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Trump can run for president despite legal troubles

USA Today

The only way Trump could lose his right to run would be if the Senate had convicted him in one of the impeachment trials and also voted to declare him ineligible under language in Article I, section 3 of the Constitution or some formal congressional process under section 3 of the 14th Amendment, according to Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Meta again threatens to block news if bill forcing company to pay publishers becomes law | WCIV

ABC News

“These bills are all bound to fail because they try to slice off one aspect of it and regulate it,” said Dietram Scheufele, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin. “Ultimately, of course every time they try to do that, they end up into running into the reality that players like Google, players like Meta and OpenAI and Bard being part of Alphabet will not be any different.

Humans evolved flexible arches to walk upright

Popular Science

“We thought originally that the spring-like arch helped to lift the body into the next step,” study co-author and University of Wisconsin-Madison biomechanical engineer Lauren Welte said in a statement. “It turns out that instead, the spring-like arch recoils to help the ankle lift the body.”

DNA Suggests Modern Humans Emerged From Several Groups in Africa, Not One | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine

Smithsonian Magazine

“All humans share relatively recent common ancestry, but the story in the deeper past is more complicated than our species evolving in just a single location or in isolation,” says lead author Aaron Ragsdale, a population geneticist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, to Reuters’ Will Dunham.

With Climate Panel as a Beacon, Global Group Takes On Misinformation

The New York Times

Climate change is “hard science,” said Young Mie Kim, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who serves as vice chair of a committee focused on research methodology. “So, relatively speaking, it’s easier to develop some common concepts and tool kits,” Ms. Kim said. “It’s hard to do that in social science or humanities.”

How presidential ambitions shape state education policy

Inside Higher Ed

Barry Burden, a professor of political science and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said while both have “general skepticism about whether public universities are serving the state well,” Walker framed his attacks on higher education around the need to improve economic efficiency at state institutions. Walker was also less focused on “meddling in the day-to-day affairs of the university in the way that DeSantis is,” in terms of imposing sweeping change on public colleges.

José Andrés, George Washington University team on global food institute

The Washington Post

At a typical university, many units can venture into the study of food — starting with, obviously, schools of agriculture. But academic institutes devoted to food have cast a fresh, interdisciplinary spotlight on the subject in recent decades. The University of Wisconsin at Madison has a Food Research Institute focused on food safety.

Bank Runs Trash Long-Held Assumption on Deposits

WSJ

“The current environment of declining deposits and runs on banks raises questions about whether most deposit amounts are sustainable, especially uninsured deposits, reducing deposit-franchise value,” said Tom Linsmeier, an accounting professor at the University of Wisconsin and a former Financial Accounting Standards Board member.

Harvard-trained psychologist’s simple habit can protect you from burnout

CNBC

You can also prevent burnout by re-framing how you think about stress, Sorensen notes. She points to a study done by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which found that high levels of stress can increase the risk of premature death by 43% — but only among those who believed stress was very harmful. Those who did not see stress as harmful were no more likely to die.

Is AI the Answer to Moms’ Mental Overload?

Bloomberg

Research by Allison Daminger, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has found through extensive interviews with couples that men and women tend to share responsibility for research and decision-making, while women do more noticing (this will need doing soon) and monitoring (is anyone actually doing this?). And women tend to have more household responsibilities overall. As a result, women do more cognitive labor.

UW-Madison graduates largest class in its history with 7,826 degrees conferred

Wisconsin State Journal

Coumbe Gitter, who got her degree in biochemistry with an environmental science minor, graduated in good company outside of her own family tree — Saturday’s ceremony was the largest commencement in UW-Madison history, with 7,826 degrees conferred, according to UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin.

How Putin’s Victory Parade Speech Changed Drastically From Last Year

Newsweek

Mikhail Troitskiy, professor of practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek that Putin’s Victory Day speech last year “did not meet the expectations” of pro-Ukraine War supporters who desired an immediate escalation, mobilization of civilians, and a rhetorical shift to an all-out “war” from a “special military operation.”

Scientists use cheese to study fungal antibiotics

Popular Science

Wolfe and his team began by investigating a cheesemaker’s problem with mold spreading on the surface of the cheeses and disrupting the normal development of the rind. This causes the cheese to look like the rinds were disappearing as the mold invaded their cheese cave. They collaborated with microbiologist Nancy Keller’s lab at the University of Wisconsin to find out what this mold was doing to the rind microbes and what chemicals the mold may be producing that disrupted the rind.

COVID emergency not over for travelers with disabilities. Here’s why.

USA Today

“This puts a lot of lower-income people at a greater disadvantage,” said Amy Gaeta, a disability rights activist and postdoctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies disability and technology and has nerve damage in one leg as well as invisible disabilities. “This is especially concerning given that so many disabled people are low-income, especially if they’re on disability welfare benefits.”

