Category: UW Experts in the News

Scientists have long speculated about why the 1918 pandemic’s second wave was deadlier than the first. Patterns of human behavior and seasonality could explain some of the difference—but the virus itself might have changed too. “And this starts to put some meat on the bone” of that hypothesis, Andrew Mehle, an influenza researcher at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was not involved in the study, told me.

Pamela Oliver, a professor emerita of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has studied protest movements for 40-plus years, said the generations-old struggle for Black rights had gained significant momentum until the events of 9/11 diverted national attention. Activists have been trying to make up lost ground ever since, she said – including the additional loss of some white allies in 2016 after the fatal ambush of five police officers in Dallas by Micah Johnson, a Black man.

That subduction process operates like a “conveyor belt,” recycling and exchanging material and volatile chemicals between the surface of Earth and deep within it, says Ann Bauer, a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mothers have suffered most. Ben Etheridge and Lisa Spantig of the University of Essex found that in the first months of Britain’s lockdown women’s well-being dropped twice as much as men’s. That some friendships have withered and others have never bloomed could have a lasting impact on new mothers in particular, predicts Margaret Kerr of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. James Conway, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health who oversees vaccination programs there, said vaccines will likely be available for 5- to 11-year-olds in late 2021, and for babies over 6 months, toddlers and preschoolers in early 2022.

“Police officers are trained that if somebody’s in a vehicle, you’re trying to stop them, and they’re noncompliant, the car is a weapon, and therefore this makes the person armed,” says John P. Gross, a clinical associate law professor at the University of Wisconsin who has written on police and vehicles.

So far, the actual growth in the price level has been temporary. Expectations of inflation remain muted because either the anticipated output gap or the responsiveness of inflation to the output gap are thought to be small, inflation expectations remain well-anchored, or all three.

Menzie Chinn is a professor of public affairs and economics at the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research examines the empirical and policy aspects of macroeconomic interactions between countries.

“Allowing different properties operated by the same person or group to follow different rules opens a loophole that farmers can use to circumvent the soy moratorium,” said Lisa Rausch, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin.

While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken draws attention to climate change in the Arctic at meetings with other national officials this week in Iceland, an even greater threat looms on the other side of the planet.

Typically the Great Lakes follow a specific seasonal cycle, said Adam Bechle, a coastal engineering specialist with the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute. The lakes bottom out in the winter when there’s more evaporation occurring as cold air moves in over the warmer water. Lake levels are highest during the summer, after snow melts and runs into them and rain falls.

“The more you’ve allowed your grassland to invest in its roots, the better off it is going to be during a drought,” said Randy Jackson, a grassland ecologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Perennial plants—which stay in the ground year in and year out—continue to “photosynthesize and put their carbon and nutrients below ground, which is really their savings account.” In times of drought, it will draw more on the savings in the ground.

Provisions that target heavily Democratic areas — like Georgia’s limits on drop boxes — are particularly blatant. “The typical response by a losing party in a functioning democracy is that they alter their platform to make it more appealing,” Kenneth Mayer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, has told The Times. “Here the response is to try to keep people from voting. It’s dangerously antidemocratic.”

Jeremy Stoddard, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, surveyed more than 1,000 middle and high school teachers in 2018 to find out how they approached teaching about Sept. 11 and the war on terror. About 130 history, government and social studies teachers said they had never taught students about Sept. 11.

Barry Burden, professor of American politics and political methodology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told USA TODAY the discrepancy is “not a sign of fraud,” just a result of sampling error.

Leslie Bow, English and Asian American Studies professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, says, “It’s important to expose children to racial diversity in children’s books because studies have shown that familiarity with children of color in stories reduces negative biases against racial groups.”

According to 2019 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, people younger than 18 account for about 22 percent of the American population. That’s why “it is really important for kids to be included” in vaccination efforts, says Malia Jones, an associate scientist in health geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied Population Laboratory. Their inclusion is “good news for herd immunity.”