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Category: UW Experts in the News

House passes TikTok ban in a win for Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher

Wisconsin Public Radio

Dave Schroeder, a national security strategist and cybersecurity expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Americans may be vulnerable because China has an app on millions of cell phones.

The content that can be pushed on TikTok is also a problem, he said, even if most of it is benign.

“There’s a concern there that the messages or the narratives that might be subtly pushed on TikTok are going to be those that are supported by the Chinese government,” he said.

Wisconsin’s wildfire season is beginning fast, with risk above normal

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Another factor is the state’s ongoing drought from last year, said Steve Vavrus, Wisconsin’s state climatologist and the assistant director at the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Center for Climatic Research. About 68 percent of Wisconsin is in a drought, according to the latest data from the United States Drought Monitor. With 18.5 percent in a “severe drought” or a level two out of four.

“The concern right now, is that we’re in a drought still from last year. In fact, the drought conditions have worsened quietly in the last few weeks,” Vavrus said. “If we get a few more of the really unseasonably warm days that we had (earlier this month) … there’s legitimate concerns surrounding the higher risk of fire in Wisconsin and elsewhere.”

Are Eric Hovde’s claims about the national debt under Biden, Baldwin correct? We took a look.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

One point right off the bat: The 2020 fiscal year ended in September 2020, which means the numbers include the last few months of former President Donald Trump’s time in office.

Overall, Hovde is “pretty close on the actual numbers,” said Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. However, Chinn said, “the basic point is that the numbers are meaningless.”

Health food packaging buzzwords are confusing. This guide can help.

National Geographic

Kathleen Glass, associate director of the Food Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, describes purchasing organic as “a lifestyle choice,” adding that there’s no evidence that organic is more microbiologically safe than conventionally grown foods.  Compared with 50 years ago, she says, the amount of pesticides and herbicides allowed on food are well below levels that could cause long-term health impacts.

Wisconsin sees ticks active months ahead of schedule

Wisconsin Public Radio

Adult ticks, approximately half of whom are infected with the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, are ready to feed earlier than usual this year.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services and the Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Diseases at the University of Wisconsin-Madison started to look for ticks in February, almost two months ahead of schedule.

Researchers asked Wisconsinites if they wanted a sandhill crane hunting season. Here’s what they found.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Fewer than one in five Wisconsinites supports a sandhill crane hunting season in the state, according to a study conducted by University of Wisconsin researchers. And approximately half of Badger State residents oppose such a hunt.

The data are part of an effort by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center to scientifically assess attitudes on hunting the large, long-legged birds.

Low-income Californians face steep water costs; rate help ahead?

Los Angeles Times

Other states average significantly less. Manny Teodoro, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has tracked the water rates of a sample of about 400 utilities across the country and found that the average monthly bill last year for a typical four-person, single-family household was $44.77. That represented a 25% increase from 2017.

A history of U.S.-Israel relations

Wisconsin Public Radio

Since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, U.S. presidents have tried a variety of approaches to maintain balanced relations with Israel and the surrounding Arab states. In the years leading up to the Israeli-Hamas war, a series of conflicts have made the attempt particularly challenging. Interview with Daniel Hummel, director of The Lumen Center  and a research fellow in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UniverCity Alliance adds Driftless Area projects

Wisconsin Public Radio

The UniverCity alliance is a program that marshals the research capacity of UW-Madison students in service of the unique needs of cities, counties, villages, townships and others across the state of Wisconsin. The Alliance has helped some communities learn how government bodies can operate more efficiently, and others determine how to address needs like childcare in their local communities. Joining us on “Newsmakers” this week are Gavin Luter, Managing Director of the UniverCity Alliance; Max Hart of the Jackson County Board of Supervisors; and Doug McLeod, Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications at UW-Madison.

Wisconsin had record-high construction jobs in January

Wisconsin Public Radio

Menzie Chinn, a macroeconomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the rise in state construction employment may be tied to a larger national construction boom. Chinn said about one-fifth of the change in employment for January and February is tied to nonresidential construction.

“There’s a big boom in the building of commercial (properties). Not commercial as in stores, but factories,” he said. “I don’t know how much of that is in Wisconsin, but nationwide, that’s a very big factor. There’s a lot of construction going on.”

Fact check: Claim that pregnancy can be detected the day after conception is false

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Fertilization, which happens when the sperm and egg unite, is what most people refer to as “conception,” said Dr. Abigail Cutler, an OB-GYN at UW Health and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

About five to 10 days after fertilization, the fertilized egg implants in the lining of the uterus. HCG is produced shortly afterward, Cutler said, first in low levels which rise rapidly over time. “The very earliest someone can confirm whether they are pregnant is following implantation, the timing of which varies but can take a week or more,” she said

House passes immigration bill named for murdered Georgia student

The Washington Post

“Many politicians, law enforcement personnel and ordinary citizens are nonetheless incensed because this person should not have been in the country and thus capable of committing a crime,” Michael Light, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has published several studies showing undocumented immigrants are not more crime-prone than native-born Americans, told The Washington Post last month. “This view that the person’s undocumented status is an aggravating factor is also likely a reason why these crimes generate such strong responses.”

