Noted: The virus’s spread has accelerated northward with the spring migration of many North American bird species, explained Ron Kean, a poultry specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
Quoted: “I do believe the U.S. has one of the more convoluted structures and also requires a lot more effort to understand,” says Cliff Robb, who teaches about personal finance and human behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.. “It forces individuals to engage much more directly with the tax system than other industrialized countries.”
Even for people who don’t pay fees to a tax preparer or for tax prep software, there’s a significant “opportunity cost” to filing, he says.
“Most people are going to take a weekend or a couple of days,” says Robb. And it’s not just time. “It creates more stress than is necessary, I believe.”
One construction worker was injured after a fire broke out at Camp Randall Stadium on Wednesday morning, according to University of Wisconsin officials.
Quoted: “It’s a very limited stopgap,” said Barry Orton, professor emeritus of telecommunications at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: The big mammals — mammoths, mastodons and giant beavers — came later. They were Ice Age creatures, living in Wisconsin from between 2.5 million and 11,500 years ago.
“It’s a little bit like yesterday for a geologist,” Brooke Norstead, assistant director of the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum, said.
And just like yesterday, there was a big animal roaming that huge ice sheet — so vast you could walk to the North Pole on it without touching land — that may sound familiar.
“There was an animal called a stag moose,” Norstead said. “Imagine a supersize moose, with even more interesting antlers.”
Warren Porter is a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies animal shape and size.
“One of the evolutionary benefits of being a large or very large animal is … that you don’t have to deal with as much threat of predation and may be able to better defend your young,” Porter said.
The family of the late Teju Olaniyan, a beloved UW-Madison professor who died suddenly on Nov. 30, 2019, honored his legacy with a celebration of his life on April 9 at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, and launched a nonprofit in his name that will focus on preserving and continuing strands of his contributions to higher education.
The amount of tuition costs at Wisconsin colleges covered by state and federal financial aid for students has shrunk over the last two decades, according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The average amount of federal Pell grants and state Wisconsin grants together covered 91.4 percent of tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002, for example, but only 69 percent in 2021.
A team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has created a material that is tougher than Kevlar, which is found in bulletproof vests.
It’s a project they hope can help save lives.
The material in small scale is almost comparable to the look of electrical tape. However, it’s much different and much stronger. So what’s inside that makes it so strong? Engineering and physics assistant professor Ramathasan Thevamaran has the answer.
“It’s a nano fiber mat made out of carbon nanotubes and Kevlar nano fibers,” Thevamaran said.
One of the more important steps backyard gardeners can take to help disappearing native bees is to grow native plants that provide continuous blooms throughout the season, according to Susan Carpenter, plant curator at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum.
Quoted: Native plant curator Susan Carpenter with the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison said they detected the rusty patched at the Arboretum about 10 years ago. “That started us on this voyage of discovery,” she said. When the rusty patched was declared endangered, she said, “people just went crazy on that.”
Noted: Xela Garcia helps young Milwaukee Latinos see themselves in art and education.
Garcia grew up on Milwaukee’s south side and has served as executive director of the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts for five years.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she minored in Chicano/Latina studies and American Indian studies and saw herself reflected in the class readings.
“It brought me back to that feeling of empowerment, of feeling seen,” she said. “This was something that was me.”
Wisconsin doctors are seeing a steady increase in the number of children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes — a disease that primarily affects adults — which may be linked to COVID-19.
Data released last week by UW Health Kids shows a nearly 200 percent increase in the number of cases of Type 2 diabetes over the past four years.
While this is a trend medical experts have noticed for years, Dr. Elizabeth Mann, a pediatric endocrinologist and director of the Type 2 Diabetes Program at UW Health Kids, said it’s taken a worrisome turn recently.
Noted: Anne Marsh serves in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health. Her 8-year-old son Ryan is transgender.
