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April 13, 2022

Research

Bison: The biggest, baddest animal in Wisconsin (sort of)

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: The big mammals — mammoths, mastodons and giant beavers — came later. They were Ice Age creatures, living in Wisconsin from between 2.5 million and 11,500 years ago.

“It’s a little bit like yesterday for a geologist,” Brooke Norstead, assistant director of the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum, said.

And just like yesterday, there was a big animal roaming that huge ice sheet — so vast you could walk to the North Pole on it without touching land — that may sound familiar.

“There was an animal called a stag moose,” Norstead said. “Imagine a supersize moose, with even more interesting antlers.”

Warren Porter is a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies animal shape and size.

“One of the evolutionary benefits of being a large or very large animal is … that you don’t have to deal with as much threat of predation and may be able to better defend your young,” Porter said.

Team at UW–Madison creates material six times tougher than Kevlar

Spectrum News

A team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has created a material that is tougher than Kevlar, which is found in bulletproof vests.

It’s a project they hope can help save lives.

The material in small scale is almost comparable to the look of electrical tape. However, it’s much different and much stronger. So what’s inside that makes it so strong? Engineering and physics assistant professor Ramathasan Thevamaran has the answer.

“It’s a nano fiber mat made out of carbon nanotubes and Kevlar nano fibers,” Thevamaran said.

How to help Wisconsin’s disappearing native bees in your yard

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Native plant curator Susan Carpenter with the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison said they detected the rusty patched at the Arboretum about 10 years ago. “That started us on this voyage of discovery,” she said. When the rusty patched was declared endangered, she said, “people just went crazy on that.”

Higher Education/System

Gap between students’ college costs and state and federal aid in Wisconsin has grown, report says

Wisconsin Public Radio

The amount of tuition costs at Wisconsin colleges covered by state and federal financial aid for students has shrunk over the last two decades, according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

The average amount of federal Pell grants and state Wisconsin grants together covered 91.4 percent of tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002, for example, but only 69 percent in 2021.

Campus life

Family, colleagues & community celebrate life of beloved UW professor and launch of Tejumola Olaniyan Foundation

Madison365

The family of the late Teju Olaniyan, a beloved UW-Madison professor who died suddenly on Nov. 30, 2019, honored his legacy with a celebration of his life on April 9 at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, and launched a nonprofit in his name that will focus on preserving and continuing strands of his contributions to higher education.

Agriculture

Community

In honor of Milwaukee Day, here are 14 people making a difference in our city

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Xela Garcia helps young Milwaukee Latinos see themselves in art and education.

Garcia grew up on Milwaukee’s south side and has served as executive director of the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts for five years.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she minored in Chicano/Latina studies and American Indian studies and saw herself reflected in the class readings.

“It brought me back to that feeling of empowerment, of feeling seen,” she said. “This was something that was me.”

Opinion

UW Experts in the News

The Grief of 1 Million COVID Deaths Is Not Going Away

The Atlantic

Jeannina Smith, a doctor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, cares for organ-transplant recipients, who are on immunosuppressive drugs and are therefore particularly vulnerable to disease; she told me that she lost more patients in the Omicron surge than at any previous point in the pandemic. “They did everything right—they got vaccinated and boosted and were so careful,” Smith said, and their loved ones must now mourn them “while society is saying that COVID is over.”

Obituaries

Doris Derby obituary

The Guardian

She taught African-American studies and anthropology at Illinois, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the College of Charleston, South Carolina. From 1990 until her retirement in 2012 she was director of African-American student services at Georgia State University.

Family, colleagues & community celebrate life of beloved UW professor and launch of Tejumola Olaniyan Foundation

Madison 365

The family of the late Teju Olaniyan, a beloved UW-Madison professor who died suddenly on Nov. 30, 2019, honored his legacy with a celebration of his life on April 9 at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, and launched a nonprofit in his name that will focus on preserving and continuing strands of his contributions to higher education.