After years of studying the deleterious effects of climate change on human health, a Wisconsin professor has come to view his work as less about devastation and more about hope.
“The health benefits of a low-carbon economy are so enormous.” Dr. Jonathan Patz recently told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
Katherine Cramer’s influential book “The Politics of Resentment” was published in March 2016 — just eight months before Donald Trump won the presidential election for the first time and ushered in a new era of American politics.
The book got national attention for the way it homed in on the urban-rural divide. Cramer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, based the book on years of having conversations with people across the state in cafes, pool halls and other community spaces.
Efforts to combat climate change and shift to renewable energy have accelerated under policies and regulations put in place by President Joe Biden’s administration. Even so, it hasn’t been enough to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, according to Greg Nemet, energy expert and public affairs professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’re on track, but we need to really start pushing harder to get the adoption of electric vehicles, solar panels, wind power, heat pumps and all those things at a faster rate,” Nemet said. “I think what we’re looking at now is probably almost definitely slowing down.”
Morgan Edwards, assistant professor of public affairs at UW-Madison, said the slowing of emissions reductions may not be immediately evident in Wisconsin as much as they will in the long run. “We’re locking in long-term climate impacts that we’re going to see for decades to come,” Edwards said. “That’s things like more extreme weather events, warmer winters, more irregular farming seasons, which is a big deal across the country, but (also) in this state where we have a lot of agriculture.”
But some people are biased against female presidential candidates. In 2017, a study found that about 13 percent of Americans were “angry or upset” about the idea of a woman serving as president. In an experiment that same year using hypothetical political candidates, Yoshikuni Ono and Barry Burden, political scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found that voters punish female candidates running for president by 2.4 percentage points. This means that a hypothetical female candidate would get, say, 47 percent of the vote, rather than 49.4 percent if she were a man.
As you spend time with people close to you, don’t be afraid to lean on them for social support. Research shows that you can literally outsource your negative emotions to those you’re closest to, minimizing their impact. In a groundbreaking study at the University of Wisconsin, researchers put people in MRI machines and threatened to shock them at random. There were three groups of participants: People who were alone. People who held the hand of a stranger. People who held the hand of a loved one.The researchers measured fear activity in each person’s brain, and they found something incredible in the third group. Participants’ brains were much less active. They could literally outsource their fear to their loved ones.
A 2023 UW-Madison survey of Wisconsin dairy farmers found that nearly 40% of farms have at least one foreign employee; other studies have estimated that immigrants account for up to 90% of the labor force in the dairy industry.
In 2018, a study out of UW-Madison that analyzed bat poop found that little brown bats in Wisconsin were eating 17 different types of mosquitoes, including nine that carry West Nile virus. The same study found the DNA of 24 different agricultural pests in the poop — lending validity to the estimate that bats save Wisconsin farmers hundreds of millions of dollars per year on pesticides.
A research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison produced high-resolution images of RSV structure, important for RSV treatment options and vaccine development.
New research has found that communities with more women-owned or -operated farms have higher rates of business creation, lower poverty rates and a longer average life expectancy.
University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Steven Deller is a co-author of the research first published in January. Deller and colleagues argue that the reduction in rural poverty is particularly important.
NOAA Climate, Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow presents how warming factors change in the Arctic, North Atlantic, their global impacts.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation will give nearly $160 million to UW-Madison in grants to support research, with $15 million specifically aimed at further developing the university’s artificial intelligence enterprise.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, UW-Madison was an international leader in the first renewable energy to produce electricity for the public — hydropower. During some of those years, the Wisconsin River was known as the hardest working river in the world because it produced so much electricity.
Wisconsin sees dozens of species of small beetles this time of year, including ladybugs, but one is particularly prevalent: the multicolored Asian lady beetle, according to P.J. Liesch, director of the UW-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab.
“The [Asian lady beetles] are the ones that folks are really seeing a lot of at the moment,” Liesch said. “Those particularly beetles are very active, flying around and coming to structures because they’re looking for sheltered wintering spots.”
