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.
But the picture is more complicated. Migrants living in the country illegally have been more likely to live in overcrowded conditions, meaning their departure would leave fewer units available. Undocumented laborers make up a significant portion of the construction workforce. A recent paper from researchers at the University of Utah and University of Wisconsin found that greater immigration enforcement led to less homebuilding, higher home prices and fewer jobs for domestic construction workers.
A new method of treating Parkinson’s disease passed non-human trials at UW-Madison.
Graduate students, faculty lead discussions on plants like wild rice and cannabis, highlighting medicinal uses and cultural significance.
The complex shape of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is one hurdle limiting the development of treatments for an infection that leads to hospitalization or worse for hundreds of thousands of people in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New images of the virus from researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison may hold the key to preventing or slowing RSV infections.
Both advancements in science and the rejection of science have been a factor in U.S. politics. UW-Madison emeritus professor of chemistry Bassam Shakhashiri returns to talk about the connection between scientific understanding, reasoning and responsible citizenship.
Recent research conducted by UW faculty finds how to help improve economies on Native American reservations through clean energy.
UW-Madison’s Prevention Research Center has received a $5 million federal grant to reduce racial health disparities and improve maternal and infant health outcomes for Black women.
UW Extension Educator Kevin Schoessow is back to talk about the Spooner Agriculture Research Station. And the food they have donated to local organizations. We also talk about the work being done at the Savannah Institute to integrate trees and shrubs with crops and livestock on farms.
With extreme weather becoming more frequent and destructive due to climate change, homeowners in parts of the U.S. facing mounting risks are likely to see significantly higher insurance costs in the years ahead, according to a June paper from experts at the University of Wisconsin and University of Pennsylvania. “Property insurance serves as the front line of defense against climate risk for homeowners and real estate investors,” the researchers noted. “By 2053, we estimate that climate-exposed homeowners will be paying $700 higher annual premiums due to increasing wildfire and hurricane risk.”
Children who grow up today in neighborhoods that were redlined, or graded low for home loans, in the 1930s are slightly more likely to have asthma, according to a new study involving UW-Madison researchers.
These historic injustices continue to fuel distrust among Indigenous peoples toward Western institutions.
As a result, University of Wisconsin health officials were pleased when the leadership of one tribal community in northern Wisconsin recently agreed to meet about the possibility of signing up tribal members for clinical health trials. The entire tribal council for the Sokaogon Mole Lake Ojibwe Nation visited with health professionals at UW-Madison Sept. 11 and 12 to help build a cooperative relationship between the tribe and the UW Health system.
Column by Dr. Nathaniel Chin, a geriatrician, memory care specialist and medical director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at UW-Madison, and Darby Peter, a research assistant in geriatrics and gerontology at UW-Madison.
Using tariffs as geopolitical influencers and industry protections sounds like a great idea. But a recent study out of the University of Wisconsin found that the US tariff codes are regressive and favor the luxury market over the mundane—a handbag made of reptile leather has a tariff rate of 5.3%, while a plastic-sided handbag has a tariff rate of 16%.
That seeming-lack of interest in joining the growing green energy market is the focus of a recent economic study coming out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison details barriers – like federal red tape – that tribes face when starting green energy projects. If these prohibitive barriers are not addressed, researchers tribes across the United States will lose out on 19 billion dollars of revenue by 2050.
Movies and books speculate whether humans are alone in the universe. A new group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is working to find answers.
Thomas Beatty, an assistant astronomy professor, compared the creation of the Wisconsin Center for Origins Research to Marvel Comics.
A group led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found historic federal policies deprived tribes of lands rich in natural resources like precious metals and fossil fuels. Even so, tribes were often left with lands most favorable for wind and solar development.
UW Center for Limnology’s Trout Lake Station celebrates 100 years of research, education.
Long before anatomist Julie Stamm wrote a book about youth concussions, she was an athletic trainer. One fall, during her undergraduate training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she treated a high school football player who got a concussion, and didn’t get better.
If these programs could operate at full capacity, they could serve over 33,000 more children, said the report, authored by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The study was done in partnership with the state Department of Children and Families.
Hilary Shager, author of the report and associate director of the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty, said not having enough staff was a primary reason for not expanding capacity, mostly among group providers. She said providers pointed to low compensation as one of their top issues.
About two years ago, University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Emily Bick went down a research rabbit hole.
It is no coincidence that Epic, one of the largest EHR vendors, was named after literary “epics,” heroic poems defined by their extreme length. A study from the University of Wisconsin found that one in five patients has an EHR the size of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, more than 206,000 words. “[Generative AI] is an opportunity to add a layer of simplicity on top of the Moby Dick-sized amount of information in a patient’s chart,” Adams said.
While districtwide enrollment is expected to remain flat this fall, projections from the UW-Madison Applied Population Laboratory indicate the student population is likely to continue trending downward for at least the next five years.
In a new study from Emory University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and UC Berkeley, researchers set out to investigate the potential demand for psilocybin-assisted therapy for depression in the United States.
Rick Lindroth at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that spongy moth caterpillars strip aspen tree foliage, increasing tree defenses and causing harm to a native species.
University of Wisconsin-Madison math professor Jordan Ellenberg sits down with The Daily Cardinal to discuss his latest AI research and writing and student work.
Wisconsinites have lower concentrations of “forever chemicals” in their blood than residents of other states, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who have studied invasive species in lakes for decades published a summary of key findings in the journal BioScience in August. “These were the ones that we felt challenge conventional views,” said Jake Vander Zanden, director of UW–Madison’s Center for Limnology and lead author of the analysis. “Almost all of these were surprising to me.”
A scientific survey of nearly 4,000 Wisconsin residents by the UW Survey Center helped identify the top issues heading into the fall election. Throughout the year, we’ve been publishing opinion pieces from faculty at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison, our partner in the Main Street Agenda, exploring the public policy behind those issues.
By mimicking bat hibernation in a lab dish, UW-Madison researchers showed how the fungus that causes deadly white-nose syndrome spreads and how a lung cancer drug might stop it.
Hybrid breeding will enable breeders to create new varieties faster and more systematically, said Shelley Jansky, a retired plant breeder at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Alliant Energy and the University of Wisconsin-Madison also partnered on an argivoltaics research site near Stoughton, which will feature a small-scale solar site that will produce enough clean energy to power over 450 homes.
A study from the UW’s Collaborative for Reproductive Equity shows that women in 19 Wisconsin counties do not have full access to maternal health care. Women in 11 of those counties live in what researchers call a “maternal care desert” — meaning there is no access to care.
Wages for the lowest-paid workers in Wisconsin have risen faster than pay for higher earners in recent years, but workers still face challenges.
That’s according to the new “State of Working Wisconsin” report from the High Road Strategy Center, an economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The report is released annually around Labor Day to provide insights into how workers are doing in the economy.
The Main Street Agenda is here to help you navigate these times. It is an election-year project designed to provide information and civil conversations about the issues Wisconsin voters care most about. The topics come from a UW Survey Center survey, WisconSays, that asked residents about the top issues they face.
The share of Wisconsin dentists serving Medicaid patients is lower than the national average. In 21 counties, fewer than four out of every 10 dentists filed Medicaid claims in 2021 — and in seven counties, not one dentist did, according to the UW-Madison La Follette School analysis. The numbers were similar in Dane County, where about six out of 10 dentists filed no Medicaid claims that year and less than one-third of Medicaid patients received dental care.
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.
