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The Court’s Liberals Still Have Power

The Atlantic

About the author: Joshua Braver is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

To become law, a Supreme Court opinion needs the backing of five justices. That reality has forced progressive justices for almost 50 years to compromise with center-right justices, resulting in legal doctrine rife with contradictions and loopholes, which conservatives have ruthlessly exploited to pare back the rights of women, racial minorities, and the gay community. Progressive justices had to make these bargains in order to get the five votes needed to be in the majority. That’s how things work.

As prison education expands in Wisconsin, incarcerated students find success

The Capital Times

In addition, the Odyssey Beyond Bars program expanded its English 100 college-credit course to four state prisons this past semester. The University of Wisconsin-Madison organization will add an intro to psychology class next year.

In collaboration with UW-Madison and four other campuses, the UW System will also soon offer incarcerated students a pathway to a bachelor’s degree through its Prison Education Initiative. Last December, the program received a $5.7 million grant from Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.

What Scientists Say about the Historic Climate Bill

Scientific American

Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

If the IRA passes in the House, it will mark a historic turning point for the U.S. as the first major piece of legislation to limit our carbon emissions and hence future warming of our planet. The outline of where we go from here is already written in the shortcomings of this bill: we must stop investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and make this legislation merely a first step of many more meaningful steps to come.

‘South Park’ enjoys a silver anniversary of satire

CBS Colorado

“As much as I love ’The Simpsons’ and I think ’The Simpsons’ is really important, I think ’South Park’ has definitely done things that ’The Simpsons’ haven’t,” says Dr. Jonathan Gray, a media and cultural studies professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose books include “Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality.”

What Scientists Say about the Historic Climate Bill

Scientific American

Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–MadisonIf the IRA passes in the House, it will mark a historic turning point for the U.S. as the first major piece of legislation to limit our carbon emissions and hence future warming of our planet. The outline of where we go from here is already written in the shortcomings of this bill: we must stop investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and make this legislation merely a first step of many more meaningful steps to come.

Climate change may aggravate more than half of human pathogens

USA Today

Even after sounding warnings about the impacts of climate change on human health for more than 25 years, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute, was still surprised at the many ways researchers found climate hazards affect disease.

“They found over 1,000 unique pathways,” said Patz, who participated as a co-author. “That to me was striking.”

Stormy Weather And Dogs – 4 Things You May Have Overlooked

Forbes

Steve Ackerman and Jon Martin are respected meteorology professors at the University of Wisconsin who have a long-running series called “The Weather Guys.” On their website, they discussed another way dogs “detect” storms changes. They write, “Thunder, the loud noise that accompanies lightning, gives this nimbostratus cloud the name thunderstorm. Some dogs don’t like loud sounds, whether from a thunderclap or fireworks.”

Are monarch butterflies endangered in the US?

Popular Science

“This is an assessment by an international scientific body that looked at all of the data and said monarchs are endangered,” says Karen Oberhauser, an expert on monarch butterfly biology and conservation and the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. “That means they’re in danger of their population going so low that it wouldn’t be able to recover.”

Could learning algebra in my 60s make me smarter?

The Guardian

Carol D Ryff at the University of Wisconsin’s Institute of Ageing told me about stereotype embodiment theory, which was proposed by the Yale psychologist Becca Levy. It says that the culture presents older people as moving slowly, being hard of hearing, talking too loud, and unable to read small print. These depictions are funny when we’re young; then we grow old and enact them, and they undermine a person’s sense of wellbeing.

The Mysterious Dance of the Cricket Embryos

The New York Times

Dr. Donoughe contacted Christopher Rycroft, an applied mathematician now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and showed him the dancing nuclei. ‘Wow!’ Dr. Rycroft said. He had never seen anything like it, but he recognized the potential for a data-powered collaboration; he and Jordan Hoffmann, then a doctoral student in Dr. Rycroft’s lab, joined the study.

More scientists are studying pediatric cancer

The Washington Post

“These changes in recent years have prompted approaches that are beginning to make a real impact on improving the care and outcome of children with diseases thought incurable 10 years ago,” says Paul Sondel, the Reed and Carolee Walker professor of pediatric oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and a pediatric oncologist for more than 40 years. “Nevertheless, while we are seeing new progress, we know there is still a long way to go to be able to cure all children with cancer.”

