L&S News

Is it a trade dispute with China, or is it a trade war? If the latter, is it on hold, or not? The flip-flops in America’s trade relationship with China are coming in ever more frequently, as President Trump issues and rescinds threats, writes Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin. 

Meeting the climate goals of the Paris Agreement is going to be nearly impossible without removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere says Gregory Nemet, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“It makes sense to have free public transport paid for by taxation, as it’s beneficial for the whole of society, not only those who use public transportation,” says João Peschanski, a sociology doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has examined free public transit systems around the world.

Gregg Mitman, a UW-Madison professor of history and environmental studies with an academic interest in Liberia, says that the university has benefited greatly from having Urey study here. “He’s brought so much to the UW in the context of the Wisconsin Idea and community engagement and really taking that public service mission to a developing country like Liberia,” says Mitman, one of Urey’s academic advisors. Mitman and Urey collaborated on the documentary, “Land Beneath our Feet.”

On Tuesday, May 1, the Poetry Foundation announced that Martín Espada was awarded the 2018 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which is presented annually in recognition of the lifetime achievements of a living US poet.

Quoted: The short answer: It’s hard to say. One of the biggest problems with bias training is that so few people have evaluated whether it’s effective, said Patricia Devine, a professor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison who focuses on how to manage prejudice in society. Some studies have also found that, when done the wrong way, these kinds of trainings can actually make the problem worse.

Quoted: Through the end of June, justices are expected to hand down decisions on 29 more cases, said Ryan Owens, a professor of political science and affiliate law faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The next opinion day is scheduled for Monday, June 4, Owens said, and decisions will likely come every other day after that.

For adults, developing resilience might make all the difference between keeping a job or burning out. A small May 2018 study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, published in Frontiers for Psychology, found that as little as two weeks of “compassion meditation” made subjects more resilient in the face of human suffering, meaning they were able to look at struggle non-judgmentally and respond with compassion rather than becoming distraught themselves.

Four years ago, Jeremy Morris launched his podcast class at the UW — and the word podcast wasn’t even in the title of the communication arts course. Now, in the midst of the golden age of podcasts, the course has a new name — Sound Cultures: Podcasting and Music — and increased demand. Morris, an associate professor of media and cultural studies, exposes students to a wide variety of podcasts and gives them hands-on experience with manipulating audio.