An unending series of mass shootings in the U.S. has produced a familiar public response over the years: an outpouring of grief, followed by heated debate over gun laws, often ending in the failure of gun control advocates to win passage of even popular measures like background checks.
Technology has the power to completely shape our lives, but it could also alter our bodies in unexpected ways. Recent research suggested small, hornlike spikes could grow on our skulls, and smartphones could be the culprit behind this change.
You might have heard recently, from publications like the Washington Post, NBC, and of course, Newsweek, that some people are growing a “horn” or a “spike” out of the back of their skull from using a smartphone too much.
A 2018 study out of Cooperative Children’s Book Center of Education (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that the percentage of books depicting characters from diverse backgrounds is abysmally low.
For that third study, the researchers crunched the numbers, and reported that a lot (35 to 40 percent) of the young people that they studied seemed to have enlarged bone growths at the back of their head, and that males tended to have larger bumps, though graphs presented in the study don’t actually seem to support that second conclusion, as University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks points out in a blog.
In order to understand why, University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist Nathan Seltzer went looking for potentially correlated data sets and settled on numbers tracking the decline in manufacturing jobs.
“The students looked to create a prosthetic leg for Stubbs to create a little more mobility at home,” shop manager at UW Maker Space, Karl Williamson said.
The success of this project is primarily due to Omar Poler, instructor of the TLAM class at UW-Madison; Janice Rice, retired UW librarian and member of the Ho-Chunk Nation; and the students from the last three spring semesters’ TLAM classes.
New research by University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist Nathan Seltzer identifies a link between the long-term decline in manufacturing jobs — accelerated during the Great Recession — and reduced fertility rates. Analyzing every birth in America at the county level across 24 years, Seltzer found that the share of businesses in goods-producing industries better predicted a metropolitan area’s fertility rate than the region’s unemployment rate.
The Vaccine Against Canine Cancer Study (VACCS) is seeking to sign up 800 dogs who live within 150 miles of one of the participating trial sites – Colorado State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of California-Davis.
The coauthors are Francisco Santiago-Ávila (a PhD candidate at the Nelson School of Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison), Professor Joann Lindenmayer (Public Health and Community Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine), John Hadidian (Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), Research Fellow Arian Wallach, Ph.D. (Centre for Compassionate Conservation, University of Technology Sydney), and Professor Emerita Barbara J. King (Anthropology, College of William and Mary)
We surveyed the U.S. public on this topic. In March and April 2018, we surveyed 2,948 U.S. adults, who resembled the general U.S. population with respect to gender, age, geographic location and race. The online survey asked all participants to read a hypothetical scenario about the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Jessica L.P. Weeks (@jessicalpweeks) is associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Noted: In the 1990s, researchers found that flies use these genes to build their limbs. In an influential paper, Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago, Sean Carroll of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cliff Tabin of Harvard University speculated that flies and vertebrates — and other animals with appendages — inherited this network of genes from a common ancestor.
Lovastatin is already approved for use in children with high cholesterol, so if proven effective for fragile X, it could quickly be prescribed for people with the syndrome, says Xinyu Zhao, Jenni and Kyle Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The UW-Madison, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Marshfield Clinic are spearheading a statewide effort to help the NIH build a national biomedical database of unprecedented depth and scope.
Greg Nemet, a professor with UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, has written a new book on the global policy and market forces that combined to make solar electricity one of the cheapest forms of energy.
It is mid-March and two researchers trudge on snowshoes through feet of snow on a wooded trail, dragging a small plastic sled full of equipment.
More research labs are retiring primates to sanctuaries like Primates Inc., a 17-acre (7-hectare) rural compound in central Wisconsin, where they can live their remaining years, according to the sanctuaries and researchers. For some monkeys, it’s their first time hanging out in the fresh air.
“Just to see them look around in amazement. You know it was all very calm and peaceful,” said Amy Kerwin, who worked for 15 years to get the Westfield, Wisconsin, sanctuary off the ground after being employed in a University of Wisconsin research lab.
Watras and Rubsam walk onto frozen Little Rock Lake in Vilas County near their base at the University of Wisconsin’s Trout Lake Station. They are scientists for UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology and the state Department of Natural Resources.