“Our son has grown up in a household where from the day he shared with us who he is, he has faced nothing but unconditional love and welcoming and celebration of who he is,” Anne said. “How do you teach a child that the world is going to perceive them differently and treat them differently? It’s a hard conversation to have with a young child as a parent.”
Among 120 life-size, orange statues of women scientists that stood last month on the National Mall in Washington D.C. was the likeness of Ahna Skop, a UW-Madison geneticist and artist. We talk to Skop about the connections between art and science.
We hear from one of the professors behind the UW system’s planned free speech survey on its campuses. Later, we talk about the career of Wisconsin actor Frederic March and the removal of his name from a campus theater at UW-Madison. Plus, a Milwaukee filmmaker talks about his new documentary about the architecture of sacred buildings.
In 2018 and 2020, the name of actor and famous UW-Madison alum, Fredric March, was removed from two University of Wisconsin campus buildings. And in the years since, that decision has gotten pushback from prominent actors, historians and civil rights advocates. We talk to a freelance journalist and public historian about why he says the decision was a mistake.
When people think about geology, most people will think of well… rocks. But the geology museum on the UW-Madison campus shows that geology is much more than rocks, it’s rocks from space, bones, and fossilized dino-droppings.
Last month, WORT reporter Andie Barrow went to the Museum of Geology to learn what makes the museum special.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study finds many cannabidiol, or CBD, products sold in southwestern Wisconsin don’t deliver what they promise on the label. One of the study’s authors says a lack of regulation and oversight is to blame.
Wisconsin’s stagnant — and in some cases declining — investment in state financial aid has led to college students and their families having to pay for a larger portion of the cost of a degree, according to a new report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The policy forum’s report, issued Tuesday, is the latest in a series of analyses by the forum that have sought to dive into the challenges the state’s colleges and universities face in preparing the workforce of tomorrow amid declining taxpayer support and, in many cases, declining enrollment trends.
The nonpartisan research center found that state lawmakers have not prioritized financial aid in recent state budgets. Instead — in the University of Wisconsin System’s case — they took the approach of freezing tuition for in-state undergraduates for nearly a decade.
Doctors and volunteers in Wisconsin spent Saturday packing and sorting medical supply donations. The shipments will go to Ukraine to aid military and community hospitals during the ongoing war with Russia.
Dr. Nataliya Uboha is an oncologist at UW Carbone Cancer Center. She is involved in the efforts to get resources to Ukraine and she says the effort is personal. Dr. Uboha up in Lviv, Ukraine has been living in the U.S. for more than 25 years. She came here by herself so the majority of her family has been in Ukraine all these years.
“When the war started, we really worked hard on getting my family over here,” she said. Keeping her family safe is top of mind but she also wants to do her part to get resources to her home country, including getting involved in a medical drive for Ukraine.
Shereen Siewert welcomes vaccine expert Dr. Jonathan Temte, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, for a review of the latest science surrounding vaccination, boosters, new treatments and the state of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Changes to UW System admissions processes, including lifting standardized test requirements for applicants at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led to more submissions, but preliminary research suggests going “test-optional” hasn’t increased the diversity of the applicant pool.
Noted: Evers vetoed five higher education bills, several of which were a reflection of major cultural and political debates of the time.
Among those was Assembly Bill 884, which would have required the University of Wisconsin System to accept a course on the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights to satisfy the diversity or ethnic studies requirement in place for core general education requirements.
Noted: Miles was known for his dedication to education. He earned an Executive Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and also attended Northwestern University to complete a Media Executive Leadership Program.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents approved three raises above the standard 2% for chancellors on Thursday.
UW-Milwaukee’s Mark Mone, UW-La Crosse’s Joe Gow and UW-Stevens Point’s Thomas Gibson all received slightly larger than normal increases.
A University of Wisconsin System survey of students on the highly-politicized topic of free speech on campus has been delayed following weeks of fallout and the resignation of a chancellor.
