Anglers aren’t the only ones catching something out in Wisconsin waters. University of Wisconsin researchers have detected almost 20 viruses in wild sport fish, including a distant relative of coronavirus that’s usually associated with birds.
In what could be a step change in the fight against coronaviruses, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin-Madison created a new vaccine that, when tested on hamsters, removed all traces of SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 plus its omicron variants from the animals’ lungs. The team had previously identified hamsters as suitable animals on which to test potential vaccines.
A lab at UW-Madison is working to create an atlas of prenatal brains with Down syndrome in an effort to better understand the condition. Anita Bhattacharyya, the leader of the lab, joins us.
Column by Erik Iverson, chief executive officer of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
This spring Alliant Energy and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will break ground on a 2.25 megawatt, roughly 15-acre solar array that will be used to study agrivoltaics at the university’s Kegonsa Research Campus 10 miles southeast of Madison.
Researchers will study the soil and water quality of the solar site, its effect on wildlife, and the feasibility of grazing animals and growing crops among the array, said Josh Arnold, UW-Madison campus energy adviser.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a new vaccine that offers broad protection against not only SARS-CoV-2 variants, but also other bat sarbecoviruses. The groundbreaking trivalent vaccine has shown complete protection with no trace of virus in the lungs, marking a significant step toward a universal vaccine for coronaviruses.
The symposium kicks off at 6 p.m. April 12 with a keynote presentation (via Zoom) by Stanley Temple of the University of Wisconsin-Madison on “The Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Then and Now: Is it Still Working?” Temple will talk about the first century of migratory bird protection and speculate about its future, given ongoing challenges from loss and degradation of habitat, collisions with human-made structures, predation by cats, pesticide poisoning and oil spills.
In the dark, dungeon-like basement of Birge Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researcher Guilherme Gainett examined a tiny arachnid under a microscope and jumped from his chair in excitement.
Potential solutions to the problem are ongoing across the state. Brining, where salt is mixed with water before being applied to roads, cleared Wisconsin highways faster and resulted in a 23% reduction in salt use on average, a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found. Some counties even use beet juice as a brining agent to allow the solution to work at colder temperatures, since standard road salt won’t work if it’s colder than 15 degrees.
New center allows for more sophisticated PFAS analysis, lab director says.
The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute has published its annual County Health Rankings and Roadmaps report, which is intended to highlight the factors that can impact our health outcomes and disparities nationwide. The report considers numerous data points, including the excessive consumption of alcohol.
One of the most common myths about dementia — a general impairment in thinking and memory — is that it’s a normal part of aging. But Dr. Nathaniel Chin, an assistant professor and geriatrician at UW Health, wants to bust that myth.
“There are plenty of people who live a really long and healthy life that never develop advanced thinking changes,” said Chin, the director of medical services with the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and host of the “Dementia Matters” podcast.
For the members of Ohe·láku, a co-op of Oneida Nation families growing their traditional white corn together, what started as an experiment has become a success story.
A few years ago, they partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to test different cover crop mixes to restore soil they grow on, which had been depleted under prior ownership. Cover crops are left in the soil after the primary crop is harvested. The idea is to make sure the fields are never bare, increasing soil fertility, limiting runoff and keeping the soil moist.
“From Community Benefits, to Collective Bargaining, and Back” was written by researchers Pablo Aquiles-Sanchez and Laura Dresser of the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The center describes itself as a “think-and-do tank” promoting solutions to social problems that focus on shared growth and opportunity, environmental sustainability and resilient democratic institutions as “necessary and achievable complements in human development.”
The Badger IP Industry Advantage Program will make research agreements and copyright agreements simpler.
James Lattis, director of the UW Space Place, said a partial eclipse is a rare site. They are an opportunity for scientific discovery. Lattis said people can watch the progression by facing away from the sun and looking at the image of the sun made by a pinhole, leaves on a tree or holes in a kitchen colander.
“You see the distant shadow of the moon rushing up on you,” Lattis said. “The crescent of sunlight that’s left is getting gradually thinner and thinner. You start seeing lighting effects in the environment around you.”
WARF public affairs analyst says university researchers may become ‘collateral damage’ under proposal.
There’s a disconnect in how we respond to older people struggling with their mental health, said Dr. Sarah Endicott, a clinical professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison focused on geriatrics. Some of that, she suspects, may be chalked up to ageism, which the World Health Organization defines as the stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination toward others based on age.
