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Was Russia’s decision to cut off natural gas exports a mistake?

Vox

Russia’s decision to cut off gas exports to Poland and Bulgaria — the latter of which had remained undecided in its stance regarding Russia up until the recent ban — is a risky move meant to act as a warning to other European countries.

But some experts have written off the move as a miscalculation.According to Yoshiko Herrera, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in Eurasian politics, it may have the opposite intended effect.

How to make self-affirmations work, based on science

The Washington Post

What’s more, people can mistakenly think affirmations are about “seeking perfection or seeking greatness,” said Chris Cascio, an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied the practice. Instead, Cascio said, the key concept of affirmations is: “As you are, you are good enough and you’re valued being you.”

Burned and vandalized: A history of cherry blossoms bearing the brunt of xenophobia

NBC News

Some anthropologists, including Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, are skeptical about whether the trees were, indeed, infested. An editorial published in response by The New York Times also said: “We have been importing ornamental plants from Japan for years, and by the shipload, and it is remarkable that this particular invoice should have contained any new infections.”

Peering Into the Deadliest, Most Destructive Tornadoes with Supercomputers

Newsweek

“They occur under specific atmospheric conditions,” Orf, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. “They require lots of moisture, atmospheric instability, and wind shear. Supercells produce the most violent tornadoes compared to all other thunderstorm types. A recent example of a violent supercell is the storm that hit Mayfield, Kentucky, in December of 2021.”

For many American families a living wage is out of reach: Report

ABC News

“The data reinforces what we’ve known for some time. People in both rural and urban communities face long-standing barriers, systemic barriers — avoidable barriers — that get in the way of groups of people and places in our country from being able to live long and well,” Sheri Johnson, co-director of County Health Rankings & Roadmaps and director of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, told ABC News.

Climate Change: The Technologies That Could Make All the Difference

WSJ

Gregory Nemet is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs whose research focuses on the process of technological change in energy and its interactions with public policy.

To get the world economy to zero emissions by midcentury, we need to move light and fast. That means aggressively expanding what we know works and is affordable—wind, solar and electric vehicles—on the order of how quickly we built ships and airplanes in World War II. Falling prices, digitization of the economy and more flexible electric grids can enable us to do that.

How to Avoid Getting Covid in a Mostly Mask-Free World

The Washington Post

“It feels like we’re being asked to partake in a trust fall,” says Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, referring to the team-building exercise that involves falling backward and counting on others to catch you before you hit the floor. “When is the last time you did a trust fall and enjoyed it?”

A tornado emergency was declared in Arkansas but no twister confirmed

The Washington Post

Such emergency declarations are rare, but they tend to be accurate. An analysis posted to Twitter by Kaylan Patel, a meteorology student at the University of Wisconsin, found of 195 tornado emergencies declared since 1999, 92 percent contained a tornado. Jacob Feuerstein, a meteorology student at Cornell, tweeted the last tornado emergency false alarm occurred in February 2016.

Science Confirms That When White People Read About Covid Racial Disparities, They Respond Selfishly

Mother Jones

“Your goal is to inform. Your goal is to say there are disparities,” says Dominique Brossard, a professor and risk communication expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, referring to my role as a journalist. But advocacy groups, “whose primary goal is to inspire change,” she says, “might take a much different approach.”

With climate despair on the rise, this Christian scientist says science isn’t enough

The Washington Post

The University of Wisconsin-Madison ecologist also belongs to an evangelical church and has struggled with deep despair over climate change. He has had a front-row seat observing the effects of a warming atmosphere through the aspen trees he has studied for decades. But he lacks the support of many within the evangelical community.

What It’ll Take to Have Actually Good COVID Summers

The Atlantic

The more the virus is allowed to mosey about, the more chances it will have to mutate and adapt. “Variants are always the wild card,” says Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Already, America is watching BA.2—the speedier sister to the viral morph that clobbered the country this winter (now retconned as BA.1)—overtake its sibling and spark outbreaks, especially across the northeast.

