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Category: Research

These Academics Spent $1.35 To Make Middle School Less Awful. Here’s How.

Time

Middle school, as documented in such educational opuses as Eighth Grade and School of Rock, is legendarily awful. Students who have done well in elementary school often stumble, become isolated and fall behind. But Geoffrey Borman, a professor at University of Wisconsin Madison who specializes in education policy and analysis, and his team, think they may have found an answer.

Looking to Have a Lucid Dream? There’s a Pill for That

The Crux

The results took researchers by surprise, according to Benjamin Baird, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison involved in the study. “It worked amazingly,” Baird says. “It was not at all clear that it would be this powerful of an effect.”

Significant Digits For Wednesday, July 31, 2019

fivcthirtyeight.com

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, built a 3-meter-wide plasma containment chamber called the Big Red Ball, inside of which they created a model of the mysterious, charged, flowing environment of the sun.

Thanks to science, parasite can have sex in mice, not just cats

Mirage News

In a study now online in the journal Public Library of Science Biology a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison peels back the mystery of why the parasite, which infects a wide range of mammals, including humans, can only have sex and reproduce in the intestines of cats.

Sun’s Puzzling Plasma Recreated in a Lab

Quanta Magazine

A research team at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, built each of these factors into their laboratory model. Inside a 3-meter-wide plasma containment chamber — the “Big Red Ball” — the team placed a cylindrical permanent magnet about 10 centimeters wide and 10 centimeters long.

Cannabis Culture

Washington Blade

Noted: African Americans in Wisconsin are four times more likely than whites to be arrested for violating marijuana possession laws, according to an analysis of 2018 arrest data by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Commenting on the state-specific study, University of Wisconsin-Madison sociology professor Pamela Oliver said: “The only possibility for these statistics to happen is for police to be stopping blacks more than whites. … We know the usage patterns are not different, so if you’re generating a difference in arrests, it has to be differential policing.”

In Milwaukee County, hundreds are hurt every year by reckless drivers. This is one victim’s story.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Preliminary data show there were 299 car crash injuries related to speed in Milwaukee County through Monday, compared with 224 through roughly the same period in 2010, according to the Community Maps database, an online tool developed by the state Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Safety and the Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That’s a 33% increase.

The Vaccine That Could Prevent Stress, Anxiety, and Depression

Vice

Quoted: One single risk factor will never explain the entirety of psychiatric problems, wrote Chuck Raison, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in a special report on the topic in Psychiatric Times. But “inflammation turned out to be a common denominator and likely risk factor for every manner of psychiatric disturbance, from schizophrenia to obsessive compulsive disorder, from mania to depression,” he wrote.

SlothBot, the slow but efficient robot, with a cunning mechanism

Electronics Weekly

“The life of a sloth is pretty slow-moving,” said project consultant Jonathan Pauli, and ecologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The nice thing about a very slow life is that you don’t really need a lot of energy input. You can have a long duration and persistence in a limited area with very little energy inputs.”

Boys hit puberty earlier, partially due to rise in BMI

cnn

These findings can only be “cautiously extrapolated to a heavier and more heterogeneous population of US adolescent boys,” Dr. Vanessa Curtis from the University of Iowa and Dr. David Allen from the University of Wisconsin wrote in an editorial that published alongside the study.

A Piece of IceCube Arrives at the Smithsonian

Air & Space Magazine

Kael Hanson, IceCube’s director of operations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that some 200 collaborators were in Madison the day the sensor was sent to D.C., so it turned into a farewell ceremony.“It’s a great honor,” Hanson says. “It’s the Smithsonian. It’s an invite-only club.”

Smart glass can do neural computing all by itself

Big Think

When we think of artificial intelligence (AI), we think of advanced computational hardware running code that allows a processor to see patterns in raw information. A team of researchers from University of Wisconsin-Madison has just published a paper in Photonics Research that describes a very different type of AI system they’ve invented and demonstrated.

IceCube Neutrino: Observatory That Hunts Most Elusive Particle in the Universe Set for $37 Million Upgrade

Newsweek

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a unique detector buried deep within ice at the South Pole that’s designed to observe some of the strangest particles in the universe. Now, the facility is set to receive a $37 million upgrade in order to enhance its capabilities, with the intention of providing fascinating new insights into the nature of the cosmos.

Three things you should know about a new autism technician program that could be coming to Waukesha County Technical College

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: In Wisconsin, the number of children with an ASD continues to increase each year, the agenda notes said. Currently, one in 71 children in Wisconsin has been diagnosed with an ASD, according to data cited in the notes from the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The center also called for planning for ASD services and training.

Why Dogs Now Play a Big Role in Human Cancer Research

Wired

The Vaccination Against Canine Cancer Study is currently enrolling dogs between 6 and 10 years of age who weigh at least 12 pounds and do not have a history of cancer or autoimmune disease. To enroll your dog, you must live within 150 miles of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, or the University of California Davis.

