Category: Research

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.

As Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin has now shown, the problem is that pro-business policies don?t really contribute to economic growth. They just make the rich richer, which is not the same thing at all.

Noted: As agriculture systems have adapted to the climate, costs have increased, said Jack Williams, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and director of the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research. That trend is expected to continue.

For a sociologist, the value of field notes can?t be overstated. Yet Alice Goffman felt deep relief at destroying hers – shredding the notebooks, then disposing of the hard drive kept in a safe-deposit box under someone else?s name.

The University of Wisconsin?s IceCube neutrino detection system has been quietly operating amid Antarctica?s barren tundra for more than four years now. In that time, the fledgling detector has captured more than 100 cosmic neutrinos, many of which originated far outside our Milky Way galaxy. And if project leaders get their way, its imaging quality is about to improve by an order of magnitude.

True or false? Women are more emotional than men. Boys are better than girls at math and science.

Every year since 1994, statistics gathered by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that just over 8 percent of children’s books published in the United States represented nonwhites. 

Sixteen new varieties of maple and alder trees developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been planted in six communities in an experiment to judge how well the trees stand up against disease, pests and other assaults.

When newly minted Ph.D.s go on the job market, they usually have questions about the teaching load, research money and tenure prospects. Alice Goffman, now an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had another query, too: Would she be allowed to get arrested and go to prison?

Parting may be such sweet sorrow, but staying together? That may be another kind altogether, a new study on marriage and depression suggests.

When newly minted Ph.D.s go on the job market, they usually have questions about the teaching load, research money and tenure prospects. Alice Goffman, now an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had another query, too: Would she be allowed to get arrested and go to prison?

Three University of Wisconsin-Madison professors have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors conferred on American scientists and engineers, the organization announced Tuesday.

Those who experience chronic marital stress are less able to savor positive experiences, and are more vulnerable to depression, according to a long-term study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and their colleagues.

It?s long been said that marriage is good for your health, but as anyone who has gone through divorce knows, a bad marriage can take a huge toll on your well being — and now a new study is proof of that.

Being married can make people more prone to depression, a study reveals.

After years of advice from experts telling us that marriage helps keep us happy, healthy and longer-lived, a study has found that it can also lead to depression.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is looking for a particular kind of biologist: a feminist one. The university has set up a fellowship, administered by its women’s studies department, for life sciences research. An interview with UW psychologist Janet Hyde.