UW Health has been navigating a five-year research effort involving 37 Alzheimer’s disease centers around the country. The first 2,000 participants enrolled this fall.
“This study is definitely a trailblazer in the field of Alzheimer’s disease research,” said Ozioma Okonkwo, professor of medicine at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the UW Department of Medicine.
The goal of archaeologists and anthropologists today is, in some way, to bring back Aztalan, and that’s what host Norman Gilliland does during his conversation in University Place Presents Aztalan: A Place of Mystery with guest Sissel Schroeder, a professor of anthropology and archaeology and certificate advisor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Leading the effort to resuscitate Franklin’s concept for motors big enough to use in industrial applications is C-Motive Technologies in Middleton, Wis. It is a 16-person startup founded by a pair of University of Wisconsin engineers named Justin Reed and Daniel Ludois who spent years tinkering with electrostatic motors to see if they could be improved.
Elizabeth Wright, a UW-Madison professor of biochemistry, said the new images of RSV’s structure will support preventing and slowing infections in the future. Wright runs the research lab that created the new images.
Six male nurse sharks live in a tank inside a laboratory on the UW-Madison campus. Originally from the Florida Keys, the sharks were moved to Wisconsin to help fight human cancer.
“It’s an experimental dream,” said Judith Kimble, a nematode researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The more we do with it, the more of a wonderful dream it becomes.”
A previously elusive ambush predator insect is seen frequently in Wisconsin this year, entomologist PJ Liesch tells us.
Although less popular than local television and some other forms of media, local radio generally gains strong trust from those who listen, according to Mike Wagner, a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism and mass communication researcher and professor. In Wisconsin, during the 2016 election, radio stations were airing around 200 hours of conservative talk every day, according to one UW-Madison study.
Sykes’ WTMJ show was Walker’s primary connection to a statewide audience, according to Lew Friedland, distinguished journalism and mass communication professor emeritus and researcher at UW-Madison. “Without Charlie Sykes, I don’t think there would have been a Scott Walker,” Friedland said, calling Sykes “one of the top three most important political actors” at the time.
While employers can help, they alone cannot save the day, Schmidt said, referencing figures from a recent report by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It found that if the providers surveyed could operate at full capacity — many cannot because of staffing shortages — they could serve a total of 33,000 more children. To fill those slots, the state would need roughly 4,000 more early childhood educators, Schmidt said.
Interview with Jessica Calarco, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Interview with Jennifer E. Gaddis, an associate professor of civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of The Labor of Lunch. She is an advisory board member of the National Farm to School Network.
Divided Americans are often described as living in different media bubbles, so for this story University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism students listened to several radio hosts across the political spectrum to report on just how different those bubbles are.
According to the University of Wisconsin, almost one-third of US land is in the so-called wildland-urban interface and thus susceptible to forest fires, up from 29.5% in 1990. Meanwhile, people are spreading out; some 44 million US homes are now under threat from fire, up from 30 million in 1990, the data shows. Climate change is making those 72,000 communities more tenuous.
In a new series, student journalists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led by Wisconsin Watch State Bureau Chief Matthew DeFour, explore all of those changes. The students who collaborated on this series include: Benjamin Cadigan, Hallie Claflin, Meryl Hubbard, Ray Kirsch, Frankie Pica, Ashley Rodriguez, Andrew Schneider, Sophia Scolman, Paige Stevenson and Omar Waheed.
This has been an unusual growing season. Garden Talk regulars Lisa Johnson and Brian Hudelson are in to talk about what they’ve seen regarding plant disease, insects and the effects of a wet spring and dry fall. And then we talk to an expert about how to grow ferns – both inside and out – and learn a little of the history of this ancient plant.
Co-authored by PhD candidates in sociology, and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea & Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication.
More than 1,000 miles from where Hurricane Milton made landfall on Wednesday night, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are using data from the storm to refine the way they study hurricanes.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is continuing to grow its Wisconet system, which is a statewide network of weather and soil monitoring stations.
The university’s weather network, called Wisconet, is expected to be a game changer for farmers, climate researchers and many other industries in Wisconsin — especially those in remote areas.
Almonds and walnuts, in particular, have cancer-fighting powers. “Nuts increase your fiber intake, and they have vitamin E and antioxidants that may help with cancer prevention,” says Bradley Bolling, an associate professor of food science at the University of Wisconsin. Bolling found that eating 28 grams of nuts per day—about a handful of almonds or walnuts—is linked to a lower risk of getting and dying from cancer. Dried fruit without added sugars may have a similar effect, though data are limited, Bolling adds.
