“They’re here,” said David Drake, a UW-Madison professor and extension wildlife specialist who uses radio collars to track and study Madison’s coyotes. “A lot of people don’t even know they’re wandering through the neighborhood.”
Using stem cells from monkeys with a condition like Parkinson’s disease, UW-Madison researchers grew brain cells that produce a chemical depleted by the disease. When they injected the cells into the monkeys’ brains, the animals’ Parkinson’s-like rigid movements were replaced by more fluid walking and climbing.
“It really concerns me that that’s the case even within midwifery which does offer a really beautiful model but again is hampered by these exclusions still being perpetuated even with this potentially transformative model of care,” UW professor says.
Diversity and representation in children’s literature has always been skewed. According to a 2018 study by the librarians at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education Cooperative Children’s Book Center, only 10% of children’s books depict the main characters as Black, and just 4% of executive-level publishing professionals and literary agents are Black.
The recent controversy surrounding Dr. Seuss allows us an opportunity to reflect broadly on the need for more positive representation in children’s books. The Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison determined that in 2019, books depicting either white main characters or animals and nonhuman objects—such as trucks—made up 71 percent of all books published, leaving little room (29 percent) for books depicting any main characters of color (11.9 percent Black, for instance, and 5.3 percent Latinx).
In the last decade, Act 10 has hurt Wisconsin. A report by the School for Workers at the University of Wisconsin found a 70% decline in public-sector union membership from 2010 to 2017.
Quoted: People who live to be 75 to 79 in Wisconsin, on average are expected to live another 13 years, according to state data. That average includes people who are quite ill with health conditions, noted Pat Remington, an epidemiologist from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.
“It is amazing how long people can live with multiple chronic conditions,” Remington said. “Everyone thinks that is when people die, but at 77 they are just likely to live to 90 on average.”
“Those drugs work well for many patients, but the effect does not last,” says Prof. Marina Emborg, who researches Parkinson’s at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, part of the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW–Madison).
Let’s start with an inconvertible fact: Being outdoors is very low risk. This holds for kids and adults. A new study, out in preprint but not fully peer reviewed, from the University of Wisconsin, which followed nearly 1,000 schools and more than 150,000 athletes, found that outdoor sports had half the rate of new cases as indoor sports.
Noted: Psychologist Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes the brain can be trained, and that exercises including short meditation practices will become routine, like running and weight lifting. Emotional well-being will be as important as physical well-being in the coming years, according to Dr. Davidson.
But the problem isn’t just the presence of stereotypes in children’s literature. There’s also an absence of inclusion. According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s school of education, about half of new children’s books in 2018 centered White characters while about 1 in 4 focused on people of color.
Data compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Education in recent years has shown a significant increase in the number of authors and characters of color in the books it tracks. There remains, however, a long way to go.
Fragile X syndrome usually arises from mutations that silence the FMR1 gene, curbing production of a protein called FMRP and leading to runaway synthesis of other proteins. SARS-CoV-2, which contains a single long stretch of RNA, hijacks the same protein production machinery to crank out more virus, making people sick in the process. Could drugs designed to thwart protein synthesis help with both? “The idea kept me awake at night for a week,” says Westmark, assistant professor of neurology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Quoted: “Most mutations that occur do not cause the virus to be more infectious or deadly, but some variants have mutations that are more concerning,” said Ajay Sethi, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Quoted: In 2015, Congress convened a committee to study how to cut child poverty in half within a decade. Hoynes served on that committee, as did Tim Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They say the group issued a clear warning to policymakers: Alleviating child poverty would cost billions, yes, but not doing so would be even more expensive.
“We argued that the cost of not doing anything was $800 billion” in lost productivity, as well as in increased costs associated with crime and health care, Smeeding says. “On the other hand, the cost of doing one of our [recommendations] was about $100 to $110 billion — an 8-to-1 return.”
Noted: The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison shared the image on social media.
The Wisconsin Sea Grant recently released it’s biennial report addressing the organization’s progress on its four pillars: healthy coastal ecosystems; sustainable fisheries and aquaculture; resilient communities and economies; and environmental literacy and workforce development.
Part of the national Sea Grant, the Wisconsin Sea Grant has studied the Great Lakes for more than 50 years.
Jim Hurley, director of the Wisconsin Sea Grant, said it makes sense for the Great Lakes to be part of the Sea Grant because many of the issues that occur in the oceans and coasts also occur in the Great Lakes.
“Issues like sea level rise,” he said. “We’ve seen tremendous fluctuations in Great Lakes water levels. Where they may be looking on the ocean coast at small increments of sea level rise, we’ve seen changes in Lake Michigan of 4 feet over the course of maybe five or six years.”
Quoted: Because these mice mimicked Rett model mice in some ways but not in others, it may be that mCAC methylation, “although significant, does not account for the entirety of MECP2 function,” says Qiang Chang, professor of medical genetics and neurology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the work.
