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July 21, 2025

Research

How to design an actually good flash flood alert system

The Verge

And when it comes to warning people about flash floods in particular, experts still stress the need to get warnings to people via every means possible.

That’s why a “Swiss cheese” approach to warning people can be most effective in overcoming that last mile, Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist and manager of the Wisconsin Environmental Mesonet at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains. (And it’s similar to an ideology used to prevent the spread of disease.)

“You know you got slices of Swiss cheese and they’ve got holes in them. Nothing is ever perfect. But if you layer enough pieces of cheese, it reduces the risk because something might go through one hole, but then it gets blocked,” Vagasky says. “We always want people to have multiple ways of receiving warnings.”

Beetles and weevils and moths, oh my! How to fight Wisconsin’s invasive insects

The Cap Times

In Wisconsin, the beetle was first discovered in 2014 in counties west of Milwaukee. In 2019, UW-Madison entomologist P.J. Liesch, on a walk with his family, found an infested shrub. This spring, Liesch fielded dozens of questions from gardeners asking about it, as did Lisa Johnson, a Dane County Extension horticulture educator.

UWM project mapping Milwaukee racial covenants hits snag after Trump agency cuts funding

In the Trump era, with university research on the chopping block, some professors have become part-time fundraisers for the sake of science.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professors Anne Bonds and Derek Handley need at least $30,000 to finish their project after the National Endowment for the Humanities cut their grant this spring. They said the agency offered no specific reason for terminating the grant aside from it no longer aligning with funding priorities.

Higher Education/System

U slaps students with $200 fee to help athletics budget as U starts paying athletes

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Luis Hernandez, strategic communications director and associate athletic director for the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said the school has come up with other ways to fund its $198.9 million athletics budget, including new corporate sponsorships, such as adding the Culver’s logo to the Kohl’s Center basketball court.

They’ve also scheduled events like concerts and the chance to play indoor golf at Camp Randall Stadium. The upcoming Morgan Wallen and Coldplay concerts at the stadium are the first to be held there in nearly 28 years, Hernandez said.

UW students don’t pay athletic fees, and the university plans on spending the full $20.5 million on athletes that is allowed, he said.

State news

Local communities with state buildings get boost from Wisconsin budget

Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin’s new budget boosts some of the funding available to local communities, including those that are home to state buildings.

State buildings are exempt from property taxes, but Wisconsin does compensate the cities, villages and townships where those facilities are located. The increased funding will affect hundreds of communities that house state facilities ranging from prisons to universities to office buildings.

Community

‘Queer people were living, loving, suffering, surviving – but invisible’: west Africa’s groundbreaking gay novel 20 years on

The Guardian

Ainehi Edoro, associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder of the literary blog Brittle Paper, says the novel marked a turning point. “For a long time, queer characters in African literature were either invisible or treated as symbols of crisis, like their presence was a sign that something had gone wrong,” she says. “So when Dibia wrote a novel that centred a gay Nigerian man as a full human being, that mattered. He pushed back against an entire archive of erasure.”