Quoted: “It makes sense to have free public transport paid for by taxation, as it’s beneficial for the whole of society, not only those who use public transportation,” says João Peschanski, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has examined free public transit systems around the world.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher is examining ways to improve athletes’ reporting of brain injuries — a key to preventing long-term neurological damage.
The Morgridge Institute for Research at UW-Madison has created a center to expand research on viruses and develop drugs or vaccines that target families of viruses.
For the University of Wisconsin, with more than $1 billion annually in research revenue, steeped in a tradition of “sifting and winnowing” for the truth and dedicated to broadcasting its findings throughout the state and beyond, the challenge is to strike a balance between academic freedom and the realities of a connected but politically fractious world.
UW-Madison is getting a new virology center to help scientists fight deadly, real-world viruses.
Officials with the Morgridge Institute for Research announced Tuesday that it will be launching the John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Center for Research in Virology.
More fallout from the tax cut package: Companies substantially increased their contributions to defined-benefit pension plans in 2017, likely because of the new tax law that President Trump signed in December, according to a new paper from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In a paper published in the journal PLOS One, University of Wisconsin-Madison soil sciences professor Joel Pedersen and collaborators determined that soil and water can serve as reservoirs for the deadly prions.
A recently published study by University of Wisconsin researchers found the bats they studied ate 17 different types of mosquitoes, including nine that are potential carriers of the West Nile Virus.
For adults, developing resilience might make all the difference between keeping a job or burning out. A small May 2018 study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, published in Frontiers for Psychology, found that as little as two weeks of “compassion meditation” made subjects more resilient in the face of human suffering, meaning they were able to look at struggle non-judgmentally and respond with compassion rather than becoming distraught themselves.
A recently published study by University of Wisconsin researchers found the bats they studied ate 17 different types of mosquitoes, including nine that are potential carriers of the West Nile Virus.
Jim Berbee — an entrepreneur, physician and philanthropist — is the new chairman of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s Board of Trustees.
Dohnielle Clayton, an author and COO of the grassroots #weneeddiversebooks, will appear on two panels this week, including one hosted by her organization. She said there has been progress in the industry, but cited a recent study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center School of Education, based in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, showing that children’s stories remain predominantly by and about whites.
Hsee says that research with University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Bowen Ruan and Zoe Y. Lu reveals a nuance in the relationship between curiosity and happiness.
At UW-Madison, a veterinarian amputated part of the animal’s leg and a prosthetist fit him with an artificial limb. Now the gray-and-black creature who spent most of his days lying down in pain is standing, walking and developing some equine attitude.
Researchers are constantly developing ways to decrease the size of transistors in order to increase the power and portability of computers, phones, and other electronic devices. As engineers approach the theoretical limits of size in traditional silicon transistors, some have turned their attention to quantum computing. Developments in this area can unlock powerful computing capabilities and expand our understanding of physics. Susan Coppersmith, the Robert E. Fassnacht and Vilas Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, is at the forefront of these developments. She spoke about her research with American Scientist editor-in-chief Fenella Saunders. A video of the full discussion is available here.
Researchers from Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin Madison and officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are leading the efforts of the app and the study — which will launch on Staten Island over Memorial Day weekend.
In addition to the U., Ohio State University, Arizona State University and University of Wisconsin-Madison have been selected as anchor institutions for the challenge.
Climate change is a health hazard. Air pollution and changing weather patterns give rise to heat-related illnesses, such as asthma and allergic disorders. According to the Centers for Disease Control, insect-borne diseases from ticks and mosquitoes have tripled in the United States in recent years, and warmer weather is largely to blame. Interviewed: Jonathan Patz, director, Global Health Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A common assumption held by many was bats eat a ton of mosquitoes. The assumption has now been proven by UW-Madison researchers.
Primitive life might linger miles above, in murky Venusian clouds that drift through an orange sky. “A colony of microorganisms could survive and evolve in those clouds,” says Sanjay Limaye, senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A common assumption held by many was bats eat a ton of mosquitoes. The assumption has now been proven by UW-Madison researchers.
This collaborative effort includes researchers here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Researchers at Iowa State University, including Dr. Daren Mueller.