Forests are reeling from climate change—but the future isn’t lost

National Geographic

Monica Turner was cataloging that recovery. On a sweltering July day, Turner, a professor of ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, shuffled along a line of tape she’d stretched 50 meters across the ground. She and a graduate student were counting every lodgepole pine seedling within a meter on either side. We were far enough from paved roads that there was no telling which forest inhabitants might be lurking—elk, deer, moose, wolves. The air was so hot I wondered fleetingly if the bear spray canister on Turner’s hip might explode.

The Grief of 1 Million COVID Deaths Is Not Going Away

The Atlantic

Jeannina Smith, a doctor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, cares for organ-transplant recipients, who are on immunosuppressive drugs and are therefore particularly vulnerable to disease; she told me that she lost more patients in the Omicron surge than at any previous point in the pandemic. “They did everything right—they got vaccinated and boosted and were so careful,” Smith said, and their loved ones must now mourn them “while society is saying that COVID is over.”

Gas prices: Biden will expand ethanol gas access into summer

USA Today

A Harvard study last year showed the use and production of ethanol emits up to 46% fewer greenhouse gasses than gasoline. A University of Wisconsin study has challenged that finding, saying ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline, based on changes in how land is used to grow the corn used to produce it. But the Argonne National Laboratory disagreed with the Wisconsin study last month, saying the group overestimated carbon loss from soil and double-counted some emissions, among other concerns.

Physicist loses scientific honor and membership in ethics violation

The Washington Post

Erika Marín-Spiotta, a University of Wisconsin geography professor who holds “bystander training” workshops — which teach people ways to intervene when they see harassment or bullying — stressed the importance of disclosing incidents of misconduct to the broader community.

It “is important so that the community is aware that these behaviors are happening, they are unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” she said.

Interns at these companies can take home six figures

CBS News

About half of those students who were lucky enough to snag internships during the pandemic had to complete them remotely, according to a 2021 workforce study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Remote interns reported lower satisfaction in part because managers were less likely to assign them “high-skill supervised work,” according to the study.

Newscast – Goodbye Dot Cotton

BBC

In its latest report, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we need to cut emissions immediately and use technology to suck CO2 from the atmosphere. One of the authors, Gregory Nemet, tells Lewis Goodall that there’s reason to be optimistic.

Russia denies atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine, saying images of apparent war crimes are fabricated

The Washington Post

That type of response is common these days among Russians, said Anton Shirikov, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who studies Russian state propaganda. The Kremlin’s misinformation “might not work in the sense that people believe everything, but people who are on the side of the government think that some of it must be true,” he said. Or they think, “We, the Russian army, cannot be that bad, so the other side must be bad.”

Was Everyone Really Just Doing Drugs In Regency England Like They Are In ‘Bridgerton’?

Women's Health

Today, there are strict rules and laws that separate recreational and medical drug use. There are also plenty of drugs that are legal, and others that are illegal. But in Regency England, these boundaries didn’t exist. “The legal structures just weren’t in place,” says Lucas Richert, PhD, a historian of drugs and medicines at the University of Wisconsin—Madison School of Pharmacy.

Vladimir Putin’s Empire of Delusions

The New Republic

Nor did things change when the Bolsheviks surged to power a century ago. As scholar Francine Hirsch notes in her seminal work on the creation of Soviet republics, the Bolsheviks swiftly realized they’d be better off maintaining the tsarist-era empire, even if in “many regions … the Bolsheviks had no indigenous support whatsoever.”

Demand for This Toad’s Psychedelic Toxin Is Booming. Some Warn That’s Bad for the Toad.

The New York Times

“People hunger for the narrative that the toad was used ancestrally by the Indigenous people of Sonora,” said Ana Maria Ortiz, a doctoral student who is carrying out a population study of the toad at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Human Ecology. “There’s an appeal to that narrative, and even I believed it at the onset.”

