Steve Vavrus is a senior scientist at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. On Jan. 17, he joined WPR’s “The Morning Show” to explain the causes of lakes freezing later.
A group of people, not affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, displayed a swastika and chanted racist words outside of a campus dorm Sunday night, chancellor Corey King said.
A $150 million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be used by UW-Madison to fund nationwide research that investigates the neurobiology of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
Dr. Nate Chin is the medical director for that study which will involve all 37 of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers in the U.S.
University of Wisconsin-River Falls students are returning from winter break while the school grapples with how to address a mental health crisis on campus that’s mirrored across the country.
Julie Stamm researches CTE at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and authored a book called, “The Brain on Youth Sports: The Science, the Myths, and the Future.” During a recent interview with WPR’s “Central Time,” Stamm said the new Boston University study adds to other research undermining a misconception that CTE is only a concern for professional athletes.
“We know that’s not the case,” said Stamm, a clinical assistant professor in the university’s Department of Kinesiology.
Firing a chancellor can be executed swiftly.
In the case of former University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow, it took just eight days from the time the UW System said it learned of his appearance in porn videos to the closed-door meeting when the UW Board of Regents ousted him as chancellor.
With the new year, millions of people resolve to diet, exercise more or make changes in other aspects of their lives, including personal finances. For most of us, personal finance-related resolutions are a combination of spending less, saving more and maybe paying off some debts. Some of the newfound attention to our financial outlook may even stem from an expensive holiday season that just wrapped up. But the new year offers new opportunities to get on track.
Written by J. Michael Collins, the Fetzer Family Chair in Consumer and Personal Finance at UW-Madison and a professor in the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the School of Human Ecology.
Tuition at Marquette University now tops $50,000 per year.
Marquette announced the new rates for the 2024-25 school year this week. An online statement pointed to inflation, increasing energy and health care costs, and other economic pressures for the 5% increase, bringing undergraduate tuition to $50,070.
A third University of Wisconsin System campus will join two others already slated to end in-person instruction at the end of this school year.
UW-Green Bay will suspend face-to-face classes at its Marinette campus after the spring semester concludes, moving to an entirely online campus come fall. Chancellor Mike Alexander insists, however, this isn’t the end.
The rising trajectory of Snapshot Wisconsin could make it the largest such wildlife monitoring project in the world, said University of Wisconsin Professor of Forest and Wildlife Ecology Phil Townsend.
Preparations are well underway for the 2024 Republican National Convention, which will be held at Fiserv Forum from July 15-18. A big part of those preparations revolves around public safety and security.
Mounted patrol officers from the Milwaukee and Madison Police departments, as well as the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin State Fair Police departments, are getting ready for the big event.
New research finds that early exposure to lead pipes can reduce an American man’s lifespan by an average of almost three months. Those are the findings from a paper co-authored by a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The results are part of a broader body of research examining conditions in childhood that may affect the longevity of Americans.
Jason Fletcher, a professor with the university’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, said researchers compared U.S. Census records of men living in cities that had lead pipes to those living in cities that used non-lead materials in the early 20th century. Fletcher said they then linked the names and addresses of those individuals to their death records from 1975 to 2005. Fletcher said the paper did not examine women because of difficulties with linking data due to name changes when women married.
“It’s a really unusual dynamic where neither party has a competitive primary process this year,” said Eleanor Powell, associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I’m hard pressed to think of a cycle where there was this much lack of interest or competitiveness.”
There will be other races and measures on the primary ballot. Some municipalities will see elections for county boards or local school funding measures, said Barry Burden, director of the UW-Madison Elections Research Center.
“So even if the presidential race doesn’t look competitive, hopefully there’ll be other things that’ll draw voters out,” Burden said.
Madison’s population will still be less than half that of Milwaukee in 2040, according to official population projections by the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2013. The 2040 projections estimated a Madison population of 281,150, compared with 627,400 for Milwaukee.
A regional study from 2022 projected larger growth figures for Madison, with estimates of 306,521 for 2035 and 345,675 for 2050. That’s still much smaller than the state’s largest city.
On Wednesday, Jan. 17 Interim Chancellor Betsy Morgan addressed a room of 600 University of Wisconsin-La Crosse staff and faculty in her opening remarks for the upcoming spring semester.
The “Joy Fest”, titled by Morgan, was held in the Bluffs Ballroom in the Student Union and offered standing room only as the event commenced with a performance from members of the UWL arts program.