Tuition, state funding and diversity: New UW-Madison chancellor’s agenda has familiar ring

Wisconsin State Journal

Jennifer Mnookin spent her first day on campus meeting with students, faculty and campus leaders as she takes on the role as UW-Madison’s 30th chancellor.

Mnookin, who comes to Madison from her previous role as dean of the UCLA School of Law, said her primary goal is to have conversations with UW-Madison students and staff and community and state leaders to discuss ways to keep UW-Madison affordable, while also addressing challenges like accessibility, funding and diversity.

Beyoncé to Replace Lyric on ‘Renaissance’ After Backlash From Disability-Rights Advocates

Wall Street Journal

Lizzo’s lyric change in June primed people to recognize the language in Beyoncé’s album, said Sami Schalk, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the upcoming book “Black Disability Politics.”“The important thing is that it was brought up again and slowly over time, we will hopefully see more people thinking differently about this word,” Dr. Schalk said.

A Navajo scientist couldn’t translate his work to his family. Now, because of a UW-Madison project he co-founded, he can.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

That’s when Martin and his colleagues — Joanna Bundus, a biology post-doctoral fellow at UW-Madison, and Susana Wadgymar, an assistant professor of biology at Davidson College in North Carolina — founded Project ENABLE (Enriching Navajo As a Biology Language for Education), an online dictionary of biology terms translated from English to Diné Bizaad, a Navajo language.

International Talent: Ripe Silicon Valley Conditions That Are Changing Remote Work

Forbes

Silicon Valley is the perfect example of the international hiring phenomenon. Researcher Sarah Edwards from the University of Wisconsin-Madison explains that “the expansion of Silicon Valley into increasingly intimate and global spaces” will result in the decentralization of the Valley as the leading startup city. Other cities like Miami are thriving in the industry thanks to digital nomads and increased job mobility (as was shown during the Great Resignation.)

Omicron BA.5 Surge: 5 Ways to Stay Safe

The New York Times

Talk to your family and friends as well as other members of your community to find out whether they’ve had Covid recently or know anybody who has or recently had Covid, Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. Because you’re more likely to interact with people in your network, you may get a better sense of incidence in your community and what your own risk of getting sick may be.

This Smart Necklace Soaks Up Your Sweat to Track Health

The Daily Beast

Now, engineers at The Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed battery-free sweat sensors that can measure several chemicals and give accurate readouts at a range of concentrations. Their sensors can be worn like a necklace or even implanted into the skin, where they would work throughout a user’s lifetime.

UW Alzheimer’s doctor, researcher inspired by father’s diagnosis with the disease

Wisconsin State Journal

Dr. Nathaniel Chin, who grew up in Watertown and got undergraduate and medical degrees from UW-Madison, planned to specialize in infectious diseases. But during his internal medicine residency at the University of California-San Diego, his father — a family medicine doctor in Watertown — was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Monarch butterflies have been declared endangered. What can we do to save them?

NPR

OBERHAUSER: If you see it, you report it. So in the United States, you can report it to a program called Journey North, which is something that we run out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. And the final thing that people can do now that you’ve heard this interview, you are an expert on monarchs, so you can spread the word.

RASCOE: That’s Karen Oberhauser. She directs the arboretum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is the founder and director of the Monarch Lava Monitoring Project. Thank you so much for talking with us.

The BA.5 Wave Is What COVID Normal Looks Like

The Atlantic

Ajay Sethi, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, still works at home, and avoids eating with strangers indoors. He masks in crowded places, but at home, as contractors remodel his bathrooms, he has decided not to—a pivot from last year. His chances of suffering from the virus haven’t changed much; what has is “probably more my own fatigue,” he told me, “and my willingness to accept more risk than before.”

On Conservative Radio, Misleading Message Is Clear: ‘Democrats Cheat’

The New York Times

“Liberals or even most moderates never listen to it, they don’t pay attention to it, they don’t see it, they don’t hear it,” said Lewis A. Friedland, a professor who studies radio at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So you don’t know it exists, you don’t know how widespread and how powerful it really is.” In Wisconsin, he said, local radio stations play “extreme right-wing propaganda” five or six hours a day.

