Quoted: Tom O’Guinn, a University of Wisconsin expert on consumer behavior, said packaging issues aren’t enough to sway diners’ decisions on where to eat.”The average American doesn’t care lot about this,” he said. “People don’t want to sit there and think, ’Gee, this is a slight improvement in packaging.’”
Quoted: “Self-criticism can take a toll on our minds and bodies,” said Dr. Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also teaches psychology and psychiatry.
Quoted: He may have an explosive temper; he may even have access to guns. “But if he hasn’t come right out and said, ‘I’m going to kill someone tomorrow,’ or ‘I’m going to kill myself,’ you’re not going to be able to involuntarily hospitalize him,” says Michael Caldwell, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin who works with dangerous young men at a juvenile treatment center in Madison.
The research was described in a paper published earlier this month in the journal Advanced Science. The work, funded by the National Science Foundation, was a collaboration between University at Buffalo, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Fudan University in China. The first authors on the paper were Haomin Song and Youhai Liu.
On Wednesday afternoon, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced that it was chosen as one of four universities across the nation tasked to achieve that goal, in partnership with the community, by 2020. They’re looking for creative ideas from throughout the community to build up the county’s middle class and hopefully narrow racial inequities.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty will spend the summer collecting data and trying to identify community members’ needs in an effort to raise 10,000 Dane County families’ incomes by 10 percent in two years.
Quoted: “The Forest Service is concerned about more and more houses built in and near wildland vegetation because of this double whammy,” says the study’s lead author Volker Radeloff, a forest ecologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Based on the regions of the brain that Homo naledi shared with modern humans, the authors suggested that it may have exhibited complex behavior. But what they did not say was what those behaviors may have been, said John Hawks, an paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and an author on the paper.
Young Mie Kim, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who published some of the first scientific analysis of social media influence campaigns during the election, said the ads show that the Russians are attempting to destabilize Western Democracy by targeting extreme identity groups.
A recent study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that more than half of the sponsors of Facebook ads that featured divisive political messages ahead of the 2016 election were from “suspicious” groups with little or no paper trail to identify them. One in six turned out to be linked to the IRA.“I expected that we would find some unknown actors in the digital media political campaign landscape, because there are some regulatory loopholes,” Young Mie Kim, the study’s lead author, recently told me. “The findings are a lot worse than I thought. It is shocking and surprising.”
When Angeline Mboutngam first attended Madison Area Technical College in fall 2012, she was enrolled in a math class that covered basic concepts such as 1 + 1 = 2. She went on to conquer calculus.On Thursday afternoon, Mboutngam settled into a desk on the third floor of UW-Madison’s College Library to study for the last exam of her undergraduate career — organic chemistry.At 45, Mboutngam, who received no formal education growing up in the Central African nation of Cameroon, will walk across the stage Saturday at Camp Randall to receive her bachelor’s degree from one of the top-ranked public universities in the United States.
Noted: A professor of communication sciences and disorders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rountrey also can’t understand how her only child can be so disorganized.
Quoted: “The Implicit Association Tests are humbling. I have every bias in the book,” said Dr. Molly Carnes, director of the Center for Women’s Health Research at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and an internal medicine doctor.Carnes has developed workshops for the university’s faculty that increase awareness about bias by teaching participants how to recognize it.
After the release of three U.S. prisoners Wednesday in North Korea, President Trump tweeted that the “Date & Place” for his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was “set.”The recent thaw in U.S.-North Korean relations has taken many foreign policy analysts by surprise.
But a new study from University of Wisconsin-Madison sociology professor Michael Light suggests people living in the country illegally are linked to a decrease in violent crime, not an increase.
Quoted: What’s more, there are some barriers to poor families getting the money, like the requirement that recipients of the funds have bank accounts for direct deposits. After looking over the procedure for filing for the refund, Tim Smeeding, an economist and poverty expert at the University of Wisconsin Madison, commented, “I am sure poor people won’t follow all of this and won’t get the money.”
Quoted: Aleksandra Zgierska, a professor who specializes in addiction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, says one possible explanation for the surge in emergency room visits is that people hooked on prescription drugs don’t have timely access to treatment and may be turning to illegal drugs.
A recently published two-year study of urban canids in and around Madison, Wisconsin, sheds light on the issue. Researchers used radio collars and statistical analysis to assess the movement and home ranges of coyotes and foxes through a mosaic of residential, commercial, and public natural areas, including tallgrass prairie and oak savanna located within the University of Wisconsin–Madison Lakeshore Nature Preserve.
Research shows the loss of young adults raises the cost of schools, public services, and recreation for individuals. The Applied Population Lab at the UW-Madison projected that 15 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties will have smaller populations in 2040 than they did in 2010.
