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Category: UW Experts in the News

Eyes on Schizophrenia

Wisconsin Public Radio

We see the term schizophrenia often, but what does a schizophrenia sufferer experience, and how can non-sufferers recognize the symptoms? UW-Madison Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry Diane C. Gooding will lead us through the complexities of a disorder that affects millions of people worldwide.

Examining Wisconsin’s parole system through the political fog

Wisconsin Examiner

Noted: Adam Stevenson, clinical professor, director of the Frank J. Remington Center at the University of Wisconsin Law School, noted that people may confuse parole with what is now often called early release. The truth-in-sentencing law provided a sort of “clarity” to sentences, he explains, separating them into a clearly designated periods of time incarcerated and time under community supervision. For example, someone convicted of a felony might spend 10 years behind bars followed by five years on extended supervision. Parole, on the other hand, acts as a sort of floating date within the imposed sentence.

“A person who is on parole is out in the community in a similar fashion to a person who’s out on supervised release, or extended supervision,” Stevenson says. “There are different processes or different things that may apply if they do something wrong, or if something happens, but it’s a very similar type of situation. That is, they’re just following different rules and under supervision out in the community.”

Not Just for the Birds: Avian Influenza Is Also Felling Wild Mammals

New York Times

Something was wrong with the foxes. That was what callers to the Dane County Humane Society in Wisconsin kept saying in April, as they reported fox kits, or young foxes, behaving in strange ways: shaking, seizing or struggling to stand. The kits, which were often lethargic and wandering by themselves, also seemed unusually easy to approach, showing little fear of humans.

Drones Being Used to Bring Defibrillators to Patients in Emergencies

NBC Washington D.C.

Quoted: “Time is really of the essence here,” said Justin Boutilier, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Survival from cardiac arrest decreases by between 7 to 15% for every minute that you go without treatment.”

Boutilier describes obstacles to emergency response —such as traffic or difficult-to-reach rural locations — as “the perfect storm.” He has been designing a prototype drone that takes off as soon as someone calls 911.

“This is sort of like a perfect storm for a drone-based delivery system,” he said. “They’re able to, you know, remove the issues caused by traffic and things like that. So they’re able to get these devices there much quicker than an ambulance could.”

Fathers feed babies too — so why are they so scarce in media coverage of the formula shortage?

Salon

Co-authored by Tova Walsh, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network and Alvin Thomas, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.

As GOP turnout surges in state primaries, Wisconsin Democrats stay upbeat ahead of convention

Wisconsin State Journal

UW-Madison political science professor Kathy Cramer said candidates campaigning on codifying Roe — after the U.S. Senate failed in its latest effort to do so — won’t turn out many people who typically don’t vote. “People are pretty firmly on their side of the partisan fence, and the very few people still in the middle are unlikely to be moved by this issue,” she said. “The major factor will be turnout, and I just don’t think this issue is all that mobilizing for people who are not already dead set on voting.”

Drones Being Used to Bring Defibrillators to Patients in Emergencies

NBC 4

“Time is really of the essence here,” said Justin Boutilier, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Survival from cardiac arrest decreases by between 7 to 15% for every minute that you go without treatment.”

Boutilier describes obstacles to emergency response —such as traffic or difficult-to-reach rural locations — as “the perfect storm.” He has been designing a prototype drone that takes off as soon as someone calls 911.

A Hotter, Poorer, and Less Free America

The Atlantic

Or the world could simply leave the United States and its kludgy economy behind. Gregory Nemet, a public-affairs professor at the University of Wisconsin and the author of How Solar Energy Became Cheap, argues that the world is now on track to transition no matter what the United States does. “There’s so much momentum right now in this clean-energy transition. It will still happen, but it will happen more slowly” if no bill passes, he told me.

Virginia Lottery’s Bank a Million draw yields surprising winning numbers

The Washington Post

“Is it very unlikely that the numbers would show up 13 to 19? Yes,” said Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor at University of Wisconsin at Madison who wrote about the lottery in his book “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking.”But any other set of numbers is “equally unlikely,” Ellenberg quickly added, speaking by phone from his front porch in Madison. “On the one hand, it’s very striking. On the other hand, a very improbable thing happens every time the lottery numbers are drawn. Every particular outcome is very unlikely. Otherwise people would win too much.”

