UW In The News

Feds pull plug on Russia ‘bot farm’ that spread social media lies

Dietram Scheufele is a professor of science communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies misinformation. The number of bots taken offline by the FBI operation is small compared to the myriad fake accounts on social media, he said. But he felt encouraged that the feds were going after the roots of AI-generated misinformation instead of flagging doctored videos. “I feel heartened,” the German native said. “We’ve seen tons of activities that are putting bandages on symptoms but haven’t really addressed the root cause – removing the tumor.”

Ferret study shows avian influenza strain found in US cows carries low risk of airborne transmission

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that the strain of avian influenza found in U.S. cows is not easily transmitted through the air among ferrets, but it does have some capability of spreading this way.

Not Everyone Has an Inner Voice Streaming Through Their Head

Most of us have an “inner voice,” and we tend to assume everybody does, but recent evidence suggests that people vary widely in the extent to which they experience inner speech, from an almost constant patter to a virtual absence of self-talk. “Until you start asking the right questions you don’t know there’s even variation,” says Gary Lupyan, a cognitive scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “People are really surprised because they’d assumed everyone is like them.”

June sizzled to a 13th straight monthly heat record

“Our world is in crisis,” said University of Wisconsin climate scientist Andrea Dutton. “Perhaps you are feeling that crisis today — those who live in the path of Beryl are experiencing a hurricane that is fueled by an extremely warm ocean that has given rise to a new era of tropical storms that can intensify rapidly into deadly and costly major hurricanes. Even if you are not in crisis today, each temperature record we set means that it is more likely that climate change will bring crisis to your doorstep or to your loved ones.”

Infant mortality rate rose in wake of Texas abortion ban, study shows

But the results did not come as a surprise to Tiffany Green, a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist and population health scientist who studies the consequences of racial inequities on reproductive health. She said the results were in line with earlier research on racial disparities in infant mortality rates due to state differences in Medicaid funding for abortions. Many of the people getting abortions are vulnerable to pregnancy complications, said Green, who was not part of the research.

Ag, enviro rules in jeopardy after SCOTUS decision

Even some of USDA’s discretionary spending could be challenged, explained said Steph Tai, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Bringing Back Local Milk, Ice Cream, and Cheese

As the ballooning demand continues to shape market forces, the shift towards fewer, larger farms is inevitable, says Charles Nicholson, associate professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. With smaller-scale dairies harder hit by labor shortages and fluctuating milk prices, “this long-term trend would be hard to change with public policy or private initiatives [alone],” he says.

How ‘Rural Studies’ Is Thinking About the Heartland

Another scholar who disagreed with Mr. Frank’s diagnosis was Kathy Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But like Mr. Frank, she was interested in the question of how social class shaped politics, and thought that the way to get an accurate picture was through fieldwork. Over five years, starting in 2007, she visited 27 small towns in Wisconsin.

The World of Luxury Fruit: Does a $156 Melon Taste Sweeter?

Some of the fruits have long been given as gifts, especially in Japan and Korea. That trend is catching on in the United States, as is the taste for flawless berries and melons that travelers may have tried overseas, produce experts said. And as the luxury goods industry has grown, so too has the interest in luxury fruit, said Soyeon Shim, a scholar of consumer and financial behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The market has become much more global,” she said. Ms. Shim added, “you can buy anything you want.”

The Big Winners of This Supreme Court Term

In a famous 1974 paper titled “Why the Haves Come Out Ahead,” the University of Wisconsin law professor Marc Galanter argued that litigation systematically favors repeat players with the wherewithal to take fullest advantage of the courts. Key to his argument was the point that courts are “reactive”: They only do something when someone asks them to. That favors “the claimant with the information, ability to surmount cost barriers, and skill to navigate restrictive procedural requirements.” And most repeat players, Galanter said, tend to be “larger, richer and more powerful” than single-shotters.

Black Americans’ Responses To Trump’s Notion Of ‘Black Jobs’

Inequitable access to high-quality education plays a role in systematically routing young Black Americans into a narrow set of jobs. “Although our schools should be preparing all students for well-paid satisfying work, far too many of our Black and Brown students are relegated to poorly resourced schools,” says Gloria Ladson-Billings, the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor Emerita of Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Biden’s voter registration executive order is targeted by GOP

“It’s a nudge encouraging federal agencies to do more to help people register,” says Dan Tokaji, an election law expert, who serves as dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School. “Until recently, the complaints were really the federal government wasn’t doing enough, not that they were doing too much to advance voter registration.”

East Palestine train derailment polluted 16 states, study says

When it began to rain in various places, the pollutants were pushed from the air and deposited on the ground. The National Atmospheric Deposition Program, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, collects these ground depositions weekly across 260 sites across North America. David Gay, who serves as coordinator of the program, routinely analyzes the data to monitor air pollutants. “If you have a lot of pollution in the atmosphere, you get a lot of wet deposition pollution at the ground,” Gay said.

