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Many falls are preventable. These tips can help.

The New York Times

Many falls can be prevented, said Dr. Gerald Pankratz, a geriatrician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That makes him “optimistic about this issue,” he said.

In his practice, Dr. Pankratz said, it is not unusual for people assessed as having a 50 percent chance of falling over the next year to cut their risk in half by taking action to avoid slips and trips.

Wisconsin state lawmakers, industry experts share concerns about proposed limits to AI regulation

Wisconsin Public Radio

University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Annette Zimmermann is a political philosopher of AI and co-lead of the school’s Uncertainty and AI research group.

“Much like many other experts working in this area, I’ve been deeply concerned about imposing such a heavy handed blanket ban on any sort of state-based efforts to effectively regulate this space,” Zimmermann said. “Right now, unfortunately, we’re in a regulatory landscape where we are heavily relying on individual states to think very hard about how to protect ordinary citizens and consumers from these kinds of harmful outputs.”

Clinical psychologist explains how ADHD drugs work, addresses unscientific harm concerns

Wisconsin Public Radio

James Li is the A. A. Alexander Associate Professor of Psychology and an investigator at the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that Kennedy’s statements on the harms of medications like Adderall aren’t based in science.

“The evidence is quite clear that the medications that are currently FDA-approved and prescribed to treat ADHD in particular are fairly well tolerated. They don’t lead to early mortality … and they are generally very beneficial when used properly under doctor’s orders,” Li said.

A hidden gem on campus: Inside UW-Madison’s Zoological Museum

The Daily Cardinal

All that most students see of the University of Wisconsin Zoological Museum (UWZM), located in the Noland Zoology Building, is the fourth floor staircase’s sign prohibiting entrance from all other than museum staff.

Behind the locked doors, however, the museum’s extensive collections of animal skins and skeletons serve as a powerful resource for research and learning.

Rising housing costs are forcing some Wisconsinites to delay medical care, new report says

Wisconsin Public Radio

Rising housing costs have been forcing some Wisconsinites to delay medical care, which can lead to negative health outcomes for residents and communities.

That’s according to a new report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension as part of a project examining livability in rural communities led by Tessa Conroy, associate professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison.

How your pets alter your immune system

BBC

According to Nasia Safdar, an infectious disease professor at the University of Wisconsin in the US, this concept has attracted interest from the pet food industry. The idea would be to develop products marketed as promoting the growth of beneficial bacteria in cats and dogs, which might then be transferred to their owners, she says.

“That angle has been an attractive one for people to fund, because for most of us, it’s the human condition that we’re interested in,” says Safdar. “So what role can the animal play in that?” she asks.

UW Health expert shares friendly family summer activities

WMTV - Channel 15

While many kids will reach for screens, Dr. Shilagh Mirgain, a distinguished psychologist with UW Health, said this doesn’t have to be the default.

She suggests going to the library with your kids and having them check out books.

She also recommended parents take their kids to a local or state park, even going as far as planning a picnic. “Think about bringing your food outside to eat. Kids outside thrive,” she said.

Abortion bans harm care for pregnancy problems, UW-Madison study says

The Cap Times

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Collaborative for Reproductive Equity released a study this spring showing that during the 13-month period in which abortion was largely unavailable in Wisconsin, OB-GYNs struggled to provide care for pregnant patients and treat pregnancy complications because of unclear legal guidelines.

A fungal disease ravaged North American bats. Now, researchers found a second species that suggests it could happen again

Smithsonian Magazine

“Cave ecosystems are so fragile that if you start pulling on this thread, what else are you going to unravel that may create bigger problems in the cave system?” said University of Wisconsin–Madison wildlife specialist David Drake to the Badger Herald’s Kiran Mistry in December.

Here are the best states for remote work, if you can still find it

USA Today

The gradual retreat from telework “presents a valuable opportunity for companies that continue to offer remote work to differentiate themselves from the competition,” said Anyi Ma, an assistant professor of management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “These companies now have the chance to attract and hire the most talented employees who prefer remote work.”

New PBS documentary on public libraries, ‘Free for All,’ has a Wisconsin accent

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

While the documentary takes a nationwide view, there’s a lot of Wisconsin in it. Among the interview subjects is Ethelene Whitmire, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who talks about Regina Anderson Andrews, the first African American to lead a branch of the New York Public Library and a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Wisconsin physicians are learning about firearms to prepare them for talking to patients about gun safety

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Two years ago, Dr. James A. Bigham, a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, began teaching medical students on the issue, not just providing statistics around firearms injury but also arranging for instruction from firearms trainers on how guns function and why someone may want to own one.

