The Barbie movie has seen great success at the box office. We talk with Christine Whelan, a UW-Madison consumer science professor, about the doll’s cultural legacy and latest form.
Yellow perch, rainbow trout and tilapia are just a few of the fish farmed for food in Wisconsin. We break down the aquaculture industry and take a tour of a fish farm. Interview with Sharon Moen, an outreach specialist for the Sea Grant Institute at the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute.
Shawn Conley is a soybean and small grain specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He said many farmers who just finished harvesting winter wheat brought in quality grain. Conley said soybean fields are also doing OK, but they’ll need at least an inch of rain per week until September to reach their best yields.
“If we don’t get rain, we’ll start seeing a yield hit on the soybean side of things,” Conley said. “Corn is a different matter. I think we’ve already started to see some corn yield losses out there.”
While paper converters often go overlooked, they play an important role in both Wisconsin’s paper industry and its economy, according to a recent study from the Wisconsin Paper Council and University of Wisconsin titled, “Adding Value to Our Economy – Paper Conversion in Wisconsin.” More than 145 paper converters operated in Wisconsin in 2022, according to the study.
That number gets bigger a lot faster if you factor in companies that use paper along with plastic and other types of products, Scott Bowe, a professor and wood products specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in the May 31 episode of the Wisconsin Paper Council’s “The Paper Files” podcast about the study.
Written by Chris McCahill, managing director of the State Smart Transportation Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Protesters frequently targeted information technology, not only because of its role in the Vietnam war but also due to its association with the imprisoning forces of capitalism. In 1970, activists at the University of Wisconsin destroyed a mainframe during a building occupation; the same year, protesters almost blew one up with napalm at New York University.
Leonard Polzin tracks dairy markets at the UW-Madison Division of Extension. He said the state is feeling the effects of a post-pandemic lag in milk demand.
“Total supply is up, and demand is down. We’re increasing inventory, cows keep producing every day, and we just can’t turn it off. Our inventory numbers of all dairy products are increasing, and buyers know that. Buyers are not hungry for product,” explained Polzin.
For 37 years, the Center for Dairy Research (CDR) has helped innovate the dairy industry.
“Cheese-making has been around, there are lots of different guesses right now, but probably somewhere in the region of 8000 years,” CDR and University of Wisconsin Madison Professor of Food Science John Lucey said.
UW-Madison Chief Information Officer and Vice Provost for Information Technology Lois Brooks describes how the university is managing the use of generative AI among students, faculty and researchers.
UW-Madison has produced at least 485 doctoral degree graduates with research related to plasma physics (a fundamental study) and fusion energy since 1965. The nuclear engineering department within the College of Engineering is one of the nation’s best.
The Center for Dairy Research, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the co-founder and former director of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute also helped with the four-year long research and development program.
Leonard Polzin is dairy markets and policy specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension. He told Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Central Time” that most dairy processors have ongoing recruitment efforts and continue to think about ways to compete with employers hiring from the same labor pool. But he said processors are also starting to pay more attention to advancements in technology and how automation could make jobs easier or replace them altogether.
“If they can take what once was done by 10 people and do it by one person through the advent of additional investment, that’s always a topic of discussion,” he said.
Farmers across the Midwest are again dumping volumes of milk down the drain as an oversupply floods the markets. We talk with Leonard Polzin, UW-Madison Extention’s Dairy Markets and Policy Outreach specialist, about what’s causing the milk surplus and how long it may last.
Josh Kamps is a crops and soils educator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension in the southwestern region. He said crop conditions vary greatly across his area, even from farm to farm.
Kamps said producers who were able to plant early in the season got enough rain to get crops started, allowing the plants to grow deeper roots that tapped into water farther below the surface as soils dried out.
“We have areas where crops were planted a little bit later, maybe toward the end of May,” he said. “Those crops are really struggling. These last couple of rain showers this week are going to definitely help.”
Steven Deller, professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said businesses remain in “wait and see mode,” as they’ve dealt with economic uncertainty since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates more than a year ago.
“Six months ago, it was like, the Fed is raising interest rates, the sky is falling, the leading economic indicators are all pointing towards recession,” Deller said. “Now, people are going, ‘Well, wait a minute, the sky is not falling.'”
Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Goldman Sachs’ prediction might be a little rosier than that of most economists. He said economists are anticipating an economic slowdown in the latter half of 2023 or early 2024.
