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Category: UW Experts in the News

Why Did Evers Veto An Update to Withholding Tables After a Tax Cut?

Posted on
PBS Wisconsin

Quoted: “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. I have no idea why he did that,” said John Witte, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor emeritus who specializes in tax and budget policy.

Witte said there is speculation that Evers vetoed the change in the withholding tables because the governor hopes Democrats will take control of the Legislature in the 2022 election and repeal the tax cuts. By not changing the withholding tables, most taxpayers wouldn’t notice a difference, that thinking goes.

“If he changed the tables the tax cuts would be permanent,” said Witte.

Wisconsin Labor Market Faces Challenges New And Old Coming Out Of COVID-19 Pandemic

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Menzie Chinn, an economics professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an email that while there is much demand for workers, supply remains constrained.

“Rising wages are not a ‘bad’, since that’s how the market adjusts to market conditions,” said Chinn. “There’s not a ‘shortage’ as the business community keeps on complaining about.”

Steve Deller, an applied economics professor at UW-Madison, said increased wages and benefits are one way companies are trying to be creative in the current labor market.

“Five years ago or so, people would think that a $15-an-hour job is a good paying job,” said Deller. “People are coming to the realization that’s not a good paying job. It’s got to be more than that. And businesses are coming around and saying, ‘If I want quality workers, I’ve got to up my pay.'”

‘Why Do You Keep Harassing Me?’: An Outagamie County Judge Controls Defendants After Sentencing

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: “It is a little bit gray whether or not courts have the authority to do that,” said Cecelia Klingele, a law professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Wisconsin law alludes to the inherent authority of the court over its sentence, but it has not been fleshed out fully in case law, sort of, what are the outer bounds of that power,” she said.

LIFT Dane’s Legal Tune-up Tool can help you remove eligible criminal and eviction records

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “We used public data that is so often used against people to help correct situations or improve situations that might be barriers to employment, housing, education, childcare and health,” explained Marsha Mansfield, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Economic Justice Institute and director of LIFT Dane.

Milwaukee Cuban-Americans watch with unease as Cubans take to the streets in protest

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “We haven’t seen these kinds of protests in Cuba, in part because the system is not one that grants the legitimacy of that kind of civic protest,” said Patrick Iber, an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The Cuban government often sees and accuses people who are involved in these protests as being interests of foreign powers, and that is the kind of accusation that the current president has used against the protestors.”

Shutdowns, sales and uncertainty: Can Wisconsin’s paper industry adapt to remain viable post-COVID?

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Steven Deller, a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist and part of a group that studied the impact of Verso’s closure in Wisconsin Rapids, said he thinks the paper industry in Wisconsin is declining for reasons similar to what happened in Maine, where he worked at a university before coming to Wisconsin.

The problem in both states, he said, is that many of the plants are old and companies are finding it doesn’t make sense to invest in aging facilities. Instead, they are building new, often in the south to reduce transportation costs by being closer to timber producers in warmer places where trees grow faster.

Boosting Funding for K-12 Schools

Posted on
PBS Wisconsin

An increase for Wisconsin’s K-12 schools in the state’s budget coupled with one-time federal pandemic aid still falls short according to public school advocates. Julie Underwood, former dean of the UW-Madison School of Education and board president for the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, explains.

A Basic Primer On The Delta Coronavirus Variant

Posted on
WORT FM
In recent weeks, public health officials have been raising concerns over the delta variant of the coronavirus.

But, according to numbers from Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services, only about 83 casesof the variant have been formally diagnosed in the state.

For more on the variant, and the risk it could pose, our producer Jonah Chester spoke with Doctor Ajay Sethi, an Associate Professor in Population Health Sciences at UW-Madison.

‘They’re More Than Willing To Suppress My Vote’: Voters With Disabilities Sound off on GOP Voting Bills

Posted on
Up North News

Quoted: The proposals, which would broadly make absentee voting more difficult, are in line with legislation that’s moved forward in other battleground states with Republican-majority legislatures, said Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. Similar bills advanced in Florida, Georgia, and Arizona.

