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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.”

Wisconsin wins 7th NCAA women’s hockey championship by blanking Ohio State

Wisconsin State Journal

This 179-day journey began with an unusual splash of cold water thrown at the University of Wisconsin women’s hockey team and at one point had a historic low point.

It ended Sunday with a more common sight: The Badgers piled onto the ice to celebrate a national championship and later splashed the cold water on coach Mark Johnson.

The Big Oil Firms Are Giving Up on Researching Algae Biofuels

The Nation

“It’s very challenging and very expensive to bring these technologies to market,” said George Huber, whose biofuels research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was funded by Exxon for years. “It’s not gonna happen overnight. It’s great they make these commitments, but you know they need to start putting in more capital into these projects.”

COVID-19: A look back on where the US succeeded and where we didn’t

ABC News

“I think that that kind of mixed messaging created enormous space for doubt enormous space for skepticism among the public,” Dr. Richard Keller, a professor in the department of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, told ABC News. “It created levels of uncertainty that were really unnecessary and deep and eventually became harmful.”

Want to help pollinators this spring? Expert suggests these tips

The Hill

“Compared to some other native bees, honey bees are less efficient or unable to pollinate some of our food crops,” Susan Carpenter, native plant garden curator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum, tells Nexstar. Honey bees are, instead, “domestic animals, maintained and cared for by beekeepers” that can be “detrimental to the wide diversity of native bees” around you.

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Is Devastating Birds, and Humans May Be Next

The Daily Beast

“We’ve been thinking a lot lately about this strain because of its potential to be a zoonotic disease” spread from animals to people, Adel Talaat, a microbiology researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told The Daily Beast. Talaat has been working on vaccine development for avian influenza that one day could be given to poultry.

Bioacoustics is revolutionizing conservation

The Atlantic

One of the biologists researching this issue was Zach Peery, from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Peery had been tracking the spotted owl’s decline since 2001, and he knew that a team in the state of Washington had been experimenting with ARUs to help identify northern spotted and barred owls there.

A prolific fundraiser, Rebecca Blank reshaped UW-Madison research, finances

Wisconsin State Journal

Rebecca Blank’s influence can be seen in some unexpected places.

It’s embedded in a nationwide breast cancer database that examined how long patients could delay surgical treatments at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s noticeable in research endeavors she helped make possible. It’s found, subtly, in portraits hanging at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

A Supreme Court justice’s paragraph could mean weaker protections for voters of color

NPR

But the judge cited Gorsuch’s one-paragraph opinion and decided the case had to be thrown out. That’s because, the judge said, the Voting Rights Act does not explicitly say private groups can bring Section 2 lawsuits. Dan Tokaji, dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School, says that literal interpretation of the law doesn’t make sense.

What is red light therapy? Benefits, uses and more

NBC News

“In terms of red light therapy for facial rejuvenation, we don’t really have many human studies to look at,” said Dr. Apple Bodemer, a board-certified dermatologist and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “most experts say that they don’t know yet if red light therapy is effective for all its claimed uses. Most say that the studies so far show some potential,” but ultimately, more studies are needed to prove its efficacy.

Democracy has a customer-service problem

The Atlantic

Think income inequality, an extortionate health-care system, and rural decay. Think, too, about the senses many people have that the sources of power—both public and private—are far away and unresponsive, and that when something goes wrong, they’re on their own. Katherine Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has argued that this anger breeds a “politics of resentment.”

Voting Rights Act’s private right of action is in danger

NPR

“I think it’s an open question only in the sense that no court has ever felt compelled to expressly say that people whose voting rights have been violated can sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because everyone — and I do mean everyone — understood that that’s what Congress meant,” says Dan Tokaji, dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School, who has written about private individuals suing for violations of federal election laws.

Camel antibodies could help pioneer future medicine

Knowable Magazine

Every four months, pathologist Aaron LeBeau scoops into a net one of the five nurse sharks he keeps in his University of Wisconsin lab. Then he carefully administers a shot to the animal, much like a pediatrician giving a kid a vaccine. The shot will immunize the shark against a human cancer, perhaps, or an infectious disease, such as Covid-19. A couple of weeks later, after the animal’s immune system has had time to react, LeBeau collects a small vial of shark blood.

Slamming the Door on Scholarship

Chronicle of Higher Ed

“It’s a significant rupture,” said Theodore P. Gerber, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and director of its Wisconsin Russia Project. “It seems like there’s not going to be a happy ending any time soon.”

Sexual attacks against teen girls increased in 2021, CDC report found

NBC News

“We really don’t have that robust evidence-based, supportive, trauma-informed education at scale in the United States. And at this particular time in history, it is especially needed given what we’re seeing,” said LB Klein, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Such a curriculum would be included in what’s known as comprehensive sex education.