Wisconsin’s workers saw record-matching wage growth last year and sustained low unemployment through 2024, according to an annual labor report from a think tank at UW-Madison, though many inequalities within the labor market remain.
The Badger Challenge is coming up in September. The event raises money for cancer research at the UW Carbone Cancer Center.
Tyler Lark, research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the report’s co-authors, said some lands have been restored to natural ecosystems. Others, those perhaps currently populated by invasive species, could be the answer to big questions the country is facing about where to house increasing renewable-energy development.
“We ideally want to avoid our best and most productive ag lands but we also don’t want to encroach on pristine or native ecosystems,” Lark explained. “Formerly cropped lands might hit that sweet spot in the middle.”
(Emily) Bick, an entomologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researches ways to better detect the agricultural pests that drive serious economic losses worldwide. She says improving these methods could result in using pesticides more strategically — less often, at just the right time.
Research this week published by the University of Toronto’s Jason Choi, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Rishabh Kirpalani and Duong Dang, and New York University’s Diego Perez highlights the extent of America’s ‘exorbitant privilege.’
In their report ‘Exorbitant privilege and the sustainability of U.S. public debt’ they note that this special status “increases the maximal sustainable debt by approximately 22% of GDP.”
In other words, the U.S. government can sustainably borrow as much as 22% of GDP more than it would otherwise be able to if it weren’t the supplier of the global reserve currency.
“Climate change will increase the risk of foodborne illness from consumption of raw produce,” said study author Professor Jeri Barak, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It’s not surprising that a host is altered by disease,” said Barak. “What’s interesting is how these changes affect other members of the bacteria community, in addition to the pathogen causing the disease.”
A UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health study has found most Wisconsinites have some level of so-called forever chemicals in their blood. Though the Badger State’s concentrations remain below the national average.The study was published in the Journal of Environmental Research.
Alaafia got a grant from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation that focuses on sickle cell research to determine the disease’s impact on patients’ lives. Another grant from University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Partnership Program funds health care navigation services, including support in finding and using resources, preventive care and mental health support
He correctly deduced that “favorable conditions of the atmosphere” led to rapid bacterial growth. As a 1927 guide to dairy production from the University of Wisconsin very poetically put it: “A thick, sultry atmosphere usually precedes thunder showers and provides favorable conditions for the growth of milk-souring bacteria.”
Wendy Caldwell is the executive director of the Monarch Joint Venture nonprofit, which partners with the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum to run the volunteer counts. She said volunteers reported fewer monarchs this season than in past years.
Host Karma Chávez returns to chat with Rachelle Winkle-Wagner, a professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, about her new book, The Chosen We: Black Women’s Empowerment in Higher Education. They talk about how, as a white woman, Winkle-Wagner built trust with the Black women she interviewed for the book, and how her relationship to Black feminist theory–especially the idea of collective liberation–developed over the years.
UW-Madison researchers have been working with eGenesis, one of two companies that supplied gene-edited pig organs for four transplants on the East Coast in critically ill patients who died within a few months. The companies are seeking federal approval to start larger clinical trials, and UW could be a site.
Gary Lupyan, a UW-Madison psychology professor, is looking at why some people report high levels of inner speech and others have little or none. In a recent study involving UW students, those with more inner speech did better at two language tests than those with less inner speech, but there was no difference on more visual and math-oriented tasks.
A study by the Institute for Research on Poverty from the University of Wisconsin-Madison separately found that cash assistance “during infancy can have profound and long-lasting effects, including educational, behavioral, and economic or labor market advantages.”
Wolves began to die. One example: a third of Wisconsin’s gray wolf population was killed by hunters and poachers when protections were removed, researchers at the University of Wisconsin found in 2021.
WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” checked in with Christy Remucal, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about whether Madisonians should be concerned, and if so, to what degree.
On today’s show host Douglas Haynes sits down with Heather Swan to talk about her new book “Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnections.” Heather Swan is a poet, writer, and lecturer in the University of Wisconsin – Madison’s English Department. Her book tells stories of human-insect connections through the lens of science and art, with a focus on the way we can connect across species.
Newsweek previously reported that a study from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine found dogs were more engaged when the TV showed other animals versus humans and that movement triggered an active response from canines.
The magnet systems were delivered to the University of Wisconsin’s Physical Sciences Laboratory in Stoughton, Wisconsin, this year by Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The project operates as a public-private partnership with Realta Fusion, Inc., a UW-Madison spin-off company that contributes funding, according to the lab.
In the 1990s, Kerwin worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Harlow Center for Biological Psychology and cared for 97 rhesus monkeys, the same species she cares for today.
The center was named after Harry Harlow, a scientist who used methods of isolation and maternal deprivation on infant monkeys to show the impact of contact and comfort on primate development in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1983, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Francis Hole petitioned the state of Wisconsin for Antigo Silt Loam. It is a very fine soil from the Antigo area. We actually have a roadside information sign there that talks about it. We even have a soil song.