Both of the planet’s poles experience extreme heat, and Antarctica breaks records : NPR

NPR

“Not a good sign when you see that sort of thing happen,” said University of Wisconsin meteorologist Matthew Lazzara.Lazzara monitors temperatures at East Antarctica’s Dome C-ii and logged 14 degrees (-10 degrees Celsius) Friday, where the normal is -45 degrees (-43 degrees Celsius): “That’s a temperature that you should see in January, not March. January is summer there. That’s dramatic.”

Demand for Psychedelic Toad Venom Leads to Fears for Species’ Survival

The Daily Beast

Toad venom proponents are divided between those who insist that “milking” straight from the source is the only way to smoke up, and those who advocate for a synthetic version of the venom. “Synthetic 5-MeO-DMT is just as good,” said Ana Maria Ortiz, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin studying the species. “People need to leave the toads alone.”

Raskin’s out, but climate’s still in play

POLITICO

Biofuels trade group Growth Energy is calling on Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to “correct the record” on a recent peer-reviewed study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison that said the carbon intensity of corn-based ethanol is likely at least 24 percent higher than gasoline. Proponents of ethanol have pushed back against the study, but critics of the Renewable Fuel Standard program have pointed to it as evidence that ethanol has worsened the climate crisis.

Could the Keystone XL pipeline help lower U.S. gas prices?

CBS News

It’s important to understand what’s contributing to the high prices of oil in the first place. Gregory Nemet, professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Energy Institute, pointed out that the cost of oil has steadily increased since last fall, when it was around $70 a barrel, to more than $130 last week before settling back at around $100 a barrel on Tuesday. That initial jump in the cost of crude was driven by the ongoing economic recovery, which boosted demand by consumers and businesses that had been dampened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Could the Keystone XL pipeline help lower U.S. gas prices?

CBS News

It’s important to understand what’s contributing to the high prices of oil in the first place. Gregory Nemet, professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Energy Institute, pointed out that the cost of oil has steadily increased since last fall, when it was around $70 a barrel, to more than $130 last week before settling back at around $100 a barrel on Tuesday. That initial jump in the cost of crude was driven by the ongoing economic recovery, which boosted demand by consumers and businesses that had been dampened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Putin’s Revised Foreign Agent Law Could Enable Mass Repression

Lawfare Blog

In the past two weeks, it has become increasingly dangerous for Russian citizens to participate in anti-war demonstrations, to express opposition to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or to share true information about the military campaign. The Russian State Duma has introduced legislation that threatens fines, forced military conscription and prison sentences for speaking the truth.

Francine Hirsch is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Bacon buying guide: What uncured, center-cut and other package terms really mean

The Washington Post

According to Jeffrey Sindelar, meat extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison: “The primary reason most bacon is not lower sodium is due to consumer preference. A majority of consumers expect bacon to have a certain amount of saltiness. So unless all bacon is lower in salt, some companies will lose market share if they reduce sodium (while others do not) since the majority still prefer ‘regular’ salt bacon. It’s all consumer driven.”

Mutations on infectious COVID variants, explained

Popular Science

But what makes the mutation “weird and unique” is that it appears to set the stage for other variants, says Kyle Wolf, a biophysicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. SARS-CoV-2 infects cells faster when it has more RBDs flipped up—but that also makes its spikes more likely to fall apart before they find their target. A virus with DOUG appears to be more stable: When its RBDs up, they wedge together, holding the spike proteins together until it finds a host, Wolf explains. The mutation could be required for other variants, which opened the spike even further, but needed a way to stabilize the package, says Sophie Gobeil, a structural biologist at Duke University.

OE parasite affecting hand-raised monarch butterflies

Popular Science

“It’s been shown that infected butterflies have lower flight ability and suffer from all of these fitness ramifications, but this is the first time it’s really been shown on a population level that a really important feature of monarch biology is affected by the rate of infection,” says Karen Oberhauser, director of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum.