint Wolfe,” Yablon said. “Notably, after this vote, the commission didn’t take the position that it had successfully reappointed her. It’s odd for the Senate to claim there’s been an appointment that the commission itself didn’t purport to make.”

Affirmative action ruling hits just as UW-Madison improves diversity

The Capital Times

In Wisconsin, the decision will likely have the largest effect on the University of Wisconsin System’s most selective campus, UW-Madison. While the school has long struggled to attract students of color, it recently ushered in its most diverse freshman class in the institution’s history. About one-third of last fall’s freshmen, or 2,695 total, identified as students of color.

U.S. Supreme Court ruling keeps open possibility of legal challenge to Wisconsin’s congressional maps

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“If the (North Carolina legislators’) position in this case had prevailed, it would have meant that the Legislature in Wisconsin could have done congressional redistricting any way it wanted, without the Wisconsin Supreme Court being able to engage in any review of that based on the state constitution,” said Rob Yablon, a professor and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “Now the door remains open, as it has been, to the state court making sure that whatever the state Legislature does is state constitutionally compliant.”

The ‘Forbidden Planet’ That Escaped a Fiery Doom

The New York Times

Melinda Soares-Furtado, a NASA Hubble fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies planetary engulfment, called the study an “exciting” example of the “unexpected properties” revealed in star-planet interactions. She suggested that future research about the system involve experts on blue stragglers, a class of luminous stars that are thought to be formed by stellar mergers.

Tropical rainforests are still vanishing at an alarming rate

Vox

Brazil, again, offers a strong example: Some companies that slaughter cows for beef say they’re monitoring their supply chains to ensure that they aren’t driving deforestation; they’ve agreed to only source cattle from suppliers without recent forest loss. Yet those same cattle may have traveled through several other farms where deforestation happened before reaching the slaughterhouses’ direct suppliers, according to Amintas Brandão Jr., a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin Madison. So in reality, those companies are implicated in environmental harm and misleading consumers.