As the verdant hills of Wakanda are secretly enriched with the fictional metal vibranium in “Black Panther,” your average backyard also has hidden superpowers: Its soil can absorb and store a significant amount of carbon from the air, unexpectedly making such green spaces an important asset in the battle against climate change.
Donna Shalala jumped into the political arena Monday, filing paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for the U.S. House seat being vacated by retiring Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
When thinking about how to revive economically lagging regions, especially in the Rust Belt, I often talk about the importance of universities. Big, high-quality research universities have been essential for creating technology clusters in Austin, Raleigh and San Diego. But even small colleges in rural areas can have big benefits for the surrounding area.
The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point plans to address “fiscal challenges” by expanding some academic programs and discontinuing others, it announced Monday. Tenured faculty positions are at stake, with possible layoffs occurring by 2020.
“We’re not trying to suggest that peer review is flawed, but that there might be some room to be innovative to improve the process,” co-author Elizabeth Pier, a postdoctoral fellow in educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said in a news release. Among other changes, Pier and her co-authors recommend a modified lottery system, in which weaker proposals are eliminated and the remaining applications are funded at random.
“There are no binding laws or agreements that require the management of space debris,” said Lisa Ruth Rand, who studies the histories of science and technologies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Along with universities like New York University and Princeton, the University of Wisconsin will launch classes on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to train students in the nascent but potentially transformative industry.
Noted: Four universities reported that zero percent of students had cars on campus: Georgetown University in the District of Columbia; Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey; and the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Fights broke out between white supremacists and protesters Monday as anti-fascist activists, students and community members converged in and around Michigan State University to counter a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer.
Noted: “The fact of the matter is that when you artificially sublimate the unpaid labor and don’t give them a fair share and force all the money to a small cohort of the population — the coaches and the administrators and the apparel companies and the television networks — a black market is going to take place,” said Zach Bohannon, a former basketball player at the University of Wisconsin. “This black market is being shown now, in public. But it was already there. There’s an imbalance there that the NCAA doesn’t want the public to know.”
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point is planning a sweeping elimination of academic majors in order to address a $4.5 million dollar structural deficit.
The nine top producers of undergraduate-alumni Peace Corps volunteers in the 2017 fiscal year were all state flagship institutions. The smallest colleges that produced the most Peace Corps volunteers that year were Agnes Scott College, in Georgia, and Cornell College, in Iowa. Both had fewer than 1,000 undergraduate students in the fall of 2016. UW is #1.
Mental health visits at Boynton Health this semester are up 18 percent compared to the fall.
The federal budget proposal for 2019 calls for defunding the College Sea Grant Program for the second year in a row, despite the threat of a bipartisan pushback from lawmakers in the Great Lakes states.
Noted: Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison associate law professor who specializes in correctional policy, said DOC is in a difficult position when it knows some, or even many, of the alerts it receives are caused by equipment malfunctions.
In early 2017, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin introduced the idea of requiring an internship or “hands-on work experience” to obtain a bachelor’s degree in the 26-campus University of Wisconsin system. This was an unsurprising development for many of us in Wisconsin. For the past several years, the governor has championed the view that a “skills gap” was stifling the state’s economy, primarily because, he has said, the higher-education system was out of touch with the needs of the business community.
Today was supposed to be a last-ditch deadline for Congress to act if it wanted to keep the protections provided by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in place. Two nationwide court injunctions blocking the Trump administration from ending DACA are temporarily keeping much of the program alive, but with no legislative solution in sight, uncertainty about the long-term prospects for the hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers who have benefited from the program continues.
The University of Wisconsin System projects 2,276 students will be enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha and the University of Wisconsin-Washington County in the fall of 2018, a decrease of more than 25 percent over the past decade.
Noted: “Kansas is the site of the major showdown on this issue, and Kris Kobach has been such a prominent advocate for concerns about noncitizens voting and other fraudulent behavior. He essentially led the Trump commission on vote fraud and integrity and he has been a lightning rod — which makes him a hero to people on his side of the argument in trying to tighten up voting laws, but makes him kind of a mischief-maker and a distraction for people who are on the other side,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The state of Wisconsin is facing a shortage of nurses due to an aging population, and the University of Wisconsin (UW) School of Nursing wants to help fill that gap with a new accelerated nursing program.
