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Ancient crystals reveal the earliest evidence of fresh water, scientists say

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CNN

John Valley, a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agreed that the conditions for life could have existed on Earth so long ago. Valley wasn’t involved in the new research but was among the first scientists to use zircons to show that Earth had ancient oceans and cooler temperatures more than 4 billion years ago, challenging the view that Hadean Earth was a hellish orb with fiery seas of magma.

Why Bird Flu Is Causing Eye Infections in Dairy Workers

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Scientific American

“Given the amount of virus detected in milk from H5N1 virus-infected cows, I am concerned about its spillover to humans, poultry and other animals,”says Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a professor of virology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

College Alone Can’t Save Women

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Chronicle of Higher Ed

In the fall of 2020, Jessica Calarco encapsulated what so many families were experiencing during the pandemic in a memorable phrase: “Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. At the time, Calarco, now an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (her promotion to full professor takes effect later this summer), was studying how parents were navigating the pandemic, a project that included two national surveys and hundreds of hours of interviews

Sociologist: Lack of social safety net impacts students

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Inside Higher Ed

Calarco, who’s previously published A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum (2020) and Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School (2018), began researching what became Holding it Together prior to the pandemic, while an associate professor of sociology at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. The pandemic changed the scope of her work somewhat (go figure), and she’s also switched institutions, to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She agreed to chat about her process and findings, and their implications for student success.

What University Presidents Can Learn From Past Protests

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TIME

This year, around 2,000 students were arrested on college campuses at the behest of their own institutions’ leaders. And it was not one or two leaders. Presidents and chancellors approved arrests of student protesters at UCLA, Columbia University, Indiana University Bloomington, University of Texas at Austin, Pomona College, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Emory University, City University of New York, Yale University, and Washington University in St. Louis, among dozens of other campuses. At the University of Southern California, there were two police sweeps to remove students’ Gaza solidarity encampments from campus.

How 2 Wisconsin runners have continued a successful pipeline from Australia

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Wisconsin State Journal

The University of Wisconsin men’s track and field team won a recruiting battle for Australian distance runner Morgan McDonald in 2014.

It’s not hard to draw the connection a decade later to Jackson Sharp and Adam Spencer wearing Badgers apparel as they head this week to the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

‘Cicadapalooza’ party set for Saturday in Lake Geneva

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Wisconsin State Journal

The 45-minute, mile-long walking tours are set to be led by UW faculty, starting at 12:30 p.m., and every hour after that up to 4:15 p.m.

Liesch also plans to join Dan Young, a UW-Madison entomologist, in a presentation at 3:30 p.m. at Library Park near the library which will cover cicada basics and feature an up-close look at periodical cicadas.

Proposed ‘alcohol density’ rule could stop new Madison liquor licenses by schools, parks and more

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Wisconsin State Journal

Dane County has some of the highest levels of excessive drinking in Wisconsin and has a higher level of traffic deaths involving alcohol than the rest of the state and the country, according to the UW-Madison Population Health Institute. Across the state, alcohol-induced deaths have tripled since 1999, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

Bill Walton left a giant impression with Madison connections

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The Capital Times

From afar, Patrick Herb wasn’t sure what to expect from the ESPN2 color analyst for the Wisconsin men’s basketball team’s late December game at the University of California in Berkeley.

He had known Bill Walton to be gregarious and maybe off-topic on the broadcasts. But he was pleasantly surprised with how much the former UCLA star put into his pre-game preparation.

Dairy cows cut the cheese, UW-Madison researchers cut the emissions

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The Capital Times

There’s a farm in the little town of Arlington, 20 miles north of Madison, that looks and smells like any other Wisconsin dairy operation. Its 550 cows are milked twice daily, once before dawn and again in the afternoon, like they are at thousands of dairy farms across the state. 

But at this farm — the University of Wisconsin’s Agricultural Research Station — when a cow eats, gets milked and burps, a data point is created. That data collection is helping researchers at UW-Madison adapt Wisconsin’s herd to the challenges of climate change. 

Hidden recession? Mental illness costs the U.S. a staggering $282 billion annually, shows new study

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Fortune

Mental illness isn’t just a pervasive problem in the U.S.—one in five adults experience it each year, per the nonprofit National Alliance on Mental Illness—it’s also an expensive one, costing the economy $282 billion annually. This, according to a new study by economists at Yale and Columbia universities and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Organic cheese and free lunch for all: what the US can learn from other nations about better school meals

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The Guardian

Providing exceptional school meals for millions of US children won’t come without a collective struggle, and our analysis of school food politics around the world reminds us to raise the bar in what we’re fighting for.

