University of Wisconsin-Madison students will soon move into their dorms and apartments. Classes will begin early next month. And as a new school year gets underway, a variety of pressing challenges on campus will linger.
In the U.S., about 1.5% of natural gas is converted into chemicals that are used to make plastics and other consumer products, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Snapshot Wisconsin is led by two DNR staffers, both with doctorates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison: Christine Anhalt-Depies, research scientist; and Jennifer Stenglein, wildlife research scientist.
Both have been with the program since its beginning, have helped guide its path and now have valuable perspective on one of the state’s largest citizen science projects.
A new report published by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in the journal Current Biology may hold clues to an unfolding mushroom mystery: the origins and possible consequences of the invasive golden oyster mushroom.
Lack of saliva also affects the digestive process, which normally begins as food is first chewed and saliva begins to break it down. If chewing is affected, this too can impact digestion and nutrition.
Researchers from Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin believe they have come up with a potential cure. They engineered a hydrogel reservoir and loaded it up with artificial saliva, which consists of mostly water and mucins, antimicrobial substances that lubricate the mouth. Hydrogels are water-based substances that can also hold a large quantity of liquids. They’ve been studied for use as everything from a bone-mending solution to an atmospheric water harvester.
New research from UW-Madison reveals how golden oyster mushrooms — first imported from Asia more than 20 years ago and increasingly popular among growers and foodies — are spreading rapidly and encroaching on native mushroom species in the Midwest. We talk to the lead author of the study.
Oceanography has much to tell us about the health of planet Earth – as well as far-flung exoplanets. Then, we learn why space rovers get stuck on Mars and the moon. Then, an up-to-date report on another summer of blue-green algal booms on Wisconsin waterways.
UW-Madison confirmed that Ridglan supplied the school with animals in the past. According to the school, dogs are used in research studies of cancer prevention, organ transplants, vaccines and other medical breakthroughs.
“Those studies have been supported by grants from federal agencies, nonprofit foundations and patient groups, and health care companies,” a university spokesperson said.
UW-Madison’s Robinson Map Library recently held an exhibition that might be unfamiliar to many of Earth’s cartographers, but will certainly resonate with fans of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. There the works of the late Karen Fonstad lay on display. The sprawling collection contained drafts and finalized hand drawn maps from her original publication and revised edition of The Atlas of Middle-earth, published in 1981 and 1991 respectively.
Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, are guests on WHA radio (970 AM) at noon the last Monday of each month.
On Aug. 5, U.S.Health and Human Services Secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert Kennedy, Jr. announced the elimination of five hundred million dollars of federal funding for research on messenger RNA vaccines. Interview with Aaron Hoskins, the Wasson Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His lab focuses on understanding the role of messenger RNA in human cells.
New documents reveal the University of Wisconsin-Madison and drug developer Labcorp are among the clients of troubled beagle breeder Ridglan Farms, according to records obtained through open records requests.
Written by rofessor of cultural anthropology and international studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Legislative Republicans nixed a plan to fund a UW-Madison program that recovers the remains of missing service members, but a new proposal would require the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents to pay for it.
A team of students and experts in the Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project at UW-Madison sifts through archives and conducts field excavations in an effort to return the remains of veterans who went missing in combat to their families.
Astrobiologist Betül Kaçar on why the simple act of asking questions (without needing a reason) is one of the most powerful things a human can do.
Wisconsin lost thousands of dairy farms in the ‘90s. At one point, farmers received inflation-adjusted milk prices that were 20% lower than in 1960 and about half of the peak price in 1979, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
Fifteen years ago, the Population Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison launched the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps. The resource provides a “treasure trove” of public data and offers a snapshot on the health of nearly every county in the nation, said Sheri Johnson, the institute’s director.
While more than 700,000 people use the resource each year, Johnson said, County Health Rankings and Roadmaps will soon lose its primary funder. The New Jersey-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is set to end its support after 2026.
“You’ve got a convergence of people who are thinking that they can improve their children — whether it’s their children’s health, or their children’s appearance, or their children’s intelligence, along with people who are comfortable using the newest technologies and people who have the money and the chutzpah — the daring — to try and do this,” said R. Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin professor emerita, lawyer and bioethicist, who’s now consulting with government agencies and private companies.
Another project cancelled by the Trump administration is a $3 million grant meant to help researchers at the University of Wisconsin work with the Brothertown Indian Nation to restore wild rice habitat in the Lake Winnebago watershed and study the effects of that restoration on the lake’s water quality.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s practice of blocking an animal rights activist’s negative comments from its social media accounts was unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled.
Beer is a big part of Wisconsin’s culture. So it’s no surprise that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has an entire class devoted to brewing. We learn more about the science behind brewing and hearing about fermenting yeast, SCOBY and lactose.
In a sunlight-dappled room in UW-Madison’s Science Hall, between historical maps from around the planet, rests a world unlike the others: the fantasy land of Middle-earth.
