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Category: Research

What Are Snow Fleas?

WXPR-FM

An anonymous listener in the Rhinelander area recently asked: What are snow fleas? Where do they live and what do they eat? Interviewed: P.J. Liesch, (UW) Extension entomologist and Director of the UW-Madison insect diagnostic lab.

Here’s how many trees are required to cool a city street

Popular Science

That’s why researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, decided to start measuring. They strapped some sensors to a bike, and sent an able-bodied person around the city of Madison to test temperatures at regular intervals along blocks with varying levels of tree cover. They published their results Monday in the journal PNAS.

UW-Madison Communication and Civic Renewal research team: Wisconsinites want nonpartisan redistricting and a voice for political minorities

Capital Times

Column: Our Communication and Civic Renewal research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison asked 1,015 Wisconsinites who they thought should control redistricting in our state: the state Legislature or an independent, nonpartisan commission. Fifty-three percent of adults said they preferred the nonpartisan commission while only 13 percent favored the idea of state lawmakers controlling the process themselves.

Astrobiology seminar aims to inspire a look into the bounds of life

Space Daily

With like-minded researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Vincent helped form a new campus group by the name of OoLALA – Origins of Life, Artificial Life and Astrobiology. The founders of OoLALA hope it can coordinate the dozens of labs that are addressing some aspect of astrobiology and inspire others to join the work.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – Chan Zuckerberg Science Initiative

Medium

“I love being able to record and study the behavior and function of living organisms under physiological conditions?—?without harming them, and without them realizing that they’re being observed.”?—?Michael Weber, Morgridge Institute for Research, in affiliation with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Flamingo Project.

In 2020 the road to the White House runs through Wisconsin (and Democrats there are moving far to the left)

Fox News

Consequently, a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison economics professor Noah Williams and Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty research director Dr. Will Flanders shows how expanding Medicaid could result in the crowding-out of private insurers and the sky-rocketing of private-sector health care costs to nearly $600 million per year, even after the savings to the state.

UW-Madison Professor Presents Plan to Halve Child Poverty In 10 Years

Wisconsin Public Radio

Thirteen percent of children in the U.S. are living in families with incomes below the poverty line. Beyond what this ends up costing the country — estimated to range between $800 billion and $1.1 trillion annually —  this has implications for children’s health and development. We talk with an economist about his plan to cut child poverty in half over ten years.

Guest: Timothy Smeeding

Study: Lack of affordable housing affects health

Houston Chronicle

The study, released Tuesday, is a collaborative effort between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It uses the most recent available data from a range of sources, much coming from last year.

UnDisciplined: The Ecologist And The Microbiologist

Utah Public Radio

Adrian Treves is an expert on the coexistence and conflicts between humans and wildlife, and especially carnivores like wolves, bears and big cats. He is a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he founded the Carnivore Coexistence Lab. EmilyClare Baker is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Oregon. Her doctoral research at the University of Wisconsin helped reveal the genes that make lager yeast love cold and sugar.

NASA’s latest cubesat candidates include a solar sail test

Engadget

Polar Radiant Energy in the Far Infrared Experiment (PREFIRE) from University of Wisconsin-Madison. This mission is composed of two satellites that will monitor far-infrared radiation and determine its role in Arctic warming, sea ice loss, ice sheet melt and sea level rise.

Meet the Foxhounds: UW-Madison group forms in opposition to Foxconn

Wisconsin State Journal

Recent reports about the company’s shifting plans, including a Foxconn executive acknowledging that the bulk of jobs at the Racine County facility will be for research and engineering rather than blue-collar manufacturing, are seen by some as more potential job opportunities for college graduates. Foxhounds interpreted the news differently, seeing the university as increasingly important to Foxconn’s bottom line and recognizing an opportunity to apply pressure on the partnership.

Horseshoe crabs are aquatic spiders, ground-breaking study shows

Haaretz.com

Horseshoe crabs have been crawling on our planet for nearly half a billion years, yet for all the brains we evolved in our measly half-million-year existence, we never did figure out what they actually are. Now a genetic study published this weekend in the journal of Systematic Biology finds evidence for the theory first postulated in the year 1881: the horseshoe crab is not a crab after all. It is a sister group to Ricinulei, the hooded tick spider.

Hillary Clinton’s claims about voter suppression in Georgia and Wisconsin

The Washington Post

Some studies show that voter ID laws favored by Republicans have a deterrent effect, especially on minority voters, who tend to vote for Democrats. Wisconsin enacted a voter ID law before the 2016 election. A study from the University of Wisconsin found that the new requirements deterred thousands of eligible voters in two counties from casting ballots.

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Election Loss: Her Latest Excuse

National Review

“The Supreme Court’s ruling in 2013 had no bearing on Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin-Madison study she relied on for her 40,000 estimate says its findings from two counties should not be extrapolated to form statewide conclusions. Her spokesman did not cite any study for the 80,000 estimate. Voter registration in Georgia did not decline from 2012 to 2016.”

Evolving Research Is Exposing How Flu Crosses The Species Barrier

WisContext

Three of Wisconsin’s better-known flu scientists over the past half-century are Bernard Easterday, Christopher Olsen and Yoshihiro Kawaoka, all of whom are affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. They spoke about their work at an Oct. 3, 2018 lecture for the Wednesday Nite @ the Lab series on the UW-Madison campus, recorded for Wisconsin Public Television’s University Place.

Monarch Butterflies: Spring Migration And Habitat Restoration

Wisconsin Public Radio

Monarch butterflies are getting ready for a big journey north to Wisconsin. We’ll talk with UW–Madison Arboretum director Karen Oberhauser about the life cycles of monarchs and why it matters to us. We also learn what we can do to help restore their habitat.

A farm is more than fields: What contemporary black farmers can learn from the past

Isthmus

When is a farm not just a farm?

Monica M. White’s new, impressively researched book Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (University of North Carolina Press, $28) highlights historical examples of black farmers using agricultural cooperatives “as a space and place to practice freedom.” And White explains how similar strategies are helping today’s underserved communities pool resources and alleviate poverty.

Wisconsin births decline to the lowest point in 40 years

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: One major factor is that fewer teens are having babies. Teen births have dropped 60 percent over a decade, said David Egan-Robertson, of the UW-Madison Applied Population Laboratory.

“And in 2017, for the first time, teen births fell below 4 percent of total births,” he said. “So that’s quite a significant change. It’s been a very long-term process, but that’s a noticeable change in that age group.

Spider Silk Could Be Used As Robotic Muscle

Technology Networks

Quoted: “This is a fantastic discovery because the torsion measured in spider dragline silk is huge, a full circle every millimeter or so of length,” says Pupa Gilbert, a professor of physics, chemistry, and materials science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was not involved in this work.

How your workout structure can affect your post-exercise mood

The Washington Post

Keep in mind, though, that psychology plays an important role. A University of Wisconsin study found that people were in a better mood when they picked their own intensity level instead of a prescribed moderate-effort workout, even though their endocannabinoid levels were higher after the latter.

Study: Horseshoe Crabs Really Are Arachnids, Just Like Spiders

Popular Mechanics

Horseshoe crabs have never quite fit in with the rest of the ocean’s animals. Considered living fossils, their circular bodies and sharp tails are often presented as frightening. But horseshoe crabs aren’t scary, they’re just misunderstood. A new scientific study has created a definitive family tree for horseshoe crabs, showing that they’re best classified as arachnids.