Look, up in the sky! It’s the Strawberry Moon, and it will be rising on Tuesday.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: While there is no strict definition of a supermoon, explained Jim Lattis, director of UW Space Place, it is a special astrophysical case that occurs within 24 hours of when a full moon is at perigee. In other words, the moon within a day of being at its fullest, and at a point in its path that is closest to Earth.

“The closest approach is going to happen roughly every 27 days. And a full moon happens every 29½ days,” said Jennifer Stafford, an astronomy graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So it’s not every month that we’re going to have a supermoon.”

Simon Balto: ‘What happened at the Capitol was no anomaly’

The Guardian

There’s much to be said about Thursday’s January 6 committee hearings, and there will be more to be said following the hearings’ full sequence. But speaking as a historian, let me for now say this: Americans need to understand that what the terrorists at the Capitol did that day wasn’t the anomaly people think it was within the long history of the United States. The almost entirely white mob storming the halls of Congress operated squarely within a tradition of white mob terrorism that has deeply shaped specific parts of the country, and the whole of the nation itself.

Simon Balto is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

What’s the latest on avian influenza in Wisconsin?

The Capital Times

As temperatures rise and the seasonal migration of wild birds comes to a close, this year’s transmission of the avian influenza may be nearing its end, said Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.

At UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, a vaccine for avian influenza is currently in the works to prepare for future outbreaks. Poulsen, however, said it may be difficult to vaccinate millions of birds and could potentially affect international trade.

Wisconsin farmers are experiencing record high milk prices, but for how long?

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Bob Cropp, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said high demand for milk is what drove prices up in 2014. But he said this year’s record prices are due to farmers cutting back on production.

“Milk production for several months, starting actually the last quarter of last year, has been running below a year ago,” Cropp said. “Cow numbers have declined and production per cow has been below normal, so we have resulted in a tightness of the supply-demand situation.”

Kohl’s Corp. negotiating company sale to owner of The Vitamin Shoppe

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Hart Posen is an expert on business strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business. He said he was surprised to see Kohl’s move forward with Franchise Group, Inc. because the holding company runs such a different set of retail businesses.

“There are two reasons one firm acquires another firm. One reason is they believe that the firm’s assets are undervalued, they think they’re getting a good deal on it,” Posen said. “More often than not what we would like to see in these situations is what we would call a strategic buyer —  a buyer that brings specific assets or knowledge or expertise to bear — that we believe may add value within Kohl’s. And it’s not at all clear to me that this buyer is a strategic buyer in that sense.”

Calls to boost natural gas can’t ignore fuel combustion’s deadly impacts

The Hill

Then in mid-May, a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison found that eliminating pollution from fossil fuel combustion in power plants could avoid as many as 11,600 premature deaths in the U.S. every year, with an annual value of $132 billion. The researchers looked at five additional sectors: industrial fuel use; residential and commercial fuel use; on-road vehicles; non-road vehicles; as well as oil and gas production and refining. They found that exposure to the small particulates emitted by combustion in these six sectors combined resulted in 205,000 deaths in one year. And, due to the disparities in the siting of power plants and other facilities, the victims of this pollution are far more often low-income and people of color.

Blue Is Probably Your Favorite Color. Here’s Why, According to Science

Popular Mechanics

From Crayola polls to legitimate peer-reviewed studies, the BBC investigated the science of how we perceive color and found that not only do we adore blue, but our perceptions of color are shaped by our experiences. Highlighting research from University of Rhode Island associate professor Lauren Labrecque and University of Wisconsin psychology professor Karen Schloss, the BBC reports that our preference for blue is longstanding, and that we start to give meaning to colors as we age.

Are Iowa’s Democratic Days Gone for Good?

The Atlantic

“Individual people’s politics is so much more about who they think they are in the world as opposed to policy stances,” Kathy Cramer, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me. “It’s about ‘Am I being heard? Am I being respected?’” To have any hope of clawing back their former terrain, Democrats need to make voters feel like the answer is yes.