12 UW-Madison inventions that changed the world

Wisconsin State Journal

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, known for helping UW-Madison commercialize discoveries such as vitamin D enrichment, a blood thinning drug and stem cells, may seem like a solid presence on campus whose existence was never in doubt.

But WARF, the nation’s first university technology transfer office, had to fight for survival from its founding in 1925 until at least 1980, when the federal Bayh-Dole Act said universities could retain patent rights on federally funded research.

UW-Madison’s record-breaking research spending fuels rise in national ranking

Wisconsin State Journal

The university announced the ranking change Monday alongside an announcement that it had spent a record-breaking $1.7 billion on research for fiscal year 2023, a 13.7% increase over the prior year. UW-Madison’s growth outpaced the national increase of 11.2% spent on university research and development, bringing the national amount spent to $108.8 billion.

Teenager infected with H5N1 bird flu in critical condition

Los Angeles Times

Nuzzo also pointed to a recent study published in Nature, led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, an H5N1 expert at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, that showed the virus that infected the first reported dairy worker in Texas had acquired mutations that made it more severe in animals as well as allowing it to move more efficiently between them — via airborne respiration.

Why did Republicans lose Senate races in so many states Trump won?

USA Today

“The Senate candidates are often well known to voters” because they run intense campaigns with a flood of advertisements, said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And because turnout was similar for the presidential and the Senate races in most states, he argued, it is likely that some people are still splitting their ticket between the two parties.“So voters in some places are making real distinctions to say this is not somebody who is aligned with Trump or represents him in the same way, or this is someone who has the state’s interest in mind in a way that other candidates don’t,” he said. “And that really is a different story from one state to the next.”

Why America Still Doesn’t Have a Female President

The Atlantic

But some people are biased against female presidential candidates. In 2017, a study found that about 13 percent of Americans were “angry or upset” about the idea of a woman serving as president. In an experiment that same year using hypothetical political candidates, Yoshikuni Ono and Barry Burden, political scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found that voters punish female candidates running for president by 2.4 percentage points. This means that a hypothetical female candidate would get, say, 47 percent of the vote, rather than 49.4 percent if she were a man.

US Drought Map Shows Which States Are Worst Affected

Newsweek

“This fall [in precipitation] has been a prime example of flash drought across parts of the U.S.,” Jason Otkin, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in a NASA Earth Observatory post. “These events can take people by surprise because you can quickly go from being drought-free to having severe drought conditions.”

When will we know the presidential election results? A state-by-state guide

CBS News

Barry Burden, Director of the University of Wisconsin’s Elections Research Center, said, “typically 2 to 2 ½ hours after polls close, we start to get a pretty good picture of the state,” but he noted Milwaukee takes longer.”It’s the biggest city, and it has the most ballots, and it also counts absentee ballots at a central location,” Burden said. “That’ll be after midnight, 1 (a.m.) or 2 a.m.”

Chinese companies use Biden’s climate law to expand their solar dominance

POLITICO

“There is this kind of global innovation system that I think has been one of the primary reasons why we’ve had this miracle of the cost of solar falling so much,” said Gregory Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who wrote a book on the solar supply chain. “To put up walls and to put up barriers, I think we’re going to squander some of that.”

What you need to know about the Electoral College as 2024 race nears end

ABC News

“It’s really 51 separate elections,” Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told ABC News. “Every state and the District of Columbia has its own rules for running the election. Then each state awards its electors separately, and it’s up to candidates to win a majority of those electors to be elected president.”

Rick Singer, man behind college admissions scandal, back in business

USA Today

If Varsity Blues accomplished anything, it affirmed the value of regular colleges, said Nick Hillman, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most students, he said, don’t attend universities with single-digit acceptance rates accused of taking bribes. Two-thirds of undergraduates attend college within 50 miles of home, according to the Institute for College Access & Success. “There’s been this acknowledgment over the last few years that geography really matters,” Hillman said. “The majority of students don’t attend places like USC or the Ivy League.”

Mass Food Poisoning Incident Leaves 46 Hospitalized

Newsweek

Food poisoning is likely to affect more people in the future as humid temperatures—which allows strains of bacteria to form and thrive—become more common due to climate change, microbiologists have warned. “Climate change will increase the risk of foodborne illness from consumption of raw produce,” said Professor Jeri Barak, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who unveiled the results of a study in August.

Electric Motors Are About to Get a Major Upgrade Thanks to Benjamin Franklin

Wall Street Journal

Leading the effort to resuscitate Franklin’s concept for motors big enough to use in industrial applications is C-Motive Technologies in Middleton, Wis. It is a 16-person startup founded by a pair of University of Wisconsin engineers named Justin Reed and Daniel Ludois who spent years tinkering with electrostatic motors to see if they could be improved.

