On the latest Energy Transition Show podcast, host Chris Nelder asks Gregory Nemert, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in the process of technological change, the big question: How will this transition thing actually happen?
In 2007, only two years after the 1918 flu sequence was completely decoded, influenza researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Tokyo and the University of Wisconsin described, in a paper in Nature, how he and his colleagues used the sequence to create live, infectious 1918 flu viruses. To demonstrate that these really were flu viruses, they infected 7 macaques with them. Not surprisingly, the macaques got severely ill, and the scientists eventually euthanized all of them.
William Tracy, a professor of agronomy at UW-Madison, has been working with sweet corn since 1984. He said that sweetness is no accident.
“Modern sweet corns don’t lose their sugar so quickly,” he said. “We researched how to accomplish that and offered our solutions to the seed industry, who incorporated it into their breeding program and catalog.”
But Ion Meyn, an associate law professor at the University of Wisconsin, said investigators would have had to present a judge with sufficient evidence linking the information stored on Perry’s personal phone to the commission of a crime before obtaining the warrant.
Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–MadisonIf the IRA passes in the House, it will mark a historic turning point for the U.S. as the first major piece of legislation to limit our carbon emissions and hence future warming of our planet. The outline of where we go from here is already written in the shortcomings of this bill: we must stop investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and make this legislation merely a first step of many more meaningful steps to come.
“The difference is only obvious in photographs comparing the perigee full moon with an apogee full moon,” said James Lattis, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “We’re looking at 18 different varieties from around the world and which ones can maybe produce the best grain or the best for future use if industrial hemp becomes more of a mainstream crop,” UW-Madison Extension Chippewa County Agricultural agent, Jerry Clark, said.
UW-Madison Extension Buffalo County Agricultural Educator, Carl Duley, says the fiber and grain produced from industrial hemp has many different uses.
“Right now they are approved for human food, not for animal feed at this point, but they are used a lot in health food stores like granola,” Duley said. “There’s a lot of flour made after the oil is squeezed out.”
Quoted: “What any curriculum should be is thoughtful, give students something they don’t already have, and make them into what we may call critical democratic citizens,” Michael Apple said. He’s the John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Apple says the efforts to ban “Flamer” and other books centered around the LGBTQ+ experience are part of a well organized campaign.
He adds that “Flamer” is an award-winning book about acceptance and self-discovery.
Climate change is an issue that scientists across the globe have been trying to combat since the late 1800s.
Warming temperatures and increased rainfall over the past few decades have brought uncertainty to Wisconsin’s agricultural sector. One of the major causes of this erratic weather is the greenhouse gasses that continue to warm the planet.
But a small group of scientists at the University of Wisconsin are working on a solution.
“Stinkhorns develop rapidly, sometimes growing up to four to six inches per hour, and can generate enough force to break through asphalt,” according to the University of Wisconsin Horticultural Extension. And once they reach their mature, rocket-shaped appearance, Mueller says, “they really do stink.”
“There’s some claim that it’s the cheapest way humans have ever been able to make electricity at scale,” said Gregory Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a lead author on that report.
Quoted: For people who don’t qualify for such visas, “if they have a desire to remain here in the United States indefinitely, asylum’s going to be their best option,” said Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
“But the process – it’s a heavy one for everyone involved.”
Quoted: “We’re seeing an increase in activity and I don’t think it’s a blip,” said Alexia Kulwiec, professor and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers – Department of Labor Education.
“I think that it is forward movement and traction toward improving working conditions. Whether it will be truly transformational and create the kind of economy that we would rather see, I’m not convinced of, but it’s certainly possible.”
Before the start of the 2021-2022 school year, many doctors, including UW Health’s Jeff Pothof, encouraged schools to continue requiring masks and not get rid of other precautions. “It didn’t seem that we should put kids in an environment where they could, you know, take the full brunt of COVID,” he said. “Now, you fast forward, you know, it’s just been a year — it feels like five — but things are different.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison political science Professor Barry Burden said Steen’s shocking overperformance against Vos spoke to Wisconsin Republicans’ outrage regarding the 2020 election and Trump’s enduring power among the party’s voters.
