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Is AI the Answer to Moms’ Mental Overload?

Bloomberg

Research by Allison Daminger, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has found through extensive interviews with couples that men and women tend to share responsibility for research and decision-making, while women do more noticing (this will need doing soon) and monitoring (is anyone actually doing this?). And women tend to have more household responsibilities overall. As a result, women do more cognitive labor.

UW-Madison graduates largest class in its history with 7,826 degrees conferred

Wisconsin State Journal

Coumbe Gitter, who got her degree in biochemistry with an environmental science minor, graduated in good company outside of her own family tree — Saturday’s ceremony was the largest commencement in UW-Madison history, with 7,826 degrees conferred, according to UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin.

How Putin’s Victory Parade Speech Changed Drastically From Last Year

Newsweek

Mikhail Troitskiy, professor of practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek that Putin’s Victory Day speech last year “did not meet the expectations” of pro-Ukraine War supporters who desired an immediate escalation, mobilization of civilians, and a rhetorical shift to an all-out “war” from a “special military operation.”

Scientists use cheese to study fungal antibiotics

Popular Science

Wolfe and his team began by investigating a cheesemaker’s problem with mold spreading on the surface of the cheeses and disrupting the normal development of the rind. This causes the cheese to look like the rinds were disappearing as the mold invaded their cheese cave. They collaborated with microbiologist Nancy Keller’s lab at the University of Wisconsin to find out what this mold was doing to the rind microbes and what chemicals the mold may be producing that disrupted the rind.

COVID emergency not over for travelers with disabilities. Here’s why.

USA Today

“This puts a lot of lower-income people at a greater disadvantage,” said Amy Gaeta, a disability rights activist and postdoctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies disability and technology and has nerve damage in one leg as well as invisible disabilities. “This is especially concerning given that so many disabled people are low-income, especially if they’re on disability welfare benefits.”

NASA Images Show Smoke and Scorched Earth from Wildfires

Newsweek

These blazes have produced huge blossoming smoke chimneys. According to NASA Earth Observatory, researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, found that the smoke pillars may have reached up to 39,000 feet tall, as far as the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere.

Productivity fell while output increased in Q1. Why?

Marketplace

Meanwhile, output that’s the amount of stuff we’re making is not keeping up, said Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin. “Production had jumped in the wake of the pandemic. And so what you have is the growth rate of production, which is largely determined by demand, is slowing a lot,” he said.

Why black bears love dumpster diving

BBC News

Certain places like Mr Marsh’s home state of West Virginia, as well as New Jersey and Tennessee, may be more ripe for bear encounters as they have growing populations of the mammals, said David Drake, a professor and extension wildlife specialist at the University of Wisconsin.

The Battle Over Refrigerating Butter: ‘Enough Is Enough’

Wall Street Journal

“This is a quality issue, not a safety issue,” said Gina Mode, a butter researcher at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Dairy Research. Butter will eventually go rancid but that won’t make people sick, she said. Ms. Mode in an informal survey of her colleagues found that 24 of 31 keep butter out, a telling data point among experts.

Gene-edited cells move science closer to repairing damaged hearts

The Washington Post

One of the genes edited out in MEDUSA cells ― SLC8A1 ― “can impact the ability of heart cells to contract,” said Timothy Kamp, director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Still, he added, “I think the concept of editing these genes is powerful. Perhaps a simpler combination [of edits] may work.”

UW-Madison hopes for further computer and data sciences innovation as new building starts

Wisconsin State Journal

A “ground blessing ceremony” — which couldn’t accurately be called a groundbreaking ceremony, as a pit already exists where two former maintenance buildings stood — was held Tuesday, with university officials celebrating the growth of the school and emphasizing the importance of data analytics to UW-Madison and society going forward.

“That is what I’m most excited about this building and what we’re doing here,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said Tuesday. “To solve real, important problems in the world, so often we must engage across. We can’t do that if we’re siloed. We can’t do that if we’re wearing blinders.”

8 Books Experts Would Recommend About Meditation

The New York Times

“Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body” by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson‌. This 2017 title was written by Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and science journalist, and Richard Davidson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds.

Leave your grass long to help bees, butterflies

The Washington Post

“If you have a traditional lawn, letting the grass grow to a foot tall or whatever it would be at the end of May is no value whatsoever,” says Susan Carpenter, native plant garden curator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. Grass that long could be harmful to lawn health and become a mowing nightmare.

Opinion | Could Peer Influence Be a Cause of the Global Baby Bust?

New York Times

I read several papers on peer effects on fertility with Angrist’s caveats in mind. One, by Jason Fletcher and Olga Yakusheva, looked at American teenagers and found that a 10 percentage point increase in pregnancies of classmates is associated with a 2 to 5 percentage point greater likelihood of a teenager herself becoming pregnant. Disentangling causality is “a really hard problem,” Fletcher, an economist at the University of Wisconsin’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, told me.

For Centuries, Boys Used To ‘Dress Like A Girl.’ Here’s When Everything Changed.

HuffPost Life

Jessica McCrory Calarco, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, weighed in on the little-known history, too. “As I teach my students, kids’ clothing only became gendered when capitalists realized they could double their money by selling separate clothes for girls and boys,” she tweeted. “Before that, kids wore gender-neutral dresses, which better accommodated growth spurts and toilet training.”

Why is there always a blood shortage?

