Now, engineers at The Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed battery-free sweat sensors that can measure several chemicals and give accurate readouts at a range of concentrations. Their sensors can be worn like a necklace or even implanted into the skin, where they would work throughout a user’s lifetime.
Noted: A University of Wisconsin economics professor estimated an annual loss of more than 6,000 jobs and roughly $5 billion in lost economic output due to reduced production or closure of refineries in the Upper Midwest. Experts for the tribe dispute those findings.
For the first time, researchers have learned two cancer drivers are linked together, and some top University of Wisconsin scientists are taking the credit for the incredible discovery.
“It’s an emergent field,” lead author Dr. Mo Chen said as she explored how the two most mutated cancers markers actually work together.
“Science teaches you that you have to be open to things that are unexpected,” UW Health’s Dr. Vince Cryns said of what they found underneath the microscope.
Metro level data was aggregated from county data in the 2022 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program.
Noted: Entomologist PJ Liesch is director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, aka @WiBugGuy on Twitter. He’s been studying the not-so-little buggers for nearly 15 years and graciously agreed to share his insights, offer some tips and bust a few myths.
Noted: In the summer, peak energy demand is pretty well matched with peak solar generation, as University of Wisconsin at Madison professor Gregory Nemet notes. People crank up the AC most when it’s sunny out.
Written by Andrea Dutton, an international expert on climate change and sea level rise who is a MacArthur Fellow and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Noted: A study by the Medical College of Wisconsin and The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in March 2021 reported that firearm-related homicides in Milwaukee among non-Hispanic African Americans were 14.6 times greater than among white residents. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has also reported that there has been more than a dozen juvenile homicides as of late June.
“My research is [focused on] how to improve access, how to make sure that communities benefit from the research, and how to make life a little easier, at least on the healthcare side,” says Dr. Maria Mora Pinzón, a preventive medicine physician and scientist at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who focuses her research on improving access to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD) services within the Latinx community.
“My research is [focused on] how to improve access, how to make sure that communities benefit from the research, and how to make life a little easier, at least on the healthcare side,” says Dr. Maria Mora Pinzón, a preventive medicine physician and scientist at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who focuses her research on improving access to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD) services within the Latinx community.
Noted: It’s true the U.S. does not guarantee parental leave. And multiple studies have found the average cost of daycare in Wisconsin can cost as much as in-state tuition at a University of Wisconsin school, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Noted: Before the pandemic hit, 1 in 12 Wisconsinites were food insecure — meaning they couldn’t or were uncertain they could get the food they needed. Food insecurity is linked to children struggling more in school, worse health outcomes in all age groups and greater stress on families, according to the Wisconsin Food Security Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jo Handelsman, a UW-Madison biologist and director for the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, warns in her new book “A World Without Soil” that global soil erosion is an invisible crisis. We have the author on to discuss the harms of worldwide soil erosion and what can be done to stop it.
Noted: While the deadline to apply has already passed, the city will still allow families to participate in surveys regarding the program, which will be studied to learn more about the success of the program. These surveys will be given out three times at six months apart from each other, and participants will be compensated for their time, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: While the country as a whole is facing an obesity crisis, the problem is much more pronounced in some states. To identify the most obese states, 24/7 Tempo reviewed health data from the 2022 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program.
One of the experts Frederickson enlisted to help chart that path was James Tinjum, the director of the geological engineering program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In addition to helping the city develop an easy-to-understand guide to PFAS for residents, Tinjum and some of his graduate students also launched research in Rhinelander, putting together a map of how water flows and interacts in the water table beneath the city and its surrounding areas.
“It’s a way to draw analysis to what types of compounds are contributing to the ‘fingerprints’ of the wells, whether it’s an organic sludge, (firefighting foam), or a more dispersed pattern of PFAS typical of landfill situations,” Tinjum said. “If we don’t have this information, we don’t know how to fix the problem.”
Noted: According to the study, which was conducted by researchers with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the state Department of Health Services, 92% of the 4,452 adults surveyed said they had eaten fish within the last 12 months, with most of those surveyed reported eating fish they purchased. But because the fish were bought, instead of caught, those consuming the fish were likely to be less aware of the advisories.
Henry Anderson, one of the researchers involved in the study and a professor at the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said to counter the lack of information, states in the Great Lakes region should focus on putting advisory information in areas they know people will be looking.
“You don’t go to the grocery store and go to the fish counter there and point to the salmon or sea bass or walleye and ask what the fish consumption advisory is,” Anderson said.
A recent survey of nearly 1,000 doctors by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Collaborative for Reproductive Equity puts the statistic at approximately 80 percent. A vast number of them expressed concern “that abortion laws will make it difficult for physicians to offer timely and appropriate care (93 percent) and for patients to receive the care they need (91 percent).”
