UW In The News

Backers Say Congressional Plan Would Save Traditional Pensions For Thousands In Wisconsin

Quoted: “Most young people graduating college in Wisconsin are going to be going into work where they are covered by a defined contribution plan, what is also known as a 401(k) plan. Unless they are working for a state entity or some other collectively bargained organization, they are probably not going to have a pension,” said Gordon Enderle, an actuary at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business.

Hurricane Dorian turns Florida sky purple as it passes state en route to Canada

Quoted: The sky’s colours resulted from an effect known as “scattering,” which sees molecules and small particles change light rays’ direction, according to Steven Ackerman, professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin — Madison

Maps of Amazon fires show why we’re thinking about them wrong

For weeks, we’ve seen headlines saying the Amazon rainforest is burning. But something unexpected happens when you map satellite data showing both the fires this year and those that have burned in the previous four years: The bulk of the forest remains almost entirely intact. –Tim Wallace has a PhD in geography from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and is currently a visual storyteller at Descartes Labs.

Dorian set to be the 7th billion dollar hurricane in 4 years

Quoted: Shane Hubbard, a researcher with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the overall cost in damages from hurricanes in that time span for the U.S. Is more than $335 billion

Hurricane tracking technology is about to regress 30 years, thanks to 5G cell networks | Salon.com

Quoted: “There is going to have to be some sort of agreement between the telecommunications and weather enterprises on what is a viable strategy on what protects the interests of atmospheric observing compared to delivering data via 5G,” Jordan Gerth, an Honorary Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center, told Salon.

Freedom Farmers: Agriculture As A Means of Resilience

White is an associate professor of environmental justice within the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of the new book  “Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement” (UNC Press/2018).

Digestive problems may respond to diet changes

Although chronic digestive disruptions warrant a doctor’s attention, “generally about 80 percent of patients will benefit from doing some sort of diet intervention,” says Melissa Phillips, a clinical nutritionist at the University of Wisconsin Health System’s Digestive Health Center.

Humans and Neanderthals Kept Breeding—and Breeding—for Ages

Quoted: “But that kind of very simple approach isn’t very good at sorting out the complexity” of how those lost populations interacted, said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Nor does it allow researchers to test specific hypotheses about how that interbreeding unfolded.

Farmers Look to Apps to Help With Timing of Crop Treatment

That has made it difficult for farmers to decide when to apply fungicide to crops because it’s based on specific growth stages of the plants, said plant pathologist Damon Smith from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But an app is helping farmers make better decisions about when to do so.

UW Researchers Develop Camera That Can ‘See’ Around Corners

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Universidad de Zaragoza in Spain have developed a new kind of virtual camera that appears to be able to see around corners.

Wisconsin Fares Well Comparatively When It Comes To Credit Card Debt

Quoted: Financial capability specialist Peggy Olive breaks it down like this: half of all people who have a credit card balance pay it off entirely each month. Another quarter carry a balance a few months of the year, and the rest regularly owe money on their cards.”Definitely, there’s different ways that people handle that credit card debt,” said Olive, who works with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology’s Center for Financial Security and UW-Extension.

BBB warns of scams targeting college students

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology Clinical Professor Christine Whelan says that’s okay.

Giant Norway pension fund weighs Brazil divestment over Amazon deforestation

Quoted: “If you buy soybeans that have been raised in the Amazon, you can be almost certain that it is deforestation free,” Lisa Rausch, an agricultural land use researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told Mongabay.

White coat carries cachet for future docs, including one who lives on the cutting edge

Revisionist History Podcast

Featured: Throughout the 1970s, a biologist named Howard Temin became convinced that something wasn’t right in science’s understanding of viruses. His colleagues dismissed him as a heretic. He turned out to be right — and you’re alive today as a result.

Mysterious dark patches in Venus’ clouds are affecting the weather there

“It is hard to conceive of what would cause a change in the albedo without a change in the absorbers,” said Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and paper co-author.

Wisconsin Officials Say Gray Wolf Population Seems Stable

Quoted: “I don’t think that the information coming out of the state should be used by the federal government in its decisions on gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act,” said Adrian Treves, professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Helicopter Parents Are Great at Financial Risk Management

Quoted: “If a parent gets health insurance through their employer, then, through the Affordable Care Act, their kids are covered through their parents at some level,” says Marjorie Rosenberg, a professor of actuarial science, risk, and insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business.

UW Study: Exercise Could Help Slow Development Of Alzheimer’s

A recent study conducted by a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows exercise can help slow the development of diseases like Alzheimer’s disease.

Graphic Novels With Fresh Voices From the Margins

Flowers’s loose, expressive line is a little messy, a little scribbly, with both cursive and all-caps text floating through the images. She is a protégée of the great cartoonist of childhood, Lynda Barry, also known for her expressive style. A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Barry has explained how important handwriting is to the experience of reading comics; in her view, judging “good” and “bad” drawing misses the point of comics, which has more to do with the personality of the hand of the cartoonist than with any kind of realism.

Humans Dominated Earth Earlier Than Previously Thought

Quoted: Because information about the past informs predictions of global change in the future, in terms of climate and land use, hard evidence of past land use is invaluable, experts say. “It’s an important paper,” said John Williams, a paleoecologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the project.

What Meditation Does To Your Brain When You’re Annoyed, According To Experts

“We begin to see stabilization of changes in the brain after 1,000 to 1,500 hours of meditation practice,” Dr. Richard Davidson, PhD, William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the founder of the Center for Healthy Minds, tells Bustle. “You can think of it as learning a musical instrument; if you got 24 hours of training in playing the violin, you still wouldn’t be very good at playing it.”

An all-woman team will edit the flagship political science journal this year. Here’s why that matters. – The Washington Post

In a bold move, the American Political Science Association recently appointed us — a team of 12 women — to edit the flagship journal of the discipline of political science, the American Political Science Review (APSR).

Aili Mari Tripp is Wangari Maathai Professor of political science and gender & women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Latest Wolf Count Provides Further Evidence Wisconsin’s Wolf Population Is Stabilizing

Quoted: Some scientists argue the state hasn’t been fully transparent or allowed independent verification of Wisconsin’s wolf count since 2012, including Adrian Treves, professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW-Madison ranked 23rd best university in country by Washington Monthly magazine

Hot Toddy: Can This Home Remedy Really Cure Your Cold?

Hot liquids help move mucus and germs out of your system. They “increase the mucociliary clearance rate,” explains Bruce Barrett, M.D., Ph.D., professor in the department of family medicine and community health at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Basically, it helps your body sweep mucus and germs out of your body.

First day of school: Teaching jobs go unfilled at rural schools

Quoted: In fact, said University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Peter Goff, who has studied teacher retention in rural areas, educators value strong support systems, good school leadership and welcoming communities just as much as higher pay.

Five ways parents can help their kids transition smoothly to middle school

Quoted: If a new sixth-grader has no one to sit with in the lunchroom one day or bombs a test, “they may start to question whether they fit in socially or can succeed academically,” notes Geoffrey Borman, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Borman and Rozek conducted research to see whether it was possible to bolster kids’ sense of belonging by underscoring that all students have difficulty at the start of middle school but eventually feel better.

As U.S. Jews Cool To Israel, Evangelicals Flock There As Tourists

Quoted: Hummel, who spent a year in Israel researching his book and now teaches in the history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the tours designed for evangelicals generally have minimal contact with Palestinians, even with Palestinian Christians.

Where Trump Stands on Israel

Quoted: Among Christians, “it’s much more of a culture-wars mentality,” says Dan Hummel, a historian at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who studies Christian Zionism. “It’s about winning and maintaining power.”