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Author: knutson4

Analysis finds summers are heating up nationwide, including in Wisconsin

Wisconsin Public Radio

The analysis is largely in line with the findings of Wisconsin’s Initiative on Climate Change Impacts, according to Jonathan Patz, a professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We’re seeing more nighttime warming than daytime warming, which is a problem for health,” Patz said. “Because if you don’t have cooling temperatures in the nighttime, it’s more dangerous, and there are more people at risk from heat waves.”

UW-Madison computer science prepares to relocate, meet ‘AI moment’

The Cap Times

When he looks at Morgridge Hall, though, he’s filled with excitement. The newly built facility will soon house UW-Madison’s School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences, or CDIS.

Arpaci-Dusseau recently took over as director of the rapidly growing school. Enrollment nearly doubled from the 2018-19 academic year to about 6,200 students in 2024-2025. The school also houses the university’s two largest majors: computer sciences, followed by data science.

51 new books for summer reading in 2025

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Saving Hearts and Killing Rats: Karl Paul Link and the Discovery of Warfarin” (HenschelHAUS Publishing), by Doug Moe. University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemist led the team that transformed spoiled sweet clover hay into both lifesaving medication and deadly rat poison. In his spare time, this man with strong opinions liked to spar with authority and rivals.

Lawmakers unveil bold plan to build game-changing energy device in unexpected location: ‘An incredible opportunity for the future’

The Cool Down

A group of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been working with local Realta Fusion to make fusion energy a reality, but they’re not the only ones, according to a report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Three of the 45 companies working on fusion are already based in Wisconsin, and new bills supporting the advancement of this promising clean energy technology could draw even more to the area.

Erika Meitner reads Philip Levine with Kevin Young

The New Yorker

Erika Meitner joins Kevin Young to read “What Work Is,” by Philip Levine, and her own poem “To Gather Together.” Meitner’s books include “Useful Junk” and “Holy Moly Carry Me,” which won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She is currently a Mandel Institute Cultural Leadership Program Fellow, and she’s the director of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Where does Wisconsin’s ‘Jump Around’ rank among top college football gameday traditions?

Badgers Wire -- USA Today

n 247Sports’ latest ranking of college football’s top 10 gameday traditions, the Badgers’ famous “Jump Around” landed at No. 2, falling behind only Virginia Tech’s “Enter Sandman” entrance theme. Past that top duo, Chief Osceola’s spear plant at Florida State secured the No. 3 spot, Ohio State’s “dotting the ‘I'” secured the No. 4 position and Auburn’s practice of rolling the oak trees at Toomer’s Corner took the No. 5 ranking.

Badger sports prepare for new era of paid college athletes

The Cap Times

Chris McIntosh, UW-Madison’s athletics director, has called revenue-sharing with the students long overdue. But the settlement would mark another seismic shift in college sports, said Matt Banker, who runs MB Sports Consulting, is a senior adviser to CCHA Sports Law, and teaches an NIL workshop at Marquette University Law School. 

Here’s what we know, and don’t know, about the shootings at UW-Platteville that left 2 students dead

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Two University of Wisconsin-Platteville female students died May 19 of gunshot wounds, the university announced May 20.

The university announced May 20 that Kelsie Martin, of Beloit, died from a gunshot wound, and Hallie Helms, of Baraboo, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at Wilgus Hall, a dormitory.

Community still processing UW-Platteville shooting that left two students dead

Wisconsin Examiner

More details are emerging about a shooting at UW-Platteville Monday which left two students dead. In a statement released Tuesday, the university said the UW-Platteville Police Department had responded to a call at Wilgus Hall, a student residence hall, for a “disturbance.” When officers arrived, they found two individuals with gunshot wounds.

Expert: Cellcom outage highlights infrastructure issues in rural areas

NBC 26

A University of Wisconsin–Madison professor says the recent Cellcom outage may be exposing a larger problem: insufficient investment in communication infrastructure, particularly in rural regions.

Professor Parmesh Ramanathan, who teaches electrical and computer engineering, says many networks lack backup systems to keep services running when critical lines go down.

