During a fireside chat on the UW-Madison campus in March, a leader in the National Science Foundation’s newest and most hands-on program gave a tip of the hat to what he was seeing in his quick tour of Wisconsin.
Bird expert and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Stanley Temple said most of the birds that will make Wisconsin home on Friday were in Missouri or Arkansas on Thursday afternoon.
“There are so many factors that go into predicting where they will land, like wind and route, but it’s very likely they will be in Wisconsin by Friday morning,” Temple said.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health has money to give away. Now it needs applicants.
The school is inviting nonprofit health organizations to apply for grants “to provide better care and address root causes of maternal and infant health disparities.” Awards will be made for a maximum of $1.15 million for up to two years. Applicants must propose working with community partners.
“So many of the issues that are happening right now, this generation of teens really thinks about how it’s going to impact them,” said Dr. Megan Moreno, a pediatrician at UW Health, and the co-director of the American Academy of Pediatrics Center of Excellence for Social Media and Mental Health.
John Lucey, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Dairy Research, wants to turn whey into the chemicals used to make plastics, adhesives and other consumer products that are currently being derived from petroleum. Just like our reliance on oil and gas, Lucey said the chemical building blocks made in oil refineries are holding us back from a greener future.
“We’ve got to replace those too unless we want to keep using fossil fuels,” he said. “These basic chemistry kinds of things, the stuff you would have learned in organic chemistry like butanol — we want to make those kinds of compounds because they can feed into the existing industry.”
Family child care providers make an average of $7.46 an hour, while center-based teachers make an average of $12.99. Both make less than the average Wisconsinite with a high school diploma, according to research by Alejandra Ros Pilarz, an assistant professor at the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
She found poor wages and lack of career advancement opportunities are top reasons why 18% of family child care providers and 28% of ECE teachers plan to leave the field within a few years.
Guest column authored by Nathan Kalmoe, executive cirector of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal, Michael W. Wagner, professor of Journalism and Mass Communication and faculty director of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal, and Dhavan Shah, Maier-Bascom professor and research director of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal, all of UW-Madison.
“Ultimately, we want to explain under which circumstances we will see novel properties,” says Larissa Albantakis, a computational neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Wolfe and his team began by investigating a cheesemaker’s problem with mold spreading on the surface of the cheeses and disrupting the normal development of the rind. This causes the cheese to look like the rinds were disappearing as the mold invaded their cheese cave. They collaborated with microbiologist Nancy Keller’s lab at the University of Wisconsin to find out what this mold was doing to the rind microbes and what chemicals the mold may be producing that disrupted the rind.
These blazes have produced huge blossoming smoke chimneys. According to NASA Earth Observatory, researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, found that the smoke pillars may have reached up to 39,000 feet tall, as far as the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere.
The time between spring and summer weather seems to be lessening. We talk with Susan Carpenter, a native garden specialist from the UW Arboretum, about how climate change is affecting native gardens.
Noted: Additionally, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found, menstrual cycles are highly-variable on an individual level, with 1 in 5 women having an “irregular” cycle. For some, that activity can be detected 35 to 37 days after the beginning of their last period.
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health says survey results it collected over the course of about a year found young people in the state reported drinking more in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Noted: Green Bay is poised to become the home of the first commercial STRAP plant, which would take these kinds of plastics and make them into materials that can be used again.
This is done through a process called STRAP — which stands for solvent-targeted recovery and precipitation — developed from early work done by undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Now, George Huber, a professor in chemical and biological engineering at UW-Madison, is leading a team at the Center for Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics, or CUWP, working to take STRAP from the lab to a commercial setting.
The center is funded by a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and is made up of people from UW-Madison and five other universities, a national laboratory and more than 20 industrial partners.
High-earning, young adults increased alcohol use the most during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a UW-Madison survey of Wisconsin residents.
Bioengineered plants aren’t exactly new—other companies are using altered greenery to try and suck up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In February, poplar trees designed by the start-up Living Carbon took root in Georgia in what might have been the first planting of genetically modified trees in a U.S. forest. And researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have experimented with mutated mustard plants that do the same thing.
The University of Wisconsin Insect Diagnostic Lab Director PJ Liesch, also known as the Wisconsin Bug Guy, studies several insect species across the state of Wisconsin.Liesch’s interest in insects stemmed from his childhood experiences.
