Category: Research

Growing up poor has long been linked to lower academic test scores. And there’s now mounting evidence that it’s partly because kids can suffer real physical consequences from low family incomes, including brains that are less equipped to learn.

A new study suggests that growing up poor affects brain development at an early age, and those brain changes can have huge effects on academic achievement.

Poverty appears to affect the brain development of children, hampering the growth of gray matter and impairing their academic performance, researchers report.

The development of fuel cell technology has been hamstrung by the need for expensive and difficult-to-manufacture catalysts like platinum, rhodium or palladium. But a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe they’ve found an ingenious alternative that employs a molecular, rather than solid, catalyst.

One of the largest misconceptions about anxiety is that the disorder is something people “bring upon themselves,” a concept that is as malignant as it is incorrect. Adding to the evidence against this isolating stereotype, a new study from the University of Wisconsin, Madison found that the brain function that underlies anxiety and depression may be inherited.

If you already don’t like flying, we have some bad news. A new study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, says that long flights are getting longer. This is because the jet stream, the high-altitude winds from west to east, are becoming more unpredictable, and buffeting planes midair.

What’s new at the Dictionary of American Regional English? Boneless cats, for one. Badgers and back-budgers. Beach-walks, bodegas, (cellar) bugs, and beelers.

A new study by two University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate students examined the impact of violent video games, finding that they can relieve stress, but boost aggression.

A leading historical geographer has called on both his disciplines to find better ways of “navigating the digital world”. William Cronon, who is Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas research professor of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was delivering the first in a new series of British Academy lectures in geography at London’s Royal Geographical Society on 7 July.

The brain function that underlies anxiety and depression is inherited, a new study finds — but there is still plenty of space for experience and environment to reduce the risk of a full-blown mental disorder.

Video games can improve your mood but playing a violent video game could increase aggressive outcomes, a UW-Madison study shows.

Regenerative braking systems are already used in electric cars to help recapture energy that’s wasted while the vehicle is stopping. But researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have also found a way to generate power while a vehicle is actually driving.

The UW Urban Canid Project, headed by David Drake and Marcus Mueller, is reaching out to the community for help in tracking and researching red foxes and coyotes in Madison urban areas.

What makes games like Scrabble and Candy Crush so appealing? Every Friday, the Field Day Lab at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (WID) opens its doors to the public, and tries to answer these sorts of questions. Ultimately, they are looking figure out how games can help improve teaching and learning.

“It’s really hard to get accurate distance measurements in astronomy and we only have a handful of methods,” says Sebastian Heinz of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who led the study. “But just as bats use sonar to triangulate their location, we can use the X-rays from Circinus X-1 to figure out exactly where it is.”

This is not a crazy space rainbow. It doesn’t lead to a pot of gold. This is, in fact, shimmering light echoes caused by X-rays, and it leads to the location of a neutron star.

Many scientific breakthroughs, including the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming, have occurred by happenstance. This is also true of a new technology that could one day replace the use of antibiotics in livestock, and perhaps even humans, for a variety of pathogenic digestive tract infections.

Tick numbers in some parts of the Madison area aren’t just multiplying, they’re rising to record levels.”I was actually surprised,” UW Entomologist Susan Paskewitz says while showing a small deer tick on a white strip of paper.

Thousands of years before humans invented agriculture, a bright burst of X-rays left the dense neutron star Circinus X-1, located in the faint Southern constellation Circinus. A year and a half ago, those X-rays were detected by the International Space Station, prompting a team of researchers led by University of Wisconsin-Madisons Sebastian Heinz to investigate the source.

University of Wisconsin-Madison has been named recipient of the nation’s first endowed chair focused on plant breeding for organic crops, with $1 million in funding from Clif Bar, a maker of sports nutrition products, and Organic Valley, a farmer cooperative in La Farge. Clif Bar, based in California, says it’s working with various organizations to raise $10 million for organic plant breeding research.

Privately-run prisons in the U.S. have become an increasingly popular way for states to cut costs, but a recent study finds that inmates actually stay longer in private prisons than in state-run correctional facilities.

A study by Wisconsin School of Business assistant professor Anita Mukherjee found that inmates held in private prisons in Mississippi from 1996 to 2004 served 4% to 7% longer than inmates serving similar sentences in public prisons. Mukherjee’s study, which is currently under review, appears to be the first to compare time served between public and private prisons.

A new study by Paul Hoban, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business, and Randolph Bucklin of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, suggests that if you are targeting consumers simply because they have spun through your Web site like wind through the trees, you might as well toss your money into the wind, as well. Rather, the best display ad ROI is to be had from targeting people who are new to your site, or have been there and done something.

“This is what anonymous did to my elbow.” It was 10 p.m. last Friday night in Philadelphia, and I was sitting outside at a restaurant with the sociologist and author Alice Goffman. Goffman, a small woman with a drink and a plate of chicken wings sitting mostly untouched in front of her, swiped back and forth on her phone, showing me photos from last month in which one of her elbows looked normal and the other one, the site of an old injury, appeared red and inflamed. Her elbow got inflamed because she is now a controversial figure.

Late last month, a Northwestern University law professor published an article calling into question the veracity of a widely lauded book by Alice Goffman, one of sociology’s brightest young stars. The book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, is an ethnographic study of a black neighborhood in Philadelphia where, according to Goffman’s research, residents live in a mini–police state, constantly in fear of being arrested and sent to jail or prison, often for minor offenses.

UW-Madison is the fourth-largest research institution in the United States, according to a recent study released by NorthStar Consulting. The College of Agricultural and Life Sciences – CALS – alone has about $102 million in research funding. It’s difficult to quantify direct and indirect economic benefits because of the many complex connections and partnerships across the university and UW-Extension. But certainly several current research projects are contributing value to agriculture in the state and beyond.

A paper in the Journal of Marketing Research by Page Moreau of the Wisconsin School of Business and Marit Gundersen Engeset of Buskerud and Vestfold University in Kongsberg, Norway asks a question we’ve all pondered at some point: Is it better for kids to free-build with LEGOs or to follow the instructions of kits?

In what may be the first study of its kind, Anita Mukherjee, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, compared average time served and recidivism at public and private prisons. She found that the lower costs that make private prisons attractive are undermined by longer stays.

A team of researchers has turned to the ocean to help unravel the mysteries of cloud formation by peeling back the mysteries of the structures of tiny aerosol particles at the surface of the ocean. The University of Wisconsin-Madison work shows how the particles’ chemical composition influences their abilities to take in moisture from the air, which indicates whether the particle will help to form a cloud, a key to many basic problems in climate prediction.