Wisconsin ranks third worst in country for air pollution exposure disparities

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: A study released last month by UW-Madison researchers found the elimination of air pollution emissions across the country from energy-related activities could prevent more than 50,000 premature deaths a year.

In a press release about the analysis, Claire Gervais, a clinical associate professor with University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, called the results “shocking.”

“Doctors can only do so much,” Gervais said. “We must have better public policy to reduce industrial and transportation sources of fossil fuel burning.”

Kiel School Board closes Title IX investigation over wrong pronouns that prompted threats of violence

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: “When even a little bit of support is provided, or attention is provided, that there is such a backlash is a reminder to us of what trans and gender-diverse kids are facing every day in this country,” said LB Klein, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in Title IX and LGBTQ+ health. “Folks are acting out in violence about basic names, pronouns and terms, and that’s politicized — trans and gender-diverse kids are not being political, they’re being politicized.”

Wisconsin faces a ‘tangled series’ of abortion laws dating back to 1849 as it heads into a possible post-Roe future

Wisconsin Public Radio

Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Collaborative for Reproductive Equity (CORE) says Wisconsin already restricts many aspects of abortion, including banning government-funded insurance coverage, limiting availability through family planning programs, requiring mandatory counseling, ultrasounds and waiting periods for medication and surgical abortions and gestational limits, among other restrictions.

“None of these restrictions are evidence-based,” says CORE director Jenny Higgins.”There’s no medical reason for any of these restrictions. So just on that alone, these restrictions should be seen as onerous.”

Quoted: According to UW associate law professor Miriam Seifter, the judges found a right to privacy based on precedents dating back to the late 19th century. The opinion concludes that the “mother’s interests are superior to that of an unquickened embryo,” regardless of whether that embryo is “mere protoplasm,” in the view of the physician, or “a human being,” in the view of the Wisconsin statute.

Wisconsin faces a ‘tangled series’ of abortion laws heading into a possible post-Roe future

Wisconsin State Journal

According to UW associate law professor Miriam Seifter, the judges found a right to privacy based on precedents dating back to the late 19th century. But the impact of that decision is complicated, Seifter said. As a federal district court decision, it’s “not formally binding.” Instead, it serves as “persuasive authority” — and may seem less persuasive depending on the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling in Dobbs.

Key Roundup Ingredient Harms Wild Bee Colonies, New Study Shows

Mother Jones

“Bumblebees are a vitally important group of pollinators [and] the new findings are especially important given the widespread global use of glyphosate,” said Prof James Crall, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who was not part of the study team. “[Current] environmental safety testing is insufficient for identifying often unpredictable effects on behavior, physiology, or reproduction that occur at sublethal exposures.”

Glyphosate weedkiller damages wild bee colonies, study reveals

The Guardian

“Bumblebees are a vitally important group of pollinators [and] the new findings are especially important given the widespread global use of glyphosate,” said Prof James Crall, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, US, who was not part of the study team. “[Current] environmental safety testing is insufficient for identifying often unpredictable effects on behaviour, physiology, or reproduction that occur at sublethal exposures.”

The Radical, Transnational Legacy of Tiananmen Workers

The Nation

University of Wisconsin–Madison historian Maurice Meisner reported that “in the early weeks of the movement, student demonstrators often marched with arms linked to exclude workers and other citizens, thereby, they thought, preserving the ‘purity’ of their uniquely nonviolent crusade.” And the student leader Wang Dan told The New York Times that “the movement is not ready for worker participation because the principles of democracy must first be absorbed by students and intellectuals before they can be spread to others.”

A charging decision in the 2016 fatal Wauwatosa police shooting of Jay Anderson Jr. is coming Wednesday

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Keith Findley, a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, previously told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that probable cause is a “relatively low evidentiary threshold.”

“Most prosecutors, even if there’s probable cause, will tell you they won’t prosecute unless they believe they have sufficient evidence that they could persuade a jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” Findley said.

How Could Life Evolve From Cyanide?