“It’s been scientific consensus since 1999 that indiscriminate killing is damaging,” said Adrian Treves, a professor of environmental studies and director of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It was a very surreal moment,” said Eshan Raul, now a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We were searching specifically for water worlds because it was hypothesized that they could exist. If these are real, it really makes you wonder what else could be out there.”
Average homeowner premiums in Florida rose 57% between 2019 and 2023 according to data from Benjamin Keys of the University of Pennsylvania and Philip Mulder of the University of Wisconsin, a steeper rise than anywhere else in the nation.
While district-wide enrollment remained flat last school year, the student population is likely to trend downward for at least the next five years, according to projections by researchers at UW-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory.
Researchers say people with clinical depression could be helped by a treatment involving psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms. Wisconsin scientists are among those conducting dozens of clinical trials worldwide on the use of the drug in treating depression. They say the evidence shows that, in combination with therapy, it shows great promise.
“It works,” said psychiatrist Charles Raison, a professor of human ecology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How far (psychedelics) get into the culture, how far they get into the clinical space? That’s a mystery.”
“We successfully increased knowledge of radon in this community, and more importantly, they could not have afforded the radon mitigation without our project’s support. This community had noted higher rates of cancer among their people for many generations and expressed concern that their land was poisoning them. They were correct,” said lead study author and associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Noelle LoConte in a release.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are studying what needs to happen for a person to remotely operate long-haul trucks that are otherwise autonomous.
“The vehicle operates on its own until it needs you,” said lead researcher David Noyce. “And then when it needs you, it calls you and says, ‘Can you get on the joystick here, and have control of the vehicle? Because I don’t understand what to do.’”
Trade associations for corn, soybean, potato and vegetable growers in Wisconsin were either unavailable or didn’t respond to requests for comment. Russ Groves, chair of the Department of Entomology at UW-Madison, said detections of pesticides are unfortunately a logical outcome in areas where agriculture is more intense on the landscape.
“Those are the tools that we have relied upon so that we don’t have real significant economic losses for a producer or an industry,” Groves said.
At the beginning of September, parts of the state were experiencing highs in the mid- to upper-80s, which are between five and 15 degrees higher than normal. Near Boscobel Airport on Sept. 15, the temperature rose to 92 degrees.
“It was a very weird September,” Steve Vavrus, director of the Center for Climate Research at UW-Madison, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” He added it was also among the 10 driest, with data going back to the 1890s.
Earlier this year, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency tightened air quality regulations across the United States.
University of Wisconsin-Madison environmental studies professor Tracey Holloway told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that these regulations are the tightest they’ve ever been. And that means our air is the cleanest it’s ever been.
“Our primary findings reveal structural details that allow us to better understand not only how the protein regulates assembly of viral particles, but also the coordination of proteins that enable the virus to be infectious,” study leader Elizabeth Wright of the University of Wisconsin–Madison said in a statement.
A patient should never come out of the operating room with more pain than they went in with.
That’s the thinking behind a group of UW-Madison engineers whose invention aims to make surgical incisions easier and reduce the incidence of accidental cuts from free-floating scalpels.
Christian Che-Castaldo, Heather Joan Lynch, Mathew Schwaller, for their use of satellite imagery to discover 1.5 million previously undocumented Adélie penguins in the Antarctic. Che-Castaldo is a quantitative ecologist affiliated with the U.S. Geological Survey, Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, and the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The researchers, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, estimated the net value of wind and solar based on a combination of off-reservation leases paid to landowners and taxes received by local governments. They predict that tribes and their members could earn about the same either by leasing the right to wind and sun to an outside developer or by developing themselves.
A routine inspection conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture into the conditions of animals in the care of University of Wisconsin-Madison Enzyme Researchers this summer resulted in a handful of citations, the latest report found.
Over time, hazards like these lights and windows are taking a toll. A nearly 50-year study of birds in North America found that populations have shrunk across species, by billions. Avian ecologist Anna Pidgeon has seen this in action. She’s been studying birds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for over two decades.
Crane hunting also brings political views and public sentiment into play, Spreitzer said. A 2023 study by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center found fewer than one in five Wisconsinites supports a sandhill crane hunting season in the state. The work was funded by the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo and the UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
Trump’s proposals to deport millions of undocumented immigrants — which would be exceedingly difficult to carry out — would bring major consequences for the construction industry and the overall housing market if he succeeds. In a widely cited February paper, researchers at the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin found that higher immigration enforcement reduced the number of construction workers and led to less home building and higher home prices. The paper also found that “undocumented labor is a complement to domestic labor,” and that deporting undocumented construction workers also cut back on the labor supplied by domestic workers.