Citizen scientists are hobbyists and passionate amateurs, and data they generate is as valuable as anything produced by professional scientists. UW-Madison Arboretum Citizen Science Coordinator, Annie Isenbarger, described citizen science as a way of “deepening the average person’s connection with the natural world.”
Written by Jay Hill, vice president of Advanced Technologies at GE HealthCare, and Anjon Audhya, senior associate dean for basic research, biotechnology and graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
An experimental nasal spray flu vaccine being developed by a Madison company, based on UW-Madison research, boosted immunity in older adults who also got a flu shot, compared with those who got only a shot, a study found.
Students have been working on various projects that have to do with river bank stabilization, conservation plans for the next 50 years, and green technology to prevent blue-green algae blooms.
With 22 million pounds of microplastics finds its way into the Great Lakes every year, two UW-Madison projects seek to detect and stop the pollution. We’re joined by assistant professor Haoran Wei and Wisconsin Sea Grant’s Ginny Carlton to talk about their efforts to address the problem.
The surveys will be conducted with the help of student volunteers in both the Forest and Wildlife Ecology Department at UW-Madison and the College of Natural Resources and Department of Biology at UW-Stevens Point.
Dr. Shoemaker and his colleagues at Pitt, along with counterparts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will now try to build on a decade of studies that looked at hormones as a reason and a possible solution.
Let’s dig deeper to explore why tropical cyclone tornadoes can happen. Most explanations mention “frictional effects,” so I will start there. The Weather Guys blog is a legendary and informative platform administered by my colleagues Jonathan Martin and Steve Ackerman (retired), professors at the University of Wisconsin. They write, “When a hurricane makes landfall, the winds near the ground slow down, while the upper-level winds keep their momentum. This change in the wind speed — and sometimes direction — with height is called wind shear.” There’s more to the story, however.
The more self-compassion you have, the greater your emotional arsenal. A series of studies from the University of Wisconsin show that meditation cultivates compassion and kindness, affecting brain regions that make you more empathetic to other people.
UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health said the goal of the study was to see if oxygenation with non-invasive ventilation would prevent hypoxemia during intubation.
Susan L. Thibeault from the Division of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, is an additional research author.
Cynthia Carlsson, who oversees the AHEAD study at UW–Madison, calls lecanemab “a game changer.”
“People who are on dialysis, unfortunately, have very high mortality to begin with,” said Dr. Matthew Blum, a nephrologist at UW Health and lead author of the study. “An 18 percent jump (in risk of death) just because of the weather is a pretty profound risk for people.”
The science comes together in a “balancing act for women,” according to Dr. Stav Atir, assistant professor in the Management and Human Resources Department at the University of Wisconsin School of Business, who has studied how gender affects the way we talk about professionals.
Atir was lead author of a study that found people were more than twice as likely to describe a male professional by surname in “high-status” fields, including politics. In the medical field, other research indicates that female physicians are more than twice as likely to be called by their first names instead of “doctor,” compared with their male counterparts.
Food Science Department’s ‘Candy School’ brings industry professionals together again as students.
In Wisconsin, only 17 percent of 2,769 people surveyed last December support a hunting season on sandhill cranes. That’s according to a study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and funded by the International Crane Foundation. The organization has said crop damage by cranes should be solved by other means, saying a hunt wouldn’t have any significant benefit for farmers.
Wisconsin researchers are among a select few to document manure spill trends.
In 15 years, reported incidents statewide jumped from about 40 to roughly 200 annually, but Department of Natural Resources and University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension staff don’t believe their frequency actually increased.
Madison serves as the innovator — home to UW-Madison, where research is king. The school ranks eighth in the nation for research expenditures among public and private universities. According to the National Science Foundation, UW invests more than $1.5 billion annually. UW also ranks high in patents granted – 12th in the nation in 2023. Additionally, the city’s startup scene is consistently ranked among the top 150 globally.
“By measuring the concentrations of these isotopes in the recently exposed bedrock we can determine how much time in the past the bedrock was exposed, which tells us how often the glaciers were smaller than today—kind of like how a sunburn can tell you how long someone was out in the sun,” Shakun said.Shakun led the project with former BC graduate student Andrew Gorin, partnering with researchers from the University of Wisconsin and Tulane University on the American Cordillera project, then seeking samples and data from colleagues at Aix-Marseille University, the National University of Ireland, Aspen Global Change Institute, Ohio State University, Union College, University Grenoble Alpes, and Purdue University.
Trump’s deportation policy could sway voters toward Vice President Kamala Harris as 70 percent of the labor on Wisconsin’s dairy farms is carried out by more than 10,000 undocumented migrant workers, according to a survey carried out by the University of Wisconsin.