NASA Images Show Smoke and Scorched Earth from Wildfires

Newsweek

These blazes have produced huge blossoming smoke chimneys. According to NASA Earth Observatory, researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, found that the smoke pillars may have reached up to 39,000 feet tall, as far as the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere.

Productivity fell while output increased in Q1. Why?

Marketplace

Meanwhile, output that’s the amount of stuff we’re making is not keeping up, said Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin. “Production had jumped in the wake of the pandemic. And so what you have is the growth rate of production, which is largely determined by demand, is slowing a lot,” he said.

Why black bears love dumpster diving

BBC News

Certain places like Mr Marsh’s home state of West Virginia, as well as New Jersey and Tennessee, may be more ripe for bear encounters as they have growing populations of the mammals, said David Drake, a professor and extension wildlife specialist at the University of Wisconsin.

The Battle Over Refrigerating Butter: ‘Enough Is Enough’

Wall Street Journal

“This is a quality issue, not a safety issue,” said Gina Mode, a butter researcher at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Dairy Research. Butter will eventually go rancid but that won’t make people sick, she said. Ms. Mode in an informal survey of her colleagues found that 24 of 31 keep butter out, a telling data point among experts.

Gene-edited cells move science closer to repairing damaged hearts

The Washington Post

One of the genes edited out in MEDUSA cells ― SLC8A1 ― “can impact the ability of heart cells to contract,” said Timothy Kamp, director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Still, he added, “I think the concept of editing these genes is powerful. Perhaps a simpler combination [of edits] may work.”

UW-Madison hopes for further computer and data sciences innovation as new building starts

Wisconsin State Journal

A “ground blessing ceremony” — which couldn’t accurately be called a groundbreaking ceremony, as a pit already exists where two former maintenance buildings stood — was held Tuesday, with university officials celebrating the growth of the school and emphasizing the importance of data analytics to UW-Madison and society going forward.

“That is what I’m most excited about this building and what we’re doing here,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said Tuesday. “To solve real, important problems in the world, so often we must engage across. We can’t do that if we’re siloed. We can’t do that if we’re wearing blinders.”

8 Books Experts Would Recommend About Meditation

The New York Times

“Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body” by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson‌. This 2017 title was written by Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and science journalist, and Richard Davidson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds.

Leave your grass long to help bees, butterflies

The Washington Post

“If you have a traditional lawn, letting the grass grow to a foot tall or whatever it would be at the end of May is no value whatsoever,” says Susan Carpenter, native plant garden curator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. Grass that long could be harmful to lawn health and become a mowing nightmare.

Opinion | Could Peer Influence Be a Cause of the Global Baby Bust?

New York Times

I read several papers on peer effects on fertility with Angrist’s caveats in mind. One, by Jason Fletcher and Olga Yakusheva, looked at American teenagers and found that a 10 percentage point increase in pregnancies of classmates is associated with a 2 to 5 percentage point greater likelihood of a teenager herself becoming pregnant. Disentangling causality is “a really hard problem,” Fletcher, an economist at the University of Wisconsin’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, told me.

For Centuries, Boys Used To ‘Dress Like A Girl.’ Here’s When Everything Changed.

HuffPost Life

Jessica McCrory Calarco, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, weighed in on the little-known history, too. “As I teach my students, kids’ clothing only became gendered when capitalists realized they could double their money by selling separate clothes for girls and boys,” she tweeted. “Before that, kids wore gender-neutral dresses, which better accommodated growth spurts and toilet training.”

Why is there always a blood shortage?

Vox

With its direct connection to the heart, its vivid hue (from wine-dark to cherry bright and cobalt blue), and its spilling in both birth and death, blood has historically served as a metaphor for humanity, as Susan Lederer, a professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argues in her 2008 book, Flesh and Blood. “Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in the 1880s. “All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood,” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in 1921. “Blood is memory without language,” added Joyce Carol Oates, more recently.

UW-Madison formally inducts Jennifer Mnookin as 30th chancellor

The Capital Times

The university’s tenet of education extending beyond the classroom has propelled her as chancellor, she told the audience. In December 2020, she donated a kidney to her father, who was diagnosed with late-stage kidney disease. A synthetic solution created at UW-Madison, which increased preservation times for organs outside of the body, allowed her kidney to safely travel on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to her dad in Boston.

Ending the COVID emergency will further harm Black maternal mortality |

The Hill

April 11-17 marks Black Maternal Health Week, a week-long campaign officially recognized by the Biden administration as a time to address racial inequities in Black maternal health and to “amplify ​the voices, perspectives and lived experiences” of Black during pregnancy.

Tiffany L. Green, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of any institutions or organizations.