“The people who do it find it life-changing,” said Jonathan Scharrer, the director of the restorative justice program at UW and a clinical assistant professor. “We’re able to reduce the distance between people and pull back from the othering of individuals, and put a human face on both sides.”
It takes more than extreme heat and pressure. It also takes precision. The energy from the lasers must be applied precisely to counteract the outward force of the fusion fuel, according to Stephanie Diem, an engineering physics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Speaking to Newsweek, Ion Meyn, an assistant law professor at the University of Wisconsin, said Greene’s comments would fall under “protected speech,” meaning she is unlikely to face any police action in response.
Additionally, University of Wisconsin, Madison agriculture and applied economics professor Paul Mitchell told USA Today, “crops are more resilient to dry weather than they were 20 years ago.” He added that as these extreme events devastating crops happen more and more frequently, the crops won’t be able to adapt quickly enough.
Quoted: “I think it’s going to be a giant goat rodeo,” said Barry Orton, telecommunications professor emeritus from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Even with its flaws, most agree the new mapping system is much better than the one it replaced.
“I’d say it’s five to 10 times more accurate. The previous one was absolutely worthless,” Orton said.
It was a very welcome thing to me that the Journal Sentinel along with the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio brought the Main Street Agenda to “We the People” in Pewaukee.Many people I know (regardless of political affiliation, economic status, or cultural background) are fed up with the incessant blaring ads and speeches blaming whoever the “other” is in order to get us vote for them.The ads say very little of substance about what the core issues are, and even less about how they would go about resolving them, only who to blame − again, so you vote for the candidate running the ad. Nothing useful is gained by them.
Quoted: Burying critical transmission lines is one method to make the grid less vulnerable, according to Vicki Bier, an energy expert and professor emerita in industrial engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“But, that again, is expensive and not something we want to do every place all across the country,” Bier said. “Maybe just a few places might justify that kind of investment.”
Bier said it would likely take insider-level knowledge of the power grid to have a high likelihood of success on a larger scale than the incident in North Carolina. Federal documents obtained by one media outlet indicate other attempts to disrupt Duke Energy substations that authorities say likely involved inside knowledge of critical substations. She noted one of the largest threats facing the grid is that it’s spread out.
“There are not a small number of critical electric facilities where after you’ve protected those, the risk is really small,” Bier said. “There’s a very wide range of facilities and all pose potential risk.”
Quoted: Amy Williamson is the associate director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Collaborative for Reproductive Equity, or CORE. She said even before Roe ended, it was difficult for many abortion seekers to raise the funds needed for the procedure, as well as any necessary childcare and time off work. The added requirement of traveling to another state makes it all the more difficult, she said.
“We know that some pregnant Wisconsinites are traveling hundreds of miles to other states at great expense and difficulty in their lives to access the care they need, or they remain pregnant when they do not want to be,” Williamson said.
Quoted: “I’ve been privileged to see it hundreds of times, and I can tell you it never gets old,” said Stanley Temple, Beers-Bascom professor emeritus in conservation in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and science advisor to the Aldo Leopold Foundation board. “It’s simply spectacular.”
While speaking with Newsweek earlier this week, Ion Meyn, an assistant law professor at the University of Wisconsin, explained that the criminal referral “is more than symbolic.”
In the meantime, doctors have stopped providing abortions in the state. Dr. Abigail Cutler, an OB-GYN and professor at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school says the legal uncertainty with the abortion ban has affected all pregnancy care in Wisconsin.
ABIGAIL CUTLER: We’re seeing it happen. I mean, there are delays in care because providers, physicians are hesitating, thinking twice, calling legal counsel, you know, conferring to make sure that – where the direction from a medical perspective seems very clear, but, you know, is it legal?
“Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating disease for individuals, but also negatively impacts family members. We were interested in exploring the basis of the disease and possible treatments,” said Stephen C. Gammie, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the corresponding author of the new study.
UW-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer examined the geographic phenomenon and found the bunching of Democrats in cities accounted for a 2- to 3-point Republican advantage, nowhere near the current split.