Curated by Mark Fonstad, the exhibit showcases the hand-drawn maps, writing tools and stories behind the atlas depicting the “Lord of the Rings” realm his mother Karen Wynn Fonstad created.
Launched this spring, The SoulFolk Collective is the first research lab to be housed in UW-Madison’s Department of African American Studies. The group is made up of about a dozen undergraduate and graduate students and is led by Jessica Lee Stovall.
“As a Black studies professor,” Stovall said, “I’ve been really interested in the ways that we can create learning and research environments that are Black affirming, that center Black joy and Black liberation, Black organizing.”
Dr. Ahmed Elbayomy, a research fellow in neurological surgery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author on two of the studies said in a statement: “More research is certainly needed, but seeing the potential protection offered by these medications is a fascinating finding.”
Michaela Hoffelmeyer, an assistant professor of public engagement in agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recalled interviewing early-career queer farmers who worried that valuable internships and apprenticeships would place them in hostile work environments or unsafe communities.
Queer farmers may also be forgoing good farmland because they want to avoid harassment, Hoffelmeyer said.
In pregnant women, the effects are particularly impactful, as such DNA changes not only play out in the mother, but in the developing fetus and also the germ cells within the fetus, the precursors to sperm and eggs.
“This means that malnutrition has the potential to influence three generations—the mother, her child, and her grandchild,” says Hasan Khatib, a professor of genetics and epigenetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Such effects have been seen in the descendants of both the Great Chinese Famine and the Dutch Hunger Winter during World War II, where the children of babies starved in the womb carry genetic alterations that have placed them at higher risk of diabetes, as well as addiction and even schizophrenia in adulthood.
The connection between mental health and extreme heat is relatively new, but it’s a big one, said Jonathan Patz, a professor at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Population Health Science at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A recent survey by UW-Madison shows that 80% of Americans say they go to a farmers market at least once a year.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Eva Golos created a graph of the USGS data illustrating the moment the tremors reached the Midwest.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Public Affairs Manual Teodoro has issued report cards for nearly every water utility around the state as part of his Wisconsin Waterworks Excellence Project.
“The idea here with the report card is to signal to the public where utilities are doing well, and where they are doing poorly in a way that is easily accessible,” said Teodoro.
Advancements in x-ray lasers have potential for research in many fields. We talk to a UW-Madison physics professor about his work. Then, the Weather Guys are back to explain what we’ve been experiencing climatewise.
Universities did great things during the 20th century. Presidents and faculty found strength and legitimacy through relevance. They helped in the all-out effort to win the Second World War. Universities anticipated the needs of the Cold War. Research labs produced products that improved people’s daily lives. The University of Minnesota patented Honeycrisp apples. The University of Wisconsin patented fortifying milk with vitamin D.
“We inherit the memory of trauma on a molecular basis,” said Hasan Khatib, a professor of genetics and epigenetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student studying taxonomy and systematics, Marsh categorizes insects. Examining the insects with a microscope, she divides them into species, which is the smallest grouping of an insect. Those species could be classified simply by the number of hairs that are on their wings or the shape of their abdomens.
“I love to organize,” she said.
The study was a nationwide Phase 3 trial led by UW-Madison surgery professor Dixon Kaufman. The goal was to test a new stem cell infusion treatment for safety and efficacy.
“There are many benefits to them (immunosuppressive drugs),” said Kaufman, the medical director of the UW Health Transplant Center. “But of course, there are side effects and downsides.”
The camp is organized in collaboration with Dr. Michael Notaro, director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. With prior funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Notaro and his team have led similar camps in Beloit, Madison, and Wisconsin Dells.
However, future programming is uncertain. Federal support for the camps ended earlier this year when NSF grants were discontinued. While funding remains in place for this summer’s sessions, organizers are seeking alternative sources to continue beyond 2025.
Dr. Michael Notaro, director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, launched the program several years ago.
“I think that’s inspired by my son Hayden,” Notaro said. “He’s autistic and a wonderful boy. My wife is also autistic. And based on my desire to support and foster neurodiversity, we created three STEM camps.”
Written by James Dahlberg, a professor emeritus in the department of biomolecular chemistry at UW-Madison.
“I am concerned that this legislation, and the broad adoption of stablecoins that it will facilitate, may trigger a crisis at the very heart of the banking system,” writes Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Copelovitch is also the author of “The International Monetary Fund in the Global Economy: Banks, Bonds, and Bailouts” and co-author of “Banks on the Bank: Global Capital, Securities Markets, and the Political Roots of Financial Crises.”
Researchers at Northwestern University, Northeastern University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison analyzed the careers of 12,000 U.S.-based faculty across 15 disciplines, including business, sociology and chemistry.
They evaluated publication outcomes over an 11-year span, which includes the five years before and after those scholars got tenure. Last week, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America published the results of that analysis in a peer-reviewed paper, “Tenure and Research Trajectories.”
Written by ssistant professor of natural resource economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A 2019 study found that a neighborhood has to be at least 40% covered by trees ‒ counting pavement and buildings ‒ to substantially limit heat. That amount of tree coverage can reduce temperatures by seven to nine degrees, according to the University of Wisconsin researchers.
