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December 30, 2021

Research

UW-Madison researchers pour themselves into 40-year History of Cartography Project

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Embedded within a four-decade-long endeavor to document the history of cartography is a deceptively simple question: What is a map?

In a world where most people interact with maps almost daily, pulling them up on their smartphone to effortlessly chart a path through the lattice of streets that lie between Point A and Point B, the map, at first glance, is a tool.

But ask a generations-spanning team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison what a map is, and they’ll give you a more complex answer. Maps are more than a flattened rendering of the land around us, said Matthew Edney, a senior scientist at UW and a professor of geography at the University of Southern Maine.

“They’re cultural documents,” he said. “They’re social instruments.”

Boaz, Wisconsin, population 156, to host state’s first community-scale microgrid

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

Pioneered by UW-Madison scientists, microgrids can use solar panels, diesel generators, batteries or some combination of resources to supply electricity when operating as islands. Microgrids are seen as a way to bring power to people in regions without access to electricity as well as a way to increase reliability and resiliency in developed countries while making better use of intermittent clean energy sources. They also offer a more manageable platform for utilities to test out things like battery storage, said Dominic Gross, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at UW-Madison.

 

Clean energy from ammonia: UW discovery a step towards carbon-free economy

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

UW-Madison scientists have discovered a new way to capture energy from an everyday product that could be a key step to a carbon-free economy. Researchers in professor John Berry’s chemistry lab found that ammonia combined with a catalyst containing the metal ruthenium spontaneously produces nitrogen, releasing electrons that can be siphoned off.

Higher Education/System

Want Better K-12 Civic Education? Look to Higher Ed

Posted on
Newsweek

Thankfully, we’re starting to see positive changes in higher education. In some cases, individual professors are stepping up, establishing on-campus centers for the study of American political ideas and institutions. At the Jack Miller Center, where I work, we partner with public-minded scholars who have created such centers at the University of Virginia, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, American University and dozens of others. Many of them, in turn, have launched programs for K-12 teachers.

State news

UW researchers working to show perennials are profitable through new $10M project

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Valentin Picasso, an agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said researchers in his field have known for a long time that planting perennial crops in farm fields has a long list of environmental benefits.

The plants’ year-round presence protects the soil from erosion and helps absorb nutrients that would otherwise runoff into lakes and rivers. The forages, which are used for livestock feed, also create an environment for increased biodiversity and can even help fix carbon into the soil, mediating the effects of climate change.

“We’ve shown, in looking at long term research here in Wisconsin, that the more diversity we have in a cropping system, the more resilient it is to weather extremes like drought. And we’ve also shown that the more perennials in the system, we have more stability in production,” Picasso said.

New principal at a Burlington middle school has a background in restorative practices. What’s that mean?

Posted on
Kenosha News

Noted: With a new building, the Burlington Area School District needed a new middle school principal. Nick Ryan’s the man for the job.

Before landing in Burlington, Ryan taught in Oconomowoc and Watertown. After receiving his master’s degree from UW-Madison, he ventured back to his birth state, Wyoming, to serve as an assistant principal before taking a similar job back in Watertown.

Health

Dane County COVID-19 cases hit all-time high

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

The number of people hospitalized has taken only a small dip in recent days, with an average of 115 people hospitalized over the last week, per Public Health data. Hospital officials have warned they are reaching a breaking point with COVID-19 patients, and UW Health said it is reducing the number of nonessential procedures it schedules amid the ongoing surge.

Athletics

UW Experts in the News

What do children’s books teach kids about gender?

Posted on
The Capital Times

Beginning in 2018, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers Ellen Converse, Matt Borkenhagen and Mark Seidenberg transcribed a collection of popular contemporary children’s books, frequenting several local libraries — from Madison Public Library to the university’s Cooperative Children’s Book Center … “One surprise is just how robust some of these gender associations are, given how little text is actually in these books,” said Gary Lupyan, a UW-Madison psychology professor and advisor to the study.

Mindfulness exercises for anxiety are the best thing you can do in 2022

Posted on
Mashable

It’s easy to believe we’re adept at taming anxiety born of uncertainty thanks to the pandemic. But this may be a false assumption. Dr. Jack Nitschke, a clinical psychologist, and associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, told me that exposure to unpredictability doesn’t necessarily improve our coping skills. “I actually don’t think people get better at tolerating uncertainty just because there’s a lot of it,” he said.

Obituaries