Collin County is the healthiest county in the state, according to a new report from the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute, which ranks the health of nearly every county in the country.
NASA is releasing new images from deep space thanks in part to a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate.
Doctor Ken Sembach is the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute and helped launch the James Webb telescope back in December. Sembach stood with President Joe Biden while the first images from the telescope were released Monday night. Sembach graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992.
Wisconsinites have the weight of the nation’s problems on their minds heading into the 2022 midterm elections, a nod to a state whose voters might be pivotal to the balance of power in the U.S. Senate this fall.
That was a key finding of the La Follette Policy Poll, a written survey sent to 5,000 state residents last fall, which asked about the issues that matter to them most and the problems they most want solved. Nearly 1,600 responded.
“The main goal was taking a pulse on what are the policy topics Wisconsinites care about most with the hopes of steering our elected officials and candidates toward those topics,” said Susan Webb Yackee, a professor of public affairs and director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison.
Alexandra Villa has spent her summer examining rocks on the ocean floor in order to learn more about carbon dioxide in the sky.
Villa, a UW-Madison geoscience graduate student, is a scientist on board the International Ocean Discover Program’s Expedition 393. Her research will help examine ways to help combat climate change and make predictions about the Earth’s future climate.
With funding from organizations such as WARF (Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation), CUNA Mutual Group, Dane Arts, and the Morgridge Center for Public Service, Karanja and her team were able to bring important conversations to the forefront regarding women of color in STEM fields. These are conversations that Karanja and the Represented Collective look to continue at an event tonight at the Goodman Community Center on Madison’s near east side titled “Legendary: An Evening of Celebration.” It will be a night of cocktails and conversation and commemoration of women in the STEM fields.
With a focus on women of color, the event will feature a group of panelists including Ana Hooker (Senior Vice President & Chief Laboratory Officer at Exact Sciences), Angela Jenkins (Technology Project Manager at American Family Insurance), Ponmozhi Manickavalli Sathappan (IT Manager at CUNA Mutual Group), and Dr. Jasmine Zapata (Chief Medical Officer for Community Health at Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Division of Public Health, and Physician and Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health) who will lead a community discussion regarding issues of representation, professionalism, visibility, microaggressions, macroaggressions, and many other topics that affect the experiences of women across the STEM fields.
Along with being able to hear from the panelists, event-goers will also be able to partake in celebrating the accomplishments of Erika Bullock and Maxine McKinney de Royston who are both assistant professors in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education.
In the 1990s, scientists at the University of Wisconsin did some interesting experiments on baby monkeys. One group was separated from their mothers at birth and raised for five months in a “nursery” of other baby monkeys. (We could perhaps call this the “evacuee” group.) The other set got to stay with their mothers, but each mother-baby pair was isolated. This “lockdown” group saw no other monkeys for five months.
“I’m not anti-CBD,” said Barry Gidal, a professor of pharmacy and neurology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who co-wrote the study and worked as a consultant for the Epidiolex manufacturer. “There needs to be oversight so that patients know what they are getting.”
Still, “it was a book that was always stocked in gay bookstores and women’s bookstores,” K. T. Horning, who recently retired as the director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told me. “A lot of lesbians bought it as gifts for friends who were having children, or even just bought for themselves, because it was the only time they had ever seen themselves reflected in a children’s book.”
Fish is a popular food in Wisconsin whether it’s part of a Friday night fish fry or a staple for Wisconsin tribes. However, a new study finds around only half of people surveyed in the Great Lakes region know about fish advisories that set limits on how much is safe to eat.
The study was published in June in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Researchers from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and University of Wisconsin-Madison found around 5 million people ate more fish than recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency recommends no more than two meals or 12 ounces of fish per week.
Only about half the people living in the Great Lakes region are aware of fish consumption advisories that warn people to limit their meals of fish, according to a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, also found that an estimated 5 million people across the region exceeded the general recommended fish intake of two meals, or 12 ounces per week, as suggested by the Environmental Protection Agency for all fish, including those purchased in stores.
Quoted: Melissa Kono is a community development educator in Clark and Trempealeau counties for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension.
She said farmers use plastic sheeting to protect hay and silage from the elements in order to feed their livestock all winter. Some forms of these plastics include top covers for silage bunkers — think white tarp covering mounds of silage with tires holding the tarp down — long bags that hold long, skinny rows of silage and wrap for individual hay bales.
“Their other option for silage would be a silo and those are very costly to construct,” Kono said. “Having a silage pile makes it easier to access, especially if farmers don’t have a lot of space, or makes it more accessible to feeding animals, which helps cut down on time and cost. I just think because farmers are stretched so very thin these days, having plastics to use has probably made it more economical.”