When the London School of Economics launched its department of management, the university’s most senior academic decided not to offer an MBA as the flagship qualification.
Noted: This year is the 25th annual Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists conference, just one of the extraordinary projects Davis launched during his roughly four decades at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. After his recent retirement, I started feeling Davis’s tenure and his dedication—to education, justice, racial equity and healing and, especially, young people—was and continues to be underappreciated.
A group of American psychologists are trying to find how people will respond to smiles with different implicit meanings, either warm or mean.
Wisconsin may be open for business, but young people are taking theirs elsewhere.
Noted: Elaborating on the timing of the publication, Katherine A. Magnuson, a poverty researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and an editor of the double-issue journal, told Colorlines, “We felt it was important to bring together a set of fresh ideas that would engage with what we have learned about anti-poverty policies of the past in order to generate positive and innovative solutions.”
In a recent study, two UW-Madison researchers conducted an experiment having subjects play a virtual reality version of the arcade game Pong. Wearing an Oculus Rift headset, the participants were tasked with whacking a virtual ball with a virtual paddle.
Ten days ago, University of Wisconsin junior Marsha Howard found herself the target of an elected official, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) directed his constituents to “exprress outrage” at the women’s basketball player for not standing during the national anthem during Wisconsin’s road game against Iowa.
Noted: The two satellites — part of the so-called GOES-R series — are a much needed upgrade to NOAA’s old weather satellites, which sport 1990s hardware. “Very few people still have a tube television in their house; they have a nice flat screen TV,” says Jordan Gerth, a research meteorologist at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin. “So the old satellite was built on that tube television technology, and it really doesn’t provide a crisp image that a nice LCD or plasma screen TV provides today.”
Noted: “Not only do we have still a vibrant local market for organic products including community supported agriculture, farmers markets and farm stands, but we also see increased interest in our grocery stores procuring local organic product to meet consumer demands,” said Erin Silva, assistant professor of organic and sustainable agriculture research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Nonetheless, local officials almost always decide that rebuilding makes sense despite the risk that the houses will burn again. Anu Kramer, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, looked at what happened to 3,000 buildings destroyed by wildfires in California from 1970 to 1999. She found that 94 percent were rebuilt. The result is that fires consistently—and predictably—destroy homes in the same place.
Noted: “It’s opened up the ability to measure head impact exposure in sports other than football,” says Dr. Brian Stemper, an associate professor in the joint department of biomechanical engineering at Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin. Earlier this year, Stemper’s team started using the Prevent mouthguard to measure head impact exposure in NCAA Division III football players.
A national group led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder filed a lawsuit this week against Gov. Walker — for not calling special elections in two vacant legislative seats. WUWM’s Marti Mikkelson asked UW-Madison Political Science Professor David Canon if Walker’s decision was politically motivated.
Wisconsin has always been home for Pat Richter.
A University of Wisconsin System attorney recommended UW-Superior leaders consult with faculty and staff over its plans to suspend 25 programs last fall, but the administration didn’t heed that advice.
MADISON, Wis (WMTV) — Carson Gulley and his wife Beatrice hosted the television show “What’s Cookin” on WMTV for nearly a decade and left behind a legacy as civil rights activists in Madison.
Members of the University of Wisconsin-Superior faculty union say they have obtained emails from the school’s administration that show established rules weren’t followed when two-dozen academic programs were suspended in October.
Noted: “The signature achievement of his 14 years as governor came in his third term — the ’Wisconsin Works’ welfare reform law,” says University of Wisconsin, Madison political scientist David Canon.
The UW-Madison Waisman Center is set to begin development on a “full-virus” vaccine for Ebola, an often fatal virus affecting thousands in Africa.
Before administrators at the University of Wisconsin at Superior shocked faculty members by cutting more than two dozen academic programs, the campus’s top leaders discussed how much action they could take without soliciting faculty input.
Noted: Dr. Margaret Schwarze, a surgeon and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said that older patients often don’t feel the financial pain of surgery because insurance pays most of the cost.
University of Wisconsin athletics officials have launched a study into safety and security policies in the aftermath of sexual assault allegations at Michigan State.