How Long Does Halloween Candy Last?

CNET

Yes, but not in the same way that perishable items such as eggs, chicken and produce do. When candy goes bad, it’s “almost always a physical (drying out) or chemical (lipid oxidation, flavor change) change and not microbial,” Richard W. Hartel, a food science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says.

When Does a High Become a Trip?

The Atlantic

Non-hallucinogenic, consciousness-altering experiences, like those reported to result from tabernanthalog use, sound far away from such mystical experiences, and more akin to how some people might feel after drinking a glass of wine or a strong cup of coffee. “Many of us are just filling our bodies with substances that cause acute alterations in consciousness of various degrees,” says Chuck Raison, a psychiatry professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

What we know: Fate of Texas death row inmate’s testimony before a state legislative committee is uncertain

CNN

“It’s the entire case, and that is Mr. Roberson’s case,” Keith Findley, professor emeritus with the University of Wisconsin Law School, testified before the Texas Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence last week. “When you have a prosecution, a conviction that rests entirely upon medical, scientific opinion, and it turns out that medical science is, at best, deeply disputed, you have a recipe for real problems.”

To save monarch butterflies, these scientists want to move mountains

National Geographic

“If the monarch migration to this part of the world is to continue, both the trees and the monarchs will need to move,” says Karen Oberhauser, a biologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study. According to Oberhauser, who studies monarch butterfly ecology, assisted migration could be a possible solution; however, whether it will work remains to be seen.

The Real Reason You Shouldn’t Let Your Dog Stick Its Head Out the Window

Inverse

“The quick and dirty answer is that [we] discourage it,” Amy Nichelason, a veterinarian and clinical assistant professor of primary care services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, tells Inverse. She says it’s not difficult to understand why dogs might enjoy riding with their heads out the window. With their keen sense of smell, “it really is just like sensory overload,” Nichelason says. “It’s like me in the candy store.”

The Scourge of ‘Win Probability’ in Sports

The Atlantic

Apart from this niche-use case, it’s not clear whether these statistics are even helpful for the people who watch games with the FanDuel app open. When I called up Michael Titelbaum, a philosopher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who works on probability, he told me that these statistics are easy to misinterpret. “Decades of cognitive-science experiments tell us that people are really, really bad at making sense of probability percentages,” he said.

News on Hurricane Milton

CNN

The amount of lightning in Hurricane Milton is “unlike any event” meteorologist Chris Vagasky has ever seen in the Atlantic Basin. Hurricane Milton’s eyewall, where the storm’s strongest winds are, exhibited more than 58,000 lightning events in just 14 hours, according to Vagasky, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That’s more than one lightning event every second, which he described as “astounding.”

Why Cheeses Such as Mozzarella and Cheddar Melt Differently Than Ricotta

Scientific American

Cheese makers’ key tool in adjusting the number of these bonds is acidity, says John Lucey, a food scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and director of the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research. In cheese made at a relatively neutral pH, there are enough calcium bonds that casein molecules are stiffly bound to each other.

Mushrooms are now becoming leather, packaging, bacon and more

The Washington Post

There is such a thing as an endemic fungus, a place a fungus grows and where it doesn’t. So, moving it should be done thoughtfully,” said Anne Pringle, a professor of botany at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “In practice, we’re only about conserving plants and animals. We don’t have that sense of the biodiversity of fungi. But we’re starting to have that conversation.”

Nearsightedness Has Become a Global Health Issue

Scientific American

Terri L. Young, co-chair of the NASEM committee that produced the report and chair of the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, talked with Scientific American about the implications of the myopia epidemic for people with myopia and policymakers.

Is Pumpkin Spice Dangerous To Dogs? Here’s Why They Should Avoid It

Inverse

Pumpkin on its own is not toxic to dogs. In fact, a little pumpkin can do some good in some cases because it’s high in fiber. “If people are worried that their dog’s stool is a little firm or hard, or that they’re constipated, we’ll use it because of its nice, high fiber content to help soften stool,” Calico Schmidt, a veterinarian and clinical instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, tells Inverse. “So it can be nice and beneficial, and many dogs like it, which is a plus, too.”

Arizona official who certifies elections alleges fraud after his defeat

The Washington Post

Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and director of its Elections Research Center, said Cavanaugh’s title could bring legitimacy to the notion that election officials are conspiring to falsify election outcomes. And the claim comes just as many voters are beginning to pay attention to the coming election, Burden said.