Emily Callaci’s history of the international feminist movement examines the influence of their intellectual and political victories. The University of Wisconsin–Madison historian describes in “Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor,” that modes of protest were part of an emerging, dynamic wave of left-feminist activism.
Callaci’s book marks a significant contribution to the new Wages for Housework literature and serves as a reminder of the campaign’s true aims. Weaving together capsule biographies of five of its founders, it offers a history that reflects Wages for Housework’s global scope and radical ambitions.
All four of the anonymous researchers asked to assess its merit were sceptical. But Berger and his colleagues were undeterred. Earlier this year, they published an updated version of their study, offering a deeper dive into the evidence they had gathered from the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. The approach paid off: two of the original reviewers agreed to reassess the science – and one was won over.
“You rarely see that in peer review,” says John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a member of Berger’s team.
Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a leading influenza scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is among those who are skeptical, pointing to H5N1 infections in Cambodia, which has reported 27 cases since 2023, 12 of which have been fatal. The version of the virus circulating in that country is different from the one that has been infecting cows and poultry in the United States.
Written by Jordan Ellenberg, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When Madison native Shawn Wiederhoeft received a kidney transplant in 2020, he did not expect to be at the forefront of a major medical breakthrough. But thanks to a clinical trial at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, he is now five years post-transplant and living without the need for anti-rejection medications.
Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, says this analysis shows why so many researchers “feel completely burnt out by the time they get to tenure”. A focus on metrics, such as number of publications or citation count, doesn’t emphasize quality, innovation or longer projects, she adds. “There’s a great deal of pressure on junior academics to do as much research as possible, to prove you deserve to keep that job.”
One month ago, the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile released their survey telescope’s first images of vibrant new galaxies, asteroids and other astronomical phenomena. UW-Madison associate professor Keith Bechtol, lead scientist of the observatory’s systems engineering team, said the images, first released on June 22, create the most extensive map of the universe to date, kickstarting new scientific discoveries in the field of cosmic observation.
Smokers can earn $380 if they are willing to kick cigarettes for four weeks and participate in a University of Wisconsin-Madison study.
The UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention is assessing whether nicotine pouches, like Zyn, can replace smoking.
ASK THE WEATHER GUYS
Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, are guests on WHA radio (970 AM) at noon the last Monday of each month.
And when it comes to warning people about flash floods in particular, experts still stress the need to get warnings to people via every means possible.
That’s why a “Swiss cheese” approach to warning people can be most effective in overcoming that last mile, Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist and manager of the Wisconsin Environmental Mesonet at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains. (And it’s similar to an ideology used to prevent the spread of disease.)
“You know you got slices of Swiss cheese and they’ve got holes in them. Nothing is ever perfect. But if you layer enough pieces of cheese, it reduces the risk because something might go through one hole, but then it gets blocked,” Vagasky says. “We always want people to have multiple ways of receiving warnings.”
“There are a small number of studies suggesting uptake of PFAS through skin is possible and the concentrations of PFHxA reported in the study are quite high,” said Christina Remucal, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Gaitsgory, together with Dima Arinkin at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, made this relationship more precise in 2012; then, working alone, Gaitsgory followed up with a step-by-step outline of how the geometric Langlands might be proved.
In Wisconsin, the beetle was first discovered in 2014 in counties west of Milwaukee. In 2019, UW-Madison entomologist P.J. Liesch, on a walk with his family, found an infested shrub. This spring, Liesch fielded dozens of questions from gardeners asking about it, as did Lisa Johnson, a Dane County Extension horticulture educator.
In the Trump era, with university research on the chopping block, some professors have become part-time fundraisers for the sake of science.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professors Anne Bonds and Derek Handley need at least $30,000 to finish their project after the National Endowment for the Humanities cut their grant this spring. They said the agency offered no specific reason for terminating the grant aside from it no longer aligning with funding priorities.
William Banholzer, an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has been traveling to town meetings arguing research doesn’t support banning the boats. Banholzer, who owns a wakesurfing boat but says that doesn’t affect his conclusions, said studies show about 70% of a wave’s energy is dissipated at around 200 feet.
“If you’re taking my rights away, you better have a preponderance of evidence on your side, and they don’t,” Banholzer said.
“Things are a mess, and it feels like a lot of unnecessary changes have been made to hinder science,” said David Rivera-Kohr who will defend his biochemistry PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison later this year. “It takes a toll mentally, but it also makes my principal investigator and lab group more conservative about our spending. We don’t know how long the money is going to last or whether new funding will come in, so we’re trying to cut costs.”
Written by Ph.D. candidate in botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I thought it was very well done,” Freya Mowat, a veterinary ophthalmologist at the University of Wisconsin who researches canine visual psychology but was not part of the new study team, tells Popular Science.
The new results are also closely aligned with a 2024 survey study conducted by Mowat and a separate group of dog researchers at the University of Wisconsin.