Wisconsin speech and hearing clinic helps transgender clients find their voice

Wisconsin Public Radio

At a time when gender-affirming care in Wisconsin is under fire, providers at a speech clinic are helping transgender clients find their voice.

“Our voice is [an] external representation of us,” Maia Braden, a speech-language pathologist at the UW Speech and Hearing Clinic told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “Anytime our voice doesn’t match who we feel we are, it can be extremely distressing.”

Survey finds Wisconsin farmers value sustainable practices

Wisconsin Public Radio

A recent survey of Wisconsin’s farmers found that 56 percent of them believe climate change is happening. Another 26 percent think it isn’t happening, and 18 percent are unsure.

Michael Bell, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who helped conduct the study, said attitudes and behaviors don’t always match up. Bell found encouragement in how the farmers are acting, not their beliefs. The same survey asked farmers if they are practicing any of 15 different sustainable agricultural practices.

Reagan admin official who helped America defeat communism dead at age 83

Fox News

Ledeen was born in Los Angeles in 1941 and authored numerous books on national security, including “Perilous Statecraft: An Insider’s Account of the Iran-Contra Affair.” He earned a Ph.D. in history and philosophy from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His academic advisor at Wisconsin was the prominent historian George Mosse, who fled Nazi Germany because of antisemitism.

Wisconsin commemorates 50th anniversary of Hmong resettlement

Wisconsin Public Radio

Mai See Thao, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that these resolutions are “long overdue.”

“Recognizing Hmong-Lao veterans is really important because they have never received the kinds of recognition that they’ve needed, given the fact that they supported the U.S. as proxy soldiers,” she said.

Wisconsin is at the center of emerging scientific field with answers to ‘nature vs. nurture’

Wisconsin Public Radio

With the study of social genomics — or sociogenomics — scientists argue that genes and environment truly coexist and influence another throughout a person’s lifetime.

University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor Silvia Helena Barcellos said social genomics really just got started roughly 10 years ago, around the same time that scientists decoded the human DNA sequence and began to better understand it.

Packers, Bucks and some of Wisconsin’s biggest businesses wade into UW funding debate

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Nearly 800 business leaders and organizations have signed a letter urging state lawmakers to increase funding for the University of Wisconsin System.

The letter pulls a page from UW-Madison’s playbook. The university in 2023 gathered signatures from dozens of business leaders who supported an engineering building Republicans held up in the previous state budget and shared their support in a statewide campaign.

Elissa’s journey: A young mom’s relentless battle for life after colorectal cancer hit

USA Today

As Elissa and Russell said their vows, Xu and Cain were working to build HistoSonics, the company they’d formed in 2009 with Tim Hall, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and J. Brian Fowlkes, a professor of radiology and biomedical engineering at U-M.

Their company created the Edison System, a device with a robotic arm that delivers precision histotripsy treatments using a specialized, high-powered ultrasound transducer through a tub of water.

I joined Meta during its ‘year of efficiency.’ I used 4 strategies to get promoted and grow my salary by $300,000 in 2 years.

Business Insider

In the summer before I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I had the opportunity to intern with Meta. I loved the scale of the projects the company worked on, and I returned to the company full time as a software engineer in 2023 — Meta’s “year of efficiency.”

When should your child stop using a pacifier?

CNN

“Ideally, if it’s not a huge challenge, trying to see (the) use of thumb sucking or pacifier use stop by 18 months is a good thing, but I wouldn’t get too worked up about it if it was still happening at age two, maybe even three,” said Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health who is also a pediatrician and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Early Childhood.

Permission to be ill

aeon

Part of this path to acceptance was to get out in front of audiences and talk again – slurred speech, flailing tongue and all. A pivotal moment came at an interdisciplinary conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall of 2023, about a year to the day that I began suffering from symptoms. I was terrified of embarrassing myself, but I walked to the podium and, before I began, openly and honestly described my condition to the audience.

UW-Madison graduate Manu Raju got his first scoop at The Badger Herald

Spectrum News

Manu Raju was a Badger who broke a legendary story in 1999 before he ascended to CNN as an anchor and the network’s chief congressional correspondent.

