“We need a very big target, such as a billion tons of material, to have a fighting chance to — once in a while — catch some of them,” said Albrecht Karle, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Category: Research
What bird flu means for milk
There are a handful of variables and factors that shape the financial losses of a dairy hit with an outbreak. Luckily, agriculture economist Charles Nicholson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and some colleagues created a calculator to estimate this financial impact of a bird flu outbreak. Based on Nicholson’s estimates for California, a typical farm of 1500 cattle will lose $120,000 annually. For context, this is about $10,000 more than the median household income of a dairy farmer.
Hibernation scientists studying squirrels could get humans to deep space
Cosmic radiation poses a perennial challenge for astronaut safety, says Hannah Carey, an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied hibernators as a model for stress and trauma protection. Carey has been part of meetings and conferences with ESA and NASA scientists discussing hibernation science. In these dialogues, she recalls that radiation protection has been of particular interest.
Coyotes, red foxes ‘coexist peacefully’ in Madison, researchers say
David Drake leads the Urban Canid Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since 2014, researchers with the project have studied where coyotes and red foxes live in the Madison area, when they are active and how they interact with each other, in addition to humans and pets. University students help Drake set up traps around the city from November to March, so they can put radio collars on animals and track them.
“We’ve gotten some really good data,” said Drake, a professor and Extension wildlife specialist at UW-Madison’s Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology.
‘Forbidden’ review: Keeping the table pure
Review of “Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig,” by Jordan D. Rosenblum, a Jewish-studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
We interviewed men who left the workforce. Their reasons don’t fit narrative.
Written by Sarah Halpern-Meekin, director of UW-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty and a professor of public affairs with the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Vaughn Bascom Professor of Women, Family, and Community in the School of Human Ecology.
Sandhill crane committee supports hunting, and solar farms can accommodate crops
Can large solar farms and cultivated crops coexist? Our guests says “yes.” Agrivoltaics is the convergence of agriculture and solar farms, which is the area of study of UW-Madison hydrologist and professor Steven Loheide and professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences Ankur Desai.
TikTok influencers are driving raw milk sales – Here’s why it’s still a bad idea
What these idealists forget is that while people used to live on more natural products, they were also pretty unhealthy. According to John A. Lucey, PhD, a professor of food science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and director of the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, it’s estimated that in 1938, pre-pasteurisation, milk-borne outbreaks constituted 25% of all disease outbreaks (related to food and water) in the United States. Now, they make up fewer than 1%.
Wisconsin scientists seek to explain strange headaches at US embassies
Christian Franck, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, leads PANTHER, an multi-institution research hub based at UW-Madison, focused on understanding, detecting and preventing traumatic brain injuries. The hub brings together experts from different disciplines.
PANTHER has received over $50 million from the U.S. Office of Naval Research since 2017, including an additional $10 million recently to investigate how pulsed microwaves might injure the brain.
Trump seemed to entertain a discredited theory on autism. This is what’s behind the rising rates
“Most of the increase in recent decades is in relatively mildly affected children and adults, so maybe in the past we wouldn’t have called it autism,” explained Maureen Durkin, professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Could AI help prevent diabetes-related sight loss?
“There’s very clear evidence that screening prevents vision loss,” says Roomasa Channa, a retina specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.
The vagus nerve’s mysterious role in mental health untangled
Scientists, including Charles Raison of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Andrew Miller of Emory University, have meanwhile identified mechanisms by which inflammation can cause depression. Inflammatory cytokines circulating in the blood can weaken or even breach the protective barrier between blood vessels and the brain. Once inside the brain, they trigger its immune cells, called microglia, to produce further inflammatory agents.
Can chickens fly? Here’s everything to know about the bird’s flight
The lifespan of a chicken varies. The average lifespan of a hen is between six and eight years, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During three to four of those years, hens will produce eggs.
4.4 billion-year-old chunk of Earth oldest to ever be discovered
“This confirms our view of how the Earth cooled and became habitable. This may also help us understand how other habitable planets would form,” Professor John Valley, a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement made in 2014.