Inside the world of championship cheese judging: supertasters, palate cleansers and puns

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Arnoldo Lopez-Hernandez grew up in Mexico and has a chemical engineering background. He became involved in cheese after he started teaching food science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He started judging at the world championships a decade ago.

Also from UW-Madison is John Jaeggi, whose grandfather immigrated from Switzerland in the 1920s and started a Swiss cheese plant in Monroe County. Jeaggi remembers sitting under a table as a 7-year-old “mesmerized” by the process and sneaking samples.

Zero-proof and low-ABV drinks are becoming more popular

Marketplace

Christine Whelan studies the wellness economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said this is one Gen Z and millennial health obsession she can get behind. “The movement away from alcohol is probably the best of the wellness remedies,” Whelan said, compared to, say, vitamins and supplements, in terms of its proven positive impact on our health.

Wisconsin efforts to remove Donald Trump from ballot dismissed after Supreme Court ruling

Wisconsin State Journal

“Today’s decision appears to put an end to all the pending litigation in Wisconsin and other states seeking to remove Trump from the ballot based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s insurrection clause,” UW-Madison Law School associate law professor Rob Yablon said Monday. “The Court is quite categorical in saying that states do not have the power to enforce that provision against candidates for federal office.”

Liberal group makes U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil one of its top targets in 2024

Wisconsin Watch

While Steil’s seat appears relatively safe, it’s actually “rather competitive,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden. Noting that Trump won the 1st District by two points in 2020 while losing the state by less than one point, “even a slight shift in political winds could bring the district into play,” he said.

Wisconsin’s Medicaid postpartum protection lags most of the country

Wisconsin Watch

“The year following a delivery is a very important year with huge life changes and where having adequate health care is absolutely essential,” said Dr. Lee Dresang, a family medicine doctor at UW Health and a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Of the patients he followed with postpartum depression, “exactly zero magically got better at 60 days after delivery,” he said during a legislative hearing.

Explore Wisconsin history through artifacts with PBS Wisconsin Education’s new ‘The Look Back’ collection

PBS Wisconsin

PBS Wisconsin Education announces the launch of a new education series called The Look Back, which explores eras from Wisconsin’s history through artifacts. The Look Back was made in collaboration with the Wisconsin Historical Society, University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries, UW–Madison’s Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History, Wisconsin educators and learners, and museums around the state.

Scientists have used cells from fluid drawn during pregnancy to grow mini lungs and other organs

ABC News

Scientists have created miniorgans from cells floating in the fluid that surrounds a fetus in the womb – an advance they believe could open up new areas of prenatal medicine. Alta Charo, an emeritus professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who wasn’t involved in the study, said the new approach doesn’t raise the same ethical issues. “Obtaining cells from amniotic fluid that is already being sampled for standard clinical purposes does not appear to add any physical risks to either fetus or pregnant woman,” she said in an email.

Inside Smashmallow, Silicon Valley’s Failed Marshmallow Startup

Business Insider

Everyone agrees that it ought to have been possible, engineering-wise, to make a machine that made Smashmallows. Everyone also agrees that, in the end, no one was able to. “The fact that Tanis said they could do it was interesting,” says Richard Hartel, a food engineer who leads the candymaking program at the University of Wisconsin. “Their engineers must have said, ’Well, this shouldn’t be a problem.’ They probably figured this was going to be easy, and it turned out to be harder than they thought.”

Scientists Debunk the Idea That Smiling Makes You Happy

Inverse

Such rigor is admirable, but it also means one can miss things, says Simon Goldberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studies the effects of meditation, including research among people who have psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. He noted that because of Dunn and Folk’s strict criteria, they omitted hundreds of studies on meditation’s benefits. “It’s, in the spirit of rigor, throwing lots of babies out with the bathwater,” he says. “It’s really very obvious that meditation training reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression.”

Starbucks to give raises, start bargaining with union workers

The Capital Times

Michael Childers, a business and labor education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the news may be bigger than the agreement the United Auto Workers reached with major U.S. auto manufacturers late last year, ending a nearly two-month strike that had shut down multiple plants.

“Historically, the service sector has struggled in a huge way to successfully organize and bargain contracts,” Childers said. “This is really exciting news for … workers wanting a voice at work.”

The truth about illegal immigration and crime

The Washington Post

“Many politicians, law enforcement personnel and ordinary citizens are nonetheless incensed because this person should not have been in the country and thus capable of committing a crime,” said Michael Light, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has published several studies showing undocumented immigrants are not more crime-prone than native-born Americans. “This view that the person’s undocumented status is an aggravating factor is also likely a reason why these crimes generate such strong responses.”

The amount of frigid winter air is near a record low, and shrinking

The Washington Post

For about a decade, Jonathan Martin, a professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, has analyzed the size of the cold pool at this level — or the area of the hemisphere covered by temperatures at or below 23 degrees (minus-5 Celsius). This winter’s cold pool will finish the winter as the second-smallest on record, Martin said.