“There will be people who deny it to you with a straight face, but there is no empirical doubt that this remains the most gerrymandered state in the country,” Mayer told Wisconsin Watch.
Brands behind conventional period products aren’t required by the US Food and Drug Administration to list every material included in their products, so knowing exactly what you’re putting in contact with your body is another great reason to use period underwear, said Sarah Frank, a doctoral student and lecturer in the departments of sociology and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Decisions about how many children to have, when to start trying, how close in age children should be spaced – are usually not made by individuals alone, explains Dr. Abigail Cutler, an obstetrician-gynecologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school.
Those decisions are often made with other people, “partners within the context of families, romantic relationships, extended family or chosen family, friends, faith leaders,” she says. Now, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, she says a new element must be added to that calculus: the state laws where people live, and whether they have access to comprehensive care during pregnancy.
Quoted: At a time that has seen record inflation and soaring housing costs, it’s even more important poverty is measured accurately and low-income families access benefits that can help them, said Timothy Smeeding, a leading expert on the poverty line and professor of public affairs and economics at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Just being over the poverty line isn’t enough to really help a kid reach the middle class or for a kid to grow well. You need lots of help,” Smeeding told USA TODAY.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer examined the geographic phenomenon and found the bunching of Democrats in cities accounted for a 2- to 3-point Republican advantage, nowhere near the current split.
“There will be people who deny it to you with a straight face, but there is no empirical doubt that this remains the most gerrymandered state in the country,” Mayer told Wisconsin Watch.
This fall, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs was excited to team up with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin Public Radio on the Main Street Agenda project. It is part of our mission to bring people together to solve the problems affecting our communities, and our faculty have remarkable research and expertise to help inform those public policy discussions.
Written by Susan Webb Yackee is a professor of public affairs and director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison.
Some experts said the worst scenarios may not come to pass, as some pandemic control measures will stay in place. Even if China completely abandons its zero-Covid policy, many people who are accustomed to daily prevention measures, such as wearing masks, will continue to do so, potentially reducing the infections, said Yi Fuxian, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But that’s changing, said Greg Nemet at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And that change matters for the proliferation of renewables.
“China is the biggest driver of it, one, because China is so big, but also because they now have much more ambitious targets for renewables and, you know, China lives up to its targets,” he said.
The finding matches with climactic modeling suggesting that Ireland would be a hospitable environment for the yeast, said Chris Hittinger, a professor of genetics at University of Wisconsin — Madison, who was on the team that found the yeast in Patagonia and not involved in the current study. What’s less clear is why the yeast been so difficult to find in the wild beyond South America, where it grows plentifully in association with beech trees and is thought to be a native species.
“Although the DOJ is independent, such a referral is more than symbolic,” Ion Meyn, an assistant law professor at the University of Wisconsin, told Newsweek. “A referral from a congressional committee that has conducted its own investigation is particularly influential. The referral would place significant pressure on the DOJ to prosecute, and the DOJ will be expected to justify any decision to decline the referral.”
Noted: A majority of both Democrats and Republicans support nonpartisan redistricting, according to a recent poll conducted by UW-Madison communications professor Mike Wagner …
But even within communities there are voters with different views and interests. One way to keep more of them engaged could be new legislative configurations and voting systems that have been tried in some European countries, said Mark Copelovitch, a political science professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison who has studied alternative voting and redistricting models abroad.
Things would have been much worse if it weren’t for advances in plant breeding, said Paul Mitchell, a professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Crops are more resilient to dry weather than they were 20 years ago,” he said.
The focus of Betül Kaçar’s research is on the origin and early evolution of life, including fascinating topics such as the influence of geology on the development of biology. A Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the principal investigator at Kaçar Research Lab, she was one of the plenary speakers at the NASA-sponsored biannual meeting Astrobiology Science Conference, AbSciCon22. Along with her research, Kaçar is deeply interested in science education and the best ways to bring science to school-aged children.
Quoted: Republicans closely tied with Trump have been losing support in suburban areas, said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center. He said that goes for the 8th Sen. district as well.
“Now, I think the party has become somewhat concerned about Trump’s presence in the party, given how the Republicans did in this midterm election,” Burden said. “But there still is a lot of enthusiasm for him among the base, especially the activists who turn out in primaries and who give money to candidates.”