UW Health study reveals why surgeons face more pregnancy complications and suggests changes
Dr. Tiffany Glazer spoke with WMTV Friday about the risks present for pregnant surgeons. Dr. Glazer is an ear, nose and throat surgeon at UW-Health, and led a review of this literature published in the journal of American Medical Association.
San Diegans can drink their tap water. Many pay more at the vending machine anyway.
“These are folks who can ill afford to spend that kind of money on what is really not a necessary thing,” said Manny Teodoro, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studied the water vending machine industry in a 2022 book, “The Profits of Distrust.” “Money spent on (vended) water is money that’s not spent on healthier food, on perhaps needed medicine and healthcare.”
Climate change puts oak trees in Great Lakes at risk
The two-lined chestnut borer is now “the most important insect cause of oak mortality,” especially for stressed, injured and weakened trees, according to Wisconsin Horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As the Christmas Bird Count turns 125, a beloved birding tradition looks to the future
With more people than ever taking part, the annual Audubon event is a growing force for science and nature conservation.
This trove of information has helped usher in entire new areas of research, like climate change ecology, says Benjamin Zuckerberg, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His work in the field utilizes large community science datasets to explore how birds, including common winter denizens such as Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Purple Finches, and Carolina Wrens, are shifting their movements in response to changes in temperatures. The data enable scientists to find answers to questions at an “unprecedented” level, Zuckerberg says.
Smith: Sandhill crane study committee supports one draft bill, opposes another and doesn’t vote on third
In the only social science work on the issue in Wisconsin, a 2023 study by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center found 17.6% of its panel of state residents supported crane hunting while 47.6% opposed it and 35% were neutral.
Raw milk has documented health risks, but if Kennedy leads HHS, its backers expect a boost
McAfee’s products have been linked to several outbreaks of E. coli, salmonella and campylobacter, according to the University of Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research. Even with on-farm testing, raw milk isn’t safe for public consumption, said Alex O’Brien, safety and quality coordinator at the Center, which is on the UW-Madison campus.
“The more people who consume it,” he said, “the higher the probability someone’s going to become ill.”
Hold up—does cheese have protein? And what kinds pack the most?
“Cheesemaking is a process of concentrating the solids originally present in milk,” Ben Ullerup Mathers, a research cheesemaker at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Dairy Research, tells SELF. “Since protein is one of the main constituents of milk solids, the further you concentrate those solids, the more protein is in the final cheese. Since hard cheeses are the lowest-moisture cheeses, they will also be the higher-protein cheeses.”
A paleontologist cracked open a rock and discovered a prehistoric amphibian with a clever survival strategy
This discovery began incidentally in 2014, when David Lovelace, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, picked up a soccer ball-sized rock on the way back to his car after a day of picking through the Popo Agie formation near Dubois, Wyoming.
12 do’s and don’ts for becoming a better gift-giver, according to science
If “they receive what they have asked for, they’re still going to be quite happy because they’re getting something that they want,” said Evan Polman, an associate professor of marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
The breath of colonialism continues to taint the air in Uganda
In the parts of the city inhabited by Africans during the period of segregation, levels of fine particulates known as PM2.5 are high enough to reduce life expectancy more than tobacco use or HIV infection, said the study’s lead author, air quality scientist Dorothy Lsoto of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
“When you look at the air quality in these different places, it’s striking,” Lsoto said.
New research offers hope in the fight against Alzheimer’s
Includes Nathaniel Chin, M.D., an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin and medical director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
The research that aims to cheese
On a recent Tuesday at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, sample number 435 lies supine on a lab table where it surrenders to a gauntlet of measurements.
Brandon Prochaska slides a thermometer into the pizza’s abdomen, and the digits tick upward to 205 degrees Fahrenheit. He and a group of other trained professionals jot the number down.
Social intelligence: The other kind of smart
In 2013, researchers at University of Wisconsin put people in MRI machines and threatened to shock them at random. The researchers measured fear activity in each person’s brain. And they found something incredible in the third group. Participants’ brains were much less active. They could literally outsource their fear to their loved ones.
Can ‘America’s Dairyland’ become the future hotbed for fusion energy?
Fusion energy’s potential to produce abundant, clean energy to fuel industry and power advancements in artificial intelligence is no longer a matter of if, but when.
