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Author: knutson4

Rising housing costs could be pricing people out of college in Wisconsin

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

We also found something we did not expect: a gender gap in how students respond to rising housing prices. University enrollment among male students drops sharply as housing costs rise. For female students, the pattern is different. In some cases, female enrollment actually increases, perhaps because women see education as a long-term investment worth making, even in tough times. But when tuition and housing costs rise together, even that resilience begins to falter.

Cracking down on fake emotional support, service animals among notable bills from May

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

This bill would require the University of Wisconsin System to contract with a vendor to provide virtual mental health services for students, beyond traditional business hours. Campuses have already utilized telehealth, lawmakers note.

“Telehealth services have proven to be effective in shortening waiting times to see a provider, and allow patients to receive care at their convenience,” bill authors wrote.

Trump cuts lead to layoffs at College Possible Wisconsin. It’s turning to AI to help fill gap

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The College Possible coaches working in Wisconsin were among more than 34,000 people affected by billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, which made sweeping cuts to AmeriCorps in late April. AmeriCorps is a federal agency with bipartisan support for deploying young people across the U.S. to work on community service projects.

The US academic partnership with China, under strain for years, faces its biggest threat

Associated Press

“I do not feel welcome anymore,” said Cao, a student of cognitive psychology at the University of Wisconsin, who was waiting at Seattle’s airport Thursday to board a flight home to China.

Cao spent eight years in the U.S. and once dreamed of staying as a professor. “Now it seems like that dream is falling apart,” he said. “It’s a good time to jump ship and think about what I can give back to my own country.”

‘Hippies have never gotten their due’: What to see at S.F.’s new Counterculture Museum

San Francisco Chronicle

Czeslawski is on a gap year after graduating from the University of Wisconsin. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life so I came to San Francisco for the first time, for inspiration,” she said.  “Anyone who comes here needs to set aside at least an hour or two,” added Czeslawki. “I’m really excited to look through the book collection. I’m looking for some Joan Didion.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will soon make final ruling on abortion. How did we get here?

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The 1849 law has been on hold since a lower court’s ruling in December 2023. The state then returned to its pre-Dobbs abortion laws, under which abortion is banned 20 weeks after “probable fertilization.”

“We’re just waiting for a final answer on that,” said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “The current state of the law has been that abortions are legal, subject to other laws we have in the state.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the US will begin revoking the visas of Chinese students

Associated Press

University of Wisconsin student Vladyslav Plyaka was planning to visit Poland to see his mother and renew his visa, but he doesn’t know when that will be possible now that visa appointments are suspended. He also doesn’t feel safe leaving the U.S. even when appointments resume.

“I don’t think I have enough trust in the system at this point,” said Plyaka, who came to the U.S. from Ukraine as an exchange student in high school and stayed for college. “I understand it probably is done for security measures, but I would probably just finish my education for the next two or three years and then come back to Ukraine.”

This judge’s journey from film school to the federal bench

Madison Magazine

Peterson wound up in graduate school at UW–Madison after deciding to pursue film studies.

“It’s what really interested me,” he says, and Peterson found a mentor and dissertation advisor in David Bordwell, the legendary UW film professor whom American film critic Roger Ebert called “our best writer on the cinema.”

It was an anxious moment when Peterson told his revered friend and mentor Bordwell that he was leaving film for the UW Law School.

Wisconsin Supreme Court suspends Dane County judge over ‘intemperate’ behavior

Wisconsin Public Radio

Although the process for handling judicial misconduct varies by state, it is “somewhat rare” for judges to be suspended in Wisconsin and across the nation, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

“[Nationwide] the overall judicial disciplinary process is sometimes critiqued from both sides as being overly lenient on judges or as being too harsh on judges,” Godar said. “It’s really difficult to strike this balance between accountability for judicial officers while wanting to preserve the independence of state courts and state judges.”

Dog park etiquette, Being a veterinarian

Wisconsin Public Radio

With more American households now having pets than children, demand for veterinarians is on the rise. Citing an increase for veterinarian job listings of 124 percent over the last three years, the employment website Indeed this year named being a vet their top job of 2025. We talk with veterinarian and clinical instructor Dr. Calico Schmidt of the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine about the joys and challenges of making a living caring for animals.