More broadly, Burden said election deniers running for statewide office in swing states this year were roundly defeated in November.
“But Brandtjen will be running in a district that is a little redder than the state as a whole. And so there might still be room for someone with her profile to be successful,” Burden said.
Quoted: “We as a state need to say, ‘This is not okay for our moms, for our babies, and we can do better. And we have to do better,'” said Dr. Nathan Lepp, an associate clinical professor of neonatology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Patrick Remington, a former epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s preventive medicine residency program, noted that vaccines “save tens of thousands if not millions of lives each year.” Remington added that the scientific community’s knowledge of COVID has continued to evolve. While vaccines might not prevent infection from COVID, he said, they have been shown to reduce risk of serious illness or death.
“I would encourage any investigation to be non-partisan but also focused not simply on identifying problems, but understand what’s worked,” Remington said. “If a hearing went into identifying the reasons for the success that we’ve seen, then that hearing could be balanced with opportunities for improvement.”
A technology startup has developed a novel approach to detecting landmines and concealed explosives that could save lives.
Clandestine Materials Detection Inc., a spin-out of University of Wisconsin-Madison, says it’s been contacted by Ukraine for help in finding explosive devices that are a threat to civilians and soldiers. Some areas have thousands of landmines set to be triggered by footsteps, vehicles or farm equipment.
In 2015, it showed up in Chicago, tearing through kennels, veterinary clinics and animal shelters. “In the shelter setting, flu is not super subtle because it comes in like a tidal wave,” said Dr. Sandra Newbury, who directs the University of Wisconsin Shelter Medicine Program. (Dr. Newbury, who was part of the team that responded to and studied the Chicago outbreak, has also been working with Operation Kindness in recent weeks.)
Critics of the plan argue that the police force is not equipped to effectively deal with mental health crises without the risk of violent escalation. Amy Watson, a professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin and Sonia Pruitt, a retired police captain for the Montgomery County, MD police department discuss the mayor’s plan and the potential challenges.
“I know I’m going to be setting a budget so I don’t suffer after the holidays,” says Christine Whelan, clinical professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She makes a list of those she needs to buy gifts for and assigns a spending cap for each person’s gift.Part of that strategy means limiting purchases to what she can comfortably afford out of savings instead of turning to credit card debt, Whelan says. “One of the ways we can use our limited resources to maximize our happiness is to pay now, rather than get socked with a credit card bill in February, which undermines our financial and emotional well-being.”
Although new data shows that inflation slowed in October, prices have still gone up significantly — nearly 8 percent –– compared to 2021. We talk about how to keep your holiday gift-giving affordable in spite of inflation. Interview with Christine Whelan, a clinical professor in the School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison
Quoted: It is a highly consequential election because it’s going to determine the balance of the court until at least 2025,” said Robert Yablon, an associate professor at the University Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
Although Wisconsin’s Supreme Court elections are officially non-partisan, UW-Madison political science professor Howard Schweber notes highly partisan issues are at stake. That includes abortion rights, gerrymandering and the way elections are run.
“Even 15 years ago, Wisconsin judicial elections really were kind of genteel affairs,” Schweber said. “And then they got very, very viciously partisan, primarily because Republicans and conservative groups made a very concentrated effort to capture the court, through what in Wisconsin, at least, were really unprecedented styles of campaign ads, highly partisan appeals.”
Schweber said that strategy proved largely successful, although Democrats were able to narrow the court’s conservative majority in 2020 when Democrat-backed Jill Karofsky beat former Justice Kelly. Kelly, who’s running this again this year, was first appointed to the state highest court by Republican Gov. Scott Walker to fill a vacancy.
Quoted: In Madison, a four-inch rainfall in one day that used to occur once every five years now happens every other year, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That got University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Steve Carpenter wondering whether extreme storms would lead to an increase in toxic blooms.