Interview with Adam D’Angelo, a Ph.D student at UW-Madison, and Scott Craven, emeritus UW-Extension Wildlife Ecologist.
Technological changes and attacks on media have eroded public trust in journalism and the news media. Sue Robinson, a UW-Madison journalism professor, joins us to share her new book on how journalists can better engage their communities and build trust with their audiences.
A recent University of Wisconsin study highlights the FHLBanks’ record of success. Their lending generates an estimated $130 billion of additional mortgage lending each year, while saving consumers $17 billion in interest payments.
Column authored by Gottwald, the director of licensing at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in Madison.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered a new species of ancient reptile in central Wyoming and named it in the language of the First Nations people indigenous to the area where it was found.
Wisconsin’s Republican delegation is asking the country’s top health officials for more information about two biosafety incidents at a University of Wisconsin-Madison research lab — a request spurred by a recent opinion article that the university has disputed as “not rooted in the facts.”
Tom Yuill, a University of Wisconsin professor and wildlife disease expert, provided health testing of the birds.
But a rambunctious skulk of four red foxes found a new way to torment greenskeepers by digging holes in putting greens at The Glen Golf Park on Madison’s Near West Side. And now the foxes have found themselves in a six-month research effort by the UW Urban Canid Project that has been studying foxes and coyotes in Madison for nearly 10 years.
Our story begins in Africa, where our species and its close relatives evolved; even the Flores hominins are descended from a species called Homo erectus that arose in Africa before spreading across most of the world. Most of the hominin sites in southern Africa tend to be in caves, like the Rising Star Cave System, where University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks and University of Witwatersrand anthropologist Lee Berger have studied the remains of a species called Homo naledi, first discovered in 2013.
PHOTO: Soy leaves that were damaged by the weedkiller dicamba as part of University of Wisconsin research into whether the herbicide drifted from where it was sprayed in Arlington, Wisconsin. Photograph: Tom Polansek/Reuters
Successful principal investigators communicate, are transparent, exhibit inclusivity, stabilize group member size.
The university revealed that construction will begin Tuesday on a nearly 350,000-square-foot building to house the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences, which was launched in 2019.
Greg Nemet continues the tradition of environmental scholarship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison through the La Follette School of Public Affairs, studying energy, climate change and public policy. He says despite a gloomy international report, the capacity to tackle problems has never been greater:
“If there were ever a time to have optimism about our collective capacity and will to address climate change, this is it. This idea was threaded through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which emphasized that we can still effect transformational change that could stave off the worst possible outcomes and lead to a sustainable, equitable world. Globally, we’ve made considerable progress in a broad range of technologies that are making the transition to a low-carbon economy more affordable and feasible than ever.”
There is also emerging evidence that the personality traits thought to undergird political beliefs – such as empathy, risk-taking, and a preference for competition vs cooperation – may be partly inherited. A literature review by New York University and the University of Wisconsin found evidence that political ideology is about 40 per cent genetic. Hence, the Collinses fear that as fertility declines it will not be some racial Other who outbreeds everyone else but each culture’s equivalent of the neo-Nazis. ‘We are literally heading towards global Nazism, but they all hate each other!’ says Malcolm.
Developed by experts at the Center for Healthy Minds at University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Healthy Minds Program is designed to give users practical skills for practicing mindfulness in daily life.
The production of ethanol as fuel for vehicles is likely harming the habitat of scores of endangered species. That’s the conclusion of a new study by a lead scientist at UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. The author of the study joins us.
A new project will see a network of more than 90 weather stations built to better monitor local soil and weather conditions across the state. We speak with the head of the project to learn how researchers and farmers may benefit from more data.
For example, the University of Wisconsin has been awarded a $5 million grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a system that can detect and “strategically correct” what the government perceives as misinformation relating to COVID, elections, and vaccines. This new grant adds to the previous $7.5 million grant awarded by the NSF to ten universities to develop anti-misinformation tools as part of the “Trust & Authenticity in Communication Systems” initiative.
A survey of Wisconsin citizens shows the state’s political divides are disrupting social relationships and personal bonds. Michael Wagner, a UW-Madison journalism professor, said the center embarked on this research to understand problems of a divided state to help articulate a solution. Its report shows results of what are described as “civic fractures.”
A report from the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal (CCCR) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found civic fracture is growing across Wisconsin.
