The rate of children with profound autism has remained virtually unchanged since the CDC started tracking it, said Maureen Durkin, a professor of population health science and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Indeed, the highest rate of new diagnoses has been among children with mild limitations, she said.
A proclamation President Donald Trump signed last week slapping a lofty price tag on new H-1B visa applications is shaking up a system Wisconsin’s universities and hundreds of companies use each year to hire thousands of highly skilled workers, researchers and educators from abroad.
Flash droughts came to prominence in the 2010s, with Prof Jason Otkin of the University of Wisconsin proposing a formal definition in 2018: a period of less than three weeks in which the moisture level in the top 40 centimetres of soil drops severely enough to affect vegetation.
Ruth, a beloved elephant at the Milwaukee County Zoo, died over the weekend. After her second fall this month, zookeepers made the difficult decision to euthanize her. Now, The University of Madison School of Veterinary Medicine is performing a necropsy.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison opened the new Computer, Data and Information Sciences (CDIS) building at the start of the fall semester, bringing together three of the campus’s fastest-growing majors under one roof and establishing a hub for research, education and outreach in technology.
University of Wisconsin-Madison’s first research lab in the African American Studies department is collecting data on spaces where Black people thrive throughout the city.
The UW-Madison research lab, Soulfolk Collective, partnered with the Center of Black Excellence and Culture to determine how to amplify Black voices, stories and lived experiences.
Adrian Treves, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of environmental studies and director of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab, founded in 2007, studies many types of carnivores, including bears. In honor of Fat Bear Week, Treves answered The Daily Cardinal’s most pressing ursidae-related questions, from Alaska to Wisconsin.
The Freshwater Collaborative has awarded Universities of Wisconsin schools $4.2 million to support water education and research programs across the state.
The funding will target already successful programs at universities including undergraduate student freshwater research. It addresses some of Wisconsin’s most pressing water issues — freshwater contamination, data centers and lead pipe replacement.
Inland floodwater mosquitoes are poised the thrive in the wake of heavy rainfall or flooding, according to P.J. Liesch, director of the UW-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab.
“Then the larvae have to feed and grow and develop, which takes a bit of time,” Liesch said, “so that’s why when we have a heavy rainfall event, it’s often 10 to 14-ish days later, and boom, the mosquitoes are out in full force.”
UW-Madison is getting an extra $13.5 million to add two floors to the lab it’s constructing for a new cyclotron particle accelerator, which can be used to help detect cancer.
The UW Board of Regents approved the revision to the project Thursday, which will create more space to treat patients for cancer and other diseases at the facility, amid a booming biotech industry.
A University of Wisconsin Board of Regents committee has signed off on a $13.5 million expansion of a planned cyclotron particle accelerator research facility that will create radioactive isotopes used in cancer research, detection and treatment.
Hundreds of community members poured into the sun-soaked cartography library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Science Hall in the last 10 days of July, gingerly perusing through decades of fantasy maps, all created by one woman.
The exhibit, curated by UW-Madison alum and University of Oregon professor Mark Fonstad, showcased the maps, annotated books and meticulous research notes behind Karen Wynn Fonstad’s, his mother, atlases of worlds including “The Lord of the Rings” and “Dungeons & Dragons.”
Potentially fatal, Chagas disease is spread by kissing bugs, a subspecies of assassin bug. But entomologist PJ Liesch returns to explain that Wisconsin’s assassin bugs are not vectors for disease. He also says the recent mosquito outbreak in Milwaukee did not result in the spread of West Nile Virus.
Patients with cancer could be diagnosed and treated in one building if UW-Madison gets approval for its expanded multimillion-dollar cyclotron lab.
Construction for a $48.5 million cyclotron lab between two research buildings next to UW Hospital was expected to start this year, but the university now is seeking the green light from the UW Board of Regents to add more space for patient treatment and research.
Karen Oberhauser is the former director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Arboretum and cofounder of the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project. She has four decades of experience researching monarch butterflies.
Oberhauser said that at this point in the monarch season, the butterflies are still living and breeding in northern ranges as far north as Canada, but she added that the earliest generation of migrators to Mexico are now about halfway to their destination.
“I just looked at those maps and I see some monarchs are showing up now in roosting sites way down in Kansas and even a little bit further south right now,” she said.
Lauren Fields was less than four months into a research project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) when she got an email message from her program officer at the federal agency.
A doctoral candidate in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fields has been studying the biochemistry involved in the feeding process of a common crab species. She and her faculty supervisor believe the project can shed new light on problems such as diabetes and obesity in human beings.
A 2021 study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Financial Security found 77% of Social Security recipients have reduced odds of owning a home.
Data from AADAPt and other studies offer some clues. In a study published in May, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison analyzed the links between adverse social experiences and vascular injuries in brain tissue.
The team studied 740 brain samples donated to Alzheimer’s research centers. Regardless of race, the brains of people who had lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods or experienced other discrimination over their lifetime were more likely to bear signs of vascular damage, ranging from blocked vessels to hemorrhages.
An associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is leading a clinical trial on whether over-the-counter hearing aids are actually beneficial to listeners with changings to their memory skills and thinking.
Dr. Kimberly Mueller, an associate professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders at UW, referenced a study conducted in 2024 that focused on modifiable risk factors for developing dementia in older adults.
Anew UW-Madison study suggests Wisconsin school districts — including some in Dane County — have moved away from compensation systems that at least partly paid teachers for performance.
Scientists at UW-Madison are leading national studies on psilocybin, to determine whether the psychedelic compound could offer lasting relief for mental health and substance use disorders.
The one scenario where you should pick up the leaves in your yard is if your trees have had serious foliar fungal diseases, according to UW-Madison.
“While most leaf spots on leaves are cosmetic and harmless to the overall health of the tree, fallen diseased leaves do serve as a source for spores that can infect next year’s emerging leaves,” the horticulture department said.
University of Wisconsin researchers Sushmita Roy and Erika Da-Inn Lee have developed a new computational tool that maps changes in the genome, ultimately helping researchers see DNA’s 3D organization and link it to phenetic disturbances in disease and normal processes, according to Roy and Lee’s study.
A new study from UW-Madison gives us some hints as to why the country is so polarized.
The August study from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication examines how using partisan news media affects an individual’s willingness to support lawmakers who reach across the aisle.
Within weeks of arriving in Madison, Tomas Dodds has already launched an exciting lab on campus: the Public Tech Media Lab. Dodds, a native of Buenos Aires, was happily working at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he was a research fellow at the AI, Media & Democracy Lab and the Institute for Advanced Study, when he saw a job opening at UW-Madison’s J-school.
According to Dodds, a main goal of the Public Tech Media Lab, which already counts faculty associates from around the globe, will be to teach journalists how to use open source technologies to create their own AI systems that align with their values and needs. The idea is to make newsrooms less dependent on big tech companies that have their own private interests.
UW-Madison professor Jimena Laporta Sanchis wants to help dairy cows beat the heat.
While a 70-degree day is welcome news to most Wisconsinites, it’s approaching a heat danger zone for dairy cattle. Due to cows’ much larger bodies and the immense work they must do to process food through four stomachs and produce gallons of milk daily, they’re more prone to overheating and increasingly vulnerable to climate change.
Parents struggle to help teens deal with online racism. Online racism is different from in-person racism because the people behaving that way usually hide behind fake names, making it hard to stop them. Studies found that teens of color see more untargeted racism – memes, jokes, comments – and racism targeting others online than racism targeted directly at them. But vicarious racism hurts, too.
Just because surveillance might cause an animal harm doesn’t mean that its privacy has been invaded. But disturbing its tranquility might qualify, according to Martin Kaehrle, a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has written about this subject.
Seasonal citizen involvement in bird and other wildlife counts provide critical data for state conservation efforts. UW-Extension wildlife specialists David Drake and Jamie Nack return to encourage more public involvement.
University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist Markus Brauer studies how social groups interact, and he told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that the state’s political divisiveness helps explain some of the trust issues.
“If there are people who belong to other political parties, then there is the possibility that they may not share the same common values, which then undermines trust,” Brauer said. “So generally, partisan strength and perceived political polarization actually undermine social trust in others.”
More than 62,000 Hmong Americans lived in Wisconsin in 2020, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison analysis of the latest U.S. Census data. Appleton is the municipality with the fourth highest population of Hmong people in the state according to the report, tallying more than 3,400 people in 2020.
Allison Daminger was in graduate school when she learned that men and women use their time differently: On average, men spend more time on paid work, and women spend more time on unpaid work.
“I remember wondering whether the time-use numbers were telling the full story,” says Daminger, who is now an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “What about differences in how men and women use their mind on their family’s behalf?”
Average wages in Wisconsin reached a record high in 2024, according to a new jobs report. But job growth in the state fell behind the overall national average. We talk with Laura Dresser, the report’s co-author.
Written by rofessor of human development & family studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Honeybees are like livestock,” Hannah Gaines Day, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who studies how pollinators interact with the environment and agricultural operations, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “They’re like little, tiny livestock that the beekeeper is taking care of, and so they have someone looking out for them and feeding them and giving them medicine if they need it if they’re sick. But the wild pollinators don’t have that.”
Labor Day offers a critical juncture at which to access the condition of workers in Wisconsin. For two decades, the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has produced comprehensive “State of Working Wisconsin” reports, which have set the standard for assessing where we are at.
The 2025 assessment features some concerning news.
Laura Dresser, a co-author of the report and High Road Strategy Center associate director, said in a statement that the 2025 data shows “some real strengths for working Wisconsin owing to the strong recovery from pandemic shutdowns.”
“Long-standing inequalities are still with us, and federal policy puts substantial clouds on the horizon,” Dresser said. “I’m especially concerned about the administration’s attacks on the integrity of federal economic data.”