Knowing what TV shows a dog likes could help assess their vision, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s (UW-Madison) School of Veterinary Medicine.
In the study, researchers sought to determine what factors influenced a dog’s interest in engaging with videos, said Freya Mowat, veterinary ophthalmologist and professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine’s department of surgical sciences. Those factors included age and vision.
Luke Fickell has made two changes to his coaching staff since Wisconsin finished 7-6 in Fickell’s first full season with the Badgers. He will soon have to make a third.
A source confirmed an ESPN report Thursday that Colin Hitschler, UW’s co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach, is joining Kalen DeBoer’s staff at Alabama.
Resources to start a small business in Madison include: University of Wisconsin-Small Business Development Center partners with banks, chambers of commerce, economic development organizations to support small business owners.
Nearly 15 percent of Wisconsin children ages 2 to 17 years are obese, according to data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health. The data show rates of obesity continue to climb until middle age, peaking at 47 percent of residents age 55 to 64.
“(Nicotine) literally alters the makeup of the brain as it’s developing,” explained Chris Hollenback, the communications director for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. “You have these receptors saying ‘more, more, more.’ When you’re under the age of 17, it’s easier to get addicted and harder to quit.”
“Some of these programs are focused on racially minoritized students,” said Taylor Odle, an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The hallmark is the Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant and it gives students $2,500 per year. What is not mentioned, I think, in a lot of dialogue, is that they not only have to qualify as a racially minoritized student, but they also have to qualify on the basis of financial need.”
Written by Dr. Jonathan Patz, the Vilas Distinguished Professor & John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute & Department of Population Health Sciences.
Steve Vavrus, director of the Wisconsin State Climatology Office, said Wisconsin tied 1987 to become the fourth-warmest year on record since 1895. The statewide average temperature for the year was 46.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which was roughly 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the long-term average. Only 2012, 1998 and 1931 were hotter.
Data from UW Health urgent care centers indicates a 4.5 percent increase from 2022 in visits for acute respiratory infections during a 9-week period spanning June and July last year.
Claire Allen runs the office at UW-Madison every Tuesday from 10 to 4. She’s been staffing it for nine months as a housing counseling specialist.
“For a lot students, their first time renting is in college,” Allen said. “Lease questions, roommate conflicts, security deposit questions, options to end a lease if it’s not working out,” Allen said. “Questions about landlords not addressing repairs, that’s a big one.”
Although the pandemic exacerbated many of Wisconsin’s workforce issues, labor force participation has been steadily decreasing across the state since its peak in the 1990’s. Today, at the Regional economic Conditions Conference hosted by the Federal reserve Bank of Minneapolis, UW Madison economist Matthew Kures said the age of workers has been a large factor in the decline.
“We simply have fewer workers of working age and prime working age than we had a decade ago or two decades ago,” said Kures.
UW-Madison political science professor and Elections Research Center director Barry Burden details the plan and timeline set by the Wisconsin Supreme Court for creating new legislative district maps.
So far this decade, the state has experienced about a quarter of the population growth it saw between 2010 and 2020. But the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in deaths that altered the state’s trajectory, said David Egan-Robertson, demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory.
“It actually may be a case that population will grow a little bit faster because there will be fewer deaths going forward in the state,” Egan-Robertson said.
Democrat Gov. Tony Evers told the Daily Cardinal, the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he supports the bill to lower tuition for DACA recipients.
College completion rates for low-income students and students of color remain dismal. About half of them earn a degree from the University of Wisconsin System within six years. Universities face tight budgets, Republican state lawmakers aim to eliminate diversity programs supporting first-generation students and students of color, and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year scrambled the college admissions landscape.
All-In Milwaukee partners with Alverno College, Carroll University, Marquette University, Milwaukee School of Engineering, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Whitewater and Wisconsin Lutheran College.
University of Wisconsin-Madison was awarded a fellowship to research and write a book on European socialist politics in the context of economic decolonization.
The project title is Failed Globalists: European Socialists, the Global South, and the Struggle for Economic Decolonization, 1945–2008. Giuliana Chamedes, associate professor of history at UW-Madison, was awarded $30,000 in funding for the fellowship.
Loss of vision over time is a particular interest for study author Freya Mowat, a veterinary ophthalmologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. Mowat studies how dogs’ vision declines over time and what factors contribute to it. She said that research may have applications for humans, as well.
