University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have unlocked a potential new treatment to target an incurable form of childhood cancer with the help of a fast-reproducing pest known for swarming kitchen produce.
Professors Melissa Harrison and Peter Lewis used fruit flies to to study how cellular pathways are misregulated by a cancer-causing mutant protein. The pesky bugs were perfect lab subjects for the project because two-thirds of the cancer-causing genes in humans are shared by fruit flies.
One of the proposed constitutional amendments, SJR 94, takes aim at DEI programs throughout state and local government in Wisconsin. Republicans have been targeting DEI programs for years and have at times found success, including when they elicited concessions from the University of Wisconsin system in 2023.
The doors of a new academic building will open, three-year-old scaffolding is expected to come down, and designs are being drawn up to revamp a historic site on UW-Madison’s campus in 2026.
Upcoming plans for development projects at UW-Madison signal another busy year of changes happening on campus. In 2025, UW-Madison notably opened a new building that houses its new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence: Morgridge Hall, a privately funded $267 million, 343,000-square-foot facility.
The high court ruling is narrow, according to Bryna Godar, an attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. The ruling finds that “most matters relating to judicial disqualification [do] not rise to a constitutional level,” Godar noted in an email to WPR.
“Typically, state supreme courts provide the final word on attorney discipline proceedings. But where an attorney raises federal constitutional issues, like due process, that can in some cases open a path for federal court involvement,” Godar wrote.
Donahue said the funding has been the result of years of working with people at all levels of government, as well as University of Wisconsin-Madison and U.S. Geological Survey experts.
“This has come after years of immense collaboration,” she said.
While conflict can feel messy, it’s not a sign something is broken. According to Hernando Duarte, farm labor outreach specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it’s a reality of farm work.
“In labor-intensive environments like farms and other agricultural operations, conflict between employees [and family] can happen,” Duarte explains. And on farms, that friction is hard to avoid.
“Conflict doesn’t have to be a negative thing,” Duarte says. “When handled properly, it can lead to stronger communication, better teamwork and long-term improvements and innovation.”
The salary pool for University of Wisconsin football coaches now represents more than what the Badgers pay to coaches in the rest of their sports combined.
Wisconsin’s 18 football coaches from the 2025 season totaled salaries of $14.61 million this school year. The 66 other coaches had a salary pool of $14.39 million, according to records released by the school.
John P. Gross, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Law who has written extensively about officers shooting at moving vehicles, said while more departments have added explicit policies regarding use-of-force and moving vehicles, officer training also needs to improve.
“If this woman was blocking the street and a law enforcement operation, they are entitled to arrest her. What they are not entitled to do is to use deadly force to arrest her,” Gross said. “From just watching the video, this seems like an egregious example.”
“It is unprecedented,” said Allison Prasch, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who studies presidential communication. “I really tried to use that word sparingly, because everything is unprecedented, but I think that’s apt.”
Trump has shifted from a foreign policy approach that advertised military interventions as a way to deliver freedom and democracy, done in conjunction with other western nations. On Wednesday, U.S. officials announced its plans to sell Venezuelan oil as news outlets reported a crackdown on dissent by the government the United States left in place.
“Just try to imagine George W. Bush standing up and boldly proclaiming that he has started this war because of the oil alone,” Prasch said in an interview.
The effort is somewhat comparable to solving a modern serial killer mystery by looking for the same DNA across different crime scenes, says John Hawks, an anthropologist and a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who was also not involved in the study.
“If you can find the same DNA pattern on paintings, drawings or even places connected with Leonardo,” he says, “you would have some confidence you are looking at his genome—even without being able to find genealogical relatives today.”
According to the Badger Institute, Wisconsin has less than a handful of driverless vehicles for testing and research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Gateway Technical College in Racine.
