As a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wicks created ice cream that doesn’t melt even after four hours at room temperature. While her concoction isn’t ready for consumption, her work could change the way we eat, store, and transport the beloved dairy treat.
A partnership led by the Great Lakes Intertribal Food Coalition and the University of Wisconsin-Madison received $10 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Sustainable Agricultural Systems program earlier this summer.
Co-authored by Morgan Edwards, an assistant professor with the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison. She also leads the Climate Action Lab and holds an affiliation with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Zachary Thomas is a graduate student in UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and member of the Climate Action Lab.
In the past decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of immigrants entering Wisconsin which has greatly increased the state’s Latino population — from 93,000 to 447,290, according to a Dairy Workers Study conducted by the School for Workers at UW-Madison.
The latest research, which comes from a team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shows the virus can be transmitted by respiratory droplets in ferrets, but inefficiently. Amie Eisfeld, an author of the study, says their lab has not seen this kind of transmission event with any other version of highly pathogenic avian influenza that they’ve isolated from the natural world and tested in ferrets.
It’s no mystery to what kind of damage feral pigs can create on a landscape. Their incessant rooting for food ultimately disturbs native ecosystems and rips up crops, and they’re often able to outcompete native wildlife species for resources. As if that weren’t bad enough, new research from a team of biologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison [Sara Hotchkiss Lab in Botany] offers some insight into just how much damage feral pigs on the Big Island are causing to Hawaii’s already fragile ecosystem.
UW-Madison’s Shawn Robinson shares his journey with dyslexia and creation of the “Doctor Dyslexia Dude” comic book superhero.
For the first time, a fusion device at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has generated plasma, inching one step closer toward using nuclear fusion as a a new source of carbon-free energy.
The university’s physicists and engineers have been building and testing the device at a lab in Stoughton for the last four years, which is referred to as the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror or WHAM. The magnetic mirror device became operational on July 15.
A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists has taken a major step toward creating a clean, reliable and powerful source of energy.
Four years in the making, it is part of a broader approach to using nuclear fusion energy that, unlike existing nuclear technology, does not create large amounts of radioactive waste.
UW-Madison researchers have teamed up with a group of the university’s tribal partners for a new project to support and expand Indigenous food traditions and practices of Great Lakes tribal nations.
For the first time, a fusion device at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has generated plasma, inching one step closer toward using nuclear fusion as a a new source of carbon-free energy.
The device is called WHAM, which stands for Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror. It’s in UW-Madison’s Physical Sciences Lab in Stoughton. After working to build and test it for four years, scientists have now moved the device into operations mode.
But how the invasive fungus is able to infiltrate bats’ skin cells has remained unknown, until a new study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Marcos Isidoro-Ayza, Ph.D. candidate in UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine and primary author of the study, said the discoveries were guided by an observation he and professor Bruce Klein made early in the research.
“Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas, opens new tab” by Michael Light, sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and two other researchers.
The 2020 study was published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.• The report, which used data from the Texas Department of Public Safety between 2012-2018, found a lower felony arrest rate for immigrants in the U.S. illegally compared to legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens and no evidence of increasing criminality among immigrants.
And, alarmingly, Americans are now much more comfortable with the idea of political violence. A 2021 study by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that 20 percent of Republicans and 13 percent of Democrats felt that violence was warranted in the current political climate.
Eight years and 130 observations: that’s all it takes to prove the winds coming from supermassive black holes have accelerated.
Led by University of Wisconsin-Madison Assistant Astronomy Professor Catherine Grier and recent graduate Robert Wheatly, a team of researchers compiled years of data to find that quasars, the cores of galaxies where supermassive black holes are messily feeding, are emitting winds that are speeding up over time. This research may mark the first step in understanding how black holes communicate with the galaxies they’re in, according to Grier.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced Thursday one of its professors, along with a PhD candidate, have made scientific gains in studying how a type of invasive fungus kills North American bats.
UW said Prof. Bruce Klein and PhD candidate Marcos Isidoro-Ayza worked to shed light on the mystery of how the fungus initiates infection and causes “white-nose syndrome,” which has devastated several North American bat species over the years. The pair discovered how the fungus covertly hijacks cells at the surface of bats’ skin.
Dennis Hancock is center director at the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center, which will administer the new facility in partnership with the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. He said part of the decline in Wisconsin dairy farms can be attributed to workforce shortage and a possible solution is replacing some of the workforce with technology.
“One of the ways to save smaller farms, in my opinion and those that have actually made the conversion would agree, is through the use of robotics,” Hancock recently said on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “Robotics are quite expensive, but they do save a lot of labor.”
Similarly, a study from the University of Wisconsin, based on Texas data, found that U.S.-born citizens have substantially higher criminal rates than immigrants who are in the U.S. unlawfully: They are over two times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes and over four times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.