Vox

With its direct connection to the heart, its vivid hue (from wine-dark to cherry bright and cobalt blue), and its spilling in both birth and death, blood has historically served as a metaphor for humanity, as Susan Lederer, a professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argues in her 2008 book, Flesh and Blood. “Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in the 1880s. “All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood,” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in 1921. “Blood is memory without language,” added Joyce Carol Oates, more recently.

UW-Madison formally inducts Jennifer Mnookin as 30th chancellor

The Capital Times

The university’s tenet of education extending beyond the classroom has propelled her as chancellor, she told the audience. In December 2020, she donated a kidney to her father, who was diagnosed with late-stage kidney disease. A synthetic solution created at UW-Madison, which increased preservation times for organs outside of the body, allowed her kidney to safely travel on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to her dad in Boston.

Ending the COVID emergency will further harm Black maternal mortality |

The Hill

April 11-17 marks Black Maternal Health Week, a week-long campaign officially recognized by the Biden administration as a time to address racial inequities in Black maternal health and to “amplify ​the voices, perspectives and lived experiences” of Black during pregnancy.

Tiffany L. Green, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of any institutions or organizations.

Look! Webb Recaptures a Famous Hubble Image in Incredible New Detail

Inverse

“Our whole program was ~24 hours, which isn’t that much time in the grand scheme of how much time other observatories have looked at it,” said Michael Maseda, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in a statement. “But, even in this relatively short amount of time, we’re starting to put together a new picture of how galaxies are growing at this really interesting point in the history of the Universe.”

Why Wisconsin Has Republicans Worried

The Atlantic

“Extreme” is no overstatement. Robert Yablon, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a faculty co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative, told me by email that although Democrats have won more of Wisconsin’s statewide elections in recent years than their Republican opponents have, “under the maps that the Republican-controlled legislature drew in 2011, Republicans maintained an iron grip on the legislature throughout the last decade—even in years when Democratic candidates won more votes statewide.”

‘A nightmare’: Texas parents say their baby was taken by CPS after using midwifery care for jaundice

Yahoo News

Jaundice occurs when blood contains an excess amount of bilirubin. “For most babies, this is not a big deal, it clears out,” Tiffany Green, an associate professor in the obstetrics and gynecology department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Yahoo News. “But for a certain small subset of babies, high levels of bilirubin can lead to brain damage, including cerebral palsy and other illnesses.”

NATO Ally Bordering Russia to Meet With Top U.S. Weapons Makers

Newsweek

“I think it is important for Poland to keep up its credentials as an indispensable ally of the United States in Europe—especially in light of the pre-war frictions that marred Poland’s relationship with European Union bodies,” Mikhail Troitskiy, professor of practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek via email. “Warsaw is likely to be considering various scenarios of continuation of the war in Ukraine and various designs for post-war Europe.

Abortion Ruling Could Undermine the F.D.A.’s Drug-Approval Authority

The New York Times

R. Alta Charo, a professor emerita of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin and an author of a brief by drug-policy scholars in support of the F.D.A., said, “The biggest threat that a decision like this brings is the threat of creating chaos.” The ruling, she added, could empower a range of groups to begin “looking over the shoulder of the F.D.A., re-evaluating their risk-benefit analyses.”

Declines in Loan Values Are Widespread Among Banks

WSJ

“Fair values of loans and securities are not qualitatively different,” said Tom Linsmeier, an accounting professor at the University of Wisconsin and former member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. “They measure the same amount: the price at which the asset can be sold in an orderly transaction in the market today.”

Without the right to adequate counsel, is our criminal justice system legitimate? 

The Hill

After 60 years of deliberate indifference to the right to counsel, our criminal justice system is on the verge of collapse. Only a large, overdue investment can save it and restore the noble ideal that justice shouldn’t be based on how much you can afford. –John P. Gross is a clinical associate professor at University of Wisconsin Law School and director of the Public Defender Project.

Trump indictment and Wisconsin election revealed the GOP’s 2024 dilemma

Vox

Second, Republicans lost control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an off-year election — a campaign where abortion was “the dominating issue,” per University of Wisconsin political scientist Barry Burden. The repeal of Roe v. Wade brought back an 1849 state law, never technically repealed, that banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy (with an exception for the mother’s life). Janet Protasiewicz, the liberal candidate in the Supreme Court race, openly campaigned on her support for abortion rights. She won by a comfortable margin in a closely divided state — yet another sign that strict abortion bans are seriously unpopular.

Wisconsin Supreme Court race breaks records

NPR

JOHNSON: In swing state Wisconsin, election after election, people are used to hearing that this campaign is the most important. But University of Wisconsin-Madison political science and law professor Howard Schweber says there’s actually so much riding on Wisconsin’s court race that this time it might be true.

‘A truly incredible amount of money’: millions ride on one US judicial election

The Guardian

“What has been most surprising is that Dan Kelly has basically raised no money as a candidate … So all of his backing has been from outside groups,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s hard to understand. Legally, they’re not allowed to coordinate. So he’s essentially handed over messaging to groups that he cannot control.”

How to Tell If a Photo Is an AI-Generated Fake

Scientific American

Creating these AI detective programs works the same way as any other machine learning task, says Yong Jae Lee, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “You collect a data set of real images, and you also collect a data set of AI-generated images,” Lee says. “Then you can train a machine-learning model to distinguish the two.”