“While people think the chances of a recession are receding, I think the average forecaster still sees a recession coming,” Chinn said. “That being said, I think most of them also think it would be a mild recession.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Alliant Energy are partnering to build a solar park that will also serve as a research center to explore mixing solar and agriculture, soil impacts, water issues and more.
Shereen Siewert welcomes Wisconsin bestselling author Michael Perry and University of Wisconsin Center for Dairy Profitability Farm Succession Outreach Specialist Joy Kirkpatrick for a discussion on farmer well-being and mental health.
Chuck Nicholson, agricultural economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s not unusual to see some milk dumping in late spring and early summer.
“We tend to see a peak in the production of milk per cow around this time of year,” he said. “That’s based on biology of the cow and the timing of what the climate looks like to make that milk.”
Last week, the United States Supreme Court ruled against the Biden administration’s attempt to cancel or reduce student loan debt. Nicholas Hillman, a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at UW-Madison and expert on higher education finance, joins us to talk about what the decision means for millions of borrowers.
Love can be expensive, whether its dates, a wedding or even having children. Sarah Halpern-Meekin, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology, joins us to discuss the impact that costs and economics have at different stages in romantic relationships.
July is a key month for corn pollination, making the next few weeks all the more critical for the crop. That’s according to Jason Otkin, an associate research professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in drought.
“We’re entering a really important time of the year now for the corn crop — pollination in July is so critical. So if we stay dry, and if we get really unlucky and have a big heat wave, that’s going to do quite the number on the corn crop,” he told “The Morning Show.”
A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and a Green Bay company are working together to upscale a new recycling technique that could help keep flexible plastics out of landfills.
The median home price in Wisconsin has more than doubled over the last decade, as supply has failed to keep up with demand after homebuilding slowed during the Great Recession. That’s according to new data from the Wisconsin Realtors Association, or WRA, and a new report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
Steven Deller, professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison, authored the report. He said many were hoping to see downward pressure on prices in response to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, but that hasn’t happened yet. Deller said high mortgage rates have had a modest effect on demand for homes, but a greater influence on those who currently own a home to postpone older couples from downsizing or young families upsizing, keeping some homes off the market.
“The normal churn in the housing market, the new supply of housing or the increase of existing homes going on the market is actually dropping a little bit more than the decline in demand,” he said.
UW-Madison researchers have successfully developed an electric motor using 3D printing technology, paving the way for future electric motors to more efficiently use electricity without sacrificing power.
A new solar farm is being developed on land owned by the University of Wisconsin southwest of Madison with the aim of finding a better balance between green energy and agriculture.
00:12 / 01:02UW-Madison looking for cheese tastersYou can now make money eating cheese. But before all of you apply for the job, the Center for Dairy Research says it’s not all fun and games.
The work being done by Furlong and the other researchers at Realta Fusion is the result of a research project at the UW-Madison looking into plasma stabilization in the fusion process. The project is housed in the UW-Madison physics department and led by Cary Forest, a physics professor and Realta Fusion co-founder.
Timothy Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Central Time” that the tight labor market has helped low-wage workers the most.
“The good news is that there’s a lot of demand for low-skilled workers beyond bars and restaurants now (with) the expansion of infrastructure and construction,” Smeeding said.
Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at UW-Madison, said that wage gains haven’t been evenly distributed by economic sectors. He noted leisure and hospitality workers have seen the largest wage gains since the pandemic, while wages for workers in all other non-farm sectors have seen slower wage growth.
“As far as we can tell, (leisure and hospitality workers) are beating inflation, at least in terms of the wage rate,” he said. “Now, I don’t know how many hours they’re working, and it’s going to be spotty because not everybody is going to be in a restaurant that saw their wages rise.”
Beyond wages, Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at UW-Madison, said the tight labor market also gives workers more leverage to negotiate with their employers for more flexible hours or to confront workplace harassment.
“I think there’s a lot of evidence that in this tight labor market, low-wage workers especially have found ways to ask more from work to see their own value,” she said.
Forget the well-worn adage that fusion energy and the promise of virtually unlimited green power is three or more decades away — a Madison startup believes it can develop a market-ready fusion reactor in a third of that time.
The longer time frame generally applies to utility scale reactors that some day could power the electric grid; Realta Fusion, a Madison company that spun off from the University of Wisconsin in September has more modest goals — modular reactors that within a decade could supply abundant energy for heat-intensive industries like plastics and fertilizer manufacturers, oil refineries and other companies that need massive amounts of heat for their processes.
