Category: Research

Jordan Ellenberg really wants you to like math. Not math in the sense of calculating a tip or doing your taxes, but math as the path to understanding, math as evidence, math as truth. Hence the title his new book, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, which Penguin Press released this week.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is trying to end sexism with science. The college announced the launch of a “feminist biology” post-doctoral fellowship, in which students will attempt to “uncover and reverse gender bias in biology,” according to the official release.

The past few years have seen a welcome crop of fine mathematics titles that are intended for the general reader, but are also valuable as inspiration and sources of interesting material for those of us who teach the subject. Jordan Ellenberg?s outstanding book pretty much shares its subtitle with Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham?s classic Why Do Buses Come in Threes?, although the two books are very different in terms of style and content.

One of the most important processes in the human body occurs inside the cellular machines that make the proteins we need to live. Now a team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has produced high resolution images of these machines called spliceosomes.

Julian Barnes? The Sense of an Ending is a good novel. We know it?s a good novel because lots of people like it, and because it won the Man Booker, one of the biggest prizes in English-language literature.

Audio: Today on the Gist, the case for integrating math into everyday conversation. Mike talks with Jordan Ellenberg, author of How Not to Be Wrong.*

The neuroscientist whose research inspired the La Crosse Compassion Project visited the city on Monday to headline the ?La Crosse Compassion Project Live!? event.

Eight UW-Madison professors have each been awarded $50,000 fellowships for research.

Richard Davidson calls it revolutionary, the idea that compassion isn?t some pre-determined personality trait.

?Capital in the Twenty-First Century,? Thomas Piketty?s new book, has received a great deal of attention. But we shouldn?t neglect another important new book on income inequality, from a much different perspective. Titled ?On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City,? and written by Alice Goffman, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, it offers a fascinating and disturbing portrait of the economic constraints and incentives faced by a large subset of Americans: those who are hiding from the law.

Although most of the attention given to greenhouse gas has focused on the air around and above us, there?s another significant source of carbon that could contribute to climate change and has previously been unaccounted for: soot and fossils buried in soil that formed up to 15,000 years ago.

How Not to Be Wrong, the first popular math book by University of Wisconsin-Madison math professor Jordan Ellenberg, just hit the shelves. In addition to a Ph.D. in math, Ellenberg has an MFA in creative writing and has been writing about math for popular audiences for several years. Unsurprisingly, the book is witty, compelling, and just plain fun to read.

Most people consider never having missed an aeroplane something to be proud of. After all, what could be worse than the sinking feeling of arriving at an airport gate only to see the plane taxiing down the runway without you? (Paywall.)

Missing a flight would ordinarily be considered the worst possible start to a holiday. But not according to American maths professor Jordan Ellenberg.

The cult of the kid genius could do more harm than good, former child prodigy turned mathematics professor Jordan Ellenberg says. Mr. Ellenberg, author of “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking,” joins Lunch Break with Lee Hawkins.

Stan Temple looked out from atop a bucolic bluff in central Wisconsin on Sunday and imagined the sky darkening, the sound of wings flapping as millions of passenger pigeons passed overhead.

New research from the University of Wisconsin suggests that deforestation is promoting the spread of a disease called Nipah virus in Bangladesh. The virus has no cure, no vaccine ? and a mortality rate of more than 70 percent.

There is far more carbon stored in the Earth?s soil than previously thought, a new study has shown, and scientists fear disturbing it could unleash vast amounts of it into the atmosphere.

A Middleton filmmaker?s efforts over the last two years helped solve some of the mystery surrounding what happened to a soldier killed in World War II and return the soldier?s remains home.

Noted: But a new piece from Greg Duncan, Katherine Magnuson, and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal in an edition of The Future of Children journal dedicated to two-generation strategies for fighting poverty asks us to consider a different framing for the problem.

Noted: In her conference keynote address, Marsha Mailick, director of the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shared data gleaned from 10 years of following the lives of more than 400 people with autism, starting in 1998. This study was prescient; adults are vastly underrepresented in autism research, and longitudinal studies into old age are badly needed.

Noted: Over 600 miles to the west, researchers in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, created a program called the Lifestyle and Functional Exercise program, or LiFE. Originally adapted from an Australian fall prevention program, LiFE is an in-home program for people aged 70 and beyond that uses exercise in seemingly mundane daily activities, like balancing on one leg while brushing their teeth.

Is the science of biology sexist? Last week, in a co-written article for the journal Nature, the director of the US National Institute of Health (NIH) publicly admonished scientists for testing drugs and theories on male lab rats, tissues and cells, while excluding females for fear their hormone cycles might distort results. Research, the authors wrote, suggests females? cycles are no more distortionary than males?. Now all studies that apply to the NIH will be vetted for an appropriate balance of male and female subjects.

Will it take a disaster to respond to climate change? A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers last week released a series of detailed science-based scenarios envisioning life in 2070 in the Madison area?s Yahara Watershed, aiming to help people envision the effects of climate change before it worsens.

UW-Madison professor of entomology Susan Paskewitz says she?s heard from many people who hope the cold winter months might have put a dent in the state?s population of disease-carrying ticks.

Typhoons are peaking in strength farther north in the western Pacific Ocean, and that may have consequences for Japan and the Korean peninsula in years to come, researchers said.

Tropical cyclones worldwide are moving out of the tropics and more toward the poles and generally larger populations, likely because of global warming, a surprising new study finds. Atlantic hurricanes, however, don?t follow this trend.

Hurricanes and tropical storms are reaching their peak intensity closer to the poles, migrating at about 30 miles per decade, according to a new study published Wednesday. If this shift continues, it could have major consequences for places like New York City, Tokyo, Japan and Brisbane, Australia, as well as other high latitude areas that don?t normally see intense hurricanes.

Tropical storms are migrating out of the tropics, reaching their peak intensity in higher latitudes, where larger populations are concentrated, a new NOAA-led study published in the journal

Tiny crustaceans in Lake Mendota are distant cousins of sea monkeys ? but they are more like the cattle of the lake.

The taxpayer-funded University of Wisconsin?Madison is now offering a pioneering postdoctoral fellowship in feminist biology.

A new program at the University of Wisconsin, called ?Feminist Biology,? teaches biology with an emphasis on women in the field. We all know we need more women in science; but, is it necessary to teach biology through a feminist gaze?

Thomas “Rock” Mackie, director of medical engineering at the Morgridge Institute for Research and an emeritus professor at UW, has been picked to receive the William D. Coolidge Award, the highest prize given out by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine.

When the University of Wisconsin announced last month it had endowed country?s first-ever post-doctoral program in feminist biology ? ?which attempts to uncover and reverse gender bias in biology? ? the backlash was swift. ?Memo to the University of Wisconsin,? Christina Hoff Sommers sniffed in an American Enterprise Institute video, ?we don?t need feminist biology any more than we need femistry or galgebra.?

Cows create a lot of body heat and use a large amount of energy in the process of producing milk. ?When you are comfortable, a cow is warm; when you are hot, a cow is miserable; and when you are cold, a cow is probably fine,? explained Dr. Lou Armentano, a professor in the Department of Dairy Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. On those hot summer days, cows immediately respond to the high temperature with decreased milk production.

Researchers at UW-Madison who conduct an annual study of poverty have found jobs and earnings are beginning to rise again as the Badger State recovers from the recession.

The poverty level continued to drop in Wisconsin in 2012, thanks to increases in jobs and earnings, according to a new study released by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.