On Wednesday morning, Raju met a small group of people with Wisconsin ties at The Monocle, a restaurant just steps away from the U.S. Capitol, for a breakfast put on by WisPolitics. That’s where he told the room about his first scoop.

Conservation gardening, and the search for exoplanets

Wisconsin Public Radio

Astronomers have identified hundreds of exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than our own – but very few exist in habitable zones that could support life. We talk to Thomas Beatty, an exoplanet researcher and collaborator with The Wisconsin Center for Origins Research, and Jim Lattis, director of the UW Space Place, both at UW-Madison.

Wisconsin GOP lawmakers praise Trump order restricting funds for ‘gain-of-function’ research

Wisconsin Public Radio

Still, other researchers argue broad restrictions on gain-of-function research could stifle studies that could ultimately protect people from risky viruses. The University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin testified against the bill last year.

“Gain-of-function experiments allow investigators to understand the complex nature of host-pathogen interactions that underlie transmission, infection, and pathogenesis and can help attribute biological function to genes and proteins,” a UW-Madison spokesperson said in a statement to WPR.

UW-Madison conducts a wide range of health and disease studies, including research that helps track viruses like avian influenza. The university is assessing how the order and related NIH guidance might affect research on campus, the spokesperson said.

As Cassie shares graphic abuse details in Diddy trial, are we all asking the wrong question?

USA Today

In a 2024 study conducted by Chloe Grace Hart, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she found that Americans were less likely to say they believed a Black woman describing a sexual harassment experience compared to a white women describing the same thing.

“That suggests that when it comes to sexual violence, Black women survivors face a particularly steep uphill battle to be believed,” Hart previously told USA TODAY.

A trove of Ice Age fossils buried in a Wyoming cave is rewriting our understanding of prehistoric animals

Smithsonian Magazine

“The sediment deposition gets really complex,” David M. Lovelace, a geoscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led a comprehensive study of the cave’s stratigraphy, explains. “Sediment that’s washing in can leave little pockets of deposition in one area. Then the inlet or the stream will shift slightly, so it deposits in another area.” Sometimes a fresh stream cuts through older sediment to drop in new surface material. “It literally forms almost a new cave through the old sediment, so you can deposit younger material under older, previously existing material. The complexities become outstanding.”

A ‘tofu-dreg’ edifice: Most of China’s official economic data is probably fake

The Hill

Dr. Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin, an expert in China’s demographics and prominent critic of that country’s one-child policy, has been digging into the details of China’s population claims — and what he has found is not good.

For starters, Yi believes that China’s population is overestimated by at least 130 million — more than one-third of the U.S. population. In a recent monograph, Yi details the many discrepancies buried within China’s current and past census data.

Told to teach more with no extra pay, Carthage College faculty vote no-confidence in president

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Nationally, there’s been a flurry of no-confidence votes at universities in recent years, including at two other Wisconsin institutions.

University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh faculty expressed their disapproval in Chancellor Andrew Leavitt’s leadership last school year. Marquette University professors voted no-confidence in President Kimo Ah Yun last fall.

Federal cuts threaten Wisconsin farm safety center for children, rural communities

Wisconsin Public Radio

“Without the continued research that’s made possible with federal funding, it would set us back,” said John Shutske, an agricultural safety and health specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’ve seen over the last several decades a pretty dramatic decrease overall in our farm fatality rate. And while I think [the number of deaths] would probably plateau, I don’t think we would be able to continue to make the kind of progress that we’ve had.”

One year later: Pro-Palestinian protesters reflect on 2024 campus encampment

WKOW - Channel 27

Library Mall on UW-Madison’s campus looks much different than it did one year ago as pro-Palestinian protests were stationed there for nearly two weeks.

Protesters were demanding that UW disclose its investments and divest from companies that profit from the war in Gaza. They met with university leaders over the span of their encampment to reach an agreement.

Wisconsin education program helps older adults manage prescriptions

Wisconsin Public Radio

Almost 15 years ago, professor Betty Chewning of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy was struck by an idea. Instead of focusing only on helping students learn how to speak with patients, what if she could help teach patients, as well?

Her idea became Med Wise Rx, an education program aimed at teaching older Wisconsinites to better communicate with pharmacists and safely manage multiple prescriptions.