Plenty of people use Facebook to keep up with friends. Now, a new UW research project is using social media to keep up with the lives of local foxes and coyotes.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.
When tires roll across the road, the energy that’s created due to the friction is simply wasted. But that could soon change — thanks to new technology aiming to convert tire friction that’s usually lost in transit into electricity.
Quoted: Bassam Shakhashiri, professor of chemistry at University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been sharing what he calls “the joy of science” for decades as he gives demonstrations of the chemistry behind fireworks each year on the Memorial Union Terrace at the university.
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.
For the apple and grape producers in Wisconsin hoping there’s room for the Badger State in the growing wine and cider industries, the University of Wisconsin has hired an enologist to help out.
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.
Tomah —They came to the Tomah tractor pull to behold the deafening roar of turbocharged, 3,000-horsepower machines.
David Krakauer, the departing director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, offers a sweeping critique about what’s wrong with higher education.
One of UW-Madison’s change agents, David Krakauer, is departing on June 30, proud of his work as head of the edgy and multi-disciplinary Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, but deeply frustrated by his dealings with the campus bureaucracy.
Rural Wisconsin citizens often feel they are getting “the short end of the stick” in resource allocation, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Katherine Cramer. Her study, to be included in an upcoming book, may help to shed light on the current struggles in the State Capitol over issues like highway funding, a $500-million basketball arena in Milwaukee, reducing taxes on the wealthy, and changes in labor laws and social service programs.
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.
Profile of Katie Brenner, a post-doctoral biochemistry fellow at UW-Madison, who along with Doug Weibel, an associate professor of biochemistry at UW-Madison, is developing a urine test to monitor the health of preterm babies.
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?
The for-profit prison industry sells itself as a cost-effective option for cash-strapped states, but according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin, privatized prisons are keeping inmates locked up longer in order to boost profits.
UW-Madison hired its first enologist — a scientist who studies wine and wine making — in March, and he’s been traveling the state to improve Wisconsin’s cider and wine industry … Although the cold Wisconsin climate can be hard on wine grapes, wine and cider outreach specialist Nick Smith is confident there’s a market for the drink.
Giving new meaning to the term “wood chip,” scientists in a woodsy part of the country have come up with a way to make biodegradable computer chips from trees. (Subscription required.)
Women seeking relief from menopause with hormone replacement can breathe a sigh of relief — and perhaps wear a bigger smile, too.
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.
Story about Katie Brenner, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of biochemistry, and her invention of an app-based device that would help women track their day-to-day fertility levels, helping them hone in on when they would be most likely to conceive, and alerting them early on when they become pregnant.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison genetic discovery, looking at two key brain proteins in mice with the developmental disorder fragile X, has researchers hoping they could one day develop treatments for other neurological disorders, such as autism.
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.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor has launched the Farmers Market Metric Project to help communities measure the impacts local farmers’ markets have on economic growth and community building.
Two UW-Madison professors serving as interim associate vice chancellors in the Office of Research and Graduate Education have been named to the post. Norman Drinkwater and Jan Greenberg were selected as the permanent associate vice chancellors following the university’s search process.
Adena Rissman is on the faculty in UW Madison, studying relationships between people and natural resources.
A study by University of Wisconsin researchers suggests that poor sleep in middle age could be one of the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Senior author Dr. Ruth Benca said in a release that despite correlation, the study doesn’t show whether poor sleep causes amyloid plaques to develop in the brain or whether amyloid plagues prevent quality sleep.
Noted: Cows on one side of the Square came from several farms in Jefferson County, while cows on the other side were provided by the UW-Madison Department of Dairy Science.
Technically, Nicholas Smith’s title is simply “associate outreach specialist” in the Department of Food Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, are guests on WHA radio (970 AM) at 11:45 a.m. the last Monday of each month.
Noted: Stanley Temple is the Beers-Bascom Professor Emeritus in Conservation at UW-Madison and former chairman of the Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development Program at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of the University of Wisconsin’s Cool Science Image Contest, some of those words are going to be a bit lengthier than usual.
Prof. Alice Goffman’s “On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City” has drawn a great deal of attention, mostly very positive (though some critical). But recently Prof. Steven Lubet has called attention to a particular passage from Prof. Goffman’s book that, on its own terms, sounds troubling.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers will spend the summer and fall studying the damage that frac sand can do to ballast after sand particles leak out of rail cars and onto railroad tracks.
A Madison startup whose device is aimed at helping women struggling with infertility took the grand prize in the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan contest.
An assistant professor of sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison is under siege amid allegations of illegality and dishonesty in her acclaimed book about the lives of young black men in urban Philadelphia.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering research and development team thinks a computer chip made mostly of wood could be the answer to potentially toxic, non-biodegradable electronics filling up landfills.
UW sociology professor Alice Goffman has gained rare acclaim for her scholarly work, “On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City.” But with the success comes criticism.
The room rotates. You stand there, shelves, walls, furniture slowly circling before your eyes. A bed decorated with throw pillows passes. The kitchen approaches. A microwave juts out from a shelf close enough to touch, a refrigerator at your back.
Great Lakes Bioenergy is a DOE, Office of Science-funded Bioenergy Research Center. Its mission is to develop ways to produce ethanol, advanced biofuels and chemicals from the non-edible, lignocellulosic part of plant biomass. The Center includes researchers at UW-Madison & Michigan State University, plus partners in a DOE-national.
Vials of bioterror bacteria have gone missing. Lab mice infected with deadly viruses have escaped, and wild rodents have been found making nests with research waste. Cattle infected in a university’s vaccine experiments were repeatedly sent to slaughter and their meat sold for human consumption. Gear meant to protect lab workers from lethal viruses such as Ebola and bird flu has failed, repeatedly.
High-profile biological lab accidents last year and this week with deadly pathogens like anthrax and Ebola put secretive bioterror labs under the microscope nationwide. The “high-containment” labs operate largely out of the public view in Wisconsin, even as mistakes happen.
Today’s cast-off gadgets are far more likely to end up in a landfill than they are being responsibly disposed of. In fact, 41.8 million tons of e-waste were scrapped last year alone. To combat this, a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has invented a radically new kind of ecologically-friendly semiconductor chip made from wood. No, seriously.
Tim Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, has a few ideas on how to solve income inequality in the US.
We’re one step closer to biodegradable gadgets. These computer chips are made almost entirely out of wood.
If blaze orange is not your color, a proposal at the Wisconsin Capitol would could give you another option. The legislation would add blaze pink to the list of approved colors that must make up half of the outerwear worn by hunters who head out into the woods in Wisconsin throughout the year.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Real men — and women — could wear pink in Wisconsin’s woods if a group of lawmakers get their way.
The Open Source Seed Initiative wants to make carrot seeds more like software. That may seem like an odd project, but consider this: It’s currently possible to patent plants with certain traits, whether they are created through traditional breeding or biotech modification.
Animals go extinct, places too. And stories change.
A group of Madison-based scientists is forming a team to find the remains of long-lost World War II veterans and bring them home for proper burial. If private fundraising goals are met, the Missing In Action Recovery and Identification Project would meld the skills of UW-Madison scholars of history, genetic analysis and archeology.
Engineers at University of Wisconsin-Madison who say frac sand leaking from train cars is harming rail lines in Wisconsin are studying a new, cost-effective fix.
