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May 15, 2025

Top Stories

Wisconsin GOP lawmakers praise Trump order restricting funds for ‘gain-of-function’ research

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Still, other researchers argue broad restrictions on gain-of-function research could stifle studies that could ultimately protect people from risky viruses. The University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin testified against the bill last year.

“Gain-of-function experiments allow investigators to understand the complex nature of host-pathogen interactions that underlie transmission, infection, and pathogenesis and can help attribute biological function to genes and proteins,” a UW-Madison spokesperson said in a statement to WPR.

UW-Madison conducts a wide range of health and disease studies, including research that helps track viruses like avian influenza. The university is assessing how the order and related NIH guidance might affect research on campus, the spokesperson said.

Research

Conservation gardening, and the search for exoplanets

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Astronomers have identified hundreds of exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than our own – but very few exist in habitable zones that could support life. We talk to Thomas Beatty, an exoplanet researcher and collaborator with The Wisconsin Center for Origins Research, and Jim Lattis, director of the UW Space Place, both at UW-Madison.

As Cassie shares graphic abuse details in Diddy trial, are we all asking the wrong question?

Posted on
USA Today

In a 2024 study conducted by Chloe Grace Hart, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she found that Americans were less likely to say they believed a Black woman describing a sexual harassment experience compared to a white women describing the same thing.

“That suggests that when it comes to sexual violence, Black women survivors face a particularly steep uphill battle to be believed,” Hart previously told USA TODAY.

A trove of Ice Age fossils buried in a Wyoming cave is rewriting our understanding of prehistoric animals

Posted on
Smithsonian Magazine

“The sediment deposition gets really complex,” David M. Lovelace, a geoscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led a comprehensive study of the cave’s stratigraphy, explains. “Sediment that’s washing in can leave little pockets of deposition in one area. Then the inlet or the stream will shift slightly, so it deposits in another area.” Sometimes a fresh stream cuts through older sediment to drop in new surface material. “It literally forms almost a new cave through the old sediment, so you can deposit younger material under older, previously existing material. The complexities become outstanding.”

Higher Education/System

Told to teach more with no extra pay, Carthage College faculty vote no-confidence in president

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Nationally, there’s been a flurry of no-confidence votes at universities in recent years, including at two other Wisconsin institutions.

University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh faculty expressed their disapproval in Chancellor Andrew Leavitt’s leadership last school year. Marquette University professors voted no-confidence in President Kimo Ah Yun last fall.

Campus life

UW-Madison graduate Manu Raju got his first scoop at The Badger Herald

Posted on
Spectrum News

Manu Raju was a Badger who broke a legendary story in 1999 before he ascended to CNN as an anchor and the network’s chief congressional correspondent.

On Wednesday morning, Raju met a small group of people with Wisconsin ties at The Monocle, a restaurant just steps away from the U.S. Capitol, for a breakfast put on by WisPolitics. That’s where he told the room about his first scoop.

Health

A ‘tofu-dreg’ edifice: Most of China’s official economic data is probably fake

Posted on
The Hill

Dr. Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin, an expert in China’s demographics and prominent critic of that country’s one-child policy, has been digging into the details of China’s population claims — and what he has found is not good.

For starters, Yi believes that China’s population is overestimated by at least 130 million — more than one-third of the U.S. population. In a recent monograph, Yi details the many discrepancies buried within China’s current and past census data.

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