Another AI model, developed by NOAA and the University of Wisconsin, has shown skill in predicting the rapid intensification of hurricanes, an area where global AI models have struggled.
The letter says the change has the potential to reduce prices at the pump without harming the environment. There’s room for debate on both fronts. Newsom’s letter cites a UC Riverside study that found E15 wouldn’t increase nitrous oxide emissions, but a 2022 University of Wisconsin-Madison study found that the blend increases upstream emissions.
Wisconsin is home to the third largest population of Hmong Americans in the United States. But a new case study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows for the aging members of this community, there’s a gap in their quality of life in nursing homes.
“This work is also personal, right?” And for medical anthropologist Mai See Thao, the study conducted with researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of Iowa was work that felt nostalgic—and not in a good way.
“Growing up in Wisconsin, my grandmother and my aunt went through the nursing home experience,” Thao, who is ethnically Hmong, said. “My aunt was actually doing very poorly because she was restricted to eating only the nursing home food. And so she was starving a lot of the time as well as my grandmother.”
Research from the University of Wisconsin showed that the spoils of working longer have accrued to those who need it the least. If you are healthier and wealthier, you are more likely to keep working.
To get on top of — and feel less toppled by — mood changes, it’s helpful for caregivers to remember that those shifts are caused by changes in the brain, said Dr. Nathaniel Chin, a geriatrician and associate professor in the department of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“They’re no one’s fault,” he said, and recognizing this can help you “feel less upset at your loved one.”
Even if local officials in Wisconsin wanted to let non-citizens vote on local races or proposals, it’s not clear whether current state law would allow that change, according to analysis from the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
“Courts in other states have reached divergent conclusions about whether provisions akin to Wisconsin’s current constitutional text allow municipalities to authorize local noncitizen voting,” the analysis noted.
A review from the nonpartisan State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School concluded that the Wisconsin ballot measure “will not have any immediate practical impact on voter eligibility,” since existing law already prohibits noncitizen voting in federal and state elections.
For a good number of people antidepressants have been a blessing, at least at the beginning of treatment, said Dr. Charles Raison, a professor of psychiatry and human ecology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.
“I always start by saying, ‘Thank God, we have them.’ Many people can say, ‘Wow, I was pulled out of a pretty deep hole,’“ said Raison, who is also the director of the Vail Health Behavioral Health Innovation Center in Colorado where psilocybin is studied.
“We are in a generally heightened state of stress caused by events around the world,” said neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson, founder and director of the nonprofit Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where research on Tibetan Buddhist practitioners found that meditation literally changed their brains.
UW Health has been navigating a five-year research effort involving 37 Alzheimer’s disease centers around the country. The first 2,000 participants enrolled this fall.
“This study is definitely a trailblazer in the field of Alzheimer’s disease research,” said Ozioma Okonkwo, professor of medicine at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the UW Department of Medicine.
The goal of archaeologists and anthropologists today is, in some way, to bring back Aztalan, and that’s what host Norman Gilliland does during his conversation in University Place Presents Aztalan: A Place of Mystery with guest Sissel Schroeder, a professor of anthropology and archaeology and certificate advisor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Leading the effort to resuscitate Franklin’s concept for motors big enough to use in industrial applications is C-Motive Technologies in Middleton, Wis. It is a 16-person startup founded by a pair of University of Wisconsin engineers named Justin Reed and Daniel Ludois who spent years tinkering with electrostatic motors to see if they could be improved.
Elizabeth Wright, a UW-Madison professor of biochemistry, said the new images of RSV’s structure will support preventing and slowing infections in the future. Wright runs the research lab that created the new images.
Six male nurse sharks live in a tank inside a laboratory on the UW-Madison campus. Originally from the Florida Keys, the sharks were moved to Wisconsin to help fight human cancer.
“It’s an experimental dream,” said Judith Kimble, a nematode researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The more we do with it, the more of a wonderful dream it becomes.”