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health professor and dean Jon Audhya considers how deep cuts to federal research funding are affecting scientific work and training of students.
Wisconsin has a record-high number of jobs and median wage, but there are signs that the economy is softening and changes in federal policy could negatively affect workers in the coming years.
That’s according to a new report from the High Road Strategy Center, a labor-focused economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. On Friday, the organization released its annual State of Working Wisconsin report, which aims to provide insight into how workers are faring in the economy.
Written by ssistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s scholarship program, First Wave, brings hip-hop pedagogy into the community by encouraging their scholars to engage with Madison’s youth. Meanwhile, an artist-led youth movement seeks to cultivate an underground hip-hop scene that directly engages with Madison’s unofficial “hip-hop ban” during the 2010s.
“So far, Wisconsin’s summer has been warmer than average and also wetter than average,” said Amanda Schwabe, a climate outreach specialist with the Wisconsin State Climatology Office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Across the state, we’ve been about two degrees warmer than the average and the state has also been about 25% wetter than average.”
Researchers from the UW-Madison’s School of Human Ecology co-authored a study finding that cold plunge elicits a natural rush of dopamine, similar to what people experience using social media.
UW-Madison students and researchers find automation apps ripe for hacking and abuse. Then, we talk about the drop off in drinking by Americans. Then, we talk about the recent flooding in Milwaukee with the Weather Guys.
In a statement, a spokesperson for UW-Madison said the university “does not yet have clarity on the full impacts of” the ruling, but that it “puts at risk” more than $14 million for biomedical research.
“This figure represents the remaining money on 22 grants that were already approved and underway, which also means the time and money already spent on these projects will potentially go to waste, in addition to the money that will not be recovered,” said UW-Madison spokesperson Victoria Comella.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently discovered a flaw in how NASA and other space agencies design and test rovers for exploring the moon and beyond.
Wisconsin has warmed about 2 degrees since the 1950s due to human-driven climate change, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists who examined temperature records from the National Climatic Data Center.
An invasive mushroom is spreading across southern Wisconsin and North America, severely reducing the biodiversity of other fungi, according to a new study led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher.
Aishwarya Veerabahu and a team of mycologists from UW-Madison and USDA Forest Service studied the edible golden oyster mushroom, which was brought from East Asia to the United States by mushroom cultivators in recent decades and has spread in the wild.
Christelle Guédot, a fruit crop entomologist and extension specialist in the Department of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, says that Japanese beetles were once the bane of gardeners and farmers in the southern half of the state, but their range has since spread northwards.
“Over the past 10 years, they have been detected by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection up in Bayfield. We also trap many hundreds in Spooner and we see them now in Door County,” Guédot said. The beetles have also been wreaking havoc in the northeastern counties, including Oneida and Vilas.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that automation apps, like iPhone’s ‘shortcuts’, can be a vehicle potential abusers use to control their partner’s activities on their mobile device.
Rahul Chatterjee, an assistant professor of computer science at UW and founder of the Madison Tech Clinic, said Madison Tech Clinic helps individuals who have been virtually stalked or harassed by their partners.
“A lot of the participants in our trials have tried one or more different types of either behavioral treatments or pharmacological treatments,” Christopher Nicholas said. “They’re looking for another option.”
He’s optimistic psychedelics paired with therapy will give patients a new tool. He worked on a 2023 study that found participants’ depression scores improved about six weeks after a single dose of psilocybin.
Interview with John Hawks, subject matter expert and the Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dane Demo Farms, a collaboration between local farmers, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Dane County Land & Water Resources Department, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, provides opportunities for farmers to directly research local impacts of conservation practices.
“Our hope is that some of them will choose to remain here in Madison and work in Madison schools, where they have had a shortage of school psychologists,” said Katie Eklund, a professor in UW-Madison’s School Psychology program who led the project.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that automation apps, like iPhone’s ‘shortcuts’, can be a vehicle potential abusers use to control their partner’s activities on their mobile device.
Rahul Chatterjee, an assistant professor of computer science at UW and founder of the Madison Tech Clinic, said Madison Tech Clinic helps individuals who have been virtually stalked or harassed by their partners.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is proposing a bill to require UW-Madison and state private animal researchers who use cats and dogs to make an active effort over a three-week period to rehome or transfer them to an area humane society.
University of Wisconsin-Madison students will soon move into their dorms and apartments. Classes will begin early next month. And as a new school year gets underway, a variety of pressing challenges on campus will linger.
In the U.S., about 1.5% of natural gas is converted into chemicals that are used to make plastics and other consumer products, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Snapshot Wisconsin is led by two DNR staffers, both with doctorates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison: Christine Anhalt-Depies, research scientist; and Jennifer Stenglein, wildlife research scientist.
Both have been with the program since its beginning, have helped guide its path and now have valuable perspective on one of the state’s largest citizen science projects.
A new report published by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in the journal Current Biology may hold clues to an unfolding mushroom mystery: the origins and possible consequences of the invasive golden oyster mushroom.