Daniel Grabois, an assistant professor of horn at UW-Madison, joins the show to tell us what electro-acoustic music is, and to tell us about the Electro-Acoustic Research Space that makes it possible for him and his students to experiment with instruments.
Chris McCahill, managing director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison based research group State Smart Transportation Initiative, argued that no matter where you park — be it a Walmart, a hotel or a city garage — and whether or not you even have a car, “everyone is paying for (parking) all the time.”
Even after sounding warnings about the impacts of climate change on human health for more than 25 years, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute, was still surprised at the many ways researchers found climate hazards affect disease.
“They found over 1,000 unique pathways,” said Patz, who participated as a co-author. “That to me was striking.”
Steve Ackerman and Jon Martin are respected meteorology professors at the University of Wisconsin who have a long-running series called “The Weather Guys.” On their website, they discussed another way dogs “detect” storms changes. They write, “Thunder, the loud noise that accompanies lightning, gives this nimbostratus cloud the name thunderstorm. Some dogs don’t like loud sounds, whether from a thunderclap or fireworks.”
Quoted: “Making the world better for monarchs is going to bring a lot of other species along for the ride,” said Karen Oberhauser, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum.
Oberhauser was a part of the IUCN team that added monarchs to its “Red List,” which highlights how organisms are threatened and what actions can prevent their extinction.
Noted: That is why rather than skyrocketing, food insecurity rates remained largely unchanged during the pandemic, said Judi Bartfeld, project coordinator for the Wisconsin Food Security Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said the “robust” federal response kept people fed, despite widespread unemployment.
Quoted: “The winner in this race will probably get in the 20s I’m guessing in terms of percentage of the vote, because it is so widely split,” said David Cannon, UW-Madison professor.
Quoted: The timing of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and other government grants is good for companies like Charter as they transition from legacy cable television service to broadband, according to Barry Orton, professor emeritus of telecommunications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Cable television isn’t going to last forever. People are cutting the cord like crazy,” Orton said. “But what they’re not cutting is their broadband connection.”
“This is an assessment by an international scientific body that looked at all of the data and said monarchs are endangered,” says Karen Oberhauser, an expert on monarch butterfly biology and conservation and the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. “That means they’re in danger of their population going so low that it wouldn’t be able to recover.”
“If climate is changing, the risk of these diseases are changing,” said study co-author Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Even during the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, many scholars of fascism were sharply divided over whether Trump should be characterized as a fascist based on the vision he articulated — or lack thereof. University of Wisconsin historian Stanley Payne argued that Trump shouldn’t be described as such because, among other things, he never embraced “a coherent new revolutionary ideology.” (Personally I’d call Trump’s first term proto-fascist and say his second presidential run could mark the maturation of that tendency.)
Quoted: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center, said bringing the convention to Milwaukee is a strategic move by Republicans to take back the state.
“It has a lot of political value being in a key battleground state and in the Midwest, where there are other states up for grabs,” Burden said about the pick.
With water issues a concern for much of the country, Wisconsin is also taking a look at how to protect the state’s water quality.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension has created four new roles within the Agriculture Water Quality Program to promote outreach and environmentally-friendly farming practices. The program is led by co-program managers John Exo and Amber Radatz.
Quoted: Stephen Kantrowitz, a professor of American history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said there was a brief period not long ago in which political leaders had a general agreement about race in American history. They believed the country had a history of racial injustice, that this was a bad thing and that the country had a collective responsibility to do something about it.
Kantrowitz said those who disagreed with the consensus generally used coded language — or “dog whistles” — to articulate their resistance. Otherwise, he said, they knew they risked being dubbed racists and therefore outside the consensus.
“What we’ve seen in the last decade,” the professor said, “is the collapse of what remained of that consensus and the rise of an overt language of white racial resentment … as a respectable (or anyway matter-of-fact) political position.”
