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UW In The News

  • Why Do Colors Change during a Solar Eclipse?

    Scientific American | March 28, 2024

    For other animals, an eclipse-induced Purkinje effect may be even more intense, says Freya Mowat, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. Birds have a fourth cone that lets them see ultraviolet light. It’s difficult to say exactly how the sudden light change during a solar eclipse would affect avian vision, Mowat, says but it’s possible that the shades of purple would be extra vivid and disorienting

  • How Baseball’s Official Historian Dug Up the Game’s Unknown Origins

    Smithsonian Magazine | March 28, 2024

    The year Baseball in the Garden of Eden was published, Selig tapped Thorn as MLB’s second official historian. “John Thorn has been brilliant,” says Selig, who now teaches baseball history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Arizona State.

  • Viral Genetics Confirms What On-the-Ground Activists Knew Early in the Mpox Outbreak

    Scientific American | March 27, 2024

    David O’Conner, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told me that COVID initially increased the collaborations between researchers and public health officials. He worries that in our supposedly post-COVID world, we’re returning to a baseline with public health and academics working with “less overlap than during the early [SARS-CoV-2] pandemic.”

  • Leading Economic Index went up for first time in two years

    Marketplace | March 26, 2024

    Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said even if the economy slows down this year, a recession is unlikely. “At least there’s strength in the economy, probably enough so that you’re not going to go into actual negative growth,” he said.

  • US housing market faces biggest shakeup in years – here’s what we know

    The Guardian | March 26, 2024

    “The decoupling of seller agent and buyer agent fees allows for a lot more flexibility and novelty in how agents are going to get paid,” said Max Besbris, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The possibilities are more open now than ever before. We’re really going to see, generally, a lot more transparency.”

  • Patients Hate ‘Forever’ Drugs. Are Ozempic and Wegovy Different?

    The New York Times | March 26, 2024

    “People think they are doing fine, so they don’t need the medicine,” said Corrine Voils, a social psychologist at the University of Wisconsin who studies medicine compliance. “But the medicine is what is keeping them well.”

  • Bizarre ‘Hot Jupiter’ Planets Keep Surprising Astronomers

    Scientific American | March 26, 2024

    The next step in fully understanding hot Jupiters is to use these discoveries to establish the relative likelihoods of the three possible migration mechanisms in order to determine which systems formed which way. Jupiter-sized planets are the rulers of their planetary system because of their dominant gravitational influence and the way their migration pathway sculpts the architectures of their system. Understanding these worlds is the first step to constructing a unified theory of planet formation that scientists have been seeking for centuries.

    -JULIETTE BECKER is an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is also a founding member of the new Wisconsin Center for Origins Research (WiCOR).

  • Planet-Eating Stars Are Surprisingly Common, New Study Suggests

    Scientific American | March 21, 2024

    Numerous unanswered questions remain, such as what sorts of planets tend to be consumed and how to know with certainty whether any given star has wholly abstained from devouring members of its brood. Even so, “this work is super compelling,” says Melinda Soares-Furtado, an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “I’m excited about what we’re starting to find.”

  • 5 Tips for a Healthier Relationship With Your Phone

    The New York Times | March 21, 2024

    If you want to peacefully coexist with technology, you need to get a handle on those impulses. Start by noticing when you have an urge to lift your phone or open social media on your browser window, said Richard J. Davidson, the founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • Does a Houseplant Need to Glow for You to See It as Alive?

    The Atlantic | March 20, 2024

    To see what other scientists thought of this petunia, I emailed Simon Gilroy, a botanist who leads a lab at the University of Wisconsin at Madison that uses green fluorescent proteins to study how a plant sends signals through its body. But the fluorescence of those proteins—originally synthesized from a jellyfish—is visible only with specialized lights, unlike the petunia now in my house, which glowed on its own. When I visited Gilroy’s lab in 2022, he showed me a tiny plant beneath a microscope lens, handed me a pair of tweezers, and instructed me to pinch it. I watched as a green luminance moved through the entire plant body: The experience permanently changed my view of plant life. Here was a lively, dynamic creature that absolutely knew I was touching it. Gilroy quickly wrote back: “I actually have 2 of those luminescent petunias on pre-order.”

  • Schools are using Yondr pouches to lock up kids’ cellphones

    Vox | March 20, 2024

    There’s also reason to believe that using cellphones in class is bad for learning. Studies on doctors, nurses, and others have shown that “multitasking during learning interferes with the long-term processing and retention of what you learn,” said Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Some research suggests that curbing smartphone use in the classroom could help students stay focused on their lessons.