Wisconsin abortion providers brace for another Trump presidency
In October, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Collaborative for Reproductive Equity, known as CORE, released a study on the demand for abortion medications. The report examined how many people in Wisconsin ordered pills from out-of-state providers. The data was collected by the organization #WeCount, a national effort to track how many clinician-provided abortions are performed each month.
UW-Madison biochemists engineer proteins to detect toxins, harmful molecules in minutes
Approached by the U.S. Army and Air Force to detect chemical threats, toxins, and other environmental hazards for soldiers, UW-Madison biochemistry professor Vatsan Raman “wanted to take proteins that nature normally makes and then redesign these proteins to get them to sense molecules that we care about.”
UW rises to sixth in national research expenditures, topping $1.7 billion
Grants help researchers promote Wisconsin idea, UW Dairy Research Program Manager says.
Do pulsed microwaves cause brain injuries? UW-Madison researchers work to find out
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are launching the first comprehensive study into how pulsed microwaves might cause traumatic brain injuries.
Scientists confront a mystery: Why have U.S. bird flu cases been so mild?
The viruses circulating in cows could be less virulent than other versions of the virus, said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a flu virologist cross-appointed to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo. But it’s impossible to prove that, given the animal studies don’t reflect it, he said.
Supplementing income off the farm, Social media warning labels, Powwow music
We learn how workers in Wisconsin are looking to bolster family farm income via employment in surrounding communities. Then a pediatrics professor shares research on social media and youth. And two members from the Wisconsin band Bizhiki discuss their new album of Indigenous music.
Breakthroughs in bioplastics may be coming
Despite recycling efforts, plastic accounts for 20% of the material in Wisconsin landfills and does not breakdown. But what if more of our plastic was biodegradable? Working on that is Erica Majumder, an assistant professor of bacteriology at UW-Madison, who joins us.
UW researchers hope to identify how the body processes different types of meth
Methamphetamine is typically associated with recreational drug use. But Heather Barkholtz, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy, said the drug also has a place in medicine.
Paul Smith: Following Aldo Leopold’s teachings, a deer hunt on his old farm
A question sometimes is raised in the conservation community to help guide decisions: What would Aldo do?
The reference is to Aldo Leopold, former University of Wisconsin professor, pioneer in the field of wildlife management and author of “A Sand County Almanac,” the widely acclaimed collection of essays and inspiration for a “land ethic.”
UW-Madison ranks sixth nationally for research
The University of Wisconsin-Madison now ranks sixth nationally for research ranking, according to the National Science Foundation’s annual rankings. Since 2018, it has ranked 8th out of 920 public and private universities.
New UW-Madison study tests how a federally legal form of THC could impact drivers
A pilot study at UW-Madison is set to test how THC variants could affect drivers. Researchers decided to use the UW-Madison driving simulator to discover how Delta-8 THC and Delta-9 THC can impair the brain. Researcher and Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences Heather Barkholtz said that the idea for the study came from the rising popularity of Delta-8 THC.
UW mechanical engineer launches study of the brain and the “Havana Syndrome”
A team of University of Wisconsin researchers, led by Professor Christian Franck, have obtained a grant to investigate how pulsed microwave beams might affect the brain. Christian Franck is the Bjorn Borgen Professor and H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellow at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the director of the UW PANTHER lab, which studies brain trauma.
UW-Madison ranks sixth in national research rankings, rising for the first time since 2016
The University of Wisconsin-Madison rose in national rankings on federal research activity after slipping for nearly a decade.
The government wants to develop this battery type
LENS will collaborate with eight universities, including Virginia Tech, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Maryland, University of Rhode Island, and a few others.
Western Wisconsin summit aims to reframe, humanize immigration
An estimated 70% of the workforce on Wisconsin dairy farms is made up of undocumented immigrant workers, according to a UW-Madison study.
New Report Reveals Wisconsin Dairy Industry Up 16%, Contributing $52.8 Billion to State’s Economy
The overall economic impact of Wisconsin’s dairy industry is bigger than ever, and dairy remains the leading sector of Wisconsin agriculture. This newly released data is from the Contribution of Agriculture to the Wisconsin Economy: An Update for 2022, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics.
