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Category: Research

Entomologist Names Wisconsin ‘Bug Of The Year’

Wisconsin Public Radio News

No two years are the same, and while insects are always around, some stand out as particularly interesting or surprising. Phil Pellitteri, an entomologist and head of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, said that when he assessed this year, he realized that while he exceeded the previous year in number of specimens submitted to the lab, 2013 ?didn?t seem that buggy.?

Study: AVID/TOPS students show gains

Wisconsin State Journal

High school students enrolled in a college readiness program offered by the Madison School District and the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County again showed stronger academic progress last year compared to other students of similar academic standing and demographics, according to a study released Monday by UW-Madison researchers.

Wisconsin Assembly committee to convene climate science panel behind closed doors

Capital Times

The forum will include testimony from a number of experts, including two UW-Madison climate scientists ? Dan Vimont and Galen McKinley ? and other environmental experts, such as Michelle Miller, associate director of the UW Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, and David Liebel, a UW engineering professor who specializes in storm water systems.

Chris Rickert: Shock not the only value to PETA bus ad

Wisconsin State Journal

Two not-very-breaking-news-like observations from the hoo-ha over Metro Transit?s decision to allow People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to put a graphic ad on its buses: 1. PETA is not known for its subtlety. 2. Humans are not known for embracing ugly truths.

Experience: I discovered a new species up my nose

The Guardian

It was about three days after I?d left Africa that the pain in my nose became too severe to ignore. Starting as a dull ache niggling at the edge of my consciousness, it had gradually built in intensity to the point at which I had to stop what I was doing to investigate further.

The next civil rights fight: Scholar Gloria-Ladson Billings believes African American students deserve better

Isthmus

Gloria Ladson-Billings travels the world, speaking and teaching about racial disparities in education. A professor in curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, her books — including the bestseller The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children — are considered part of the canon for teacher educators. Ivy League schools have tried to lure her away, but she has turned down offers from Harvard and Stanford, where she got her Ph.D.

Workplace Success

Men's Health

Pay attention, managers: Group the Johns with the Jennifers. The quality of a team?s work improves if its members share the same initials, suggests a new study from the University of Wisconsin. 

Rehabilitative device bridges the gap between stroke victims’ brains and hands

Gizmag

We?ve recently seen rehabilitative systems in which stroke victims use their thoughts either to move animated images of their paralyzed limbs, or to activate robotic devices that guide their limbs through the desired movements. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, however, have just announced an alternative approach. Their device acts as an intermediary between the brain and a non-responsive hand, receiving signals from the one and transmitting them to the other.

Human Health in a Changing Climate: Jonathan Patz

KQED-FM, San Francisco

Polar bears aren?t the only species threatened by climate change. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin, has spent the last two decades studying the ways that a warming world will affect human health. In 2007, he shared the Nobel Prize as a lead author for the United Nations? Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Patz, who holds degrees in medicine and public health, crisscrosses the globe to spread the word about the far-reaching impacts of climate change on our health and why better urban planning might be the answer.

PETA rolls out new bus ad campaign

NBC-15

Pictures of a lab cat are now being displayed throughout Madison on the sides of city buses. Madison Metro buses rolled out a new Peta ad campaign. The picture shows a cat with a metal bar screwed to its head.

Architects of the Swamp (subscription required)

Scientific American

Joy Zedler carefully planned the three experimental wetlands at the University of Wisconsin?Madisons Arboretum to be identical: parallel marshes 295 feet long and 15 feet wide, carved by engineers into the green landscape. Zedlers contractors planted all three tracts with similar species to see how the vegetation would absorb and clean water runoff during storms.

Field Trip to Malapa

National Geographic

Paleoanthropologist and science blogger John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of the experts on site at the Rising Star Expedition, analyzing fossils, monitoring activity from the Command Center, and helping tell the story from the senior scientists? perspective. For real-time updates follow him on Twitter @JohnHawks.

Icy South Pole Lab Reports 28 High-Energy Neutrino Events

Wisconsin Public Radio News

Since opening a couple years ago, a particle detector in Antarctica has been spotting nearly massless subatomic particles called neutrinos, in ice or in the atmosphere. Now, however, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory says it has also detected 28 high-energy neutrinos from beyond our solar system.

Stay tuned to CWD research

Wisconsin State Journal

A second study, reported by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, also is troubling for the passive strategy. UW-Madison research, yet to be published, found that prions ? the infectious, deformed proteins that cause CWD ? can be taken up by plants. The findings suggest crops and garden plants pose a previously unknown risk for exposure to CWD among deer.

Inside Wisconsin: Tom Still

Wisconsin State Journal

Part of the global effort to predict storm behavior is being conducted through the UW-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies. With support from NOAA, university scientists will work with data from NOAA satellites, current and future. The team will collaborate to improve satellite-based products that monitor weather and climate while enhancing sensors planned for future spacecraft.

The American Police State

The Chronicle Review

In a book coming out this spring, Goffman, now a 31-year-old assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, documents how the expansion of America?s penal system is reshaping life for the poor black families who exist under the watch of its police, prison guards, and parole officers.

Wisconsin orchard IPM program helps cut pesticide use

The Grower

An increasing number of Wisconsin apple growers have adopted integrated pest management while reducing their pesticide use. Not only is it good for the environment, but it also has sent a positive message to state and federal agencies, according to a news release.

Wisconsin professor, Sesame Workshop helping kids

Big Ten Network

Helping children process their parent?s incarceration is an issue University of Wisconsin Professor Julie Poehlmann has been grappling with for more than 15 years. And for the last few years, she has been developing a unique way of communicating with children about some tough life questions.

University of Missouri to buy stake in Arizona observatory

Kansas City Star

Noted: The area of the mirror in the Arizona telescope is 75 times larger than the area in a telescope on the MU campus in Columbia, said Eric Hooper, an astronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is the interim director of the WIYN Observatory.

Soda or Pop? Dictionary of American Regional English Getting an Update

Time NewsFeed

In 1965, bands of surveyors drove their Dodge vans every which way out of Madison, Wisc., starting a project that would take nearly a half century to complete. Their work?going door to door and asking what people called that strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk or those delicious round things you put syrup on and eat for breakfast?became the Dictionary of American Regional English, a six-volume catalog of the things that are only said in Maine or Appalachia or Southern Texas.