This might be the most Wisconsin-y job yet — sorry, Culver’s and Kwik Trip employees.
The Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is looking to hire people “passionate about all types of foods, but especially cheese, pizza and other dairy products,” according to the job posting.
Wisconsin residents who borrow from payday lenders face some of the highest costs in the nation, according to a 2022 Pew study. The head of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s Madison branch discusses its upcoming microloan program as an alternate to traditional lenders. And J. Michael Collins, a UW-Madison professor, talks about the state of Payday lending in Wisconsin.
During the pandemic, the income gap actually started to get smaller after decades of stagnating wages for low income workers and faster, bigger gains for the wealthy. But the end of pandemic policies may put these gains in jeopardy. Timothy Smeeding, a professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains.
“As a pharmacist who works in a rural primary care clinic, I’ve seen how challenging it can be for patients to get in for an appointment with their primary care provider,” Marina Maes, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy said. “The provider schedules are booked two to three months out, which limits patients’ access to timely and convenient care from trusted health care professionals.”
Over the last several years, state workers have been leaving their jobs at higher rates and those jobs are remaining unfilled for longer than they typically do. The analysis shows that turnover and vacancy rates for state workers outside of the University of Wisconsin System rose to record levels in fiscal year 2022, with 16.4% of the 28,000 employees leaving their jobs, including 10.2% who left for voluntary reasons other than retirement.
In addition, 5,770 full-time positions, or 17.7% of the total authorized positions in state government outside of the UW System, were vacant as of June last year.
In the biomedical engineering design program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, students craft solutions to real world problems.
Written by Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Realta Fusion, a fusion energy startup founded in the fall of 2022, received $12 million from the federal government and other organizations to design a magnetic bottle device that could help reduce the reliance industries that make common materials like plastic have on fossil fuels, Realta said.
That company was spun out of a two-year project at UW-Madison led by physics professor Cary Forest, who is Realta’s co-founder and chief scientific officer. The money for that project — $10 million — came from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project’s Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E program.
Quoted: “A lot of things obviously have changed in 15 years, including a lot of cost increases particularly for things like labor and for utilities,” said Chuck Nicholson, an ag economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So it has become harder and harder to use that old value to accurately represent what it takes to transform a pound of farm milk into a certain amount of cheese.”
Emma Vos spent much of her childhood feeding calves and milking cows on her family’s 120-herd dairy farm. Now, she’s a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying agriculture business management with plans to run the family farm in Maribel, just south of Green Bay, after graduation.
Noted: As the test batches for their ultimate quick meal starter grew and they got more serious, they worked out of the USDA-inspected meat processing facility at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery building. Initially, the Meyers tested the market in Madison and Milwaukee. Last year, JBS bought the brand and product name, allowing the Meyers to grow to national distribution.
Exploring the boundaries and limits of innovation in an age when breakthroughs are happening at a startling pace is among the goals of the Responsible Innovation Hub, a new center within the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery on the UW-Madison campus. It’s an effort to examine how different disciplines — scientific, technical and business — can better work together for society.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned lawmakers earlier this month that the federal government could default on its debt by June 1st. We examine the political options available for Republicans and Democrats, as well as the potential economic consequences of failing to increase the debt limit. Interview with Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Thanks to more than $3 million in grant funding, the University of Wisconsin-Madison now plans to establish 90 sites to monitor weather and soil conditions throughout the state by fall of 2026. The state currently has 14 weather stations.
Chris Kucharik, a UW-Madison agronomy professor, is overseeing the university’s effort to build the new network. He recently joined Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Morning Show” to discuss how more weather and soil reports could be used and how researchers will decide where to build the new stations.
A report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension found the average price of agricultural land sold in the state last year was $5,551 per acre. That’s 11 percent higher than in 2021 and nearly 24 percent higher than in 2020.
Heather Schlesser, the Extension agriculture educator who prepared the report, said the sustained increases trace back to the cash farmers received from federal COVID-19 assistance programs. She said at the same time, many farmers decided it was the right time to sell land.
“It’s all about give and take, supply and demand,” she said. “There’s not a lot of ag land out there. So if there’s more money out there and there’s less land, the farmers that are selling are going to want more for it. So I think that started driving it.”