“If we are finding risk factors for unhealthy dog aging, we may also find risk factors for unhealthy human aging — because we live with our dogs,” Mowat said.
The Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance held a public hearing Thursday on legislation to provide funding for the UW System capital projects that were used as bargaining chips in the system’s debate with legislative Republicans late last year over diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
The bill would provide more than $400 million from the state’s general fund to pay for new campus buildings, renovations, additions and the demolition of aging infrastructure. The marquee project included in the bill is funding for a new engineering building at UW-Madison.
About 5,000 students at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls will return to start the spring semester in a little over a week.
But junior Juliana Graff knows the campus is still hurting, especially after the death of Mason Crum. He was a junior studying finance. “I can’t really shake that feeling that this is going to continue, that there’s still going to be issues in this regard going forward, unless something changes,” said Graff.
No longer tied to milking cows herself twice a day, Hinchley says both she and her dairy cows are happier with the robotic milkers operating 24 hours a day.
“It’s not necessarily something that you would have to do in order to stay in the dairy business,” said Chuck Nicholson, a UW-Madison professor of animal and dairy sciences. He noted only about 8% of Wisconsin’s dairy farmers have implemented the new technology, typically family farms that want to save on labor costs. “The labor shortage is definitely a key motivating factor.”
“This judge seems to be a very activist judge,” said John Gross, a clinical law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “He seems to want to insert himself into the resolution of cases in ways that are often not appropriate, or at the very least, not authorized by any statute.”
Gross also raised concerns the restitution order, which directed money to the county that supported the victim after the assault, could set a dangerous precedent in which judges or district attorneys could use restitution to fill government coffers.
States and the federal government have made efforts to increase the number of health care providers. Wisconsin has a rural residency program and a loan assistance program to draw medical students to rural and other shortage areas. The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health developed an urban program and a rural program, called the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine, to increase enrollment to address shortages. And there’s the effort of the Medical College of Wisconsin to open up two satellite campuses with 50 enrollment spots.
In less than six years, the number of dugout canoes known to exist in Wisconsin rose from 11 to nearly 100. Locating and studying these vessels, ranging from about 150 to 4,000 years old, is the mission of the Wisconsin Dugout Canoe Survey Project. Interview with Sissel Schroeder, a professor of anthropology with a specialization in archaeology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose lab hosts the Wisconsin Dugout Canoe Survey Project which she heads up with state maritime archaeologist Tamara Thomsen.
Wisconsin lawmakers are considering ending “gain-of-function” research at all higher education institutions in the state.
The rare practice of modifying risky pathogens to make them more harmful to people during research has become political and controversial since the COVID-19 outbreak.
The current increase in COVID-19 cases is a continuation of an increase in the illness that began in August and started to take off after children returned to school in September, said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The surge also follows along with other respiratory viruses, although its pattern is not identical, he added.
“For someone who has symptoms for a respiratory virus infection, they may not have COVID-19 — it could very well be influenza or could be RSV,” Sethi said Thursday. Wherever they are given, “COVID tests are still useful, because it would be nice to know what virus you might have.”
Studies show that early intervention and integrated, team-based mental health services are an effective way to treat schizophrenia. However, many patients still can’t access the new approach to care. We talk to Ronald Diamond, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at UW-Madison and former medical director of the Mental Health Center of Dane County, about what’s standing in the way of patients getting the treatment they need.
The National Institutes for Health is awarding a $150 million grant to UW-Madison researchers to study how Alzheimer’s and other dementias are affecting the brain. We talk with the study leader about Alzheimer’s and the future of dementia research.
“That language is pretty categorical, so my sense is that no recall election could be held until new maps are adopted or the court takes some other authorizing action,” Robert Yablon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who specializes in election and constitutional law, said.
Are you house-hunting on Milwaukee’s east side?
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is hoping to sell the chancellor’s residence at 3435 N. Lake Drive. UWM will first seek permission to sell from the UW Board of Regents, then put it on the market.
“When many talk about ‘totaling a car,’ it is often taken to mean that the car is a total wreck and cannot be salvaged, certainly not driven. However, in the insurance world, ‘totaling’ is when the insurer declares the book/cash value (e.g., Blue Book Value) of the car just before the accident is less than the costs of covered repairs from the accident,” says Karen C.A. Holden, professor emeritus, Department of Consumer Science and Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin – Madison Institute on Aging.
The closures of three Universities of Wisconsin branch campuses have left empty buildings and hundreds of acres of unused land in Richland, Washington and Fond du Lac counties.