UW-Madison center sees promise in using psychedelics for addiction, PTSD, depression

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The UW–Madison Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances supports research and education into psychedelic drugs and related compounds. The idea is to learn how these psychedelic substances may help mood or behavior in ways other forms of therapy can sometimes fall short.

For the last 10 years, the center at UW-Madison has been part of a psychedelic renaissance in the science community, one that comes after decades of negative media attention stymied research and public perceptions.

We’re getting close to recreating the first step in evolution of life

New Scientist

“RNA nucleotide triplets serve very specific informatic functions in translation in all cells,” says Zachary Adam at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, meaning they are used to convey information. “This paper is interesting because it might point to a purely chemical role – a non-informatic function – for RNA nucleotide triplets that they could have served prior to the emergence of a living cell.”

Can bacteria serve as ‘microscopic miners’ of the metals we need?

Mother Jones

“We’re creating a new industrial paradigm at the intersection of biology and mining,” said Dennett, who earned a Ph.D in geosciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and went on to work at NASA’s astrobiology program and run data architecture for Amazon Web Services before founding Endolith. “Our goal is simple: reshape supply chains for the most important technology transitions of our lifetime.”

UW-Madison researcher discovers valuable chemical compound in engineered poplar trees

Channel 3000

A UW-Madison researcher has made a surprising discovery that could transform how we source important chemical compounds used in everyday products, moving from fossil fuels to trees.

Brian Fox, a biochemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has identified parahydroxybenzoate—a chemical compound used in medicine, cosmetics, and food products that’s normally taken from oil—in biochemically engineered poplar trees.

Report highlights increased concern for water quality, contaminants in Madison lakes

The Daily Cardinal

The report also included more detailed metrics and information on weather and climate drivers, phosphorus data, clarity and conservation practices. It used data collected by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology, the Dane County public health, land and water agencies and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, among other sources, as well as their own citizen science network called the LakeForecast monitoring network.

How Trump cuts are driving 4 major challenges at UW-Madison this year

The Cap Times

Wisconsin’s flagship state university is under pressure on a variety of fronts this spring, making it difficult to keep up with developments in the news.

As the Trump administration reshapes the federal government and its relationship with higher education, authorities in courtrooms, the state Capitol and university administration are also tackling big decisions that could affect campus life for years to come.

Country music is dominating Wisconsin’s summer concert season like never before in 2025

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

28: Years it’s been since Camp Randall Stadium at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has hosted a concert tour. Country superstar Morgan Wallen will end the drought June 28, then become the first artist ever to headline the stadium for two consecutive nights, with a second show on June 29.

Board needs to work with community to keep MPS Italian Immersion Program open

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

When I was a student at Rufus King, I took Spanish and Italian courses. Four years later, my younger brother Michael did the same.  After high school, I went on to study Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and studied abroad in Italy. After graduation, I used my Italian language skills and taught 4-year-old kindergarten at the Italian Immersion School during the 2008-2009 school year.

The internet is littered with advice. What’s it doing to your brain?

Vox

“Research has overwhelmingly found that advice is really beneficial, and that people tend to under-utilize advice, usually causing them to make lower quality decisions,” says Lyn van Swol, a professor of communication science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies advice and information-sharing in groups. The catch, she notes, is that most of that research looks at advice from one, two, or three other people, not dozens, hundreds, or thousands of strangers on TikTok: “It’s overwhelming — it’s like a fire hose of advice.”

Scientists have lost their jobs or grants in US cuts. Foreign universities want to hire them

Associated Press

Brandon Coventry never thought he would consider a scientific career outside the United States. But federal funding cuts and questions over whether new grants will materialize have left him unsure. While reluctant to leave his family and friends, he’s applied to faculty positions in Canada and France.

“I’ve never wanted to necessarily leave the United States, but this is a serious contender for me,” said Coventry, who is a postdoctoral fellow studying neural implants at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Everything you need to know about the ‘age-reversal’ supplement NAD+

Essence

According to Guarente, pellagra is characterized by what are known as the four Ds; dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and death. “Pellagra turned out to be a disease of NAD+ deficiency and the molecules that could prevent and/or cure it were termed vitamin B3s,” he says, which Conrad Elvehjem, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proved in 1937.