Wisconsin research team exploring ways to make cheese curds stay squeaky longer
John A. Lucey, professor of food science at UW-Madison and the director of the Center for Dairy Research, reported that national sales numbers for natural cheese curds have steadily increased to around $52 million in 2021. However, fresh cheese curds are still predominantly purchased in the Midwest.
UW-Madison’s record-breaking research spending fuels rise in national ranking
The university announced the ranking change Monday alongside an announcement that it had spent a record-breaking $1.7 billion on research for fiscal year 2023, a 13.7% increase over the prior year. UW-Madison’s growth outpaced the national increase of 11.2% spent on university research and development, bringing the national amount spent to $108.8 billion.
PFAS cleanup idea for Dane County airport advances despite criticism
High levels of PFAS have, as a result, plagued Lake Monona, with a University of Wisconsin-Madison study finding the lake’s foam had the highest concentration of PFAS in the state.
What is raw milk? And why is everyone talking about it?
“The people that struggle with milk can drink raw milk,” she says. Her claim isn’t in line with a study by John Lucey, a professor of food science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which found “no obvious reason why raw milk could assist with lactose intolerance.”
UW-Madison study will inject people with meth to answer a decades-old question
But a pair of researchers at UW-Madison hope to close that decades-old knowledge gap through a study in which they’ll inject 17 people with small doses of both kinds of methamphetamine to see how the “D” isomer present in illicit meth metabolizes in the body and whether that changes when the “L” isomer, the kind in nasal sprays, is present.
Raison lab studying effects of psilocybin
The lab is seeking participants to study the effects of psychedelics on the conscious mind.
String theory is not dead
“Many of the unsolved problems in particle physics and cosmology are deeply intertwined,” write physicists Fernando Marchesano, Gary Shiu and Timo Weigand in the 2024 Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. String theory may provide the path to solving those problems.
Nanoink and printing technologies could enable electronics repairs, production in space
The flight path to these experiments began when a research team led by Iowa State’s Shan Jiang, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, and Hantang Qin, formerly of Iowa State who’s now an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wondered if their ink and printer technologies would work in the zero gravity of space.
Has Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford opposed Wisconsin’s voter ID law?
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study estimated the law prevented 4,000-11,000 Milwaukee and Dane county residents from voting in the 2016 presidential election.
Do abortion policy changes affect young women’s mental health?
“The survey data shows just how strongly people feel about abortion policies,” said corresponding author J. Michael Collins, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Planet 10 times the size of Earth is one of the youngest ever found
“We try to extrapolate from these other worlds how quickly planet formation might have taken hold in the early solar system,” says Melinda Soares-Furtado at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison genetic scientists sound alarm on AI overreliance, say there are persistent flaws in data
Researchers in the Genetics-Biotechnology Center at UW-Madison published a study in September, raising concerns over issues found in AI-assisted genome-wide association studies and offer new statistical methods for improvement.
All life on Earth today descended from a single cell. Meet LUCA.
“We tend to think that early life is somehow simpler, less sophisticated … but I don’t think there’s any reason to think that,” said Betül Kaçar, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison who wasn’t involved in the research. “A complex ecosystem, to me, sounds more realistic.”
Report finds Wisconsin agriculture revenue on the rise, up nearly 11 percent from 2017
An economic analysis shows Wisconsin’s agriculture industry is pulling in more revenue in recent years but employing fewer people.
The report, titled “The Contributions of Agriculture to the Wisconsin Economy,” is published every five years. The newest survey found the industry earned $116.3 billion in revenue in 2022, the latest data available. That is a 10.9 percent increase from 2017. However, the numbers are nuanced, Steve Deller and Jeff Hadachek, co-authors of the report out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
What Musk and Rogan got very wrong about climate change and meat
In fact, there are many ways to measure emissions from meat production. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has outlined several methods, including the use of respiration chambers, which capture the gasses animals release during breathing, and the SF6 technique, a more advanced method where a tracer gas is used to measure methane emissions directly from livestock.
What happens under water in winter?
When it comes to determining the role that lakes play in global carbon cycling, those estimates are often drawn from summer data. Just using that small subset of data creates errors in estimates of atmospheric interactions and other downstream effects, said Hilary Dugan, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Department of Limnology.