-Jennifer Gaddis is an associate professor in civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Investors, worried they can’t beat lawmakers in stock market, copy them instead

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Washington Post

Around the same time, James Kardatzke, an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, started scraping up congressional data. In 2020, he launched one of the first websites that tracked trades disclosed by Pelosi, whose venture capitalist husband, Paul, is a successful investor. (The former speaker has long maintained that she does not personally own any stock and has no knowledge of or involvement with her husband’s investments.

Seating changes impact Wisconsin men’s basketball fans

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Wisconsin State Journal

In emails and communications that ticket customers shared with BadgerExtra, Wisconsin informed some fans with men’s basketball seats in the lower level, particularly on the sidelines near the court, that their location won’t be available in the same setup starting in the 2024-25 season.

Internships are linked to better employment outcomes for college graduates – but there aren’t enough for students who want them

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The Conversation

Are there enough paid internships?No. Only two out of three internships offer compensation for students at four-year colleges. The situation is worse for students at two-year institutions, where 50% of internships are unpaid.

  1. Matthew T. Hora

    Associate Professor of Adult and Higher Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison

    Hee Song Project Assistant at the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Smartphone use can actually help teenagers boost their mood

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New Scientist

Now, Matt Minich and Megan Moreno at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have gone further, showing a positive association with smartphones. They enlisted 253 children in the US to take part in a six-day study, sending them 30 short surveys via text at random times between 9am and 9pm.

Periodical cicadas won’t be coming to Madison — here’s why

Posted on
The Capital Times

Still, this is a unique phenomenon that people in the Badger State won’t experience again until 2041. Known on social media as the “Wisconsin Bug Guy” P.J. Liesch is particularly excited about the swarms of cicadas that have already started to pop up and make noise here.

“I turn 40 years old next year, and I have not seen these yet with my own eyes,” said Liesch, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab.

Washington Post said it had the Alito flag story 3 years ago and chose not to publish

Posted on
The Hill

Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, said it was a bad call. And, she added, if she were at the Post she would have argued for the paper to be more forthcoming. While Martha-Ann Alito has the right to her own opinions, a flag like that shouldn’t be on display outside the home of a U.S. Supreme Court justice, Culver said. “It’s a flag that flies in the face of the neutrality that the Supreme Court is supposed to be observing,” she said.

Don’t Let The ‘Woke’ Narrative Blind Us To Higher Ed’s Contributions

Posted on
Forbes

In fact, there is data showing a lack of overt bias. A study of the University of North Carolina system, for example, found that direct discussion of politics comes up in only 8 percent of classes. In the University of Wisconsin system, “students reported substantially more frequent encouragement than discouragement of exploring a variety of viewpoints.”

Opinion: I’m a millennial mom. Why are you looking at me to fix the birth-rate problem?

Posted on
MarketWatch

“In order to make childbearing seem like an easy option, having more kids an easy option, you’d have to go even further than many of the states that have strong social-safety-net systems,” said Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin and the author of the forthcoming “Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.”

DACA immigrants in the Madison area live with fear and uncertainty

Posted on
The Capital Times

Dreamers live under a microscope; any mistake could jeopardize their status, said Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

“Someone who has DACA is already incredibly accomplished and has had no errors in their ways for their entire life because they basically have been forced to have a perfect life — in academics and employment and with their character — in order to qualify for DACA,” Barbato said.

Act 10 is back in court. Here are the stakes for Wisconsin unions

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The Capital Times

“I think you can show what has happened to real wages for teachers in Wisconsin when they’re not allowed to bargain over wages,” said Michael Childers, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who researches organized labor issues. “And what does that do to every other aspect in terms of teacher turnover and the ability to recruit and retain people to come to the profession. We’re 10 years in, there’s enough data.”

“Success is the ticket to the next challenge.” Students celebrate hard work, milestones at annual Mann Scholars Celebration

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Madison365

Mann Scholar Alum Remarks were given by Dr. Alisa King-Klemperer, the first ever Mann Scholar to get her doctorate degree. She is now the communications manager at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC), a scientific center for astroparticle research located at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

Abortion a risky campaign topic for GOP candidates, experts say

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The Capital Times

These are the voters whom Republican candidates risk losing if they take a strong stance on abortion bans, according to Mariel Barnes, a political scientist at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“This presents a problem for the Republican Party and Republican candidates,” Barnes told the Cap Times. “Because they’re trying to satisfy this more extreme wing in the party that wants to restrict abortion under almost all circumstances, when it is actually very unpopular with the center of the party, and you need the center of the party to get elected.”

Carol Enid Frykenberg

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Wisconsin State Journal

In 1970 she was employed by the School of Music at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, serving as Undergraduate Advisor in Music Education, and for ten years, from 1976 to 1986, also as administrator of the Summer Music Clinics for junior and senior high school students. She retired from the university in 1998.