‘It does kind of make me the breadwinner’: stay-at-home mom charges husband $2,700 a week for household labor — sparking a debate on TikTok

Moneywise

Of course, not every household follows the traditional gender roles. But data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison finds that women still spend twice as many hours doing physical housework as their male partners.

It doesn’t stop there. Allison Daminger, an assistant professor of sociology, found in her research that in 80% of opposite-sex couples, women shoulder most of the cognitive labor — things like managing family calendars, planning meals and checking on homework.

National Spelling Bee champions say it set them up for success: ‘You attain a level of mastery’

Associated Press

Joanne Lagatta arrived at the University of Wisconsin in 1995 with a flawless academic record and an achievement on her resumé that she didn’t like to talk about — but that no other undergrad on the sprawling Madison campus could claim: Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.

The bee winner in 1991 at age 13, Lagatta nonetheless struggled adjusting to life outside her rural hometown of Clintonville, Wisconsin — until she got a push from a professor who was a devoted spelling-bee fan.

Harvard revokes tenure of embattled dishonesty researcher

Inside Higher Ed

Harvard University has revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a dishonesty researcher in the business school who was accused of fabricating data, WGBH reported.

The move follows an internal investigation into allegations raised two years ago by the blog Data Colada that Gino had co-authored four academic papers that revealed “evidence of fraud.” Investigators determined that Gino had “engaged in multiple instances of research misconduct” in those papers, manipulating data to support her hypotheses, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Democratic troubles revive debate over left-wing buzzwords

The Washington Post

Honestly, Democrats trip over themselves in an attempt to say exactly the right thing,” said Allison Prasch, who teaches rhetoric, politics and culture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Republicans maybe aren’t so concerned about saying exactly the right thing, so it may appear more authentic to some voters.”

She added: “Republicans have a willingness to paint with very broad brushstrokes, where Democrats are more concerned with articulating multiple perspectives. And, because of that, they can be hampered by the words and phrases they utilize.”

The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over humanity’s origins

The Guardian

Macchiarelli now brokered the publication of two of them on the widely read blog of John Hawks, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and longtime Sahelanthropus sceptic. In principle, to print images of someone else’s unpublished fossil was a clear breach of ethics. But then, Macchiarelli, Bergeret and Hawks reasoned, after Beauvilain’s article, the femur was no longer unpublished.

A big Trump administration cutback went nearly unnoticed

The Washington Post

Aaron Perry, a former University of Wisconsin police officer and founder of the Perry Family Free Clinic, said he saw firsthand how Black men were being left behind by the health-care system.

“I would always ask them … what could be different?” Perry said. “And that’s when they would tell me, ‘I’m homeless. I haven’t eaten. I have a heart condition. I don’t have medication.’”

5 myths about food expiration dates and best-by labels

The Washington Post

Kathy Glass, who recently retired as associate director at the Food Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said she respects “use-by” dates and other storage guidance (like an ideal fridge temperature) on refrigerated products, particularly those designed to be eaten cold.

“Many manufacturers have researched spoilage versus safety to determine those dates,” she said. On those keep-cold products, she said the phrase “use by” signals “they’ve done their studies to demonstrate that if you would use it by that particular date, and you kept it at a good refrigeration temperature, it should be safe.” Food should be refrigerated between 35 and 40 degrees, she said.

These world leaders went to Harvard before Trump’s foreign student ban

Bloomberg

Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, who won his mandate to lead the city-state with the ruling People’s Action Party earlier this month, received a master’s in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2004. He also earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan, respectively.

Environment 4 hours ago The Paris Agreement Target for Warming Still Won’t Protect Polar Ice Sheets

Mother Jones

“Coastal communities that are adapting to and preparing for future sea-level rise are largely adapting to the amount of sea-level rise that has already occurred,” said co-author Andrea Dutton, a geoscientist and sea level expert at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In a best-case scenario, she added, they are preparing for sea level rise at the current rate of a few millimeters per year, while the research suggests that rate will double within decades.