How Black Librarians Helped Create Generations of Black Literature

“She was a connector,” said Ethelene Whitmire, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a 2014 biography of Andrews, who retired from the library system in 1966. “She wasn’t there to take credit, but to work behind the scenes.”

Chemicals from East Palestine derailment spread to 16 US states, data shows

Researchers expected to find some evidence of the burn 50 miles from the site, and the high levels of contamination in the samples across the vast range that it was spread was “very surprising” said David Gay, a University of Wisconsin researcher and lead author.

See the Photos of the Rare Cicada Emergence

That slight overlap does not necessarily mean the two broods will breed with one another. “Is there a possibility of interactions and hybridization? That could occur—but given the long life cycles, it’s really hard to study,” PJ Liesch, the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, tells TIME.

Study on tween screen use shows link between parents and kids

The study caught the attention of Megan Moreno, professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and co-director of the American Academy of Pediatrics Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. Moreno, whose expertise is in the field of adolescent health and digital media, says she has been troubled by the widespread message — “almost to the edge of moral panic” — that social media use is causing adverse mental health outcomes for adolescents. “That has been a narrative I’ve been really interested in because I’ve really been wanting to see: Where is that evidence?” she says. “And it hasn’t been there.”

A Bird-Flu Pandemic in People? Here’s What It Might Look Like.

Crucially, no forms of the bird flu virus seem to have spread efficiently from person to person. That is no guarantee that H5N1 will not acquire that ability, said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist and bird flu expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.“ I think the virus is clearly changing its property, because we never saw outbreaks in cows,” Dr. Kawaoka said.

Supermassive Black Hole’s ‘Wind’ Shapes Surrounding Galaxy

A team of astronomers, including from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Arizona, analyzed years of observations of a quasar—bright cores of a galaxy thought to be powered by a supermassive black hole—to find unexpected changes in the gases surrounding a black hole.

The US is losing wetlands at an accelerating rate − here’s how the private sector can help protect these valuable resources

Wetlands aren’t the most eye-catching ecosystems. They include swamps, bogs, fens and other places where soil is covered by water most of the time. But they perform a huge range of valuable services, from soaking up floodwaters to filtering out pollutants and providing habitat for thousands of species of mammals, fish, reptiles, insects and birds.

–Steph Tai Professor of Law and Associate Dean, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Supermassive Black Hole’s ‘Wind’ Shapes Surrounding Galaxy

A team of astronomers, including from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Arizona, analyzed years of observations of a quasar—bright cores of a galaxy thought to be powered by a supermassive black hole—to find unexpected changes in the gases surrounding a black hole.

Women Are America’s Safety Net

In November 2020, in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic, Calarco, who is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told the writer Anne Helen Petersen, “Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women.”

Feds nab felons on social media by tracking gun videos, pics, chats

“A lot of people don’t realize how exposed they are,” says John P. Gross, a University of Wisconsin, Madison law professor and former public defender who’s seen social media play a big part in criminal cases. “That’s all stuff the government can find and gain access to.”

How Members of the Chinese Diaspora Found Their Voices

“I used to think that no matter what an individual or a group does, it makes no difference,” Wang Jing, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. “But now my feeling is that, regardless of what this can achieve, I have this anger and I want to express it.”

Scientists Know When Humans and Neanderthals Had Sex and Swapped DNA

“This study gives us the most accurate picture showing how some Neanderthals joined into the modern human gene pool, and then what happened to their genes afterward,” John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who was not involved in the research, told Business Insider.

The biggest cropland changes were near Ogallala Aquifer, study shows

“A lot of the assumptions were that this former cropland had a lot of overlap with formal conservation programs,” Tyler Lark, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment who co-authored the study, said in a news release. “But we saw that they’re almost entirely distinct pools.”

The truth about ‘zombie cicadas’: ‘The fungus can do some nefarious things’

P.J. Liesch, director of UW Insect Diagnostic Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained that the fungus does “really interesting things” to the cicadas it infects. “The fungus can do some nefarious things,” he told Fox News Digital in a phone interview. “It can produce some amphetamine-like compounds, which end up affecting the behavior of these infected cicadas.”

‘Godfathers of climate chaos’: UN chief urges global fossil-fuel advertising ban

“The problem is now urgent, and we can’t say we need to do something about it in the future, we need to take action now,” said Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “The earlier we start making big cuts to emissions, the earlier we can start making a difference.”’

Women are America’s safety net. Holding society together is wearing them down.

Not long after having her second child, Calarco, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, started a project in 2017 investigating how parents’ best-laid plans for raising their children go awry.

Earth warming at record rate, but no evidence of climate change accelerating

“Choosing to act on climate has become a political talking point but this report should be a reminder to people that in fact it is fundamentally a choice to save human lives,” said University of Wisconsin climate scientist Andrea Dutton, who wasn’t part of the international study team. “To me, that is something worth fighting for.”