Batchelor dated the stalagmite using a Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry instrument from UW professor John Valley’s Lab. Valley said the SIMS instrument provided a more accurate record of data compared to other studies that have been conducted up until recently.
After nearly five years of construction, new upgrades to the Babcock Hall Dairy Plant and a three-story addition for the Center for Dairy Research are finally complete at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison didn’t promptly report a 2019 lab incident involving a potentially dangerous bird flu virus to some authorities, raising questions about whether the public can trust oversight of such controversial research, an investigative reporter alleged Tuesday in a USA TODAY opinion piece promoting her new book.
“It’s really dynamic. We can expect that there will be mutations that pop up and a lot of them won’t be very successful at being transmitted and maintained in populations of animals,” Thomas Yuill, a professor emeritus of pathobiological science, forest and wildlife biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A recent forum at UW-Eau Claire, one of the region’s leading universities when it comes to getting undergraduate students internships and other career experiences, highlighted some antidotes to the enrollment slump. It also spoke to how colleges can help local economies by keeping talent close to home.
State-of-the-art renovations to UW-Madison’s Babcock Hall are expected to revolutionize the Wisconsin cheese industry and bring the university’s iconic dairy production back to campus after a three-and-a-half year hiatus.
The second study was conducted by Charlie Trevor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Anthony Nyberg of the University of South Carolina.
Meanwhile research centers are popping up like — what else? — mushrooms after a rainstorm, including at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the University of Texas’ Dell Medical School, in Austin. Psychedelics are in the midst of what journalists inevitably refer to as a “renaissance.”
Thousands of clinical trials underway in Wisconsin require thousands of volunteers – people whose ailments, desire for compensation or altruism motivate them to take part in medical research. We talk with Betsy Nugent, the director of clinical research for the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine.
The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute has released its new county health rankings. We speak with Sheri Johnson, the institute’s director about the variables that produce the healthiest communities.
Written by Gregory Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs.
About half of Pennsylvania’s counties were in the bottom portion of an annual ranking of health outcomes, according to the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
The Field Day Lab in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research is creating online video games to be used as learning tools for students. We talk to Sarah Gagnon, creative director for the Field Day Lab in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the UW–Madison School of Education, about their latest games and how they work.
Cancer is the No. 1 cause of illness and death in the aging dog population. According to the School Of Veterinary Medicine at University Of Wisconsin-Madison, roughly one out of every three dogs is affected and 6 million new cancer diagnoses are made in dogs each year.
Although documented in the Greenlandic ice cores, “prior to this study, there was a lack of evidence that suggested that the Midwest responded to DO events,” said Cameron Batchelor, a geologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Batchelor, the first author on the study, completed this work during her doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “For the first time, we have proof that this region of the world was sensitive to DO events.”
The leader of the social media and adolescent research team at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, Dr. Megan Moreno, says conversations about social media best practices need to include teenagers.
The growing research into PFAs contamination finds sources in everyday consumer goods like toilet paper and traces PFAs into Green Bay and the Great Lakes. We talk to Christy Remucal, is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of the Water Science and Engineering Laboratory at UW-Madison, about where we’re finding PFAs in Wisconsin’s waters.
When it comes to adjusting for warmer water, some fish are defying expectations. We talk to Olaf Jensen, an associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Center for Limnology at UW-Madison.
Health outcomes are not even across Wisconsin’s 72 counties, and even the healthiest counties have sharp disparities, with Black residents far more likely to die prematurely, according to new data from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Population Health Institute.
State of play: The healthiest counties in Colorado are its wealthiest ones, with Douglas County ranking at the top once again and other mountain communities not far behind, according to an analysis by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
Two new reports from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention detail infant and maternal mortality rates in the U.S. We talk with Tiffany Green, a reproductive health expert and assistant professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, about what needs to be done to save the lives of mothers and their babies.
Quoted: On the other side of the debate is Mark Seidenberg, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the leading scientists cited by advocates for the science of reading. Seidenberg said there is a large volume of research that sheds light on how children learn to read and that supports the science of reading approach.
Can using such approaches raise the overall success of kids in becoming readers? “I think it’s huge,” Seidenberg said in an interview.
Overall, large urban counties (using definitions from the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute) saw a slight decline in population, while rural ones saw a slight increase. Since “urban” and “rural” correspond to “strongly Democratic” and “strongly Republican,” the same pattern applies to counties that voted most heavily for President Biden or Donald Trump in 2020.