However, injuries are all too common in high-intensity interval training environments. This is why engineers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW-Madison) recently designed a wearable that can directly identify muscle strain to help mitigate recurring injuries.
Many studies have linked high quality after school and summer programs to positive student outcomes in academics, school attendance and behavior. A longitudinal study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Irvine; the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Policy Studies Associates, Inc. finds that regular participation in high quality after school programs is linked to significant gains in standardized test scores and work habits as well as reductions in behavior problems among disadvantaged students.
The research was described in a paper published earlier this month in the journal Advanced Science. The work, funded by the National Science Foundation, was a collaboration between University at Buffalo, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Fudan University in China. The first authors on the paper were Haomin Song and Youhai Liu.
UW-Madison is partnering with community groups and a philanthropic venture of former Google chairman Eric Schmidt for an initiative to devise — and potentially implement — proposals to boost the net incomes of Dane County families on a broad and likely unprecedented scale.
On Wednesday afternoon, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced that it was chosen as one of four universities across the nation tasked to achieve that goal, in partnership with the community, by 2020. They’re looking for creative ideas from throughout the community to build up the county’s middle class and hopefully narrow racial inequities.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty will spend the summer collecting data and trying to identify community members’ needs in an effort to raise 10,000 Dane County families’ incomes by 10 percent in two years.
Kelton Halbert was chasing after supercell storms near Kansas City when he was rewarded with the view of a tornado twisting down to a farm field.
You would think it would be enough for yogurt to be delicious; to be an integral part of Mediterranean cuisine, to be the base for a sweet frozen treat. You’d think it would be enough for the fermented dairy product to be chockablock with probiotics, which help keep the human gut healthy and humming along.
Based on the regions of the brain that Homo naledi shared with modern humans, the authors suggested that it may have exhibited complex behavior. But what they did not say was what those behaviors may have been, said John Hawks, an paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and an author on the paper.
“I wanted to look at the mechanism more closely and look specifically at yogurt,” said Brad Bolling, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US
Young Mie Kim, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who published some of the first scientific analysis of social media influence campaigns during the election, said the ads show that the Russians are attempting to destabilize Western Democracy by targeting extreme identity groups.
A recent study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that more than half of the sponsors of Facebook ads that featured divisive political messages ahead of the 2016 election were from “suspicious” groups with little or no paper trail to identify them. One in six turned out to be linked to the IRA.“I expected that we would find some unknown actors in the digital media political campaign landscape, because there are some regulatory loopholes,” Young Mie Kim, the study’s lead author, recently told me. “The findings are a lot worse than I thought. It is shocking and surprising.”
There’s a stigma linking violent crime with illegal immigrants and part of that has to do with the spotlight on MS-13 gang arrests across the country and specifically in Lake Worth. But, a state-by-state study says an increase in undocumented immigration actually makes communities safer. The study was conducted by sociologists Michael Light of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Ty Miller of Purdue University.
But a new study from University of Wisconsin-Madison sociology professor Michael Light suggests people living in the country illegally are linked to a decrease in violent crime, not an increase.
A recently published two-year study of urban canids in and around Madison, Wisconsin, sheds light on the issue. Researchers used radio collars and statistical analysis to assess the movement and home ranges of coyotes and foxes through a mosaic of residential, commercial, and public natural areas, including tallgrass prairie and oak savanna located within the University of Wisconsin–Madison Lakeshore Nature Preserve.
Research shows the loss of young adults raises the cost of schools, public services, and recreation for individuals. The Applied Population Lab at the UW-Madison projected that 15 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties will have smaller populations in 2040 than they did in 2010.
“None of the plants were ever actually attacked,” says University of Wisconsin-Madison ecologist John Orrock. “We just gave them cues that suggested an attack was coming, and that was enough to trigger big changes in their chemistry…”
Two UW-Madison biomedical researchers have been awarded the prestigious Hartwell Foundation Award to help in their research advancing children’s health.
Wisconsin’s rural counties saw an estimated 9 percent fewer 20- and 30 year-olds in 2010 than they would have if their population from 2000 had remained static, according to data from the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That’s compared to a statewide average loss of less than 1 percent. And looking at just 20 year olds, that figure jumps to a loss of 34 percent in rural counties.