A proposed GOP bill could give those communities $2 million to redevelop the former two-year campus sites.
Despite documented systemic barriers, a new UW-Madison study shows mothers with low incomes find the credit system in the United States legitimate. We speak with Sarah Halpern-Meekin and J. Michael Collins, two of the researchers.
This week, Republican legislators unveiled a proposal to legalize medical marijuana in Wisconsin. We get reaction to the proposal from Lucas Richert, a pharmaceutical historian at UW-Madison.
Prageeshwar Chandran, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was up bright and early to experience the snow.
He’s an international student from India and said he had never experienced a big snowfall before.
“The last time there was a winter storm in Madison, I wasn’t here; I was in Chicago,” Chandran said. “So, I didn’t know what went down here. But this is the first time, and I don’t think it bothered me too much. I think everyone worked tirelessly around the clock.”
This fall, UW-River Falls took over UW-Madison’s Farm and Industry Short Course. We learn why the agricultural program shifted to another university as well as what the program means for the future of dairy farming.
A bill that would prohibit higher education institutions in Wisconsin from conducting “gain of function” research on “potentially pandemic pathogens” received a public hearing on Wednesday.
The bill — AB 413 — was introduced by Rep. Elijah Behnke (R-Oconto) and Sen. André Jacque (R-DePere), who cited several incidents at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and controversy over the origins of COVID-19.
Dr. Paula Cody, medical director of adolescent medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, warned about the dangers of diet pills and supplements more than six years ago after hearing enough patients ask about supplements to lose weight or gain muscle — and the issue has only grown.
“The incidence of eating disorders has increased pretty dramatically after the pandemic. We’ve seen the numbers skyrocket,” she said. “So I do think that the concern I had before, which was not a small matter then — I’m even more concerned now.”
UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Dean Glenda Gillaspy reflects on her first three semesters on campus. She says the two most common issues that come to her desk from stakeholders are decreasing enrollment trends and the status of production agriculture education on campus.
According to University of Wisconsin officials, a total of $62.5 million has been raised for funding the new football indoor practice facility adjacent to Camp Randall Stadium.
That amount, bolstered by a $20 million commitment from alums Ted and Mary Kellner, is 83.3% of UW’s goal of $75 million. The fundraising efforts started in late October.
Kathryn McGarr, an associate professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is also affiliated with the Department of History, pointed out the regional differences too, and then that there has been a shift since the Civil War for both of the parties. One example is the stance on equal rights.
“At the time of the Civil War, most members of what was then called the Democratic party supported slavery, and most members of what was then the newly formed Republican Party were anti-slavery,” she wrote in a December 28, 2023 email. “But what each party stood for has shifted dramatically over time, with the biggest realignments occurring in the middle of the Twentieth Century over civil rights. So someone like the segregationist senator Strom Thurmond was a Democrat until 1964 when he switched affiliation to the Republican Party.”
Kohl gave a lot of money away. Like… a lot. He put Kohl in the Kohl Center at his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, by donating $25 million to get it built. Twenty years later, he put up $100 million to build a new stadium for the Bucks, now known as the Fiserv Forum. And he gave over $50 million in grants and scholarships to teachers, schools and programs throughout Wisconsin.
UW-Madison professor and editor Nate Jung describes how students can approach using generative AI to improve reading and writing skills while remaining mindful of its limitations as a teaching tool.
Stem cell biologists are gaining new insight into the human brain — thanks to technology developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Randolph Ashton is the associate director of UW-Madison’s Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center and says they can use that research to screen for numerous conditions like spina bifida and autism; and, according to Dr. Ashton, RosetteArray technology could eventually help scientists develop more specific medical treatments – and perhaps even a cure. When it comes to medical ethics, he says his primary concern is the prohibitive cost of such treatment.
Gracz declined to criticize the mayor or the Common Council. But he emphasized that he has a business degree from Marquette University, was a union leader for 20 years, spent seven years on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, did labor negotiations for the county and was head of employee relations for the state.
Simon Goldberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies the effects of meditation, including research among people who have psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. He noted that because of Dunn and Folk’s strict criteria, they omitted hundreds of studies on meditation’s benefits. “It’s, in the spirit of rigor, throwing lots of babies out with the bathwater,” he says. “It’s really very obvious that meditation training reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression.”
When asked for comment, a spokesperson for the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education said the school had not been made aware of the bill before Monday and was still reviewing it.