Noted: Data from the Department of Children and Families’ 2022 Child Care Market Rate Survey showed that in Milwaukee County, the average annual child care cost for a 4-year-old is $12,142; for an infant, it’s $16,236.
Comparably, the annual tuition cost at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2022 to 2023 was $9,273.
During a fireside chat on the UW-Madison campus in March, a leader in the National Science Foundation’s newest and most hands-on program gave a tip of the hat to what he was seeing in his quick tour of Wisconsin.
We talk with Michael Childers, a professor in the UW-Madison School for Workers and Department of Labor Education, and an entertainment reporter about the latest in the second week of a massive Hollywood writers strike.
The potential Milwaukee and Milwaukee County sales taxes that could be implemented under the Assembly bill would not be without consequences, said Andrew Reschovsky, professor emeritus of public affairs and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“You don’t pay attention if you have plenty of money,” he said of the increased prices that come with a sales tax. “But if you’re having trouble getting through the month, those extra pennies can make a big difference.”
“So many of the issues that are happening right now, this generation of teens really thinks about how it’s going to impact them,” said Dr. Megan Moreno, a pediatrician at UW Health, and the co-director of the American Academy of Pediatrics Center of Excellence for Social Media and Mental Health.
John Lucey, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Dairy Research, wants to turn whey into the chemicals used to make plastics, adhesives and other consumer products that are currently being derived from petroleum. Just like our reliance on oil and gas, Lucey said the chemical building blocks made in oil refineries are holding us back from a greener future.
“We’ve got to replace those too unless we want to keep using fossil fuels,” he said. “These basic chemistry kinds of things, the stuff you would have learned in organic chemistry like butanol — we want to make those kinds of compounds because they can feed into the existing industry.”
Family child care providers make an average of $7.46 an hour, while center-based teachers make an average of $12.99. Both make less than the average Wisconsinite with a high school diploma, according to research by Alejandra Ros Pilarz, an assistant professor at the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
She found poor wages and lack of career advancement opportunities are top reasons why 18% of family child care providers and 28% of ECE teachers plan to leave the field within a few years.
These changes would cut back on delays and roadblocks that drive up prices, said Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Housing dies a death of a thousand cuts because every change, every delay, just adds costs,” Paulsen said.
Dan Olszweski, University of Wisconsin-Madison Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship, among those cited.
Ashley Swanson, associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said hospital mergers — on average — increase prices, while having a negligible effect on patient care.
“It seems like they primarily increase prices when the merging hospitals are located close to one another,” she said. “But there is some relatively new evidence suggesting that cross-market mergers can sometimes increase prices as well.”
The rate at which Wisconsin’s “prime working age” adults are either working or looking for work is among the best in the country, according to a recent report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
“It speaks a lot to our work ethic,” said Matt Kures, the report’s author and a community economic development specialist for UW-Extension. “Traditionally, we have had high participation rates and I think that’s just kind of ingrained in us.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average cost of infant care in Wisconsin is $12,567 annually, or $1,047 per month. Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at UW-Madison, said women in the workforce feel the effects of that most.
“Moms tend to carry the burden of care disproportionately in families,” she said. “The years before the kid goes to school … are really expensive years to work.“
Noted: Green Bay is poised to become the home of the first commercial STRAP plant, which would take these kinds of plastics and make them into materials that can be used again.
This is done through a process called STRAP — which stands for solvent-targeted recovery and precipitation — developed from early work done by undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Now, George Huber, a professor in chemical and biological engineering at UW-Madison, is leading a team at the Center for Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics, or CUWP, working to take STRAP from the lab to a commercial setting.
The center is funded by a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and is made up of people from UW-Madison and five other universities, a national laboratory and more than 20 industrial partners.
We talk about why First Republic Bank was seized by regulators, whether we’re in the middle of a larger banking crisis, and what individuals should know going forward. Interview with J. Michael Collins, associate professor of public affairs and consumer science at UW-Madison, where he directs the Center for Financial Security.
The crowd sheltered by a tent overlooking a UW-Madison construction site included some of computing’s more familiar names.
The Walt Disney Company is suing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, accusing his administration of government retaliation for their criticism of his policies. Howard Schweber, a professor of political science and legal studies at UW-Madison, joins us to break down the case and explore what’s at stake.
Christine Whelan, a consumer science professor at UW-Madison, helps us with suggestions for how we can de-clutter and off-load belongings, while inflation may be looming over any thoughts of restocking or replacing items.