But the picture is more complicated. Migrants living in the country illegally have been more likely to live in overcrowded conditions, meaning their departure would leave fewer units available. Undocumented laborers make up a significant portion of the construction workforce. A recent paper from researchers at the University of Utah and University of Wisconsin found that greater immigration enforcement led to less homebuilding, higher home prices and fewer jobs for domestic construction workers.
A new method of treating Parkinson’s disease passed non-human trials at UW-Madison.
Graduate students, faculty lead discussions on plants like wild rice and cannabis, highlighting medicinal uses and cultural significance.
The complex shape of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is one hurdle limiting the development of treatments for an infection that leads to hospitalization or worse for hundreds of thousands of people in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New images of the virus from researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison may hold the key to preventing or slowing RSV infections.
Both advancements in science and the rejection of science have been a factor in U.S. politics. UW-Madison emeritus professor of chemistry Bassam Shakhashiri returns to talk about the connection between scientific understanding, reasoning and responsible citizenship.
Recent research conducted by UW faculty finds how to help improve economies on Native American reservations through clean energy.
UW-Madison’s Prevention Research Center has received a $5 million federal grant to reduce racial health disparities and improve maternal and infant health outcomes for Black women.
UW Extension Educator Kevin Schoessow is back to talk about the Spooner Agriculture Research Station. And the food they have donated to local organizations. We also talk about the work being done at the Savannah Institute to integrate trees and shrubs with crops and livestock on farms.
With extreme weather becoming more frequent and destructive due to climate change, homeowners in parts of the U.S. facing mounting risks are likely to see significantly higher insurance costs in the years ahead, according to a June paper from experts at the University of Wisconsin and University of Pennsylvania. “Property insurance serves as the front line of defense against climate risk for homeowners and real estate investors,” the researchers noted. “By 2053, we estimate that climate-exposed homeowners will be paying $700 higher annual premiums due to increasing wildfire and hurricane risk.”
Children who grow up today in neighborhoods that were redlined, or graded low for home loans, in the 1930s are slightly more likely to have asthma, according to a new study involving UW-Madison researchers.
These historic injustices continue to fuel distrust among Indigenous peoples toward Western institutions.
As a result, University of Wisconsin health officials were pleased when the leadership of one tribal community in northern Wisconsin recently agreed to meet about the possibility of signing up tribal members for clinical health trials. The entire tribal council for the Sokaogon Mole Lake Ojibwe Nation visited with health professionals at UW-Madison Sept. 11 and 12 to help build a cooperative relationship between the tribe and the UW Health system.
Column by Dr. Nathaniel Chin, a geriatrician, memory care specialist and medical director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at UW-Madison, and Darby Peter, a research assistant in geriatrics and gerontology at UW-Madison.
Using tariffs as geopolitical influencers and industry protections sounds like a great idea. But a recent study out of the University of Wisconsin found that the US tariff codes are regressive and favor the luxury market over the mundane—a handbag made of reptile leather has a tariff rate of 5.3%, while a plastic-sided handbag has a tariff rate of 16%.
That seeming-lack of interest in joining the growing green energy market is the focus of a recent economic study coming out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison details barriers – like federal red tape – that tribes face when starting green energy projects. If these prohibitive barriers are not addressed, researchers tribes across the United States will lose out on 19 billion dollars of revenue by 2050.
Movies and books speculate whether humans are alone in the universe. A new group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is working to find answers.
Thomas Beatty, an assistant astronomy professor, compared the creation of the Wisconsin Center for Origins Research to Marvel Comics.
A group led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found historic federal policies deprived tribes of lands rich in natural resources like precious metals and fossil fuels. Even so, tribes were often left with lands most favorable for wind and solar development.
UW Center for Limnology’s Trout Lake Station celebrates 100 years of research, education.
Long before anatomist Julie Stamm wrote a book about youth concussions, she was an athletic trainer. One fall, during her undergraduate training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she treated a high school football player who got a concussion, and didn’t get better.
If these programs could operate at full capacity, they could serve over 33,000 more children, said the report, authored by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The study was done in partnership with the state Department of Children and Families.
Hilary Shager, author of the report and associate director of the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty, said not having enough staff was a primary reason for not expanding capacity, mostly among group providers. She said providers pointed to low compensation as one of their top issues.
About two years ago, University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Emily Bick went down a research rabbit hole.
It is no coincidence that Epic, one of the largest EHR vendors, was named after literary “epics,” heroic poems defined by their extreme length. A study from the University of Wisconsin found that one in five patients has an EHR the size of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, more than 206,000 words. “[Generative AI] is an opportunity to add a layer of simplicity on top of the Moby Dick-sized amount of information in a patient’s chart,” Adams said.