Noted: Brock was a pioneer in studying microbial ecology at Yellowstone, and his research was funded by the National Science Foundation, according to a recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Now 94, he retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after a distinguished career as a professor and researcher and runs a nature conservancy with his wife, Kathie.
As a scientist, Tracey Holloway has spent a lot of time thinking about how climate change is going to affect the world.
As a mother of two young boys, she spends a lot of time thinking about what the world will be like when her youngest son — now only 10 months — turns 30.
“It always seemed like 2050 was so far into the future, but now my baby’s going to be 30 in 2050, and that’s not that far away,” she said.
Holloway, a professor at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been studying air quality and pollution for nearly 20 years. Now, she’s teaming up with other women scientists to help make understanding climate change accessible, forming a group called Science Moms.
Noted: “Determined” tells the story of three women participating in the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention, or WRAP, the world’s largest family history study of Alzheimer’s disease. The University of Wisconsin-Madison research group that began in 2001 is made up of primarily middle-aged adults with a deceased or living parent with Alzheimer’s, a factor that makes them 2½ times more likely to get the disease than those without a family history.
The connections between climate impacts, wood supply, and poverty have drawn researchers at the University Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Wisconsin to study wood banks on a national scale. Growing out of dozens of interviews of wood bank volunteers done by Clarisse Hart, director of outreach and education at the Harvard Forest, the team has identified 82 wood banks across the country.
Quoted: Benjamin Baird, a sleep researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who wasn’t involved in this study, told Scientific American the findings “challenge our ideas about what sleep is.” SciAm has more: Sleep has classically been defined as unresponsiveness to external environmental stimuli—and that feature is still typically part of the definition today, Baird explains. “This work pushes us to think carefully—rethink, maybe—about some of those fundamental definitions about the nature of sleep itself, and what’s possible in sleep.”
UW School of Medicine and Public Health explained that the study, published in Science Translational Medicine, explains how urinalysis has been used to detect other diseases or disorders, but never cancer.
As we approach a full year of this pandemic and attempt to survive sub-zero Wisconsin winter, many of us are tired; physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I teach at UW-Madison and the beginning of the semester is always an intense energetic marathon for me so I find myself having to be extra mindful about resting. So this month’s piece isn’t about food, but about rest as a political practice of resistance.
Quoted: “That high-resolution temporal record is, I think, pretty impressive,” says Brad Singer, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the history of the Earth’s magnetic field but was not part of the research team. “This is only a small number of specimens that they measured, but the results look fairly reproducible in the different trees, and I think that’s a pretty impressive set of data.”
Noted: The connections between climate impacts, wood supply, and poverty have drawn researchers at the University Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Wisconsin to study wood banks on a national scale. Growing out of dozens of interviews of wood bank volunteers done by Clarisse Hart, director of outreach and education at the Harvard Forest, the team has identified 82 wood banks across the country.
Quoted: These findings “challenge our ideas about what sleep is,” says Benjamin Baird, a postdoctoral researcher who studies dreams at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and was not involved in this study. Sleep has classically been defined as unresponsiveness to external environmental stimuli—and that feature is still typically part of the definition today, Baird explains. “This work pushes us to think carefully—rethink, maybe—about some of those fundamental definitions about the nature of sleep itself, and what’s possible in sleep.”
Quoted: “This work challenges the foundational definitions of sleep,” says cognitive neuroscientist Benjamin Baird of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who studies sleep and dreams but was not part of the study. Traditionally, he says, sleep has been defined as a state in which the brain is disconnected and unaware of the outside world.
Quoted: “That would be a really interesting future direction of this methodology,” Benjamin Baird tells Inverse. Baird is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison who studies lucid dreams, but was not involved in this study. He also has lucid dreams himself.
Like so many great scientific discoveries, Tom Brock started the research that would go on to revolutionize the field of biology — and pave the road to the development of the gold-standard COVID-19 tests used to fight a pandemic — with a question.
In addition to the tantalizing possibilities of growing whole furniture, the plant-based materials could enhance fuels and chemicals production, says Xuejun Pan, a professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who wasn’t involved in the study. “You don’t have to necessarily grow a strong piece of wood. If you can produce a biomass, for example, as a future feedstock for bioindustry—competitively and productively—that could be attractive,” he says
The agency cites research done at UW-Madison that found that when the Badger Seal – a mask fitter that was developed by UW-Madison engineers – was put over a three-ply mask, it reduced the amount of particles able to enter by 15 times.
Quoted: Two researchers at UW-Madison began sequencing SARS-CoV-2 samples in February 2020. Virology professor Tom Friedrich and pathology professor Madison Dave O’Connor have a background in HIV research, and began sequencing SARS-CoV-2 samples from around Dane County as soon as local spread began.
“The sort of architecture of how the virus looks at the genetic level is a little different,” O’Connor said. “But the basic principles are the same as for HIV, and flu and other viruses.”
