Curious Campus

Meet a water policy expert whose new book lays out a blueprint for creating alternate corporate business models called “cooperatives,” which incorporate green practices, pay living wages and preserve jobs in the community. The best ones have an auditing system in place to show that they’re producing those triple bottom-line returns, says Melissa Scanlan, director of the Center for Water Policy at UW-Milwaukee.On this episode of Curious Campus, we talk with Scanlan about cooperatives and her new book, “Prosperity in the Fossil-Free Economy: Cooperatives and the Design of Sustainable Businesses.”

Meet a water policy expert whose new book lays out a blueprint for creating alternate corporate business models called “cooperatives,” which incorporate green practices, pay living wages and preserve jobs in the community.

The season of shopping is upon us, and retailers and marketers are bombarding us with messages about purchasing. The average person is exposed to more than 4,500 commercial messages every day. So what is it about an ad – whether it’s traditional or digital – that stops us in our tracks? And what features of advertising actually lead us to buy? Insights are coming from a tsunami of data provided by buyers themselves, thanks to digital advertising and social media. On this episode of Curious Campus, we talk with Purush Papatla, a professor of marketing at UWM, about how social and data scientists are mining this sea of information to uncover the secrets of consumer behavior.

The season of shopping is upon us, and retailers and marketers are bombarding us with messages about purchasing. Learn how a social and data scientist mines the characteristics of advertising to reveal the secrets of consumer behavior.  

It’s often difficult to get people to contribute money voluntarily. A choice-based strategy known as “dueling preferences” can break through a reluctance to tip or make a donation by giving consumers a chance to reveal something about themselves.  

The universe is full of massive celestial bodies that slam into each other. Albert Einstein predicted that these cosmic collisions send out invisible shocks called gravitational waves through the universe, warping space-time. Think of a bowling ball tossed onto a trampoline.One of the two kinds of gravitational waves has already been detected. Scientists are still looking for the other – the kind called “low-frequency” gravitational waves that are monster-sized compared to those that have been detected.On this episode of Curious Campus, we’ll learn more about gravitational waves with Sarah Vigeland, an assistant professor of physics at UW-Milwaukee, and Xavier Siemens, an associate professor of physics at Oregon State University.

Right now, the two Mars Rovers, Perseverance and Curiosity, are exploring the surface of the Red Planet to help scientists learn more about its history, soil and atmosphere. This is an initial step in figuring out if humans can live — or even land —on Mars. Finding out more about Mars could help us learn how atmospheric changes there happened and better understand the potential impact of climate change on Earth.On the debut episode of Curious Campus, we’ll talk to Jean Creighton, a professor of physics and director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium, and Darien Dixon, a UWM alum who is one of the lead camera operators on NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover, to learn more about the exploration of Mars.

Right now, the two Mars Rovers, Perseverance and Curiosity, are exploring the surface of the Red Planet to help scientists learn more about its history, soil and atmosphere.