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Category: Research

These researchers are getting access to Facebook data to study misinformation

Poynter

Quoted: Of the five researchers Poynter reached out to, only one responded saying that fact-checking was in the scope of their project for Social Science One. But for Sebastián Valenzuela, a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studying how fact checks affect misinformation on Facebook is still tough even with the data-sharing tools.

“It’s a bit more tricky for our project because the information on whether the shared link on Facebook was sent or not to a third-party fact-checker (which is the easiest way of measuring whether fact checks affected fake news sharing) is not available for Chile,” said Valenzuela, the lead researcher for one of the winning abstracts, in an email to Poynter.

The Most Important Scholar of Buddhism You’ve Never Heard Of

Tricycle

Noted: His death rocked the department that he had started at the University of Wisconsin-Madison—there was no apparent successor—and his students scattered across the globe, carving out niches for themselves in areas of academic scholarship in which they would become experts. Now, 50 years after his death, we’re taking a long-overdue look at Robinson, who mentored some of today’s top Buddhist thinkers and set the groundwork for Buddhist higher learning in the US.

Tahoe residents oppose new homes in path of wildfire danger

Napa Valley Register

Quoted: “There are a lot of buildings and there is a lot of woodland vegetation and they are close to each other, and there is a lot of fire,” said Anu Kramer, a wildfire scientist at the Silvis Lab at the University of Wisconsin who conducted the research. “When those things come together that is when you are going to see a lot of destruction.”

Scientists: 15-minute storm caused Lake Michigan rip currents that killed 7 hours later

Sheboygan Press

Quoted: This is the first study of rip currents on the Great Lakes even though they have been a topic of discussion for a long time, said Chin Wu, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wu supervised Ph.D. student Álvaro Linares, who led the project.

“A rip current is a concentrated, strong offshore flow,” said Adam Belche, a coastal resilience outreach specialist with the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute. The standard speed is about 1 foot per second.

What obstacles complicate health care for rural Wisconsinites?

Premiering in April 2019, the documentary marks the 10-year anniversary of UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine, which trains and incentivizes medical students to practice in underserved rural communities around the state. The program aims to alleviate some of the most pressing rural health challenges, which the documentary investigates.

How Entrepreneurs Can Learn to Embrace Stress

Stamford Advocate

So, instead of avoiding stress, we need to learn how to deal with it — and research shows that changing your perceptions of stress can literally save your life. In a 2013 TED Talk, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal describes a University of Wisconsin-Madison study that tracked 30,000 U.S. adults over eight years. The study was designed to explore how we think about stress, and how those perceptions can affect our health.

Mueller Report Exposes Campaign Finance Problems Far Beyond Russia

Truthout

Russia was not alone in exploiting these digital ad disclosure loopholes. According to a peer-reviewed study by University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Young Mie Kim, 25 percent of Facebook political ads that ran in the final weeks of the 2016 election mentioned candidates and would have been subject to disclosure as electioneering communications if aired on TV.

Science politicization, funding fights leave researchers in limbo

Badger Herald

The federal government funds less than 50 percent of basic research conducted in the U.S. — including academic research from universities. And while this funding is necessary for scientists to keep their labs up and running, public disinformation and diminishing support for research create a difficult atmosphere for researchers nationwide.

Michigan mentions in Mueller report point to Russian election plot

The Detroit News

Noted: It’s not clear Trump Jr. had any idea he was amplifying a fake account, and he was not alone in doing so. U.S. media outlets “also quoted tweets from IRA-controlled accounts and attributed them to the reactions of real U.S . persons,” according to Mueller.

His report cited a Columbia Journalism Review article by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Commuting While Pregnant: A Long Ride Could Be a Risky One

The New York Times

The study, recently published by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Lehigh University, suggests that women who travel 50 or more miles each way to work by car may be at a “much greater risk” of having low-birth-weight babies (under 5.5 pounds) as well as fetuses with intrauterine growth restriction — a condition, in which the fetus doesn’t grow as fast as expected, that’s generally associated with mothers who have diabetes, high blood pressure, malnutrition or infections including syphilis.

Not Getting Enough Sleep Could Lead to Injuries for Division I Athletes

Sleep Review Magazine

Andrew Watson, MD, MS, presented a research abstract looking at the connection between poor sleep habits and injury rates in some college athletes at the 28th Annual Meeting of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine in Houston.

Getting a good night’s sleep is an issue for many college athletes, who can suffer from insufficient sleep duration and poor sleep quality. Watson and his team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison wanted to evaluate the effects of poor sleep on in-season injury in male and female college athletes.

The science behind why women survive longer than men

Marketwatch

AFAR-supported investigator Dr. Dudley Lamming, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, has studied how a gene called “RICTOR” may be responsible for the differential effects of the drug rapamycin in males and females.

To ensure that 10 billion future people can eat, look at your carbon ‘foodprint’ today

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “Most people don’t realize that the food system is one of the primary ways that humans are affecting the environment,” explained Valerie Stull, an interdisciplinary environmental health scientist and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Global Health Institute.

Human viruses threaten the future of Uganda’s chimpanzees

My colleagues and I recently analysed two outbreaks of respiratory disease in two different chimpanzee groups, both located in Uganda’s Kibale National Park…Initially, we feared that the same virus caused both outbreaks, which would mean a single virus had been rapidly transmitted throughout the forest. But our team leader, Dr Tony Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tested samples, and we learned that the outbreaks were caused by two different viruses commonly found in humans.

Scientists Look for the Genes That Determine Beauty

Healthline

In a study published this month in PLOS Genetics, lead author Qiongshi Lu, assistant professor in the department of statistics at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his colleagues used attractiveness scores to locate and identify several genes correlated to facial attractiveness in 4,383 individuals.

New Study Reveals the Dangers of Long Commutes During Pregnancy

Fortune

In a new study published earlier this year, researchers at Lehigh University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found a link between the distance a woman travels to work every day while pregnant and the health outcomes for her child, including low birth weight, the likelihood of a C-section, and intrauterine growth restriction, or when a baby doesn’t reach a normal size as measured throughout the pregnancy.

David Ward: Congress should invest more in ag research to keep US ahead of China

Wisconsin State Journal

Since 2014, Wisconsin universities have received 74 AFRI grants totaling $38 million. These grants have gone to projects such as studying the impact of climate change on dairy production at UW-Madison and research on improved food access for rural, low-income communities at Northland College in Ashland. Locally, this means we are improving an industry that is a cornerstone to our economy. Globally, this allows us to maintain food-supply chains and remain a world leader in agriculture.

Progress made towards blood test for colon cancer

Spectator Health

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have identified four blood-based protein markers associated with the pre-cancerous forms of colon cancer that are most likely to develop into disease, according to a new report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Craft Beer’s Quest For The Funky Flavors of Wild Yeast

Discovery Magazine

Chris Hittinger is a University of Wisconsin microbiologist who’s researched Saccharomyces for years. He says this wild yeast discovery was a big step forward for the field. Since then, his lab has been setting the groundwork that could set us up for some pretty sweet brews in the future.

UW Madison Scientists Discover Cancer Pathway Breakthrough

Spectrum News 1

A big cancer breakthrough, thanks to researchers at UW Madison.  A special team has solved the mystery behind the most studied protein in cancer biology.   ’Many pharmaceutical companies invest millions ..billions of dollars to target those mutant P-53 cancer cells — but it’s hard,’ UW Madison Post Doctoral Fellow Suyong Choi said.   So hard no one has ever unlocked the secrets of the cancer regulating protein.