UW-Madison Extension Entomologist PJ Liesch spends much of his time identifying and confirming insect sightings. This spring has brought him a number of unusual observations, including a scorpion.
UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Andrew Leavitt and UW system President Jay Rothman will shut down UW-Oshkosh’s two-year branch campus in Menasha at the end of the spring 2025 semester. WLUK-TV was the first to report the news Thursday morning.
It’s at least the fourth proposal for 126 Langdon St. since 2008. The most recent attempt to redevelop the site, Core Spaces’ seven-story Hub II, failed to secure city approval in 2020 and again in 2021 after residents objected to the building’s height and its luxury amenities, which included a rooftop swimming pool and hot tub.
A new collaboration between the UW-Madison School of Education and three Wisconsin school districts — Madison, Lake Mills and Middleton-Cross Plains — proposes a solution: Through the District Leadership Preparation Pipeline, a group of Wisconsin teachers will earn their master’s degree from UW-Madison for no cost. In return, they commit to working in their home school districts as a principal or assistant principal for at least two years.
Officials with La Crosse County, the town of Campbell, UW-Madison, U.S. Geological Survey and the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey earlier this week drilled three “sentinel” wells to help identify PFAS migration in the area and monitor the untainted aquifer.
The goal is to make large-scale solar and wind projects work for all involved, said Sherrie Gruder, sustainable design specialist and energy strategist for UW-Extension, who is overseeing the initiative. Gruder said the grant will help local governments and residents “have a voice in making the projects work well for the values and the goals of the communities in our state.”
The citations come after an initial round of UWPD citations which were issued to protesters immediately after officers from the Madison Police Department and UWPD raided the encampment on May 1.
The second phase, which began in March, involves cleaning, painting and applying decorative gold leaf, and repairing and replacing glass beads and tiles that add to the elegance of the pavilion. The project is being funded by UW-Madison, which was gifted the pavilion more than 20 years ago. The restoration will allow the pavilion to continue to shine on the east side of the botanical gardens.
Crucially, no forms of the bird flu virus seem to have spread efficiently from person to person. That is no guarantee that H5N1 will not acquire that ability, said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist and bird flu expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.“ I think the virus is clearly changing its property, because we never saw outbreaks in cows,” Dr. Kawaoka said.
Sloan Gibson, meanwhile, came looking for ideas she could bring back to her job in the information technology division at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “A rising tide raises all boats,” Gibson said. “Just because a game is accessible … or a piece of tech is accessible doesn’t mean it’s just for people who need the accessibility. It just means more people can use it and enjoy it.”
That slight overlap does not necessarily mean the two broods will breed with one another. “Is there a possibility of interactions and hybridization? That could occur—but given the long life cycles, it’s really hard to study,” PJ Liesch, the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, tells TIME.
Bird flu has not been found in Wisconsin cows, but voluntary testing has been minimal since late April, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture mandated testing of dairy cattle moving between states and quarantines of herds that test positive, said Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at UW-Madison.
The study caught the attention of Megan Moreno, professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and co-director of the American Academy of Pediatrics Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. Moreno, whose expertise is in the field of adolescent health and digital media, says she has been troubled by the widespread message — “almost to the edge of moral panic” — that social media use is causing adverse mental health outcomes for adolescents. “That has been a narrative I’ve been really interested in because I’ve really been wanting to see: Where is that evidence?” she says. “And it hasn’t been there.”
