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Trump says migrants are fueling violent crime. Here is what the research shows

Reuters

“Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas, opens new tab” by Michael Light, sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and two other researchers.

The 2020 study was published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.• The report, which used data from the Texas Department of Public Safety between 2012-2018, found a lower felony arrest rate for immigrants in the U.S. illegally compared to legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens and no evidence of increasing criminality among immigrants.

Republican convention: GOP hopes to swing Wisconsin

The Hill

“Wisconsin is one of the handful of states that has flipped back and forth between the last two presidential elections, so for a party that’s concerned about winning the Electoral College, this is a state where they would naturally look,” explained Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Biden’s press conference will be a key test for him. But he’s no master of the big rhetorical moment – Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The debate, rather than helping Biden reset the race against Trump, confirmed voters’ preestablished fears about him, said Allison Prasch, a professor of rhetoric who researches presidential communications at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.“The president is a symbol,” she said, adding that Americans often look to the president as a mirror to reflect on their hopes and their fears.

How the Home Insurance Market Became So Distorted

The New York Times

Deciphering the cost of home insurance from one place to another is almost impossible. But two professors — Benjamin Keys of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Philip Mulder at the University of Wisconsin — found a workaround. They obtained data showing how much millions of American households pay to mortgage service companies, which typically includes insurance. Then they deducted payments for mortgages, property taxes and other fees, leaving them with an estimate of home insurance premiums.

Feds pull plug on Russia ‘bot farm’ that spread social media lies

USA Today

Dietram Scheufele is a professor of science communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies misinformation. The number of bots taken offline by the FBI operation is small compared to the myriad fake accounts on social media, he said. But he felt encouraged that the feds were going after the roots of AI-generated misinformation instead of flagging doctored videos. “I feel heartened,” the German native said. “We’ve seen tons of activities that are putting bandages on symptoms but haven’t really addressed the root cause – removing the tumor.”

Not Everyone Has an Inner Voice Streaming Through Their Head

Scientific American

Most of us have an “inner voice,” and we tend to assume everybody does, but recent evidence suggests that people vary widely in the extent to which they experience inner speech, from an almost constant patter to a virtual absence of self-talk. “Until you start asking the right questions you don’t know there’s even variation,” says Gary Lupyan, a cognitive scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “People are really surprised because they’d assumed everyone is like them.”

June sizzled to a 13th straight monthly heat record

NPR

“Our world is in crisis,” said University of Wisconsin climate scientist Andrea Dutton. “Perhaps you are feeling that crisis today — those who live in the path of Beryl are experiencing a hurricane that is fueled by an extremely warm ocean that has given rise to a new era of tropical storms that can intensify rapidly into deadly and costly major hurricanes. Even if you are not in crisis today, each temperature record we set means that it is more likely that climate change will bring crisis to your doorstep or to your loved ones.”

Infant mortality rate rose in wake of Texas abortion ban, study shows

AP News

But the results did not come as a surprise to Tiffany Green, a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist and population health scientist who studies the consequences of racial inequities on reproductive health. She said the results were in line with earlier research on racial disparities in infant mortality rates due to state differences in Medicaid funding for abortions. Many of the people getting abortions are vulnerable to pregnancy complications, said Green, who was not part of the research.

Bringing Back Local Milk, Ice Cream, and Cheese

Civil Eats

As the ballooning demand continues to shape market forces, the shift towards fewer, larger farms is inevitable, says Charles Nicholson, associate professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. With smaller-scale dairies harder hit by labor shortages and fluctuating milk prices, “this long-term trend would be hard to change with public policy or private initiatives [alone],” he says.

How ‘Rural Studies’ Is Thinking About the Heartland

The New York Times

Another scholar who disagreed with Mr. Frank’s diagnosis was Kathy Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But like Mr. Frank, she was interested in the question of how social class shaped politics, and thought that the way to get an accurate picture was through fieldwork. Over five years, starting in 2007, she visited 27 small towns in Wisconsin.

The World of Luxury Fruit: Does a $156 Melon Taste Sweeter?

The New York Times

Some of the fruits have long been given as gifts, especially in Japan and Korea. That trend is catching on in the United States, as is the taste for flawless berries and melons that travelers may have tried overseas, produce experts said. And as the luxury goods industry has grown, so too has the interest in luxury fruit, said Soyeon Shim, a scholar of consumer and financial behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The market has become much more global,” she said. Ms. Shim added, “you can buy anything you want.”