“I don’t think it’s intentional, but the lower value we place on older adults in general, especially when it comes to end-of-life, I’m guessing that’s part of the cause,” said Endicott, who also works as a geriatric psychiatrist at Stoughton Hospital in Dane County.
A UW-Madison student tells us about his podcast on changing technology. Then, a Washington Post columnist and a member of the Milwaukee Fire Department talk about America’s hardest jobs. Then, we explore new research on daddy longlegs. Then, we discuss efforts to make national parks along Lake Superior carbon neutral.
Members of the University of Wisconsin-Madison community descended on Capitol Hill Wednesday to make the case for more research funding.
“We can create jobs. We can create innovation, new technologies, and improve human health and improve the human condition,” said Charlie Hoslet, the vice chancellor of university relations at UW-Madison.
The eyes are vestigial organs, or the remnants of body parts that no longer function—they are the “leftovers of evolution,” as study co-author Guilherme Gainett, who was a biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when he conducted the research but now works at Boston Children’s Hospital, tells Science News’ McKenzie Prillaman. In humans, vestigial organs include wisdom teeth and the appendix.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have spent years trying to unravel the details of Down syndrome: What happens inside the womb, how the genetic disorder alters the formation of neurons, and what specific processes affect brain development. The work can’t proceed without studying fetal tissue. Anita Bhattacharyya, an associate professor of cell and regenerative biology, said her lab’s findings so far are significant, having identified a layer of late-developing neurons that are reduced in the brains of fetuses with Down syndrome. If she were to start her career again, however, she isn’t sure she would follow the same path. “It seems too risky,” she said.
Zach Feiner is a research scientist at the state Department of Natural Resources and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology. On WPR’s “The Morning Show,” Feiner said the state hopes lowering the number of fish caught can help walleye recover.
It’s quiet as a group of eight people stand bent at the waist, intently staring at a pizza sitting on a gleaming stainless-steel counter.
It’s an early March Wednesday morning, and they are in the Hilmar Cheese Dairy Applications Lab of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Dairy Research.
On Friday, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced the launch of its Sustainability Research Hub.
In early Feb. 2024, UW-Madison chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced a new cross-campus initiative focused on environmental sustainability.
When it comes to space gardening, UW-Madison botany professor Simon Gilroy believes there’s plenty of room to grow. Gilroy himself is at the root level of the science of galactic farming, as he and his research team are in the midst of his sixth plant expedition into space, this time seeing how tomato plants grow without gravity and whether some of the biology that naturally exists on Earth can be engineered and replicated in space.
A study by the University of Wisconsin determined that pets like to listen to music that fits into how animals communicate.
Higher pollen counts and a longer, earlier pollen season are brought on by warmer temperatures. From 1990 to 2018, the overall amount of pollen increased by up to 21%, according to a study by the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Texas and the Midwest experienced the largest increases.
Funding falls short of Baldwin’s original request of $7 million, will go towards improving facilities in conjunction with USDA.
Includes interviews with Jeb Barzen, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture and Jessica Hua, an associate professor in forest and wildlife ecology, both at UW-Madison.
The pay gap for men and women in Wisconsin is worse than the gap between genders nationally, even as female representation on the state’s corporate boards continues to grow.
Nationally, women working in full-time, year-round jobs earn about 84 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. In Wisconsin, women make nearly 81 cents to every dollar a man makes, Census Bureau data shows.
A recent report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension found the pay gap persists, even for those with college degrees.
“We think this work could help people to understand neuropsychiatric diseases, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, compared to the other models,” said Yuanwei Yan, a scientist in the Zhang Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In a study published last month titled “Economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on families of children with autism” researchers analyzed how families of children with developmental disabilities, including autism, faced significant economic disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic, using data from the Study to Explore Early Development, a case control study designed for young children with developmental disorders.
University of Wisconsin assistant professor in economics Martin O’Connell is investigating the theoretical effects of a sin tax, which are placed on products that have external costs — such as sugars, nicotine and alcohol. The idea behind implementing these taxes is decrease consumer consumption of unhealthy products, like soda, according to O’Connell’s research.
Adult ticks, approximately half of whom are infected with the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, are ready to feed earlier than usual this year.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services and the Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Diseases at the University of Wisconsin-Madison started to look for ticks in February, almost two months ahead of schedule.
Fewer than one in five Wisconsinites supports a sandhill crane hunting season in the state, according to a study conducted by University of Wisconsin researchers. And approximately half of Badger State residents oppose such a hunt.