“I had thought maybe get a rainstorm, get a bloom, but it’s not that simple,” Carpenter said, who is lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Carpenter, emeritus director of UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology, worked with other researchers to examine data collected from Lake Mendota. He said around three-quarters of all phosphorus pollution stems from extreme storms. While those storms play a large role, they don’t necessarily trigger a bloom right away.
Dr. Gregory DeMuri, who specializes in Pediatric Infectious Disease at UW Health Kids compared it to having a bad cold, “I think the biggest thing is most kids have already had RSV and they haven’t been tested. We didn’t do this before COVID, for most children, and that’s because most kids get over it on their own and it’s mainly going to be just a bad cold.”
Scientists have long known that plants have photoreceptors and can detect the presence of light, often in highly sophisticated ways. They can, for example, sense the color and direction of a beam, according to Simon Gilroy, a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin Madison. That’s what the telegraph plant is doing when it swivels its leaves toward the light.
There’s another aspect of the midterm elections that reinforces the point that it didn’t involve much change. As University of Wisconsin Madison political scientist Barry Burden pointed out on Twitter, a victory in Georgia’s upcoming Senate runoff election by Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) would mean that, for the first time since senators were popularly elected by voters, no incumbent will have lost his or her seat.
New York Times movie critics say the Black Panther films have underlying messages about the politics of colonization and the African diaspora. We hear from Ramzi Faraz, a UW-Madison English professor and author, about how political movements influence comics and the ways characters shape identity.
Health insurance can be confusing.
Meet Quentella Perry, who helps people plow through the complexities while working for Covering Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that educates people about health insurance and helps them choose a plan.
Just as accountants are busy during tax time, Perry and her colleagues have their hands full helping people navigate the choices offered during the Affordable Care Act open enrollment period from Nov. 1 to Jan. 15.
Noted: It’s not exactly clear how lake effect snow will change with climate change, said Steve Vavrus, a climate and atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He called it a “climatic tug-of-war.”
On one hand, a warmer climate may cause fewer cold and dry air masses pushing down from the Arctic and sucking up the moisture over the Great Lakes. That would mean fewer and less intense storms, said Vavrus.
On the other hand, a warmer climate should lead to less ice on the lakes, giving more time for the warm lakes to come into contact with cold air in the atmosphere during the winter. That would favor more storms, said Vavrus.
According to Derek Johnson, a professor of media studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “Media Franchising,” one major feature of a franchise versus a movie is not just its multiple sites of production — the theme park, the toy, the television show — but also its orientation toward the future. In order to survive, it must maintain a careful balance between novelty and familiarity, courting the next generation of fans without driving away too many of the old ones.
In the last decade, UW-Madison’s Antarctic-based research center has made major innovations. We get the latest research on neutrinos and the depths of far away galaxies.
For the first time ever, an international team of scientists has traced neutrinos coming from the galaxy NGC 1068 in the constellation Cetus. The “ghost particles” appear to be accelerated toward Earth by a supermassive black hole.
In a scientific breakthrough, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s 1-billion-ton IceCube Neutrino Observatory, buried around 1 mile under the ice at the South Pole, detected the neutrinos.
A proposed development that would bring a new soccer stadium to downtown Milwaukee should include guarantees of good wages and a path to union representation for workers in the stadium district in return for public subsidies, a new report recommends.
The report, “Worker Power Levels the Playing Field,” was released Tuesday by COWS, a think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It says taxpayer-funded support for the proposed Milwaukee soccer stadium project, dubbed the Iron District, should come with strings that ensure local hiring and strong job standards even after the project is built out.
“It’s important for Milwaukee to see itself as a national leader in this way and to reapply the lessons from the Deer District as new development is considered,” says Laura Dresser, associate director of COWS. Dresser is coauthor of the report along with Pablo Aquiles-Sanchez, a COWS research analyst.
Noted: At UW-Madison, the most selective school in the state, it’s too early to say what, if any, academic recovery will be needed, according to John Zumbrunnen, the university’s vice provost for teaching and learning. There hasn’t been a spike in tutoring sessions. Nor has there been a higher rate of D and F grades awarded. But the university offered two semesters of a pass/fail grading policy, which “muddies the data picture for us.”