Noted: The National Conference of State Legislatures says helmets saved an estimated 1,630 lives in 2013. The organization, citing a 2009 report by the University of Wisconsin Medical School, also says several studies have proved the obvious, that medical costs from motorcycle crashes are higher for riders without helmets.
An endowed grant for the school was also announced today.
Quoted: “We are excited to infuse the initiative with a new class of inspiring and novel projects that continue to showcase UW-Madison’s highly competitive and forward thinking world-class faculty and staff researchers,” said Norman Drinkwater, interim vice chancellor for research and graduate education.
On Thursday, Wessinger gave a talk entitled “The Cult Narrative and the Branch Davidians,” at UW-Madison, arguing for a more nuanced understanding of religious movements. The talk was a product of a joint effort between the university’s Religious Studies Program and School of Journalism and Mass Communication to help journalists better cover religious subjects.
Two UW-Madison researchers believe that their discovery of protein agents responsible for causing chronic wasting disease near mineral licks in Dane and Iowa counties strengthens longstanding theories that gathering spots for deer are hot spots for transmission of the disease.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study has found that a transmission “hot spot” for chronic wasting disease in deer may be at salt or mineral licks.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study has found that a transmission “hot spot” for chronic wasting disease in deer may be at salt or mineral licks.
Joseph had one of the most complicated heart conditions his doctors had ever seen. To plan his surgery, they 3D-printed a copy of his heart. Features physicians at UW Health.
UW senior Brandon Nwadinobi helped his mentor look into inconsistencies in grant peer review.
Scientists detected the prion that causes chronic wasting disease in soil and water at mineral lick sites in south-central Wisconsin, according to work published Wednesday by University of Wisconsin researchers.
Noted: “We have seen an increase in the types of tick-borne pathogens. So this is very real,” cautioned Lyric Bartholomay, associate professor in School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also co-directs the Upper Midwestern Regional Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Disease.
Even though today we can easily measure external forces during movement, we still lack the ability to measure the underlying muscle-tendon forces that generate human movement. Previous measuring methods have provided only limited information on the human tendons and muscles. Fortunately, new wearable device technology and research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison)—led by mechanical engineering professor Darryl Thelen and graduate student Jack Martin—have determined a new non-invasive method of measuring human muscle-tendon force and movement.
Noted: Indeed, the few antibias trainings that have been proven to change people’s behavior make this case. One training, developed by Patricia Devine and colleagues at the Prejudice and Intergroup Relations Lab at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, looks at bias as a habit that can be broken. Their approach—which I’ve written about before—consists of a couple of hours of modules based on what the researchers see as three essential elements of an antibias intervention: awareness of the problem, motivation to do something about it, and strategies for what to do. The strategies include observing stereotypes arise and mentally replacing them, actively looking for situational explanations for a person’s behavior, and trying to imagine what the world would look and feel like from another person’s point of view.
WASHINGTON — It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie: In April, China is said to have tested an invisibility cloak that would allow ordinary fighter jets to suddenly vanish from radar screens.
One training, developed by Patricia Devine and colleagues at the Prejudice and Intergroup Relations Lab at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, looks at bias as a habit that can be broken. Their approach—which I’ve written about before—consists of a couple of hours of modules based on what the researchers see as three essential elements of an antibias intervention: awareness of the problem, motivation to do something about it, and strategies for what to do.
UW’s Automated Vehicle Proving Grounds is one of 10 federally designated labs testing autonomous vehicle technology, a distinction Wisconsin should be proud of, and which could lead to spinoff businesses and jobs.
UW-Madison’s recently released Origins project links together different academic fields to paint a picture of how scientists research Earth’s and mankind’s beginnings.
Noted: Fortnite does, to be sure, involve firearms, and is recommended for ages 13 and up. But its graphics are free of blood and gore. And though adults may worry that shooting games cultivate aggression, C. Shawn Green, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches video games, notes that, “there’s really no evidence that playing a violent video game would take someone who has absolutely no violent tendencies and suddenly make them violent.”