  • Daddy Longlegs Have Four Extra, Hidden Eyes, Researchers Say

    Smithsonian Magazine | March 20, 2024

    The eyes are vestigial organs, or the remnants of body parts that no longer function—they are the “leftovers of evolution,” as study co-author Guilherme Gainett, who was a biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when he conducted the research but now works at Boston Children’s Hospital, tells Science News’ McKenzie Prillaman. In humans, vestigial organs include wisdom teeth and the appendix.

  • Opinion: How to make sure the 6% real estate home commission really does die

    CNN | March 19, 2024

    It might seem like the National Association of Realtors, which in the past few years has been the target of antitrust lawsuits and whose former president resigned in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal, is in crisis. Last year, a federal jury in Missouri found that the NAR, along with private brokerages, had colluded to keep broker fees artificially high and awarded nearly $1.8 billion to hundreds of thousands of home sellers. And on Friday, the NAR announced that instead of appealing it would settle the lawsuit. (Max Besbris is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of “Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality.” )

  • Georgia primary votes not counted ‘in hours’

    USA Today | March 19, 2024

    Barry Burden, the founding director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center, outlined several other reasons why votes were counted faster in the primaries than in the 2020 general election.

  • How Realtors’ settlement could change the buyer-agent relationship

    Marketplace | March 19, 2024

    That may sound like a more expensive arrangement for homebuyers. But economist Abdullah Yavas at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business said under the traditional arrangement, sellers only technically pay for buyer’s agents. In reality, buyers were still footing the bill.

  • Nebraska and Maine allocate electoral college votes differently than other states

    NPR | March 18, 2024

    Nebraska and Maine long ago discarded the electoral college’s winner-take-all approach to allow split ballots if a candidate wins the popular vote in a congressional district. (Featuring quote from Barry Burden.)

  • COVID-19 misinformation continues to pose danger 4 years post-pandemic

    USA Today | March 15, 2024

    Many people are disparaging or dismissive when talking about people who believe misinformation, but it can happen to anyone, said Sedona Chinn, an assistant professor in the life sciences communication department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • Obscure legal theory could weaken voters’ protections from racist laws

    The Guardian | March 15, 2024

    The ruling is part of a suite of attacks in recent years aiming to chip away at section 2, said Daniel Tokaji, an election law expert who is dean of the law school at the University of Wisconsin. “These are judges who are not terribly friendly to the voting rights and in particular to protections that racial minority groups have long had to wait for,” he said.

  • Powerful Realtor Group Agrees to Slash Commissions to Settle Lawsuits

    New York Times | March 15, 2024

    “This will be a really fundamental shift in how Americans buy, search for, and purchase and sell their housing. It will absolutely transform the real estate industry,” said Max Besbris, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “Upsold,” a book exploring the link between housing prices and the real estate business.

  • Are we breaking the Atlantic Ocean? The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, explained.

    Vox | March 14, 2024

    “This is a sort of $2 million question,” Till Wagner, an atmospheric and ocean scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says. “Can this actually happen? And if so, when?”

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

    National Geographic | March 13, 2024

    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.

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

    Los Angeles Times | March 12, 2024

    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.

  • House passes immigration bill named for murdered Georgia student

    The Washington Post | March 8, 2024

    “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.”

  • The Era of the Much Older Sibling

    The Atlantic | March 8, 2024

    This new norm of spaced-out siblings seems to be a by-product of the changing American family. The reasons are difficult to parse, but “we know that partner switching explains some of it,” Christine Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who co-authored that 2020 study on the phenomenon, told me.

  • Warm climate cuts short decades-long wolf study near Lake Superior, MI

    Associated Press | March 7, 2024

    Less ice could translate to longer fishing seasons, but winter storms could wreck nets and traps and destroy whitefish eggs that rely on the ice for protection, said Titus Seilheimer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison fisheries specialist.

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

    Marketplace | March 6, 2024

    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.

  • How to address the problem of discarded donor organs

    STAT | March 4, 2024

    Column by Joshua Mezrich, a professor of surgery, transplant surgeon and holds the Mark A. Fischer Chair in Transplantation at UW Health and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

  • Inside Smashmallow, Silicon Valley’s Failed Marshmallow Startup

    Business Insider | March 4, 2024

    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 | March 4, 2024

    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.”

  • Daddy Longlegs Have Been Hiding Extra Eyes From Us

    The New York Times | March 1, 2024

    Guilherme Gainett, then a biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was looking through a microscope at the embryo of a daddy longlegs when he saw it — or, rather, saw them.

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