Tim Shiell, director of UW-Stout’s Menard Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovation, sent an email Wednesday to UW System’s interim president, Michael Falbo, to say the survey would be delayed until fall 2022. UW System officials released the email to reporters Thursday.
University of Wisconsin-Platteville Chancellor Dennis Shields will leave the university on June 1 to take on a new role as the next president of the Southern University System and chancellor of Southern University and A&M College.
A Middleton doctor who was found dead in Iron County last weekend was hiking along a river when a steep embankment likely collapsed beneath her, authorities said Wednesday.
Dr. Kelsey Musgrove, 30, was reported missing on March 30 after she didn’t return from a solo hiking trip near Potato River Falls in Gurney.
Noted: With rapid at-home tests becoming much more widely available since late 2021, an unknown but potentially large number of positive test results are going unreported. While this dynamic may pose a challenge to public health officials tracking COVID-19, the challenge is not insurmountable. That’s according to Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The fact that we have home-based testing is a good thing,” Sethi said. “While it may compromise our ability to have a good record of cases that are in the community, we don’t necessarily want to abandon this very important way that people can test and take action, so we have to find a workaround.”
UW-Madison investigated at least nine employees over the past six years for “hostile and intimidating” academic bullying, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. We talk with a State Journal higher education reporter about their investigation
Members of the University of Wisconsin athletic department – from administrators to coaches – routinely tout the school’s academic standing as a selling point for recruits and a source of pride.
UW officials plan to back up their words with action.
UW is among only 22 FBS schools currently with plans to compensate student-athletes for academic achievement.
Written by Joe Peterangelo, a senior researcher for the Wisconsin Policy Forum and Ned Littlefield, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a research fellow with the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Former University of Wisconsin-Whitewater interim Chancellor Jim Henderson says his sudden resignation Monday was due to a lack of support from UW System administration and not about issues on campus. Henderson says he wouldn’t encourage anyone to apply for a UW System chancellorship.
The University of Wisconsin System will survey students over the next month about whether they feel campuses support freedom of speech and freedom of expression. The survey is being funded by a donation to UW-Stout’s Menard Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovations.
Quoted: The report’s findings confirm other research that has shown the link between poverty and COVID-19, says Tiffany Green, a University of Wisconsin economist who researches the impact of race and economics on health.
“This is not about individual behavior,” Green said in an interview. “It’s about what kinds of social conditions place people at risk.”
Early in the Wisconsin pandemic, outbreaks occurred in the meatpacking industry in Brown County. “And because of the way our occupational system is structured, they were disproportionately likely to be Hispanic immigrants,” Green says. “And they were working under conditions that were not properly regulated, that were not safe, when it comes to trying to prevent COVID.”
A battle over a free speech survey that has pitted the short-tenured interim president of the University of Wisconsin System against UW universities’ chancellors has culminated in the resignation of the top leader at UW-Whitewater.
If you’ve been paying more for eggs recently, you have the bird flu to thank, according to egg producers.
UW-Madison scientists say they are fighting back.
Across the nation, tens of thousands of birds have had to be put down in recent weeks as the bird flu ravages flocks, and farmers say while it’s already making eggs expensive, it won’t stop there.
UW-Madison scientists say this is an issue that comes and goes, which is why they’re looking to bring a vaccine for the birds to market.
“Knock on wood, we’ve been doing okay in Wisconsin. We’ve had two outbreaks here in Wisconsin,” said UW-Madison Poultry Specialist Ron Kean.
Noted: University of Wisconsin Law School professor Robert Yablon unpacked the Voting Rights Act and how the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Wisconsin Supreme Court to approach its redistricting rulings.
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater interim Chancellor Jim Henderson has abruptly resigned from his position as head of the school.
In a brief message posted on the campus website, Henderson said that one of his three goals as interim chancellor has been to “help this campus hire the best chancellor possible who will be here for the long term.”
Former Foxconn executive Alan Yeung has been hired by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to “jump-start technology entrepreneurship efforts” within its College of Engineering.