Ice fishing obsession faces peril in changing Wisconsin climate

The Capital Times

Olaf Jensen, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology, studies fish, fishing and fishery management. He said what’s more exciting to him is what lies under the surface.

“It’s a glimpse into that mystery of life under the ice when you go ice fishing,” Jensen said. “You realize that life goes on under the ice. Lakes don’t just go to sleep for the winter and wake up again when the ice comes off.”

Paper exams, AI-proof assignments: Wisconsin college professors adjust in a world with ChatGPT

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Eric Ely, who teaches in the Information School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has made some of his assignments more personal, asking students to write about topics that connect to their own lives. In a new assignment this semester, he has students engage with an AI chatbot and document the process. “Part of my job is to prepare students for life after college, right?” he said. “This is the world that we’re living in, and so I feel like I would be doing a disservice to students if I would not talk about this or limit or completely prohibit the use.”

For UW-Madison professor Dietram Scheufele, the big question isn’t what AI can — or cannot — do for college students. “What I’m much more concerned about is the fundamental disruption to our social system and how we prepare students for that,” said Scheufele, whose research includes technology policy, misinformation and social media. “The question for universities right now is why this degree will be worth something 40 years from now.”

John Zumbrunnen, the vice provost of teaching and learning at UW-Madison, said the most-asked question he gets about AI is whether the university has or will have a policy on it. UW-Madison does not, meaning students navigate at least four different class policies per semester. In some cases, individual assignments will have their own AI expectations. That’s why it’s important, he said, for instructors to offer grace in this new world.

“The answer in the teaching and learning space cannot be one-size-fits-all,” he said earlier this month at a UW Board of Regents meeting.

Planned Parenthood asks Wisconsin Supreme Court to rule on constitutional right to abortion

Wisconsin Public Radio

Miriam Seifter, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Law, said similar cases have been brought before state supreme courts across the country since the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections in their 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“At least a dozen state high courts have expressly held that these types of provisions protect abortion, at least to some extent,” Seifter said. “There are a number of others that have reached those types of rulings at the lower court level, but haven’t fully resolved them in the high courts yet.”

Fact check: Yes, the price of an inhaler in the U.S. is massively higher than overseas cost

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

David Kreling, professor emeritus in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the U.S. price quoted by Baldwin sounds about right.

“The $500 number may be in the ballpark for U.S. patented (brand-name, newer) drugs,” Kreling said in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin. “That would be consistent with my understanding of market data on sales by firms in the U.S. Things in the $7 range, here, only reside within the off-patent generic drug market (where we have low prices, sometimes at or near lowest in the world).”

How the polar vortex could deliver one last blast of wintry weather

The Washington Post

“What is remarkable is we have a second disruption to the stratospheric vortex happening right now,” Andrea Lang, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said in an email. “Two major disruptions to the polar vortex in one season is not common. It has happened before, but it is not something that you expect to happen in any given winter season.”

Presidential candidate age, Nursing home staffing requirements, Wisconsin as a hub for video games

Wisconsin Public Radio

Joe Biden and Donald Trump would be the two oldest candidates to ever be nominated for President. We talk to Allison Prasch, a political rhetoric professor from UW-Madison, about how age plays in the race and how previous candidates have faced similar questions.

Barbara Bowers, a UW-Madison nursing school expert, explains why nursing homes in Wisconsin would benefit from bigger changes to how they operate, in addition to simply complying with a new federal requirement to increase staff size.

UW-Madison’s Missy Nergard and Paul Robbins discuss new sustainability initiative

WORT-FM

UW-Madison’s new Sustainability Research Hub is scheduled to launch this spring – as part of a campus-wide initiative Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced earlier this month.

The initiative’s stated goals range from promoting collaborative research to achieving net-zero emissions by 2048. WORT News Producer Faye Parks spoke to Missy Nergard, UW-Madison’s director of sustainability, and Paul Robbins, dean of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, to learn more.

Delayed FAFSA information has kept Wisconsin colleges, universities waiting

Wisconsin Public Radio

UW-Madison pushed its decision date from May 1 to May 15 to give families more time to weigh financial offers.

Helen Faith, director of the office of student financial aid at UW-Madison, said the “new and major” change to the application had a big impact on students. “Of course, they’re very anxious. They really want to know whether they can afford to come here,” Faith said.

Wisconsin Democrats introduce a proposal to ban conversion therapy

WKOW-TV 27

LB Klein, an LGBTQ+ Health Expert & Associate Professor at UW-Madison, says, statistically, society sees a lot of LGBTQ+ community members who face depression and anxiety. Klein believes this isn’t because they’re a part of the LGBTQ+ community, but because they’re living in cultures where people are trying to change who they are.

“If we provide access for folks to have supportive therapies, and to live in on a state local level, in a way where they’re affirmed and supported, we actually see those disparities around health and mental health go away,” Klein said.