The data are part of an effort by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center to scientifically assess attitudes on hunting the large, long-legged birds.
The cofounder of Retraction Watch and a Wisconsin medical analyst take academia’s ‘publish or perish’ dynamic to task.
Raymond Allen speaks of past, present, future of lakes in Madison.
The titles of the 150 or so posters on display in the Capitol’s Rotunda sounded just as impressive as what might be found at a symposium of doctoral students — such as “The cost of clean water: An efficiency analysis of Wisconsin’s water utilities” or “Investigating alternatives to antibiotics using phage.”
That’s one takeaway from a recent paper by Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, a professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, Anyi Ma at the University of Wisconsin business school and Rebecca Ponce de Leon of Columbia University.
This new norm of spaced-out siblings seems to be a by-product of the changing American family. The reasons are difficult to parse, but “we know that partner switching explains some of it,” Christine Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who co-authored that 2020 study on the phenomenon, told me.
More than a 150 undergraduate student researchers from the Universities of Wisconsin gathered together for the 20th annual Research in the Rotunda at the Capitol.
Dave Weimer, a professor of political economy at the UW-Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs, has a new book called “Dog Economics” that dives deep into the costs and decisions associated with dog ownership.
Scientists studying viruses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently opened their lab door for a tour, looking to shine a light on their work after being targeted by a Republican bill.
When the paper came out, Jacquelyn Gill was working on her dissertation at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, studying the Pleistocene mammal populations of the Upper Midwest through the proxies of ancient pollen, charcoal and fungal spores.
Every first week in March, the state of Wisconsin celebrates Leopold Week, honoring the legacy of the esteemed conservationist, writer and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Aldo Leopold with events and demonstrations in the spirit of his land ethic.
His comments included a reference to a city plan that prioritizes lead service line replacement based most heavily on the area deprivation index, which ranks neighborhoods by “disadvantaged status,” according to the Center for Disparities Research at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Year after year, the Bronx is ranked as the least healthy county in New York, coming in 62nd out of 62, according to County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a project of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute that compares counties’ health metrics.
The fine print: 98 cities were surveyed, with data from the University of Wisconsin’s County Health Rankings & Roadmaps.
Guilherme Gainett, then a biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was looking through a microscope at the embryo of a daddy longlegs when he saw it — or, rather, saw them.
The data is incomplete on how many crimes each year are committed by migrants, primarily because most local police don’t record immigration status when they make arrests. But the studies that have been done on this, most recently by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, show that in Texas, where police do record immigration status, migrants commit fewer crimes per capita.
The school, attended by some 1,100 students, is located in the Bronx, an area that ranks last in New York state for health outcomes and factors, according to the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
UW study: Wisconsin ranked last out of all 50 states for the rate of business ownership among people of color.
Coercive control and financial abuse are often tied together. The vast majority of domestic-abuse cases also involve economic abuse, and finances are one of the main reasons a person stays with or returns to an abusive partner, as noted in a research brief by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Financial Security. The fact that your friend’s husband pushed her to give up her job is a bad sign.
“Many politicians, law enforcement personnel and ordinary citizens are nonetheless incensed because this person should not have been in the country and thus capable of committing a crime,” said Michael Light, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has published several studies showing undocumented immigrants are not more crime-prone than native-born Americans. “This view that the person’s undocumented status is an aggravating factor is also likely a reason why these crimes generate such strong responses.”
A study from a UW-Madison researcher published Monday in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters contends that walleye, one of Wisconsin’s most sought-after fish and one of its tastiest, are not only struggling to survive in warming waters; their reproduction is also being interfered with and has been “unable to keep up with increasingly early and more variable ice-off dates.”
The Badger Challenge surpassed $1 million in 2023 to fund cancer research and treatment right here in Madison. 100% of participant raised funds were awarded to 8 scholars working to move cancer research and patient treatment initiatives forward.
Andrea Samz-Pustol embodies Wisconsin Idea through impactful research.
Leopold, born in Iowa in 1887, received a forestry degree from Yale and began his professional career in 1909 with the U.S. Forest Service. In 1924 he became associate director of the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison and in 1933 the University of Wisconsin created a chair of game management for him. Leopold died in 1948 fighting a grass fire on a neighbor’s farm. The property is now part of the Aldo Leopold Foundation near Baraboo.
But what happens to the rest of the economy when remote workers come to town? A new paper from Hoyoung Yoo, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at the impacts of the program on local residents.