Quanta Magazine

Joining me now is Betül Kaçar. She’s an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the department of bacteriology. She’s also the principal investigator of Project MUSE, a major NASA-funded astrobiology research initiative. Betül Kaçar, thanks very much for being here.Betül Kaçar

Betül Kaçar (18:33): Thanks for having me.

Why the global economy runs on dollars

Washington Post

Ultimately, the question of whether the dollar will remain a global reserve currency answers itself. To misquote a famous authority on political economy, “A day may come when the dollar loses its central role as the dominant global reserve currency, but it is not this day.” It is not even this decade, and quite likely not even this century. It won’t even become a possibility until the E.U. becomes a true fiscal and political union — or until China develops an accountable liberal government and much more developed private financial markets and finally accepts the free movement of capital flows. None of those scenarios seems likely to happen soon.

Mark Copelovitch (@mcopelov) is professor of political science and public affairs and director of European Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author (with David A. Singer) of “Banks on the Brink: Global Capital, Securities Markets, and the Political Roots of Financial Crises” (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

With the help of two Supreme Courts, Republican map prevails

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Rob Yablon, University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor and redistricting expert, disputes that.

“Even at that late stage, I do think it’s an exaggeration to say that there weren’t any other options that were available,” he said.

Yablon said the state Supreme Court could have taken more evidence or reconfigured the Milwaukee districts. They also could have drawn a whole new map. These are things courts do, Yablon said.

Air pollution more likely to harm people of color in Wisconsin, especially in Milwaukee, study finds

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “It is shocking that Wisconsin has the third-highest racial disparity in the country for

exposure to particulate matter, disproportionately killing black residents,” said Dr. Claire Gervais, a clinical associate professor with the University of Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine and Community Health.

“Doctors can only do so much. We must have better public policy to reduce industrial and transportation sources of fossil fuel burning,” Gervais said.

Most teens have a healthy relationship with digital technology, so long as their parents do too

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Dr. Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health and study lead, said their findings show just how important parents are when it comes to teens and technology.

“Parents serve as such role models, and I think that when kids are young, the role-modeling includes a lot of instruction and talking; and I think when teens are older, parents teach more through their own behavior than through their own words,” she said.

New tool shows Wisconsin farmers financial benefits of letting cows graze

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: John Hendrickson, farm viability specialist for UW-Madison’s Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, helped develop the tool for the Grassland 2.0 project. Started in 2020 using a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the collaboration between researchers from UW-Madison and other universities, farmers and agriculture industry leaders is working to encourage farmers to adopt the use of grasslands.

“We want farms to be financially viable and sustainable for the long term,” he said. “But of course the Grasslands 2.0 project also has this larger look at the entire landscape and climate change and soil erosion and what can we do to have a more sustainable agricultural system on the landscape.”

Social impact worker cooperatives gain adherents in Madison with accelerator kickoff, growth

Wisconsin State Journal

The recent interest in worker co-ops is driven by several factors, said Courtney Berner, executive director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, adding there are just over 700 businesses in the state that have incorporated as cooperatives. “I’ve seen that interest increase since the (2008) recession … a push back against Wall Street,” she said. “There’s the trend of baby boomers that are retiring. How do we retain those businesses?”

Where have all the walleye gone? Before long, anglers may have to make do with bluegills

Wisconsin State Journal

Wisconsin spends millions of dollars each year on efforts to maintain populations of popular species like walleye, trout and whitefish. But those efforts to resist change are often ineffective, said Zach Feiner, a research scientist with UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology and lead author of the report. “In many lakes it doesn’t seem to be working very well,” Feiner said. “What we’re doing now is maybe stocking lakes that are becoming too warm to really be able to sustain walleye populations into the future.”

Years after being pardoned, some recipients see ‘restart,’ others still face career barriers

Wisconsin State Journal

“Pardons remove all of the formal legal consequences of criminal conviction,” UW-Madison associate law professor Cecelia Klingele said. “It’s sort of like it’s the magic wand that erases all of the consequences (of) that conviction — except the informal ones. No pardon can make people not be biased against you, unfortunately.”