Noted: On average, Wisconsin customers pay nearly 6 percent of their income on electricity and gas. Using federal data, a University of Wisconsin-Madison analysis found 18 neighborhoods across the state have energy burdens of 8 percent or more, including nearly a dozen Black and Hispanic communities in Milwaukee County. In rural areas, Menominee, Marinette, Clark, Burnett and Adams counties also paid a greater proportion of their income on energy costs.
Plants already pull significant weight in removing carbon dioxide from the air, but a new study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows there’s potential for plants to capture more.
The study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, also shows the potential to increase the amount of aromatic compounds — or the building blocks for certain biofuels and medicines — produced by plants.
Quoted: To Sanjay Limaye, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the landing itself was “astounding.”
With a newly-minted astronomy doctorate at the time, Creighton recalled a general feeling of relief. “We’re going to be able to move forward; the road has been set,” she said.
Two verbal changes in particular are linked with the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, as explained in a 2018 study published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. “What we’ve discovered here is there are aspects of language that are affected earlier than we thought,” said Sterling Johnson, PhD, one of the study’s authors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Race also matters in proctoring software built to monitor students during remote exams. Proctoring software does not always accurately assess people who have darker skin. At the University of Wisconsin at Madison and in other cases, students have been barred from or have had to pause from taking tests because of software failing to recognize faces of people with darker skin. The technology itself certainly is not racist. Yet, as scholars such as Ruha Benjamin and Safiya Noble have shown, the algorithms and codes structuring such technologies can perpetuate racial biases and stereotypes.
Quoted: “Life as we know it is as much an expression of the conditions on our planet as it is of life itself. We resurrected ancient DNA sequences of one molecule, and it allowed us to link to the biology and environment of the past,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison astrobiologist and study lead Betul Kacar.
Quoted: Jenny Higgins, a professor and director of the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said their research has also shown an increase in birth rates in Wisconsin in recent years due to abortion clinic closures. Higgins said Wisconsin’s abortion ban will have devastating impacts on people’s health and wellbeing in Wisconsin.
“Either people will travel out of state to get abortion care in Illinois and Minnesota, for example, which will take significant time, money and logistical resources,” said Higgins. “Some people will self-manage their abortions here in Wisconsin … and then, of course, some people will not be able to access abortion care at all.”
Noted: When the La Follette School of Public Affairs surveyed Wisconsin residents last fall, researchers found people in the state have far more complicated — and frankly, far more important — issues on their minds, things like climate change, health care, race relations and water quality, precisely the issues that don’t often get covered extensively in political campaigns or can easily be reduced to bumper sticker slogans.
Over the next four months, our “Wisconsin Main Street Agenda” project will report on what we’re learning from residents and explain what we know about the mood of the electorate based on that massive survey of Wisconsin residents by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center.
The project is a partnership of the Ideas Lab, the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio.
Turning more attention to the bowl is a boom in microbiome research that “has made it apparent just how important the organisms living in our gut really are,” says Joshua J. Coon, Ph.D., a professor of biomolecular chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Research provides some support for this idea. In one small study, researchers at the University of Wisconsin created a game based on Jamal Davis, an imaginary Black male science student who experiences discrimination in his PhD program. Players took the role of Jamal Davis and experienced what he experiences because of his skin color. When questioned afterward, the players said they understood how he felt and could take on his perspective, indications that they felt empathy.
The Clean Lakes Alliance has been monitoring the Madison-area lakes for cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, in an effort to provide season-ahead algal bloom forecasting. Blue-green algae was responsible for at least eight of the 22 beach closures last summer. Beaches have been closed by the public health department in recent weeks due to high bacteria readings, though all are open now.
Dr. Paul Block, an associate professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UW-Madison, has been conducting research to gauge the predictability of Lake Mendota’s water quality and hopes to apply his research to other area lakes as well. His research is the basis for the algal bloom forecast in the lakes of Madison.
To human eyes, the night sky between the stars appears dark, the void of space. But X-ray telescopes capture a profoundly different view. Like a distant fireworks show, our images of the X-ray sky reveal a universe blooming with activity. They hint at yet unknown cosmic eruptions coming from somewhere deeper into our galaxy.
To help find the source of these mysterious X-rays, University of Wisconsin, Madison astronomer Dan McCammon and his team are launching the X-ray Quantum Calorimeter or XQC instrument. XQC will make its seventh trip to space aboard a NASA suborbital rocket. This time, XQC will observe a patch of X-ray light with 50 times better energy resolution than ever before, key to revealing its source. The launch window opens at Equatorial Launch Australia’s Arnhem Space Centre in Northern Territory, Australia, on June 26, 2022.