“The bills we’re seeing in Wisconsin and other battleground states are really just an immediate reaction to legislators’ discontent with what happened in 2020,” said Burden. “Its roots are in Donald Trump’s complaints about absentee voting. He railed for about a year, consistently and publicly, in speeches and on Twitter, about what he believed was fraud happening with mail-in voting,” he added.

Doctors urge people to watch Bucks games responsibly

Posted on
WKOW-TV 27

Dr. Ann Sheehy with UW Health said everyone should enjoy the moment, but do so safely. “We’re all really excited for the Bucks, and I love the celebrations going on,” said Dr. Sheehy. “Especially after we’ve all been so separate for a year, it’s even more meaningful, I think, to gather people in the state of Wisconsin, to celebrate these things. I would just say that I hope that people that are attending have been vaccinated.”

Wisconsin DNR working on wolf hunt and management plans

Posted on
Spectrum News

Noted: A recent study from UW-Madison showed that about an additional 100 wolves had been killed during the hunt last winter on top of the 218 killed by hunters and trappers.
“Researchers estimate that a majority of these additional, uncounted deaths are due to something called cryptic poaching, where poachers hide evidence of illegal killings,” a university release about the study said.

Gov. Evers stresses importance of vaccines after someone at budget signing event tests positive for COVID-19

Posted on
CBS 58

Quoted: Ajay Sethi, professor of population health sciences at UW-Madison, said this scenario is proof the pandemic is not over.

“It’s a good reminder that anybody who is not yet vaccinated against COVID-19 really ought to do so because as soon as you leave your house without a mask, you have a risk of catching the virus,” said Sethi.

Wisconsin group works to conserve and restore prairies

Posted on
Spectrum News

Quoted: Earth’s vegetation is changing as fast as it did during the Ice Age, according to University of Wisconsin geography and climate professor Jack Williams. Organizations like the Prairie Enthusiasts conserving and restoring land makes a big difference.

“One of the things we’ve definitely learned from the past is that when climates change, species move and one way we can help those species is helping this movement across these modern, fragmented, very much transformed landscapes,” Williams said.

 

 

The US doesn’t really know how widespread the Delta variant is because its virus sequencing is lagging far behind many other rich nations

Posted on
Business Insider

Quoted: Thomas Friedrich, professor of pathobiological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the FT that federal regulations designed to protect people’s privacy can get in the way of the “rapid sharing of information we need.” States interpret these regulations in different ways, he said.

Wisconsin educators help design ‘Shipwrecks!’ game

Posted on
PBS Wisconsin

During the 2020-21 academic year, 14 Wisconsin third through fifth grade teachers took part in the Shipwrecks! Game Design Fellowship with PBS Wisconsin Education and Field Day Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Throughout the winter, these educators met with teachers, game designers, researchers and maritime archaeologists to co-design a video game that investigates shipwrecks in the Great Lakes using the practices of maritime archaeologists.

As fisheries managers consider ecosystem approaches, new study suggests no need for new strategies

Posted on
Seafood Source

Quoted: “Management of forage fish populations should be based on data that are specific to that forage fish, and to their predators,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Associate Professor Olaf Jensen, a co-author of the study, said. “When there aren’t sufficient data to conduct a population-specific analysis, it’s reasonable to manage forage fish populations for maximum sustainable yield, as we would other fish populations under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

Pencils down: The year pre-college tests went away

Posted on
Knowable Magazine

Noted: When poor, Black or brown students score lower, it’s not exactly the tests’ fault, says Eric Grodsky, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who analyzed the links between standardized testing and socioeconomic status in the Annual Review of Sociology. That’s because scores reflect disparities in students’ lives before testing. Wealthy students, for example, might have benefited from parents who had more time to read to them as toddlers, all the way through to being able to afford to take both tests, multiple times, to obtain the best score.

Thus, the disparities reflected in test scores result not from a failure of the tests so much as a failure to create a just educational system, Grodsky says. “We don’t do a good job of serving all our kids.” And if test scores determine one’s future opportunities, using them can perpetuate those inequities.