In 2003, Wisconsin was the epicenter of a monkeypox outbreak. The latest cases shouldn’t cause alarm, yet.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “The average person shouldn’t be worried about monkeypox. It’s more about knowing when and where it’s been found and monitoring your own health,” said Dan Shirley, medical director for infection prevention at UW Health in Madison. “If you have anything that seems like monkeypox, report it right away.”

How universities prepare new teachers to handle the aftermath of tragedies

WKOW-TV 27

Some of Wisconsin’s newest teachers have only had their degrees or teaching certificates for a few weeks. As they plan for what their classrooms will include in the fall, many are also preparing for what they would do if tragedy were to strike their school. That’s something they’re prepared to do, according to Tom Owenby, a teaching faculty member in secondary social studies at UW-Madison. He said the university broadly teaches education students what they should do if there’s a school shooting once they are teaching full-time

Foxconn Megafactory Flop Forces Wisconsin Town to Recast Its Net

WSJ

“Right now, it’s a giant white-elephant-type project,” said Steven Deller, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The water lines that they ran into it, the highway infrastructure that they ran into it, the electric lines that they ran into it—it’s all way overcapacity,” he said.

A growing Wisconsin brewery faces high demand, tight supply

PBS Wisconsin

Quoted: “We’ve built a supply chain system that includes factories, that includes distribution centers, that includes transportation methods and all that stuff. We’ve built that to handle a certain capacity that we thought was coming at us,” said Jake Dean, director of the Grainger Center for Supply Chain Management at the University of Wisconsin School of Business.

New estimates say 1.3 million Wisconsin households don’t have access or can’t afford broadband internet service

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Our reliance on the internet quadrupled during the pandemic, said Barry Orton, professor emeritus of telecommunications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The bar keeps getting raised higher,” Orton said, with increased demands for faster speeds, especially in uploads.

Foxconn Megafactory Flop Forces Wisconsin Town to Recast Its Net

Wall Street Journal

“Right now, it’s a giant white-elephant-type project,” said Steven Deller, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The water lines that they ran into it, the highway infrastructure that they ran into it, the electric lines that they ran into it—it’s all way overcapacity,” he said.

Women return to the workforce after COVID-19

Spectrum News

According to a UW-Madison professor, there’s a big return to work in Wisconsin right now. Laura Dresser is an assistant clinical professor with the university’s Institute for Research on Poverty.

“There are more workers in the labor force today than there were in February of 2020 before the shutdowns,” she said.

She added the labor force participation rate is about 66% in the state.

“That doesn’t mean women’s lives aren’t really stressed by the pandemic, but I think we haven’t seen a kind of permanent shift in work as a result at least here in Wisconsin,” Dresser said.

Many homeowners have a strong interest in climate change. Here are Milwaukee-area resources that can help them create ‘greener’ homes.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Wisconsin is seeing “warmer and wetter” weather, like much of the world, according to Stephen Vavrus, a senior scientist for the Nelson Institute for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over the past decade, heavy rains and flooding have become more common, leading to flooded lawns and basements, and leaking roofs for homeowners.

Gender Stereotypes In Hulu’s Baby And Toddler Programming May Have Lasting Effects For Kids

Forbes

Another problem with children learning these stereotypes at such a young age is that once stereotypes are learned, it’s nearly impossible to unlearn them. Patricia Devine, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison explained to Wisconsin Public Radio, “A lot of people sincerely embrace egalitarian values, but being socialized into our culture, they learn stereotypes very early in childhood, around age three, four and five. They’re firmly ingrained; they’re frequently activated, very well-practiced, and they end up being the default, or habitual kind of response.” She adds, “I’m not sure if it’s possible to unlearn them…I know I shouldn’t act based on the stereotypes, but it’s not as though my awareness or my knowledge of those stereotypes just goes away.”

Black scholars demand retraction of autoethnography article

Inside Higher Ed

“African Studies Keyword: Autoethnography,” the article in question, was written by Katrina Daly Thompson, Evjue-Bascom Professor of the Humanities and professor of African cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Kathryn Mara, a postdoctoral fellow in African cultural studies at Madison. Both authors identify as white women and argue against a tradition—or at least an aspiration—among many Africanists of “detachment” and “objectivity.”