Yeung was heavily involved in Foxconn’s failed pledges to invest $10 billion into a high-tech manufacturing hub in Racine County and donate $100 million to UW-Madison.
An announcement posted Thursday by UW-Madison’s College of Engineering announcing Yeung’s hire lists him as an author, college alum and technology executive — it has no mention of Foxconn.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s plans to demolish the century-old Columbia Hospital building in order to reduce costs are being delayed — and could be blocked permanently.
The city Historic Preservation Commission on Monday recommended permanent historic designation for the former hospital building, 3321 N. Maryland Ave.
Quoted: While Tom Purnell — a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of English language and linguistics — was living in Pennsylvania in the mid-1980s, he said the cash dispensing machines in that area were called MAC (money access centers).
“ATM (automated teller machine) is the generic term that is being used more widely now, overtaking the local variants,” he said in an email.
“A lot of changes and variations in pronunciation reflect things that not just happen in our mouths, but also what happens in our ears,” said Joe Salmons, a longtime professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In many languages, when there’s an “l” at the end of a syllable, it will mess with how people hear a preceding vowel, he explained, especially when the “l” is in the same syllable.
A similar example of this is pillow v. “pellow,” he noted.
The “melk” pronunciation is also heard in other parts of the Midwest, he said. And while it’s not exclusive to the state, it appears to be most common in eastern Wisconsin.
Pregnant women with mild high blood pressure and their babies can benefit from treatment, according to a large study co-authored by a researcher at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Quoted: Panelist David Noyce, who is the executive associate dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Engineering, said consumer worries about not being able to recharge an electric vehicle — what the industry calls range anxiety — is still one of the biggest barriers to electric vehicle adoption.
Noyce said vehicle makers are working to improve batteries as a remedy to this problem. But he said making charging stations more available is the other half of the solution.
“That’s where the emphasis is going on as we speak,” he said during the panel. “The federal government has jumped into the fray here … because of the market demand, but as well as climate goals, decarbonization, reduction in the use of fossil fuels and so forth.”
The Migration Policy Institute says about 10,000 individuals in Wisconsin qualify for the DACA program, also known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. But, only 6,200 individuals are active recipients. We learn about a new support center at UW-Madison helping immigrants.
The University of Wisconsin Badgers offensive line runs drills during the University of Wisconsin spring football practice at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison on Thursday, March 31, 2022.
Noted: In a 2011 study, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared the impact of enhanced, high-empathy medical care with what they called “standard care.” When patients with colds rated their care “perfect in empathy” they had shorter and less serious illness than peers who rated their care less than perfect, an indication that even the perception of empathy makes a difference.
Moreover, the body’s own chemistry reflected the difference in care. Patients who perceived their care to be high in empathy showed higher levels of neutrophils ― a type of white blood cell that fights infections ― than those given standard care.
The difference between the standard and the more empathetic care affected the doctors, too.
“When they pulled the card to provide standard care, they felt terrible. When they pulled the enhanced care card, they felt great,” said David Rakel, lead author of the study and chairman of the department of family medicine and community health at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The study was published in the journal Patient Education and Counseling.
Patrick Remington, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Preventive Medicine Residency Program, said doctors who do not prescribe ivermectin to COVID-19 patients are upholding the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm to patients by making decisions according to the consensus of available credible medical research.
“We strive to get it right. We do the best job we can to do no harm and this is an example that would be unthinkable to me to ask a physician to prescribe a medicine that is at best, ineffective and at worst, harmful,” Remington said. “There are valid debates about the best ways to treat serious illnesses and science is iterative, that as we go along we learn by experimentation, we learn by carefully conducted research.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has hired one of Foxconn’s most prominent former Wisconsin executives.
Part of the deal former Gov. Scott Walker and Foxconn executives struck with Wisconsin included a promise to give UW-Madison $100 million. But that money never showed up. And the Foxconn project has only faltered since it was announced.