The hackers are out there. You could be next

Posted on
Agri-Pulse

Quoted: “The classic thing is that attackers go in and lurk, sometimes for very long periods of time, and maybe exfiltrate data,” said Molly Jahn, a plant geneticist at University of Wisconsin-Madison who was undersecretary of research, education and economics at USDA in 2009 and 2010 and has done extensive research on cybersecurity. Jahn is currently on loan to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) but spoke to Agri-Pulse in her personal capacity as an expert.

Wolf study raises questions about what’s going on in Wisconsin’s woods

Posted on
Wisconsin Examiner

After contributing to an independent study to assess how many wolves were killed during the February wolf hunt, Professor Adrian Treves expected some criticism. “There’s just more controversy surrounding wolves, their protected status, and the conflict that some people experience with them that makes management very difficult and controversial,” Treves, a professor of environmental studies at UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies, told Wisconsin Examiner. It’s also normal for new research to be debated, questioned, and compared with other existing information. Treves, however, feels that’s not how the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is handling the study’s findings.

Native bees need saving too, research shows decline across Midwest

Posted on
Spectrum News

This summer, UW-Madison researchers further looked at the links between certain types of crops, the growth in those types of crops and the correlation to a decline in native bees across the state and the midwest as a whole.

“Rarer [bees] that have become increasingly rare, they might not be able to thrive because we’ve eliminated those flowers that they need from the landscape,” said Jeremy Hemberger, a research entomologist at UW-Madison “by converting prairies and wetlands to agriculture and developments.”

The decline of native bees is a decades-long problem that keeps the list of endangered bees growing.

“Native bees are silently playing these really important roles, so just people becoming more aware that there’s all these other groups out there that through our actions we could be supporting, I think is a really valuable thing,” UW-Madison professor Claudio Gratton said.

Researchers Estimate 1/3 of Wisconsin’s Wolf Population Wiped Out in Last Year

Posted on
Newsweek

In an analysis published in the journal PeerJ on July 5, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM) estimate that Wisconsin’s wolf population was reduced by about one-third between April 2020 and April 2021. Specifically, the researchers estimate that 313 to 323 (27 to 33 percent) of the state’s 1,034 wolves were killed by hunters or poachers in that period of time.

Wisconsin’s Covid Condition: The Delta Variant Looms for Unvaccinated People

Posted on
PBS Wisconsin

Quoted: “The really good news is that if you have gotten your vaccine, you’re not going to be sick with the Delta virus,” said David O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the July 7 edition of Here & Now’s Noon Wednesday.

“Most of the people who are getting sick with the Delta variant, and indeed with covid generally, in the United States are people who are not vaccinated,” said Thomas Friedrich, a professor of pathobiological sciences at UW-Madison, also during the July 7 episode of Noon Wednesday.

UW Prof. Jordan Ellenberg, “Shape: The Hidden Geometry Of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy And Everything Else.”

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WORT FM

Stu Levitan welcomes one of the brightest stars in the firmament that is the University of Wisconsin faculty, Professor Jordan Ellenberg, here to talk about his New York Times best-seller, Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else.

Latinos Have Greater Risk of Developing Alzheimer’s, But Less Likely to Get Help

Posted on
WTTW - Chicago PBS

Quoted: Dr. María Carolina Mora Pinzón, a preventive medicine physician and scientist at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute at University of Wisconsin, Madison, says that Latinos are less likely to move a relative into a residential care facility or access other forms of help.

“We have heard from people that are looking for the services, that they are not available for their family members,” said Mora Pinzón. “It’s either an access issue where they are not eligible, or the insurance does not cover these types of services.”

Humans are practically defenseless. Why don’t wild animals attack us more?