The Big Winners of This Supreme Court Term

The Atlantic

In a famous 1974 paper titled “Why the Haves Come Out Ahead,” the University of Wisconsin law professor Marc Galanter argued that litigation systematically favors repeat players with the wherewithal to take fullest advantage of the courts. Key to his argument was the point that courts are “reactive”: They only do something when someone asks them to. That favors “the claimant with the information, ability to surmount cost barriers, and skill to navigate restrictive procedural requirements.” And most repeat players, Galanter said, tend to be “larger, richer and more powerful” than single-shotters.

Black Americans’ Responses To Trump’s Notion Of ‘Black Jobs’

Forbes

Inequitable access to high-quality education plays a role in systematically routing young Black Americans into a narrow set of jobs. “Although our schools should be preparing all students for well-paid satisfying work, far too many of our Black and Brown students are relegated to poorly resourced schools,” says Gloria Ladson-Billings, the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor Emerita of Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

East Palestine train derailment polluted 16 states, study says

The Washington Post

When it began to rain in various places, the pollutants were pushed from the air and deposited on the ground. The National Atmospheric Deposition Program, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, collects these ground depositions weekly across 260 sites across North America. David Gay, who serves as coordinator of the program, routinely analyzes the data to monitor air pollutants. “If you have a lot of pollution in the atmosphere, you get a lot of wet deposition pollution at the ground,” Gay said.

See the Photos of the Rare Cicada Emergence

TIME

That slight overlap does not necessarily mean the two broods will breed with one another. “Is there a possibility of interactions and hybridization? That could occur—but given the long life cycles, it’s really hard to study,” PJ Liesch, the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, tells TIME.

Study on tween screen use shows link between parents and kids

The Washington Post

The study caught the attention of Megan Moreno, professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and co-director of the American Academy of Pediatrics Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. Moreno, whose expertise is in the field of adolescent health and digital media, says she has been troubled by the widespread message — “almost to the edge of moral panic” — that social media use is causing adverse mental health outcomes for adolescents. “That has been a narrative I’ve been really interested in because I’ve really been wanting to see: Where is that evidence?” she says. “And it hasn’t been there.”

A Bird-Flu Pandemic in People? Here’s What It Might Look Like.

The New York Times

Crucially, no forms of the bird flu virus seem to have spread efficiently from person to person. That is no guarantee that H5N1 will not acquire that ability, said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist and bird flu expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.“ I think the virus is clearly changing its property, because we never saw outbreaks in cows,” Dr. Kawaoka said.

The US is losing wetlands at an accelerating rate − here’s how the private sector can help protect these valuable resources

The Conversation

Wetlands aren’t the most eye-catching ecosystems. They include swamps, bogs, fens and other places where soil is covered by water most of the time. But they perform a huge range of valuable services, from soaking up floodwaters to filtering out pollutants and providing habitat for thousands of species of mammals, fish, reptiles, insects and birds.

Professor of Law and Associate Dean, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Women Are America’s Safety Net

The Atlantic

In November 2020, in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic, Calarco, who is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told the writer Anne Helen Petersen, “Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women.”

The biggest cropland changes were near Ogallala Aquifer, study shows

The Washington Post

“A lot of the assumptions were that this former cropland had a lot of overlap with formal conservation programs,” Tyler Lark, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment who co-authored the study, said in a news release. “But we saw that they’re almost entirely distinct pools.”

The truth about ‘zombie cicadas’: ‘The fungus can do some nefarious things’

Fox News

P.J. Liesch, director of UW Insect Diagnostic Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained that the fungus does “really interesting things” to the cicadas it infects. “The fungus can do some nefarious things,” he told Fox News Digital in a phone interview. “It can produce some amphetamine-like compounds, which end up affecting the behavior of these infected cicadas.”

Earth warming at record rate, but no evidence of climate change accelerating

The Associated Press

“Choosing to act on climate has become a political talking point but this report should be a reminder to people that in fact it is fundamentally a choice to save human lives,” said University of Wisconsin climate scientist Andrea Dutton, who wasn’t part of the international study team. “To me, that is something worth fighting for.”

The most pressing bird flu mysteries scientists want answered

STAT

Yoshihiro Kawaoka put into words a question that worries many scientists watching this situation, the worry that underscored Fouchier’s insistence that this outbreak must be stopped as quickly as possible. “We do not know whether the bovine H5N1 virus will become established in cattle,” wrote Kawaoka, a flu virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “If it does, will it evolve to adapt more towards ‘mammalian-like’ influenza viruses? … Will it pose a risk to human health?”