A new, more accessible and much cheaper approach to surveying the topology and strength of interstellar magnetic fields — which weave through space in our galaxy and beyond, representing one of the most potent forces in nature — has been developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Meanwhile, a 2018 study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that more than 4,000 fiber optic cabling will be submerged underwater.
Megan Sykes, an immunologist at Columbia University, has spent years using human fetal tissue to develop a mouse with a humanlike immune system, which mimics how type 1 diabetes develops in humans. The tissue is donated after elective abortions, and the mice are testbeds for potential diabetes treatments.
A new report out of the University of Wisconsin at Madison shows that students have trouble pursuing internships because they’re preoccupied with work or had too heavy of a course load.
Barneveld became part of a landmark study of tornado debris by University of Wisconsin-Madison meteorology professor Charles Anderson. In the days following Barneveld’s tornado, Anderson and his students placed ads in newspapers, conducted a ground survey and a mail and phone campaign seeking information on the fallout of debris.
In their paper published in the journal Pediatrics in 2016, they wrote that high mortgage and student loan debt didn’t have the same negative impact on parents’ and kids’ well-being as credit card or medical bill debt, says lead author Lawrence M. Berger, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty and professor and doctoral program chair in the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told USA Today the technology for a carbon-free economic system is already in place.
Watras and Rubsam walk onto frozen Little Rock Lake in Vilas County near their base at the University of Wisconsin’s Trout Lake Station. They are scientists for UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology and the state Department of Natural Resources.
Could Wisconsin establish itself as the “Silicon Valley of Water”? That’s what the University of Wisconsin System is trying to do with the launch of a Freshwater Collaborative that will bring together its 13 campuses into a first-of-its-kind research hub focused on water topics.
Alice Goffman wrote one of the most widely read sociology books in recent memory. But On the Run, her account of young black men caught up in the criminal-justice system, became entangled in ethical controversies. Now her academic career appears to be foundering.
Noted: Part of the problem is that phosphorus emitted from cow manure and fertilizers used on farms is leaking into Madison’s lakes, according to the UW-Madison Center for Limnology.
Leaders from across the University of Wisconsin System announced a statewide initiative to connect every UW campus in focusing on freshwater resources.
Noted: Barneveld became part of a landmark study of tornado debris by University of Wisconsin-Madison meteorology professor Charles Anderson. In the days following Barneveld’s tornado, Anderson and his students placed ads in newspapers, conducted a ground survey and a mail and phone campaign seeking information on the fallout of debris.
Quoted: But other green technologies have achieved lower costs and more widespread adoption precisely because of the relatively free movement of ideas, people and production, as University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Gregory F. Nemet notes in his new book, “How Solar Energy Became Cheap.”
“The life of a sloth is pretty slow-moving and there’s not a lot of excitement on a day-to-day level,” says Jonathan Pauli, an associate professor in the forest & wildlife ecology department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who consulted with the Georgia Tech team on the project.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced Wednesday that the federal government would sharply curtail federal spending on medical research that uses tissue from aborted fetuses, mainly by ending fetal-tissue research within the National Institutes of Health.
The Trump administration on Wednesday said it would bar scientists at federal agencies from pursuing research using fetal tissue and add new hurdles for researchers on college campuses to renew funding for research using the materials. It also said it would drop a contract with the University of California, San Francisco, to research HIV infection using the tissue.
A group of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison are analyzing data to better understand the challenges faced by Latinx and Hmong immigrant parents in Dane County school districts.
The Trump administration Wednesday imposed new restrictions on federal use of fetal tissue obtained from abortions, barring government scientists at NIH from doing such research, and canceling an existing HIV research contract with the University of California, San Francisco.
“There is no evidence that the use of donated tissue from fetal remains has any effect on whether women choose abortions, and no evidence that decades of research using donated tissue has ever led to an increase in the number of abortions,” said Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin.
WASHINGTON — Government scientists must stop research that uses human fetal tissue, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday in a series of new restrictions.