Scientists use algorithm track deadly pig virus

Nova Next

Kristen Bernard, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine who was not involved in the latest study, says genomic sequencing studies of PEDV suggest it originated in from a viral strain in China in 2012. Experts suggest that PEDV may have spread to the U.S. through animal feed ingredients from China.

Potential Tropical Storm Barry to Impact Gulf Coast With Severe Flooding, Surge, Wind Threats; Hurricane Watch Issued

The Weather Channel

Gulf water is warmer than average for early July, with sea-surface temperatures from 84 to 88 degrees, and according to an analysis from the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, there is no appreciable wind shear over the Gulf of Mexico that could prevent a tropical depression or storm from forming.

Discovery of Raptor-Like Dinosaur Adds a New Wrinkle to the Origin of Birds

Smithsonian

Noted: Those bones, representing a partial skeleton, were used to name the new dinosaur Hesperornithoides miessleri today in the journal PeerJ. Described by University of Wisconsin-Madison paleontologist and artist Scott Hartman and colleagues, this dinosaur is categorized as an early member of a group of svelte, small, sickle-clawed dinosaurs known to experts as troodontids. These were raptor-like dinosaurs related to the group that contains more famous carnivores like Velociraptor, as well as the forerunners of birds.

Researchers Create AI Using Just A Sheet of Glass!

Mashable India

Advancements in Artificial Intelligence are at its forefront. Almost every other day, some or the other jaw-dropping scientific research makes its way to the news headlines. From self-driving cars, a robot that can write articles to AI doctors and teachers, there’s hardly any area that hasn’t been touched by AI. And now another research by University of Wisconsin–Madison involved a way to create AI using nothing but a piece of glass. It neither requires a computer nor any electricity.

The Freshwater Collaborative Hopes to Develop and Tap Water Expertise Within the UW System

Shepherd Express

The University of Wisconsin System recently launched a proposal to form the Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin using the collective water expertise of faculty at all 13 UW System campuses. Building on existing strengths, the UW System proposes to create the Freshwater Collaborative to allow students to pursue elite, cross-disciplinary, water-related studies at the 13 campuses. The collaborative would also bring local, regional and global research talent to Wisconsin to help meet the global, regional and local demand for a skilled water workforce that could solve water resource problems here and throughout the world.

Fish die-offs in Wisconsin expected to double by 2050, quadruple by 2100, report says

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Imagine sauntering up to your favorite Wisconsin lake and recoiling from the stench of rotting fish and the sight of pale carcasses littering the shoreline.

Those days are coming, according to two researchers who worked together at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In a report released Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, Samuel Fey and Andrew Rypel predict fish die-offs in Wisconsin lakes will double by 2050 and quadruple by 2100.

This spray-on nanofiber ‘skin’ may revolutionize wound care

Fast Company

Nanomedic joins other researchers attempting to reimagine the wound healing process. Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, created a new kind of protective bandage that sends a mild electrical stimulation, thereby “dramatically” reducing the time deep surgical wounds take to heal.

Cool Factor

Natural History Magazine

Researchers led by biologists Carly Ziter and Monica Turner, then both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, used air temperature sensors attached to bicycles to track how temperatures related to tree and impervious surface cover.

School of Rock: UW professor jams with band Tent Show Troubadours at Summerfest stage

Badger Herald

Doug McLeod, Evjue Centennial Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, just finished teaching his Sports Marketing Communication course before educating the Summerfest crowd how to rock. Yes, that’s correct, McLeod is the co-founder and bass guitarist of Tent Show Troubadours. The quartet McLeod plays with opened for Young the Giant at the Uline Warehouse Stage.

UW Study: Irrigated Farms In Central Sands Region Linked To Cooler Temperatures

Wisconsin Public Radio

A new study on the irrigated farms of Wisconsin’s central sands region is suggesting that something farmers in more arid climates have known for a long time is also true in the Midwest: a high concentration of irrigated farms can cool regional climate.And while that initially sounds like a good thing, viewing irrigation as a defense against climate change is not the message, according to Mallika Nocco, lead author of the study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Why Do We Sleep? Neuroscientists Reveal “Rebalancing” Effect on Brain

Inverse

The University of Wisconsin-Madison study focused on synapses, the spaces between two connected neurons. To communicate with one another, neurons release neurotransmitters, chemical messengers that nerve cells use to communicate, into synapses. In the mouse experiment at the heart of the study, the authors found that synapses shrink during sleep and expand during wakefulness.

News from around our 50 states – minimum wage

USA Today

An expert on poverty says the state should raise its minimum wage and provide more help for families who are struggling despite record-low unemployment. University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Timothy Smeeding co-wrote a report that found Wisconsin’s poverty rate has remained stagnant for nearly a decade, fluctuating between 10% and 11% from 2008 to 2017.