Category: UW Experts in the News

Spider plants (Chlorophytum comosum) are among the most popular houseplants, and they are nontoxic to children, dogs, and cats. According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, these plants can tolerate some neglect and grow well in almost any home environment. Perfect for beginners, spider plants make beautiful hanging greenery and are available at nearly any garden center. Not only are they pretty and easy to grow, but these plants are also efficient at improving the air quality in your home by removing air-borne toxins like formaldehyde and carbon monoxide

Artist Dakota Mace is leading the development of a curriculum dedicated to cultural appropriation within the Center for Design and Material Culture at UW-Madison. The curriculum examines what cultural appropriation may look like through design as participants explore larger themes of privilege and intent versus impact. Mace, who is Navajo, hopes this work encourages others to consider the stakes of cultural appropriation.

It’s hard to believe that hard cider almost disappeared in the U.S. In a time we like to call the “golden era of hard cider,” 18th-century American colonists were known to offer a glass of the stuff to house guests (via New England Historical Society). Sadly, Prohibition led to the chopping down cider-specific apple trees, devastating the industry for decades, according to the University of Wisconsin. The industry started to pick up again in the 1980s. Thanks to a massive resurgence in all things craft alcohol, the industry’s market value will nearly quadruple by 2027 (via Market Data Forecast).

“Wisconsin is really at the very edge of the carp invasion front,” said Zach Feiner, a research scientist with the DNR and UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology and coauthor of the study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. “They’re adapted for warmer temperatures.”

“There is a nationwide movement this year among conservative election skeptics and (Donald) Trump supporters to recruit election observers and aggressively challenge proceedings,” Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center, said in a phone interview Thursday. He fears those challenges will disrupt election proceedings and slow down the process, but doubts they will lead to any significant changes to the results of the crucial midterms, for which early voting is already underway.

Finn Enke, a professor studying the history of gender and sexuality in the 19th and 20th centuries  at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says historically, anti-LGBTQ movements rise and fall with electoral cycles. “It’s organized by people who are funding specific politicians and a specific political agenda,” Enke says. “It really is about political power and not about gender and not about sexuality.”

Keith Findley, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School told Newsweek that it is unlikely the post will have any impact on the case.Even if the poster was determined to have been a member of the jury, Findley said it means that person acted in violation of the judge’s instructions, but it does not mean it invalidates the jury’s verdict.

The run-up to Election Day is often a contentious time.In recent years, it has also become a litigious time – parties increasingly turn to courts to resolve disputes about the rules for voting.

1. Miriam Seifter

   Associate Professor of Law, Co-Director of the State Democracy Research Initiative, University of Wisconsin-Madison

2. Adam Sopko

   Staff Attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Spiritual psychosis expert Ari Brouwer discussed Lori Vallow’s possible religious psychosis. According to Religion News Service, Brouwer is a Ph.D. student from the University of Wisconsin. He studies the similarities between spirituality, psychosis, and psychedelics and says Vallow displayed warning signs.

“There’s been a lack of a proactive message from the Barnes campaign top to bottom,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at UW-Madison, who added that Barnes’ messaging around the economy was more effective in the summer and that he’s had a focus on defending himself since.

Studying Neanderthals is like “putting together a puzzle where we have many, many missing pieces,” John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin not involved in the study, tells the Associated Press’ Maddie Burakoff. And now, the new study means “somebody’s dumped a bunch more pieces on the table.”

The angel wings, also known as (Caladium ’Red flash’) is a tropical plant that is purposely grown for its large and showy foliage. The surface of the leaves features a combination of green shade, red veins, and pink dots that are extremely eye-catching. This pot plant doesn’t have stems; the leaves grow directly on petioles that emerge from the tuber underground (via the University of Wisconsin-Madison).

University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks, who was not involved in the study, said the research was an exciting application of ancient DNA evidence, even as many questions remain about Neanderthal social structures and lifestyles.

With less than three weeks before the Nov. 8 election, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Mike Wagner joins Live at Four to talk about political advertising.

By Joshua Davies Professor, Sciences de la Terre et de l’atmosphère, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Margriet Lantink Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“If China’s economy is compared with a plane, the 1979 policy of reform and opening up ignited the fuel—the young workers—that drove the economy to grow by an average of 10% annually from 1979 to 2011,” said Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “Big Country with an Empty Nest.”

“If the U.S. was spending money on a drug trial and they kept finding it wasn’t working and it wasn’t working, and actually had bad side effects, then we would have stopped funding that drug trial ages ago,” said Ben Fisher, associate professor of civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author of the WestEd study, citing an analogy used by the sociologist Aaron Kupchik. Instead of continuing to throw money at an ineffective security strategy with unintended consequences, schools should instead be investing in proven strategies, like counseling, Fisher said.