AUW-Madison alumna alleges that the university scrubbed her critical comments about the university’s animal research practices from its social media accounts in a violation of her First Amendment rights. The Animal Legal Defense Fund sued UW-Madison last week on behalf of the former student, Madeline Krasno, who previously worked in a university research lab as an undergraduate animal caretaker.
UW-Health researchers conducted studies focused on how the cancellation or resumption of fall sports affected student-athletes’ mental health.
Nearly 9% of Wisconsin’s $345 billion economy is generated by UW-Madison and related organizations and startup companies, according to a February 2021 report done by NorthStar Analytics, LLC.
Quoted: Those data show that “it’s mask fit that really matters, and there are bunch of different ways to improve mask fit,” says David Rothamer, a mechanical engineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Engineering.
Noted: A 2012 study led by Leslie Seltzer at the University of Wisconsin, for instance, found that phone calls can approximate in-person interactions in reducing cortisol (the stress hormone) and stimulating oxytocin (a neuropeptide associated with bonding and affection).
Noted: The Badger Seal is a DIY mask fitter designed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It takes a few minutes’ time and work to assemble, but materials only run $1 per mask. You can download the instructions here.
UW-Madison and its affiliated entities are an economic engine contributing $30.8 billion a year to the Wisconsin economy, according to a new report commissioned by the university and funded by UW Foundation.
Streur pointed to a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison that shows how COVID-19 has made life in rural and low-income communities in Wisconsin, which ranks 38th for internet access out of all 50 states, even harder without broadband.
A team of university researchers led by Tessa Conroy found that even before the pandemic, those on the winning side of Wisconsin’s “digital divide” often had higher home values, improved health outcomes, better entrepreneurship opportunities and higher educational outcomes than those living without fast internet.
A team led by Professor Tim McGuine, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, undertook a study to identify the impact of playing a sport during the COVID-19 pandemic on student athletes’ health. The nature of the study was an online survey conducted in October 2020.
The task force report cites a University of Wisconsin study that showed more than 400,000 senior citizens in Wisconsin will be living in poverty by 2030, resulting in the state spending an additional $3.5 billion on public assistance programs.
New guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages Americans to make their masks work better by tightening their fit, including by using a simple, homemade tool designed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Health researchers conducted studies focused on how the cancellation or resumption of fall sports affected student-athletes’ mental health.
A University of Wisconsin- Madison professor’s study on a deadly disease found in chimpanzees is causing concern, but he does not currently believe it will affect humans.
Robinson says three principles helped guide where to spend her efforts — bring your best self, go where the people are, continuously reevaluate yourself and the field.
“It was not subtle—the chimpanzees would stagger and stumble, vomit, and have diarrhea, sometimes they’d go to bed healthy and be dead in the morning,” says Tony Goldberg, a disease ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to Ann Gibbons for Science.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently expressed concerns that a fatal disease known for killing chimpanzees could jump to humans because of the similarities in hereditary material, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The disease causes both gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms that are “not subtle,” lead researcher Tony Goldberg told Science.
Project focuses on learning primarily from the experiences of Black and Native peoples to improve anti-racism education in STEM.
“There are very few pathogens that infect chimpanzees without infecting humans and very few pathogens that infect humans without infecting chimpanzees,” said Tony Goldberg, one of the authors of the paper and a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of epidemiology.
Led by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the disease was reported on February 3rd in the journal Nature Communication.The study suggests that the disease is caused by a newly discovered bacterium that comes as the world struggles with the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A new and always fatal disease that has been killing chimpanzees at a sanctuary in Sierra Leone for years has been reported for the first time by an international team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Disease ecologist Tony Goldberg was stunned in 2016 when he learned that a mysterious infection was swiftly killing chimpanzees at a lush sanctuary in Sierra Leone’s rainforest. “It was not subtle—the chimpanzees would stagger and stumble, vomit, and have diarrhea,” recalls Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Sometimes they’d go to bed healthy and be dead in the morning.”
In 2016, Dr. Goldberg, an epidemiologist and veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and head of the Kibale EcoHealth Project, was approached by the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance to try to solve the mystery. He and his colleagues at Wisconsin joined forces with other veterinarians and biologists in Africa and elsewhere to undertake a comprehensive analysis of blood and tissue from the dead chimps that had been frozen at a nearby hospital.
But cases kept coming. In 2016, the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, an umbrella organization for the continent’s primate sanctuaries, reached out to epidemiologist Tony Goldberg, Owens’ advisor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Goldberg was immediately intrigued. “This is an unknown infectious disease that poses a serious risk to the health and survival of an endangered species, which happens to be our nearest relative,” he says.
The bacterium, Sarcina troglodytae, causes a disease called Epizootic Neurologic and Gastroenteric Syndrome, or ENGS. Although the illness has yet to be found in humans, “there are very few pathogens that infect chimpanzees without infecting humans,” said Tony Goldberg, one of the authors of the paper and a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of epidemiology.