Karen Oberhauser, professor emeritus in entomology with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told “Wisconsin Today” this data on insecticides is “exciting” because it measures the impact humans have on monarchs and other species.
“A lot of people come up to me and say, they’re just not seeing as many monarch butterflies as they have in the past,” she said. “(This study) is really our ability to dig into the data and think about the changing practices in agriculture.”
“Very often these tools can invent false facts,” said UW-Madison Assistant Professor Annette Zimmermann. “That’s very misleading and very dangerous, particularly in professions that impact a lot of people.”
Zimmermann researches the ethical implications of AI at UW. She says it’s crucial to give workers a seat at the table when making decisions about how to use AI.
Gregory Nemet, professor of public affairs at UW-Madison, and Morgan Edwards, associate professor of climate policy at the school, are two of the lead authors on the 222-page report. Titled “The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal,” it is the second in a series of annual reports and shows how steep the battle against climate change is.
In 1895, UW–Madison professor Edward Birge set out to answer a question he had about zooplankton in Lake Mendota after reading a French scientific paper, and his research marked the beginning of limnology in North America. Since then, UW–Madison scientists have arguably made Madison’s lakes the most-studied lakes in the world.
A 2018 study published by University of Wisconsin and Dartmouth professors found tribal forests, such as the Menominee in northern Wisconsin, maintained their diversity of native plants beneath tree canopies much better than non-tribal forests.
By 1927, Edward Holyoke Farrington was presenting this explanation as a matter of fact in A Guide to Quality in Dairy Products, published by the University of Wisconsin. “A thick, sultry atmosphere usually precedes thunder showers and provides favorable conditions for the growth of milk-souring bacteria,” Farrington wrote. He also noted another significant factor: “the condition of the milk cans.” If milk is stored in unsanitized vessels that already harbor bacterial cultures, it will curdle even faster when exposed to the warm, wet air bacteria love. “No effect from thunder and lightning on milk and cream will be noticed,” Farrington assured readers, so long as the milk was chilled, and “if the cows are clean, the milk cans are clean, and all the utensils carefully sterilized.”
A previously theorized barrier to tokamak fusion known as the Greenwald limit has now been smashed by a factor of ten, thanks to the efforts of a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin.
“We created a cell line from an endangered bat species (little brown bat) to create a model for the disease in animals that are not available to be studied,” study co-author Dr. Bruce Klein — a professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, and Medical Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison — told Salon. “We created a model of hibernation, which is so critical to understanding of the pathogenesis of the infection.”
County fairs around the state have already gone through the additional testing requirements for avian flu this summer. The Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory has received nearly 400 samples every week since June, according to director Keith Poulsen.
Poulsen said they could accommodate more tests, but there hasn’t been the demand.
The Weather Guys, Steve Ackerman and Jon Martin, are back to put into context just how hot and wet this summer has been in Wisconsin. They’ll also explain why more severe weather events are becoming the new normal.
Lawns that consist solely of turfgrass provide little-to-no resources for pollinators, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison extension division of horticulture. Also, letting lawns grow for the month of May and then mowing more than one third of the height is stressful to the turfgrass.
Some people living with Parkinson’s disease are receiving a new treatment in a clinical trial following research done by scientists at UW-Madison, the university announced Monday. The first-in-human trial began in April of this year, but the research leading up to the treatment started in 2021.
About two in five Wisconsin adults are obese, according to findings by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Obesity rates are even higher in some pockets of the state, including in parts of Milwaukee’s north side where more than half of adults have obesity, according to the UW-Madison research.
As part of a casual field day for the UW-Madison Extension in Chippewa, Dunn and Eau Claire counties, people from the Future Farmers of America, the Department of Natural Resources, Chippewa County Department of Land Conservation and others saw a demonstration of electric weed control.
A team of UW-Madison physicists and engineers is looking to the past to power the future.Their $20 million contraption, tucked inside their underground Stoughton lab, features a series of stainless steel cylinders joined end to end, dotted with scrawled calculations and hooked up to a choreographed jumble of tubes, wires and machinery.
There is a limited number of weather reporting stations in Wisconsin, leaving some areas like New Berlin in data gaps.
A new weather station network run by University of Wisconsin-Madison is hoping to change that. It is called WiscoNet and New Berlin just got one of the newest weather stations.
Mauriel Rodriguez Curras and UW-Madison ecology professor Jonathan Pauli collected DNA from foxes’ and martens’ scat and hair to investigate spatial, dietary and behavioral habits before wolves were introduced, within the first year of introduction and as packs coalesced on the island.
The Wisconsin turkey reintroduction was a partnership of the DNR and NWTF. Tom Yuill, a University of Wisconsin professor and wildlife disease expert, provided health testing of the birds.
Christine Remucal, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UW-Madison, graduate student Sarah Balgooyen and other researchers looked at foam and surface water samples collected between 2020 and 2023, from areas across the state.