Noted: The June 16 news article “Study: Air pollution reduces global life expectancy by more than two years” made the startling point that breathing dirty air has more of an impact on global life span than alcohol, cigarettes, terrorism or conflict. Think this is just a problem for the more crowded and less-developed parts of the world? A study conducted at the University of Wisconsin at Madison showed that eliminating air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels would prevent 50,000 premature deaths and provide more than $600 billion in health benefits each year in the United States.
A federal program will give Wisconsin and 10 other states a $20 million boost to help farmers, cheese makers and other dairy processors develop new products and new markets to help stabilize the embattled dairy industry.
The funds, announced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) Monday at a Jefferson County cheese producer, will expand the Dairy Business Innovation Initiatives program in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
USDA is giving the money to the Dairy Business Innovation Alliance, a joint project of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association and the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The groups will provide grants and support programs so that farms, dairy processors and related businesses can “modernize, reach new markets and create economic growth,” said Baldwin.
UW-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty is partnering with the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania to gather survey data throughout the program. The information collected will be used to help guide policies and future programs, advocate for a national guaranteed income program and aid in the expansion of the social safety net.
We see the term schizophrenia often, but what does a schizophrenia sufferer experience, and how can non-sufferers recognize the symptoms? UW-Madison Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry Diane C. Gooding will lead us through the complexities of a disorder that affects millions of people worldwide.
Something was wrong with the foxes. That was what callers to the Dane County Humane Society in Wisconsin kept saying in April, as they reported fox kits, or young foxes, behaving in strange ways: shaking, seizing or struggling to stand. The kits, which were often lethargic and wandering by themselves, also seemed unusually easy to approach, showing little fear of humans.
Noted: A study at the University of Wisconsin found digital messaging—and especially text—were effective in building relationships. The reason they made a difference is because they tended to communicate people were thinking about each other and taking time to reach out. The study found quantity was actually not as important as quality—communicating a real caring or attention to the other person.
Co-authored by Tova Walsh, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network and Alvin Thomas, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
A study from the UW Carbone Cancer Center has found that Black patients with pancreatic cancer have lower survival rates than white patients because they are far less likely to receive life-extending treatments in Wisconsin.
Anew study showing Black smokers who took a pill were more than twice as likely to quit as those who only received counseling is welcome news in Wisconsin, which has the nation’s highest smoking rate racial disparity, UW-Madison researchers say.
Kalkstein’s partnership with Wisconsin forecasters developed through the work of UW-Madison’s UniverCity Alliance, which invited Kalkstein to give a lecture on campus in 2020. That led to a meeting with local officials to talk about ways Madison and Dane County are responding to the urban heat island effect.
Allan Houston is a Professor of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Tennessee. Disclosure: Research on chronic wasting disease at the Ames station is conducted in cooperation with the University of Tennessee, Mississippi State University, the University of Wisconsin and Colorado State University.
As temperatures rise and the seasonal migration of wild birds comes to a close, this year’s transmission of the avian influenza may be nearing its end, said Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.
At UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, a vaccine for avian influenza is currently in the works to prepare for future outbreaks. Poulsen, however, said it may be difficult to vaccinate millions of birds and could potentially affect international trade.
As many students celebrate the start of summer with relaxation, the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus is still filled with researchers working to make new discoveries and advances on today’s leading questions.
In a paper published on May 20 in Science Advances, the Center for Healthy Minds team, led by Richard J. Davidson, found that short term mindfulness training has no effect on brain structure and gray matter density. This discovery contradicts several views regarding MBSR as a therapeutic treatment.
Trials will begin in August at five locations: Toronto’s Pearson International airport, the Port of Tampa’s cruise ship terminal, Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, a major Hindu temple near Atlanta and the University of Wisconsin.
Finally, additional hydrothermal synthesis experiments examining the detailed kinetics of quartz cementation at conditions reflective of the earthquake-producing crust would likely be informative.— Randolph T. Williams (rtwilliams@wisc.edu; 0000-0002-1160-8842), University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA; and Åke Fagereng (0000-0001-6335-8534), Cardiff University, UK
Quoted: A study released last month by UW-Madison researchers found the elimination of air pollution emissions across the country from energy-related activities could prevent more than 50,000 premature deaths a year.
In a press release about the analysis, Claire Gervais, a clinical associate professor with University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, called the results “shocking.”
“Doctors can only do so much,” Gervais said. “We must have better public policy to reduce industrial and transportation sources of fossil fuel burning.”
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health released a new study Thursday, indicating that the longer someone who has an opioid use disorder takes medication to treat it, the less likely they are to overdose.