Esther Ngumbi says scientists should talk about their work in a way the public can understand. She joins Central Time to share why that’s important in an age of misinformation, and how scientists can change their frame of thinking.
Noted: Ian Baird, an associate professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that in both Cambodia and Laos the high prices paid for precious hardwoods has also caused villagers to become heavily involved in illegal logging.
Quoted: “Many black folks came north not to continue their jobs as a farmer, but to move into the rust belt and fill the factories,” said Monica M. White, an assistant professor of environmental justice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the forthcoming book “Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed the Trump administration a setback over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.
Two weeks ago, Zach Xu drove to his hometown of Parkland, Fla. Few had heard of the sunny suburb until Valentine’s Day, when 17 people were gunned down at Xu’s former high school.
When his children were small, Irwin Goldman wanted to give them a beet to snack on — a beet so pretty and swirled with colors, so juicy and delicious, that they’d crunch on it raw.
A recent lunch with three Wisconsin offensive linemen featured some of the great food debates of our time: Does a Kobe beef patty really contain ground beef imported from Japan? Who serves Chicago’s best deep-dish pizza? Are cheese curds better than mozzarella sticks?
Christy Clark-Pujara, Ph.D., associate professor of history for the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, illuminated the history of black male suffrage in Wisconsin at the State Historical Society on Feb. 20.
Noted: “No one had heard of Kevin Nicholson, but suddenly this gift was available,” Barry Burden, who oversees an election research center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said of the Uihlein money. “I doubt that Kevin Nicholson would be a candidate — at least not a serious one — if he didn’t have the Uihlein family backing.”
Oversight of Wisconsin Public Radio and TV will return to the University of Wisconsin–Madison July 1 as part of a reorganization of the statewide university system.
What if the enticing aroma of freshly brewed coffee and tea could do more than just excited the senses? What if every cup of joe meant a little bit more freedom for people around the globe? What if your afternoon macchiato meant more opportunities for those who need them the most?
Visitors will learn about the “inner beliefs,” so to speak, of architect Wright, and how his personal designing doctrine influenced his design of homes that are spread throughout the country. Three houses that have been called “Wright homes” are in Stark County, although details about those homes are not a part of the exhibition, which was curated by Virginia Terry Boyd, emerita professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and installed at McKinley museum by Kenney. The exhibition was organized by International Arts & Artists in cooperation with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
Noted: “Neanderthals appear to have had a cultural competence that was shared by modern humans,” John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who wasn’t involved with the study, tells National Geographic. “They were not dumb brutes, they were recognizably human.”
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point is looking at cutting academic majors and laying off faculty to deal with a $4.5 million structural deficit.
If you look to your left as you walk into the School of Human Ecology on the UW Madison campus, you will see something wondrous in the Design Gallery window. The exhibit is called “Whirling Return of the Ancestors: Egúngún Arts of the Yorùbá in Africa and Beyond.” The garment in the window is worn in what’s called a Masquerade.
Noted: Barry Gerhart, acting dean and senior associate dean for faculty and research at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, to interim dean of the school.
Noted: The findings will likely seem controversial, since the idea that men and women have different inherent abilities is often used as a reason, by some, to argue we should forget trying to recruit more women into the stem fields. But, as the University of Wisconsin gender-studies professor Janet Shibley Hyde, who wasn’t involved with the study, put it to me, that’s not quite what’s happening here.
On 4 July 2003, beachgoers at Warren Dunes State Park, in the US state of Michigan, were enjoying America’s Independence Day holiday when a fast-moving line of thunderstorms blew in from Lake Michigan. They scurried for shelter, but the event passed so quickly it didn’t appear that their holiday was ruined. “In 15 minutes it was gone,” says civil engineer Alvaro Linares of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Universities such as Yale and MIT have no shortage of international applicants, but a STEM designation for an economics program unquestionably offers a recruiting edge. In a proposal to change the CIP code for its graduate economics program from the one for economics to the one for econometrics in 2016, the economics department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison cited competition from other programs that had the STEM designation. “This year, we have already had 6 instances of applicants to our terminal MS program declining our offer and accepting the offers [of] other terminal MS programs and the reason given is that the other programs offer a STEM designation,” says the proposal considered by the University Academic Planning Council in 2016.