Quoted: “If they’re interested potentially in Hannity and they’re interested in Pirro…that gives us some clue of what’s going to be on the Sinclair cable network,” said Lewis Friedland, who directs the Center for Communication and Democracy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When I talk to senior scientists, many view harassment as an injustice that happens somewhere else, not in their field or at their institution. But data suggest that the problem is ubiquitous. In separate surveys of tens of thousands of university students across Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, upwards of 40% of respondents say that they have experienced sexual harassment.
On April 27, the U.S. Congress’s Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission, held a hearing about alleged Kremlin pressures on the United Nations Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a hybrid legal body that investigates and tries high-level corruption cases.
Rachel A. Schwartz is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Using social media, two University of Wisconsin-Madison alums have created a movement among African-American students in higher education that has two goals: one academic, the other political.
It’s graduation season, and UW-Madison alums Anthony Wright and Brian Allen are promoting #BlackandHooded to black recipients of advanced degrees, inviting them to share photos celebrating their accomplishments.
Quoted: In certain circles, they’re held in high esteem. Clinicians interested in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy often seek them out for training. And Charles Raison, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, sees merit in the couple’s approach.
Wisconsin’s rural counties saw an estimated 9 percent fewer 20- and 30 year-olds in 2010 than they would have if their population from 2000 had remained static, according to data from the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That’s compared to a statewide average loss of less than 1 percent. And looking at just 20 year olds, that figure jumps to a loss of 34 percent in rural counties.
Noted: The National Conference of State Legislatures says helmets saved an estimated 1,630 lives in 2013. The organization, citing a 2009 report by the University of Wisconsin Medical School, also says several studies have proved the obvious, that medical costs from motorcycle crashes are higher for riders without helmets.
Marco Werman speaks with Menzie Chinn about tariffs and global trade.
One training, developed by Patricia Devine and colleagues at the Prejudice and Intergroup Relations Lab at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, looks at bias as a habit that can be broken. Their approach—which I’ve written about before—consists of a couple of hours of modules based on what the researchers see as three essential elements of an antibias intervention: awareness of the problem, motivation to do something about it, and strategies for what to do.
UW’s Automated Vehicle Proving Grounds is one of 10 federally designated labs testing autonomous vehicle technology, a distinction Wisconsin should be proud of, and which could lead to spinoff businesses and jobs.
UW-Madison’s recently released Origins project links together different academic fields to paint a picture of how scientists research Earth’s and mankind’s beginnings.
(also published in the Council on Foreign Relations)
Young Mie Kim, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, collected controversial Facebook ads displayed over a six week-period before the 2016 elections. She found that one-half of groups purchasing these ads not only failed to file a report with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), but also had no IRS or online footprint indicating who they were.
Research out of the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that by age three, kids can understand basic money concepts, such as value or exchange.
Quoted: “The average age of a girl getting her menstrual cycle is 12 years old. But it can happen as young as 9,” said Dr. Jasmine Zapata, a pediatrician and preventive medicine resident at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. Zapata said it can be both physically and emotionally hard for pregnant girls and its important to go beyond just teaching abstinence, as some politicians, including President Donald Trump, have advocated.
A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison refutes the assertion that more undocumented immigrants in the U.S. correlate to an increase in violent crime.
The Waisman Center has a new director. The organization at UW-Madison is one of only 14 Eunice Kennedy Shriver Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Centers in the country. The new director Qiang Chang is our guest. He discusses current research on autism and Rett syndrome and explains how research and clinical service connect. Plus learn about the promise stem cell research holds for degenerative diseases such as ALS.
Quoted: “Twenty-six out of 72 counties in Wisconsin don’t have any Ob-Gyn’s,” said Jody Silva, the rural residency program manager for the University of Wisconsin.
High-achieving, low-income students make up just 3 percent of enrollment at elite colleges. This week, 100 top U.S. universities are vowing to do something about it. Chancellor Blank is interviewed.
Some day, if billionaire inventor Elon Musk’s idea comes to fruition, humans will travel from city to city via Hyperloop.
Quoted: When today’s young adults do decide to get married, many of them are further along in their careers, with a better sense of who they are, and what they contribute to their workplace. One 29-year-old I talked to, a medical resident in San Francisco, told me that for those who believe one’s bank account offers a clear reflection of a person’s work ethic or success, it can be hard to cede control. “It’s about wanting to maintain one’s sense of identity, individuality, and autonomy,” said Fenaba Addo, an assistant professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Phillips spent her life fighting for the freedom of marginalized people in the state of Wisconsin. She was the first black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School in 1951, according to the university. (She even has a building named after her on campus.) After graduating, Phillips won a seat on the Milwaukee Common Council in 1956, another first, both for a woman and an African-American, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
New research shows tribal forests in northern Wisconsin have older trees, and better plant diversity and tree regeneration than surrounding state or national forests. Researchers with Dartmouth College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison published their findings in a recent issue of the journal Ecology and Society.