Posted on
Live Science

Quoted: There are a few likely reasons why they don’t attack more often. Looking at our physiology, humans evolved to be bipedal — going from moving with all four limbs to walking upright on longer legs, according to John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“There is a threat level that comes from being bipedal,” Hawks told Live Science. “And when we look at other primates — chimpanzees, gorillas, for instance — they stand to express threats. Becoming larger in appearance is threatening, and that is a really easy way of communicating to predators that you are trouble.”

‘I Think The Governor Wins’: Experts Weigh In On Political Spin Of State Budget

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at UW-Madison, agreed the tax cut will likely play to the governor’s advantage during campaign season.

“He will not be easy to paint as a tax-and-spend liberal,” Burden said. “I think (the tax cut) takes the edge off some of the criticism that Republicans would use.”

New Federal Funding Aimed At Small Meat Processors Could Help Industry Capitalize On Pandemic Demand

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Jeff Sindelar is a meat specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension. He said small and mid-size processors saw demand for their services and products expand rapidly in 2020, after coronavirus outbreaks forced large processing plants to reduce capacity or shut down.

“They were really stressed because (farmers) were needing places to go with their animals, (consumers) were interested in buying more protein, and there was also this small hoarding phenomenon that was going on for a short period of time,” Sindelar said.

Season 4 premiere: Critical race theory and a ‘woke’ military

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Stars and Stripes

In the Season 4 premiere episode of Military Matters, host Rod Rodriguez discusses “wokeness” and critical race theory in the military with guests, Brian “BK” Kimber, Air Force veteran and host of the weekly podcast, “World News with BK,” and John Witte, professor emeritus from University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the departments of political science and the Robert La Follette School of Public Affairs.

With reelection on horizon, Gov. Tony Evers campaigns on Republican tax cut

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said Republicans may have inadvertently handed Evers a huge re-election gift by allowing him to sign such a monumental income tax cut, defusing the GOP attack line that Evers is a tax-and-spend liberal. “I think that’s more the irony in all this,” Burden said. “The budget itself looks like a win for Republicans, they mostly got what they wanted. But the budget I think will help Evers’ re-election and doesn’t do much to help Republicans out.”

Child tax credit cash to start hitting parents’ bank accounts Thursday

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

“This all takes place in a country like ours with less upward mobility and less opportunity for kids now than in past,” said Tim Smeeding, who studies poverty as a professor of public affairs and economics at UW-Madison. He sees the payments as good public policy “based on the idea that kids are expensive, and society has a shared interest in seeing them thrive.”

ColdQuanta Reaches Quantum Computer Milestone By Demonstrating Immense Scalability of ‘Cold Atom’ Processor Approach

Posted on
MarketWatch

Hilbert is based on pioneering work over the last several decades by Mark Saffman, ColdQuanta’s Chief Scientist for Quantum Information and professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Cold Atoms are nature’s qubits. Their pristine characteristics enable control of their quantum state with a clear pathway to rapidly scaling to multiple thousands of qubits,” said Mark Saffman.

UW Health: Guidance on COVID-19 vaccine boosters is a ways away

Posted on
WISC-TV 3

“There is still so much to learn – how long immunity persists after vaccines, what kinds of reactions people might have with additional doses, and do the vaccines need to be updated for new strains of SARS-CoV2 – that it’s just too soon to know whether we will all need to have booster shots like we do for the flu,” Dr. Jim Conway, medical director of UW Health’s Immunization Program and professor of pediatrics and infectious disease specialist at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, said.

Will we need COVID-19 booster shots? UW Health weighs in

Posted on
WKOW-TV 27

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend boosters for any COVID-19 vaccine, indicating that the need for and timing of COVID-19 booster doses have not been established. It may be a while until those recommendations are made, according to Dr. Jim Conway, medical director, UW Health Immunization Program, and professor of pediatrics and infectious disease specialist, UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

CDC not currently recommending boosters for COVID-19 vaccines

Posted on
NBC-15

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that at this time they are not recommending booster doses of any of the COVID-19 vaccines currently in use in the United States. Dr. Jim Conway, the medical director of the UW Health Immunization Program, and professor of pediatrics and infectious disease specialist at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, says it might be a while before those recommendations are made.