Quoted: “Given the importance of getting election administration right and the suspicion these candidates continue to express about the 2020 election, it is surprising that their plans for replacing the WEC are not more specific,” said Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center.
Carol D Ryff at the University of Wisconsin’s Institute of Ageing told me about stereotype embodiment theory, which was proposed by the Yale psychologist Becca Levy. It says that the culture presents older people as moving slowly, being hard of hearing, talking too loud, and unable to read small print. These depictions are funny when we’re young; then we grow old and enact them, and they undermine a person’s sense of wellbeing.
“I think it does, especially on the question of whether the 2020 election was legitimate or not,” said Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the director of the school’s Elections Research Center, when asked if the different endorsements raised questions about the direction of the party.
“Ooooh!” University of Wisconsin professor Jonathan Senchyne tweeted. “You’re just like millions of retail & food service workers whose managers demand they be available at any time for flexible scheduling each week rather than giving them reliable, repeating shifts that would make it possible to plan for childcare, school, 2nd jobs, etc.”
Interview with Diana Hess, dean of the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education and a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction.
“These changes in recent years have prompted approaches that are beginning to make a real impact on improving the care and outcome of children with diseases thought incurable 10 years ago,” says Paul Sondel, the Reed and Carolee Walker professor of pediatric oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and a pediatric oncologist for more than 40 years. “Nevertheless, while we are seeing new progress, we know there is still a long way to go to be able to cure all children with cancer.”
Good sleep habits are important for both kids and adults, but they’re especially important for kids so they can get the most out of school, according to Dr. Rachna Tiwari, pediatric sleep specialist, UW Health Kids, and clinical assistant professor, UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Tiwari says kids who don’t get enough sleep may struggle with focus or be irritable.
After getting a trial run during the pandemic, Isaacson said there is broad support in Wisconsin schools to continue free meals for all.
That’s not a surprise, said UW-Madison historian Andrew Ruis.
“Significant emergencies like the Great Depression (and) the COVID-19 pandemic often change people’s views about what is possible from a social or political standpoint,” Ruis said. “I think there’s a real chance that universal school meals will be realized on a broader scale than they currently are.”
Peripatetic, or traveling from place to place, aptly describes Dre’s life, as it does his creator’s. In his zig-zagging career, Wright, now a clinical associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and a former co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, has seldom taken the safe route and has been, literally and metaphorically, all over the map.
Guests include assistant scientist Tyler Lark and Yanhua Xie, a postdoctoral research associate, both at UW-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE).
Kimber Wilkerson is the faculty director of UW-Madison’s Teacher Education Center. She says there are many reasons hiring teachers is difficult right now.
“A critique of the teaching profession is the pay,” said Wilkerson. “I think COVID has exacerbated that experience by making the working conditions for teachers even more challenging.”
Quoted: “We already have this the system where childcare is getting more and more expensive, harder and harder to get into childcare, more and more poverty, structural poverty that’s racialized,” Dr. Tiffany Green said. “Then we have abortion on top of that where the people that need them most can’t get access to the services they need and they’re more likely, for a lot of reasons, to be black, brown and or indigenous.”
Quoted: “‘Decertifying’ (or any variant, such as ‘voiding’) a presidential election after the fact is simply not a thing,” UW-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer said …
“The complete absence of any decertification mechanism in either the constitution or federal statutory law is a fundamental point,” UW-Madison law school associate professor Robert Yablon said. “That legal silence is glaring given that other aspects of the presidential election process are set out in detail, including in Article II Section 1, the 12th Amendment, and the Electoral Count Act.”
Alvin Thomas, who is an assistant professor in the UW-Madison Human Development and Family Studies Department, said while there are many obstacles that minorities face in accessing mental health treatment, there are a few major issues that stand out.
Quoted: “In the absence of any maternal illness, genetic abnormalities in the fetus — including those that would not allow the fetus to survive outside the womb — do not constitute a life-threatening condition for the mother,” Dr. Lisa Barroilhet, interim chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said in a written statement. “Because the abortion is not being performed to save of the life of the mother, it would not be legal in Wisconsin per the 1849 statute.”