A previously elusive ambush predator insect is seen frequently in Wisconsin this year, entomologist PJ Liesch tells us.
Although less popular than local television and some other forms of media, local radio generally gains strong trust from those who listen, according to Mike Wagner, a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism and mass communication researcher and professor. In Wisconsin, during the 2016 election, radio stations were airing around 200 hours of conservative talk every day, according to one UW-Madison study.
Sykes’ WTMJ show was Walker’s primary connection to a statewide audience, according to Lew Friedland, distinguished journalism and mass communication professor emeritus and researcher at UW-Madison. “Without Charlie Sykes, I don’t think there would have been a Scott Walker,” Friedland said, calling Sykes “one of the top three most important political actors” at the time.
While employers can help, they alone cannot save the day, Schmidt said, referencing figures from a recent report by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It found that if the providers surveyed could operate at full capacity — many cannot because of staffing shortages — they could serve a total of 33,000 more children. To fill those slots, the state would need roughly 4,000 more early childhood educators, Schmidt said.
Interview with Jessica Calarco, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Interview with Jennifer E. Gaddis, an associate professor of civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of The Labor of Lunch. She is an advisory board member of the National Farm to School Network.
Divided Americans are often described as living in different media bubbles, so for this story University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism students listened to several radio hosts across the political spectrum to report on just how different those bubbles are.
According to the University of Wisconsin, almost one-third of US land is in the so-called wildland-urban interface and thus susceptible to forest fires, up from 29.5% in 1990. Meanwhile, people are spreading out; some 44 million US homes are now under threat from fire, up from 30 million in 1990, the data shows. Climate change is making those 72,000 communities more tenuous.
In a new series, student journalists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led by Wisconsin Watch State Bureau Chief Matthew DeFour, explore all of those changes. The students who collaborated on this series include: Benjamin Cadigan, Hallie Claflin, Meryl Hubbard, Ray Kirsch, Frankie Pica, Ashley Rodriguez, Andrew Schneider, Sophia Scolman, Paige Stevenson and Omar Waheed.
This has been an unusual growing season. Garden Talk regulars Lisa Johnson and Brian Hudelson are in to talk about what they’ve seen regarding plant disease, insects and the effects of a wet spring and dry fall. And then we talk to an expert about how to grow ferns – both inside and out – and learn a little of the history of this ancient plant.
Co-authored by PhD candidates in sociology, and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea & Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication.
More than 1,000 miles from where Hurricane Milton made landfall on Wednesday night, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are using data from the storm to refine the way they study hurricanes.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is continuing to grow its Wisconet system, which is a statewide network of weather and soil monitoring stations.
The university’s weather network, called Wisconet, is expected to be a game changer for farmers, climate researchers and many other industries in Wisconsin — especially those in remote areas.
Almonds and walnuts, in particular, have cancer-fighting powers. “Nuts increase your fiber intake, and they have vitamin E and antioxidants that may help with cancer prevention,” says Bradley Bolling, an associate professor of food science at the University of Wisconsin. Bolling found that eating 28 grams of nuts per day—about a handful of almonds or walnuts—is linked to a lower risk of getting and dying from cancer. Dried fruit without added sugars may have a similar effect, though data are limited, Bolling adds.
“It’s been scientific consensus since 1999 that indiscriminate killing is damaging,” said Adrian Treves, a professor of environmental studies and director of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It was a very surreal moment,” said Eshan Raul, now a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We were searching specifically for water worlds because it was hypothesized that they could exist. If these are real, it really makes you wonder what else could be out there.”
Average homeowner premiums in Florida rose 57% between 2019 and 2023 according to data from Benjamin Keys of the University of Pennsylvania and Philip Mulder of the University of Wisconsin, a steeper rise than anywhere else in the nation.
While district-wide enrollment remained flat last school year, the student population is likely to trend downward for at least the next five years, according to projections by researchers at UW-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory.