What Does a Smart Toilet Do and Is It Worth It?

Men's Health

Turning more attention to the bowl is a boom in microbiome research that “has made it apparent just how important the organisms living in our gut really are,” says Joshua J. Coon, Ph.D., a professor of biomolecular chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Video games that teach empathy

The Washington Post

Research provides some support for this idea. In one small study, researchers at the University of Wisconsin created a game based on Jamal Davis, an imaginary Black male science student who experiences discrimination in his PhD program. Players took the role of Jamal Davis and experienced what he experiences because of his skin color. When questioned afterward, the players said they understood how he felt and could take on his perspective, indications that they felt empathy.

Fathers feed babies too — so why are they so scarce in media coverage of the formula shortage?

Salon

Co-authored by Tova Walsh, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network and Alvin Thomas, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.

Drones Being Used to Bring Defibrillators to Patients in Emergencies

NBC 4

“Time is really of the essence here,” said Justin Boutilier, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Survival from cardiac arrest decreases by between 7 to 15% for every minute that you go without treatment.”

Boutilier describes obstacles to emergency response —such as traffic or difficult-to-reach rural locations — as “the perfect storm.” He has been designing a prototype drone that takes off as soon as someone calls 911.

A Hotter, Poorer, and Less Free America

The Atlantic

Or the world could simply leave the United States and its kludgy economy behind. Gregory Nemet, a public-affairs professor at the University of Wisconsin and the author of How Solar Energy Became Cheap, argues that the world is now on track to transition no matter what the United States does. “There’s so much momentum right now in this clean-energy transition. It will still happen, but it will happen more slowly” if no bill passes, he told me.

Virginia Lottery’s Bank a Million draw yields surprising winning numbers

The Washington Post

“Is it very unlikely that the numbers would show up 13 to 19? Yes,” said Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor at University of Wisconsin at Madison who wrote about the lottery in his book “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking.”But any other set of numbers is “equally unlikely,” Ellenberg quickly added, speaking by phone from his front porch in Madison. “On the one hand, it’s very striking. On the other hand, a very improbable thing happens every time the lottery numbers are drawn. Every particular outcome is very unlikely. Otherwise people would win too much.”

Calls to boost natural gas can’t ignore fuel combustion’s deadly impacts

The Hill

Then in mid-May, a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison found that eliminating pollution from fossil fuel combustion in power plants could avoid as many as 11,600 premature deaths in the U.S. every year, with an annual value of $132 billion. The researchers looked at five additional sectors: industrial fuel use; residential and commercial fuel use; on-road vehicles; non-road vehicles; as well as oil and gas production and refining. They found that exposure to the small particulates emitted by combustion in these six sectors combined resulted in 205,000 deaths in one year. And, due to the disparities in the siting of power plants and other facilities, the victims of this pollution are far more often low-income and people of color.

Blue Is Probably Your Favorite Color. Here’s Why, According to Science

Popular Mechanics

From Crayola polls to legitimate peer-reviewed studies, the BBC investigated the science of how we perceive color and found that not only do we adore blue, but our perceptions of color are shaped by our experiences. Highlighting research from University of Rhode Island associate professor Lauren Labrecque and University of Wisconsin psychology professor Karen Schloss, the BBC reports that our preference for blue is longstanding, and that we start to give meaning to colors as we age.

Are Iowa’s Democratic Days Gone for Good?

The Atlantic

“Individual people’s politics is so much more about who they think they are in the world as opposed to policy stances,” Kathy Cramer, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me. “It’s about ‘Am I being heard? Am I being respected?’” To have any hope of clawing back their former terrain, Democrats need to make voters feel like the answer is yes.

Glyphosate weedkiller damages wild bee colonies, study reveals

The Guardian

“Bumblebees are a vitally important group of pollinators [and] the new findings are especially important given the widespread global use of glyphosate,” said Prof James Crall, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, US, who was not part of the study team. “[Current] environmental safety testing is insufficient for identifying often unpredictable effects on behaviour, physiology, or reproduction that occur at sublethal exposures.”