That’s not to say Zumbrunnen hasn’t fielded concerns from some instructors. In math, there’s been a slightly larger share of students placing into pre-calculus instead of calculus. A STEM instructor told him this year’s crop of students scored lower on a basic exam than in past years. He’s heard from a social sciences instructor who felt that students this fall weren’t quite as ready to read at a college level than in past years.
Quoted: “It just is really not possible to engage in much fraudulent activity without being noticed very quickly,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dale Schoeller, a professor emeritus of nutrition at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) who participated in the research, has spent years studying water and metabolism. “Total water turnover with water from beverages and a lot of your water comes from the food you eat,” he said.
But whether graduates of STEM-designated degree programs take advantage of the extended visa option may not matter. That’s because colleges find that reclassifying degrees as STEM benefits them in other ways. For example, in 2016, when John Karl Scholz was dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he sought to reclassify his institution’s economics program. Speaking with Inside Higher Ed this month, Scholz, who is now provost, shared the impact.
“The new designation is helpful in recruiting and supporting students who are considering multiple institutions for their graduate work,” Scholz said, adding that Madison’s economics programs had always been more quantitatively focused, and the reclassification reflected that.
Quoted: Laura Dresser, associate director of COWS, a University of Wisconsin-Madison think-tank, said there’s also been a fundamental change in how employers and employees navigate illness.
“There is this thing that’s changed about what we do when we’re sick, when our kids are sick, what our child cares will accept or tolerate when our kids are sick,” Dresser said. “I think people send their kids or themselves to school or work sick less often than we used to.”
She expects people having more access to sick time hasn’t had a major impact in their decision to take time off.
“The fact that more workers get paid now when they’re sick than used to makes it slightly more likely that they’ll stay home,” Dresser said. “But even in the olden days, they stayed home when their kid was sick, they just didn’t get paid.”
When Audrey Evans works from home, a throaty warble is her soundtrack.
Her building for graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison isn’t air-conditioned, so during the warmer months, Evans likes to open the windows.
“I’ll be working away at my computer, and I’ll hear turkey noises,” said Evans, who created the Instagram account “Turkeys of UW Madison” as a fan page dedicated to the urban birds. “It’s always like the perfect opportunity to take a break and go look out my window to see the turkeys right underneath it.”
Regardless of your age, if your finances are tight, it’s best to say so. “There are years when we can be more generous, and years when we can’t,” said J. Michael Collins, faculty director at the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “We make money a taboo, but it’s OK to be transparent.”
“I know I’m going to be setting a budget so I don’t suffer after the holidays,” says Christine Whelan, clinical professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She makes a list of those she needs to buy gifts for and assigns a spending cap for each person’s gift.
“This is an extremely high-stakes state Supreme Court race,” UW-Madison Law School associate professor Robert Yablon said, adding that some of the cases the justices are likely to take up could generate interest in the race across the country.
The indictment, which carries multiple felony charges, will likely exacerbate the shortage of these monkeys, used in everything from drug safety testing to vaccine research, says Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who studies infectious disease in cynomolgus macaques. Still, he says, the main priority should be stopping this illegal trade, both for the science and the animals themselves. “These sorts of unscrupulous actors give a black eye to an already heavily scrutinized industry.”
“The science has never supported the old eight glasses thing as an appropriate guideline, if only because it confused total water turnover with water from beverages and a lot of your water comes from the food you eat,” said study co-author Dale Schoeller, a nutritional sciences professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who’s studied water and metabolism for decades.
Quoted: “It just is really not possible to engage in much fraudulent activity without being noticed very quickly,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A hands-on simulation called PurpleState being used for research at UW-Madison’s School of Education aims to give students experience in dissecting political messaging and discourse.
As with health care, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated trends that were already underway — and are linked to larger social issues, said Sarah Marty, director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the UW School of Business, and producing artistic director for Four Seasons Theatre.
Today, “people are spreading their arts dollars around to different art forms,” Marty said. “That’s wonderful for the audiences, but difficult for the arts organizations.”
I spoke with Barry Burden, a respected expert on Wisconsin and national politics and a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Burden also shared his post-election analysis with the Rotary Club of Madison this week.