Researchers say people with clinical depression could be helped by a treatment involving psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms. Wisconsin scientists are among those conducting dozens of clinical trials worldwide on the use of the drug in treating depression. They say the evidence shows that, in combination with therapy, it shows great promise.
“It works,” said psychiatrist Charles Raison, a professor of human ecology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How far (psychedelics) get into the culture, how far they get into the clinical space? That’s a mystery.”
“We successfully increased knowledge of radon in this community, and more importantly, they could not have afforded the radon mitigation without our project’s support. This community had noted higher rates of cancer among their people for many generations and expressed concern that their land was poisoning them. They were correct,” said lead study author and associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Noelle LoConte in a release.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are studying what needs to happen for a person to remotely operate long-haul trucks that are otherwise autonomous.
“The vehicle operates on its own until it needs you,” said lead researcher David Noyce. “And then when it needs you, it calls you and says, ‘Can you get on the joystick here, and have control of the vehicle? Because I don’t understand what to do.’”
Trade associations for corn, soybean, potato and vegetable growers in Wisconsin were either unavailable or didn’t respond to requests for comment. Russ Groves, chair of the Department of Entomology at UW-Madison, said detections of pesticides are unfortunately a logical outcome in areas where agriculture is more intense on the landscape.
“Those are the tools that we have relied upon so that we don’t have real significant economic losses for a producer or an industry,” Groves said.
At the beginning of September, parts of the state were experiencing highs in the mid- to upper-80s, which are between five and 15 degrees higher than normal. Near Boscobel Airport on Sept. 15, the temperature rose to 92 degrees.
“It was a very weird September,” Steve Vavrus, director of the Center for Climate Research at UW-Madison, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” He added it was also among the 10 driest, with data going back to the 1890s.
Earlier this year, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency tightened air quality regulations across the United States.
University of Wisconsin-Madison environmental studies professor Tracey Holloway told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that these regulations are the tightest they’ve ever been. And that means our air is the cleanest it’s ever been.
“Our primary findings reveal structural details that allow us to better understand not only how the protein regulates assembly of viral particles, but also the coordination of proteins that enable the virus to be infectious,” study leader Elizabeth Wright of the University of Wisconsin–Madison said in a statement.
A patient should never come out of the operating room with more pain than they went in with.
That’s the thinking behind a group of UW-Madison engineers whose invention aims to make surgical incisions easier and reduce the incidence of accidental cuts from free-floating scalpels.
Christian Che-Castaldo, Heather Joan Lynch, Mathew Schwaller, for their use of satellite imagery to discover 1.5 million previously undocumented Adélie penguins in the Antarctic. Che-Castaldo is a quantitative ecologist affiliated with the U.S. Geological Survey, Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, and the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The researchers, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, estimated the net value of wind and solar based on a combination of off-reservation leases paid to landowners and taxes received by local governments. They predict that tribes and their members could earn about the same either by leasing the right to wind and sun to an outside developer or by developing themselves.
A routine inspection conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture into the conditions of animals in the care of University of Wisconsin-Madison Enzyme Researchers this summer resulted in a handful of citations, the latest report found.
Over time, hazards like these lights and windows are taking a toll. A nearly 50-year study of birds in North America found that populations have shrunk across species, by billions. Avian ecologist Anna Pidgeon has seen this in action. She’s been studying birds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for over two decades.
Crane hunting also brings political views and public sentiment into play, Spreitzer said. A 2023 study by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center found fewer than one in five Wisconsinites supports a sandhill crane hunting season in the state. The work was funded by the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo and the UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
Trump’s proposals to deport millions of undocumented immigrants — which would be exceedingly difficult to carry out — would bring major consequences for the construction industry and the overall housing market if he succeeds. In a widely cited February paper, researchers at the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin found that higher immigration enforcement reduced the number of construction workers and led to less home building and higher home prices. The paper also found that “undocumented labor is a complement to domestic labor,” and that deporting undocumented construction workers also cut back on the labor supplied by domestic workers.