Quoted: Steve Deller, ag economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said agriculture experienced the same supply chain issues that almost every industry faced in 2021.
“A lot of the stuff that farmers need to operate were in very low supply. So essentially it’s more expensive for farmers to operate,” Deller said. “It’s like any business. You know, I need to buy a new piece of equipment, but I can’t find it and prices go up.”
Noted: As absentee ballots are being cast across the state for Aug. 9 primary elections, Robert Yablon, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, recently joined Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Central Time.” He said leaving the voting rule debates unsettled amid an election is essentially asking for controversies.
Interview with Steve Deller, Professor, Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Coyotes have become practically ubiquitous across the lower 48 United States, and they’re increasingly turning up in cities. The draws are abundant food and green space in urban areas.
-David Drake, Bret Shaw, Mary Magnuson
Lizzo’s lyric change in June primed people to recognize the language in Beyoncé’s album, said Sami Schalk, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the upcoming book “Black Disability Politics.”“The important thing is that it was brought up again and slowly over time, we will hopefully see more people thinking differently about this word,” Dr. Schalk said.
“It’s literally the most popular flavor and fragrance in the world, and it’s a multimillion-dollar industry,” University of Wisconsin botany professor and vanilla expert Ken Cameron said recently to On Wisconsin, the UW-Madison alumni magazine.
UW Health’s chief quality officer Dr. Jeff Pothof joins Live at Four to talk about the latest COVID-19 headlines.
Quoted: “Younger generations keep seeing this message of doom and gloom and the end of the world in 12 years, 15 years and so on,” Dominique Brossard, professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. “We know from research in the psychology of risk that if you keep on talking about doom, what you end up doing is fueling a feeling of helplessness, anxiety.”
Over the past few weeks, the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend has opened two new exhibitions by indigenous artists to the public.
On July 23, the museum opened Ho-Chunk photographer Tom Jones’s first major retrospective, which features 120 photos from sixteen bodies of work over 25 years.
“There’s something that a friend of mine said once,” says Jones, a professor of photography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “She came to a show, and she’s like, ‘Your work is so beautiful, but then when you really look at it and get up on it, it slaps you in the face.’”
Quoted: “It’s usually not just contact in passing, but really close skin-to-skin contact, that’s the major risk to spread,” said Dr. Dan Shirley, medical director of infection prevention at UW Health.
“Had this unfolded on this kind of timeline in 2020, it really could have created problems, because there would have been questions about whether the state could have actually named a slate of electors,” Robert Yablon, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, told the Times. “You could imagine there being disputed slates of electors that were sent to Congress, and it could have been a big mess.”
With the help of Ho and Chaney – as well as Sami Schalk, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and my own experience as a plus-size international travel writer – we’ve compiled a series of tips that can help anyone, regardless of their size, feel a little more comfortable and confident about their next flight.
“I choose window seats so I can lean against the wall more,” said Schalk.
The news came as no surprise to Karen Oberhauser, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. A globally recognized expert on monarch butterflies, Oberhauser has been studying the species for nearly 40 years.
Saying “it would be surprising” if Wisconsin’s fake electors weren’t subpoenaed while other states’ fake electors were, UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said, “Government officials issuing these subpoenas would treat all of the states equivalently, especially because it was a shared network of conspirators who were communicating across state lines.”
Silicon Valley is the perfect example of the international hiring phenomenon. Researcher Sarah Edwards from the University of Wisconsin-Madison explains that “the expansion of Silicon Valley into increasingly intimate and global spaces” will result in the decentralization of the Valley as the leading startup city. Other cities like Miami are thriving in the industry thanks to digital nomads and increased job mobility (as was shown during the Great Resignation.)
Quoted: “Overall, Americans are vaccinating their children. Overall, we have really good vaccination rates. And then there’s minority pockets of communities where they do it less, for different reasons,” said Dr. Dominique Brossard, a professor at UW-Madison who chairs the Department of Life Sciences Communication. Brossard’s area of expertise is in risk communication.
