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January 24, 2019

Top Stories

Research

How to stay focused

Ahmedabad Mirror

Noted: Creativity can benefit from distraction too. Jihae Shin, now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has found that when people played Minesweeper or Solitaire for 5 minutes before coming up with new business ideas, they were more creative than those who didn’t play.

You can’t control what you can’t find: Detecting invasive species while they’re still scarce

The Conversation

Jake Walsh, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Most of the 10,000 ships lost to the bottom of the Great Lakes in wrecks over the past 400 years are still lost – hidden somewhere in 6 quadrillion gallons of water. Finding anything in a lake is a lesson in humility, so life as a freshwater biologist is always humbling. If we can’t account for huge steel freighters, imagine the challenge of finding a single tiny organism.

Mosquito-fighting bacteria

The Naked Scientists

Most of the candidates discovered to date have been based on plant products. But now, in an article published in Science Advances, University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Mayur Kajla and his colleagues have discovered that chemicals produced by the bacterium Xenorhabdus can deter multiple mosquito species from feeding. And they do it with equivalent – or better – efficacy than DEET

Higher Education/System

How Politics Are Reshaping the College Presidency

The Atlantic

A board has a responsibility to a university, one that can be corrupted when political ideologies are introduced, Harris said. “That fundamentally damages a university, and that can take generations to recover from,” he said. He pointed to the damage that politics have done to the University of Wisconsin system as an example.

Campus life

From the belly of the beast

Isthmus

For its fifth annual social justice conference, UW-Madison’s School of Social Work wanted to hear from people who know the social work system better than anyone: those who have grown up in it.

Agriculture

Downtrend in milk prices

Agrinews

Quoted: “Exports as a percentage of U.S. milk production have been climbing,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Every major downturn in the U.S. all milk price corresponds to times when export growth has been off trend or down.”

Downtrend in milk prices

AgriNews

“Exports as a percentage of U.S. milk production have been climbing,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Every major downturn in the U.S. all milk price corresponds to times when export growth has been off trend or down.”

Community

Arts & Humanities

Madison’s black pioneers: An oral history collection captures the good times and bad

Isthmus

Noted: Simms is the editor of Settlin’: Stories of Madison’s Early African American Families, a collection of oral histories published late last year by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. Simms, 74, grew up in Madison, attending the city’s public schools and later UW-Madison, where she received three degrees, most recently a doctorate in educational administration. She is 15 years younger than her sister, Delores Simms Greene, whose oral history is included in the collection. The age gap proved pivotal to how their respective lives unfolded.

Health

FDA Pushing for Over-The-Counter Sales of Naloxone

Pain News Network

Noted: “Expanding naloxone access increases opioid abuse and opioid-related crime, and does not reduce opioid-related mortality. In fact, in some areas, particularly the Midwest, expanding naloxone access has increased opioid-related mortality. Opioid-related mortality also appears to have increased in the South and most of the Northeast as a result of expanding naloxone access,” wrote Jennifer Doleac, PhD, Texas A&M University, and co-author Anita Mukherjee, PhD, University of Wisconsin.

The person they were meant to be

Madison Magazine

Noted: Things are slowly changing at the institutional level, says Mel Freitag, diversity officer and associate clinical professor at the UW–Madison School of Nursing. Today’s incoming students have been raised with more evidence-based and anecdotal education about gender identity, and they’re pointing out the gaps in class, a phenomenon known as “upteaching.”

Opinion

Tom Still: Research fuels UW

La Crosse Tribune

The annual report by the National Science Foundation on research and development spending by U.S. colleges and universities confirmed what many people already know: The UW-Madison is a powerhouse when it comes to attracting R&D dollars.

Business/Technology

UW Experts in the News

Obituaries

Remembering Erik Olin Wright

Dissent Magazine

Erik Olin Wright, a University of Wisconsin–Madison sociologist and former president of the American Sociological Association, died from acute myeloid leukemia on January 23, 2019. He was 72.

UW-Madison Related

With a towering natural bridge, Pier County Park is worth a detour in the Driftless Area

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Ableman’s Gorge State Natural Area, on Highway 136 north of Rock Springs, features a nearly mile-long L-shaped cliff of quartzite and sandstone. Nearby is Van Hise Rock, a 15-foot monolith named for geologist and former president of UW-Madison Charles Van Hise, who used the rock to demonstrate how rocks change when mountains are formed.