UW In The News
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Why Some Americans Buy Guns
Nick Buttrick, a psychologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, wanted to know whether firearms provided similar comfort to gun owners, serving as a sort of psychological security blanket.
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Many Future Storms May Dump 50% More Rain, Overwhelming City Drains
But plenty of America’s infrastructure was laid down even earlier, meaning it was designed to specifications that are probably even more obsolete, said Daniel B. Wright, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Unpaid internships have long been criticized. Why are they still around?
Matthew Hora, founding director of the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that he “wholeheartedly” endorses a ban on unpaid internships and associated training programs, but he isn’t optimistic that they are going away anytime soon. Some disciplines, like social work, make them mandatory for graduation; employers in some fields, such as the arts, have limited resources; and others, he said, pointing to government, seem to “ignore the unethical nature of free labor.
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A linguist on why talking can sound like singing
To put this practice into context, I spoke to two experts: Langston Wilkins, expert in hip-hop and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Dan Charnas, historian of hip-hop and associate arts professor at New York University. Both confirmed that the use of repetition to add musicality to spoken vocal samples is a common practice in hip-hop, but neither was familiar with Deutsch’s framing of the phenomenon as an auditory illusion.
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How to tell good advice from not-so-good advice
Humankind has long sought crowd-sourced answers to problems. From the 300-year history of the advice column to the plethora of advisers at our employ — spiritual, political, financial, emotional, professional, legal — people are inclined to make better choices when those actions have been guided by another. “We all have biases,” says Lyn Van Swol, a professor of communication science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “and if you can meld your perspective with another good source of information, you’re starting to cancel out some of your biases.”
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Experts say influential group’s guidance on CTE is too weak
“There are researchers out there who, rightfully so, want really strong data. We all should be striving for very strong evidence, but it’s very hard to come by in environmental exposure cases like this,” said neuroscientist Julie Stamm, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the consensus statement. She agreed that cohort studies will yield the best evidence regarding CTE, “but that’s going to take decades,” she said.
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To fight berry-busting fruit flies, researchers focus on sterilizing the bugs
Lyric Bartholomay, a professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies integrated pest management and public health entomology who was not part of the study, said “increasingly tailored genetic approaches” will be necessary in the future to protect crops and people from pests, especially as insecticide resistance increases.
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Aspiring Fathers Open Up About the Emotional Toll of Fertility Issues
Plus, while the impact of age on a couple’s fertility has historically focused on the woman, “there has been a lot of data gathered over the last 10 years that indicates that, as men age, their fertility potential does decline over time,” said Daniel H. Williams, a urologist who specializes in male infertility at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
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Cancer drug shortages highlight supply chain vulnerabilities
“This is the first time I’ve ever experienced drug rationing in my career,” said Marina Sharifi, medical oncologist at the University of Wisconsin’s Carbone Cancer Center.
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The Simple Way to Fight Aging, According to Experts
Exercise can help your memory and learning ability, too. Moderate-intensity exercise is linked to an increase in cerebral blood flow and brain glucose metabolism, which are connected to cognitive functions, says University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Ozioma Okonkwo, who co-wrote two studies on the subject.
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Mesoscale Convective Systems: The Science Behind These Thunderstorm Clusters
An MCS is a prolific lightning generator. A late-April 2014 MCS along the Gulf Coast produced 6,076 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in just 15 minutes, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s CIMSS Satellite blog.
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The uncanny valley, explained: Why you might find AI creepy
It’s hard to say, says Bilge Mutlu, a professor of computer science at the University of Wisconsin Madison. While the researchers expect that with repeated exposure, the uncanny valley reaction might diminish, Mutlu says that for him, the feeling has only gotten stronger.
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Good journalism can safeguard against AI disinformation, UW prof says
Dietram Scheufele, faculty researcher and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has spent decades studying the ways in which the public responds to new technologies.
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Why does college tuition have so many extra fees?
In many states, there’s either political pressure to keep tuition low or flat, or there are mandates, said Nick Hillman, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Education. For example, he said Wisconsin temporarily kept tuition frozen for nearly a decade.
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What happened to the common cold? Post-Covid, it feels like every sniffle needs a name.
Rhinovirus C, one of the most common cold-causing viruses, can lead to bacterial pneumonia in children who have or are susceptible to asthma, said Ann Palmenberg, a researcher and professor with the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Newspapers Printed Unabomber’s Manifesto in 1995. It’s Still Fiercely Debated.
“I think today we have more conversations about minimizing harm, and I think that’s a good thing,” said Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Young Americans brace for ‘unprecedented’ return of student loan payments
The original pause to student loan payments originated from the early days of the pandemic, according to University of Wisconsin Madison professor Nick Hillman.
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A dude and a desk: Why women really don’t get to host late-night TV
Mauk, a former Standards and Practices executive at Fox, says she spoke with Mary Huelsbeck, the archivist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (where Mauk completed her doctoral program) out of a desire to “prove that this is not the first time someone had spoken out and used their platform as a late-night television talk show host to do good political activation.” (Mauk’s husband, producer Hayden Mauk, used to work with Jimmy Kimmel.)
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Homo naledi species, discovered in South Africa, may have buried its dead and carved symbols, studies suggest
These creatures had some traits in common with modern humans, like legs made for walking upright and hands that could work with objects, said University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks, a member of the research team. But other features looked more ancient, including their small brains.
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‘A train wreck coming’: Americans brace for the return of student loan payments
The original pause to student loan payments originated from the early days of the pandemic, according to University of Wisconsin Madison professor Nick Hillman.
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Trump can run for president despite legal troubles
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.
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Man’s Photos Reveal Abandoned Pet Cemetery in ‘Haunted’ Massachusetts Woods
Professor Joanne Cantor of the University of Wisconsin has spent years studying the lasting impact that scary films can have on us. In an interview with BBC Science Focus, she explained how horror films trigger the part of the brain known as the amygdala, which is highly active in situations where we are afraid.
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Meta again threatens to block news if bill forcing company to pay publishers becomes law | WCIV
“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.
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Life expectancy in US: Problems date back to 1950s, report finds
But the general takeaway remains the same, said Michal Engelman, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Th timeline shows how life expectancy may be heavily influenced by systemic issues that are larger than just individual health choices.
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How will the debt limit deal affect the economy?
“Essentially, you’re putting on additional administrative burdens for people to receive these benefits,” said Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin.
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Humans evolved flexible arches to walk upright
“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.”
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We now know how Botox enters neurons and paralyses muscles
“By understanding more about the mechanism of cell entry, we are one step closer to preventing cell entry and preventing botulism,” says Sabine Pellett at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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DNA Suggests Modern Humans Emerged From Several Groups in Africa, Not One | Smart News| 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.
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With Climate Panel as a Beacon, Global Group Takes On Misinformation
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.”
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How presidential ambitions shape state education policy
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.
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