Why Bird Flu Is Causing Eye Infections in Dairy Workers

Scientific American

“Given the amount of virus detected in milk from H5N1 virus-infected cows, I am concerned about its spillover to humans, poultry and other animals,”says Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a professor of virology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

College Alone Can’t Save Women

Chronicle of Higher Ed

In the fall of 2020, Jessica Calarco encapsulated what so many families were experiencing during the pandemic in a memorable phrase: “Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. At the time, Calarco, now an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (her promotion to full professor takes effect later this summer), was studying how parents were navigating the pandemic, a project that included two national surveys and hundreds of hours of interviews

Sociologist: Lack of social safety net impacts students

Inside Higher Ed

Calarco, who’s previously published A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum (2020) and Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School (2018), began researching what became Holding it Together prior to the pandemic, while an associate professor of sociology at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. The pandemic changed the scope of her work somewhat (go figure), and she’s also switched institutions, to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She agreed to chat about her process and findings, and their implications for student success.

Organic cheese and free lunch for all: what the US can learn from other nations about better school meals

The Guardian

Providing exceptional school meals for millions of US children won’t come without a collective struggle, and our analysis of school food politics around the world reminds us to raise the bar in what we’re fighting for.

-Jennifer Gaddis is an associate professor in civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Internships are linked to better employment outcomes for college graduates – but there aren’t enough for students who want them

The Conversation

Are there enough paid internships?No. Only two out of three internships offer compensation for students at four-year colleges. The situation is worse for students at two-year institutions, where 50% of internships are unpaid.

  1. Matthew T. Hora

    Associate Professor of Adult and Higher Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison

    Hee Song Project Assistant at the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Washington Post said it had the Alito flag story 3 years ago and chose not to publish

The Hill

Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, said it was a bad call. And, she added, if she were at the Post she would have argued for the paper to be more forthcoming. While Martha-Ann Alito has the right to her own opinions, a flag like that shouldn’t be on display outside the home of a U.S. Supreme Court justice, Culver said. “It’s a flag that flies in the face of the neutrality that the Supreme Court is supposed to be observing,” she said.

Opinion: I’m a millennial mom. Why are you looking at me to fix the birth-rate problem?

MarketWatch

“In order to make childbearing seem like an easy option, having more kids an easy option, you’d have to go even further than many of the states that have strong social-safety-net systems,” said Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin and the author of the forthcoming “Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.”

Bird flu, raw milk debate converge

The Hill

“These claims — I’m a chemist by trade — just make no sense whatsoever on any kind of science or chemistry basis,” University of Wisconsin–Madison food science professor John Lucey told The Hill. “I’ve been doing research on dairy products and milk for 20-plus years,” Lucey added. “In my field, nobody gives credence to these fantastic claims.”

The Problem With Nudging People to Make a Better Choice

Wall Street Journal

In the end, though, the main takeaway from our research is that nudges may be a great first step. But that’s all they are: a first step. Much of the hard work is what comes next.

-Evan Polman is an associate professor of marketing and Kuechenmeister-Bascom professor in business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sam J. Maglio is a professor of marketing at the University of Toronto.

How China Pulled So Far Ahead on Industrial Policy

The New York Times

“There’s enormous economies of scale by going big as China did,” Gregory Nemet, a professor of public policy at the University of Wisconsin who has studied the global solar industry. When the investments resulted in overcapacity, suppressing the profitability of China’s companies, Beijing was willing to ride out the losses.

Damages From PFAS Lawsuits Could Surpass Asbestos, Industry Lawyers Warn

The New York Times

One challenge facing medical research lies in the sheer number of different PFAS chemicals that have now entered the environment, each of which can have slightly different health effects, said Steph Tai, associate dean at the University of Wisconsin’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and an expert in the use of science in environmental protection and litigation.

Can Medicare money protect doctors from abortion crimes? It worked before, desegregating hospitals

ABC News

As Medicare prepared to begin paying for the care of elderly patients in July 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson used the offer of massive federal spending as a tool to finally end the most glaring racial discrimination in hospitals nationwide. It remains “one the most prominent and powerful cases of linking federal funding to other policy goals,” said University of Wisconsin professor Tom Oliver, an expert on health care policy changes.