A harrowing real-life tale about the demise of the Great Lakes has been chosen as the next book in the Go Big Read series of campus-wide book reading at UW-Madison.
Earlise Ward is set to take over as director of the center next January. Ward, who has been with the School of Nursing since 2007, will be replacing the former director, Kathy Cramer, after she stepped down to return to a full-time professor position in the Department of Political Science.
Once a farm, almost a subdivision, the UW Arboretum has never been static.
Noted: The speech was ranked No. 47 on a list of the top speeches of the century in 1999. The list, compiled by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Texas A&M University, was based on a survey of scholars who ranked speeches by social and political impact and rhetorical artistr
One in six of those groups was linked to Russia, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study here, and the identities of the rest of the 122 groups that are labeled “suspicious” are still unknown, an indication of the influence of “astroturf” or shell companies in U.S. politics.
When Young Mie Kim began studying political ads on Facebook in August of 2016—while Hillary Clinton was still leading the polls— few people had ever heard of the Russian propaganda group, Internet Research Agency. Not even Facebook itself understood how the group was manipulating the platform’s users to influence the election. For Kim, a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the goal was to document the way the usual dark money groups target divisive election ads online, the kind that would be more strictly regulated if they appeared on TV. She never knew then she was walking into a crime scene.
For 70 years a UW-Madison institution has been changing the community for the better. Humorology, the largest student run nonprofit in the state, pits original mini musicals against one another in the spirit of philanthropy.
An exercise class for older women and bringing people of color into research on Alzheimer’s disease. Classes for the Odyssey Project, the successful yearlong program designed as a pathway for low-income people to attend college. Community space for the African American Breastfeeding Alliance of Dane County, Urban League of Greater Madison and Madison Area Technical College. Those are among the offerings of the UW South Madison Partnership, which recently celebrated its third year providing services on Madison’s South Side. The university’s courses, clinics and research programs take place at its facility in Villager Mall, 2312 S. Park St., which also has space available for community groups.
Quoted: “Wisconsin’s economy is kind of just slugging along,” said Steven Deller, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We weren’t hit as badly by the great recession, but our recovery has been painfully slow.”
When ecologist John Orrock of the University of Wisconsin–Madison squirted snail slime—a lubricating mucus the animals ooze as they slide along—into soil, nearby tomato plants appeared to notice.
Quoted: “When it was time to stand up and say, ‘Hey we can’t do things that way,’ or ‘This doesn’t make sense’, he never did that,” said Tim Smeeding, a public affairs and economics professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: “Our history follows us more publicly than it used to,” said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Culver noted that maybe two decades ago if Reed’s final round had been marred by a scoring discrepancy or lost-ball kerfuffle, the stories of his past might have surfaced briefly and merely as footnotes. But today those stories face boldly forward in the midst of an essentially flawless performance.
“Venus had plenty of time to evolve life on its own,” said lead author Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center, in a press release. In fact, previous research suggests that Venus could have once maintained a habitable climate with liquid water on its surface for as long as 2 billion years. “That’s much longer than is believed to have occurred on Mars,” he said.
Quoted: “Beyond question, patients should be informed that the ‘safety step’ of not undergoing surgery is theirs to choose,” wrote Dr. Kirk Hogan, professor of anesthesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, in an article published earlier this year. “Each patient must determine if the proposed benefits of a procedure outweigh the foreseeable and material risks of cognitive decline after surgery.”
Featured: U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin announced Wednesday that he will not seek re-election at the end of his term saying he wants to spend more time with family. We talk with WPR News’ Capitol Reporter Laurel White for reactions from the speaker’s district, then turn to a political scientist look at the effects on Congress, Wisconsin and on Ryan’s future. (Guest: David Canon)
Some 4,500 years ago, the Bell Beakers invaded Britain. Roughly 90% of the genes of later Britons came from this group, named for the distinctive shape of their pottery. Archaeologists long thought that Britain’s early farmers, who built Stonehenge five millennia ago, adopted the pots from continental neighbors. Instead DNA evidence shows that the farmers were nearly annihilated by the Bell Beakers.
Mr. Hawks is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Low birth weight is a key factor in infant death, and a new report released in March by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin suggests that the number of low-birth-weight babies born in the United States — also driven by the data for black babies — has inched up for the first time in a decade.
Quoted: Reality: A major study on this question came out in 2011, and Janet Mertz, senior author of the study and a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, concluded, “This is not a matter of biology: None of our findings suggest that an innate biological difference between the sexes is the primary reason for a gender gap in math performance at any level.”