Now Alan Yeung has joined UW-Madison’s College of Engineering as an entrepreneurship consultant. He’ll be helping the college “commercialize research, and connect with industry and entrepreneurs,” said Renee Meiller, a spokeswoman for the College of Engineering.
A new study by researchers at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy found inaccurate labels on some non-prescription CBD products sold in the Badger State.
Quoted: Laura Albert is a professor of industrial and systems engineering with University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said business travel in particular is slower to return to pre-pandemic levels.
“We found ways to do things remotely that are quite effective,” Albert said. “There’s not a substitute for everything, but some of that, I think, will stick around, and that might affect where routes are selected, because a lot of routes follow where business travel is needed.”
Quoted: Wisconsin producers primarily grow winter wheat, which is planted in the fall and harvested in the summer, making it unlikely farmers will plant more this spring in response to potential shortages or to capitalize on higher prices, Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.
But farmers in the state will likely spend more time managing the wheat fields they do have planted this spring, he said.
“More fertilizer, maybe more concerned about fungicide applications if you’re looking at a problem with disease. That’s what we might see, is farmers more willing to spend money on managing the planted crop for winter wheat,” he said.
Happiness expert Dr. Christine Whelan from the University of Wisconsin-Madison joins Live at Four to talk about Madison’s high ranking on a recent WalletHub study of the happiest U.S. cities.
The New Yorker relies on an algorithm from Robert Nowak, an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Nowak said on WPR’s “The Morning Show” that the algorithm collects the ratings and over time pushes more successful captions to the top of a sorted list. It’s similar to how a search engine such as Google tracks how many times a website is chosen after a given search.’
So roughly speaking, the funnier the caption, the more ratings it receives, providing a more statistically accurate estimate of just how funny it is,” he said.
A new project from a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison aims to answer the question: What do dogs like to watch on television?
She’s asking dog owners to contribute to her research by sharing their own pups’ preferences.
The survey is part of a larger and more ambitious research project by Freya Mowat, a veterinary ophthalmologist and professor at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, to learn more about how canine vision degrades over time and what factors contribute to it. That research could have implications for the treatment of human eyesight, as well.
Noted: Instead of limiting milk production, the plan focuses on reducing the negative impacts of uncontrolled expansion and sending stronger market signals to farms about whether they should produce more milk. The group worked with researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create models for what a mandatory management program could look like and how it would affect farmers’ and consumers’ prices.
Aside from the babble of Brush Creek and an occasional car pulling up to the small cluster of brick buildings capped with sloping metal roofs, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Richland in rural Richland Center is mostly quiet on a February morning.
Enrollment at UW-Platteville Richland has fallen by nearly 87 percent, from a peak of 567 students in 2014 to 75 students in fall 2021. It’s the sharpest decline of any UW campus. Still, UW-Platteville officials have said there are no plans to shut the campus down.
A new report is highlighting how much the Great Recession widened racial wealth gaps, particularly on the basis of income and homeownership.
“Racial Disparities in Household Wealth Following the Great Recession,” authored by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Fenaba R. Addo and Duke University Professor William A. Darity Jr., found that Black and Latino households continue to lag behind white households in wealth and income statistics.
The report was published this month through the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty and used Survey on Consumer Finances data to come to its conclusions.
Quoted: Essentially, the U.S. Supreme Court was saying that the Wisconsin Supreme Court didn’t properly show its work,” said Professor Robert Yablon, a redistricting expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
But Yablon said the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling did not close the door on the governor’s plan if he can demonstrate to the Wisconsin Supreme Court that the additional majority-Black district was necessary.
“The U.S. Supreme Court said that the Wisconsin Supreme Court was free to consider additional evidence about the governor’s map,” Yablon said. “And I expect that they will try to more fully explain why the lines in the Milwaukee area should be drawn the way that they drew them.”
To predict our future under climate change, some scientists are looking way into the past — and digging deep into the ocean floor.