“It is a clear indication that this administration values symbolic statements over research aimed at saving lives,” Alta Charo, a bioethics professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, wrote to BuzzFeed News in an email Wednesday. “Indeed, in one of the greatest ironies, this tissue might be used for research on the Zika virus that can cause devastating birth defects, so a policy aimed at symbolically valuing fetal life may end up devaluing the lives of actual children.”
“Once you have a certain critical mass of canopy, then each tree becomes more important when it comes to cooling temperatures. That has serious implications for how we design our cities and plan our neighbourhoods,” said Ziter, who did the research while completing her doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The life of a sloth is pretty slow-moving and there’s not a lot of excitement on a day-to-day level,” says Jonathan Pauli, an associate professor in the forest & wildlife ecology department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who consulted with the Georgia Tech team on the project.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are studying erosion along the Lake Michigan shoreline as part of an ongoing study regarding bluff erosion.
As University of Wisconsin seniors look to wrap up their final projects to graduate within the scope of the UniverCity Alliance with Green County, officials are considering how the different viewpoints can help bolster development in their municipalities.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a new way of mimicking the complex coordination between our two arms and hands, a development that could one day help robots defuse bombs and allow nurses to care for patients thousands of miles away.
A researcher says the study of the human genome is just beginning to revolutionize our lives. Professor Jason Fletcher of the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison is a health economist and Director for the Center for Demography and Health and Aging. He will be the next speaker in the “Science On Tap” series at the Minocqua Brewing Company. He will be addressing some of the social implications surrounding the genomics revolution.
The article was reported in collaboration with Wisconsin Public Radio for its “High Tolerance” series, which explores the state’s complicated relationship with alcohol.
The app is part of a behavioral study being carried out by researchers at UW-Madison and Columbia University in New York who are seeking to better understand where and how people encounter ticks. They’re particularly interested in finding out what activities people are doing (and where they’re doing them) when they encounter black-legged (or deer) ticks (Ixodes scapularis), which often carry the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.
For many Wisconsinites, summer means swimming in the region’s freshwater lakes. But in some places, it can also mean danger — especially from rip currents.
Stress reduction techniques, such as meditation and deep breathing, getting some exercise into your routine, and optimizing your sleep at night can help, the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says. Turmeric, fresh produce, and probiotics are also considered anti-inflammatory foods, as Annakeara Stinson previously wrote for Bustle.
Yuli Liu, a PhD candidate in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, helped develop the device.
Wang’s study—which includes researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin-Madison—has policy implications for the US, where the Environmental Protection Agency in 2015 lowered the federal health standards for ozone.
Quoted: “We used to expect the middle class to grow. That was kind of a given. And we’ve had nearly 20 years where it hasn’t,” said Laura Dresser, associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a progressive policy institute on the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus.
The funding formula stemmed from a 2003 study of the school-funding process by a pair of college professors — Larry Picus of the University of Southern California and Allan Odden of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It’s called the “Tick App” and it was designed by researchers at UW-Madison to help gather information about where certain ticks may be across the state.
How resilient are Yellowstone forests when it comes to frequent fires? Kelly April Tyrrell of the University of Wisconsin–Madison provides this look at how researchers are addressing the issue.In August 2016, areas of Yellowstone National Park that burned in 1988 burned again. Shortly after, in October 2016, ecologist Monica Turner and her team of graduate students visited the park to begin to assess the landscape.
In a recent study, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin documented significant temperature increases and lower precipitation levels that threaten the biodiversity and ecosystems of the parks: Glacier National Park — loss of greenery, melting glaciers; Yellowstone, the world’s first national park — devastation of whitebark pine forests.
Wednesday Nite @ the Lab, which started in February 2006, allows the public to hear campus scientists — and occasionally researchers from other universities — share their expertise.
“This can easily bulk up the stool, reduce constipation, and eliminate excess gas and bloat. With about 3g of fiber in each fruit, it represents about 10 percent of the daily recommended amount of fiber,” lead researcher Sherry Tanumihardjo from the University of Wisconsin- Madison said in the review study.
As per a study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute on Aging, women in their midlife are more stressed as compared to both men and women of other age groups.