Non-white voters are more than four times more likely to lack a current ID than their white counterparts. One study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that voter ID in Wisconsin discouraged up to 23,000 people in Milwaukee and Dane counties from voting in the 2016 election.
“We sampled several dozen different lakes and rivers in Wisconsin, and so we were looking at PFAS in foam,” said Christy Remucal, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and interim director of the University of Wisconsin Aquatic Sciences Center. “It’s the white stuff you sometimes see on the side of the lake or in the river.”
The state budget committee on Tuesday approved the release of $27 million for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation to cover grants aimed at creating a regional tech hub and to help communities affected by UW shutdowns. The committee also approved money for the Department of Corrections to cover the costs of youth who are serving adult sentences.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that naturally occurring foams on state waterways have PFAS levels as much as thousands of times higher than waters that lie below.
The findings are part of a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. She said the PFAS concentrations in foam were “jaw-dropping.” Samples of foam collected from Lake Monona showed PFAS levels up to roughly 328,000 parts per trillion.
A mistake by a researcher at UW-Madison could lead to a break through in t-cell therapy to fight cancer.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that the strain of avian influenza found in U.S. cows is not easily transmitted through the air among ferrets, but it does have some capability of spreading this way.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory, and two Japanese universities studied how H5N1 has evolved since the March outbreak by infecting humanized mice and ferrets in experiments funded by the National Institutes of Health.
In a lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Katy Jinkins typically starts her day at a filing cabinet full of thin, purple silicon disks that reflect green in the light.
Most of us have an “inner voice,” and we tend to assume everybody does, but recent evidence suggests that people vary widely in the extent to which they experience inner speech, from an almost constant patter to a virtual absence of self-talk. “Until you start asking the right questions you don’t know there’s even variation,” says Gary Lupyan, a cognitive scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “People are really surprised because they’d assumed everyone is like them.”
In fact, the issue unifies all Wisconsinites — Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. It ranks at the top of issues residents rated as most significant problems they face. And while it is a common problem for all, inflation has an outsized impact on the young, according to the “WisconSays” survey of nearly 4,000 residents conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Survey Center in partnership with the La Follette School of Public Affairs.
A new study by a University of Wisconsin-Madison team of researchers looking at wolves on an island in Lake Superior is helping shed light on the role that certain species play in helping shape an entire ecosystem.
Every patient is a unique individual. They have their own genetics, their own exposures to the environment that they have been in,” said Dr. Muhammed Murtazais, associate director of the Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicineat the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And, so, precision medicine is this approach that could we actually learn more about each individual patient, so that each patient gets the right drug at the right time.
Thanks to a recent study from the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, UW said Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy can be improved by altering the conditions the T-cells are grown in. Researchers at the WID accomplished this through “metabolic priming.”
As a Wisconsin resident, I am proud of the role played by UW-Madison in gene therapy and its future potential. Unfortunately, our Legislature fails to appreciate the university’s scientific contributions to humanity when it comes to funding.
The Wisconsin Biohealth Tech Hub Consortium members include the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), the University of Wisconsin System Administration, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, GE HealthCare, Rockwell Automation, Exact Sciences Corporation, BioForward Wisconsin, Employ Milwaukee, Accuray, Plexus, WRTP Big Step, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Madison Area Technical College, the Madison Regional Economic Partnership (MadREP), and Milwaukee7.
UW-Madison researchers on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, including MDMA. Madison was the only Midwest site for phase 3 trials of a psychedelic-assisted therapy treatment for Post-traumatic stress disorder. We learn about the potential for these substances in improving mental health.
The reintroduction of wolves has only had temporary effects on other small carnivores at Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior, according to new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison scientists have developed a new technique for identifying and analyzing a single molecule.
The new development, published in the May edition of the journal Nature, is the most sensitive way of identifying single molecules yet. With a variety of applications in a wide variety of scientific fields, it offers a future of “new microscopic perspective of unprecedented detail.”
The University said the sensors detect nitrate in soil types that are common in Wisconsin, allowing farmers to make better informed soil nutrient management decisions and reap economic benefits. The sensors can also be used as an agricultural tool to monitor nitrate leaching.
“Everybody expected a local contamination issue,” said David Gay, coordinator of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and lead author of the new study. “But I think what most people don’t understand about this fire is how big it was and how wide-ranging the implications are.”
Dr. Paul Peppard, a sleep medicine researcher at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved in the study, said losing weight has long been recommended as a way to reduce the severity of sleep apnoea by expanding lung capacity, reducing fat in the airways and improving oxygen usage.
During a 2023 workshop held by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, University of Wisconsin reproductive health researcher Jenny Higgins reported that fake individuals, or “bots,” had submitted about 3,000 responses to one of her surveys one weekend. Her team then had to spend hours on data quality checks and hire a data scientist to “weed out” ineligible participants.
A team of scientists from the UW-led Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center mapped millions of acres of abandoned farmland across the U.S. over several decades in a study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Knowing where this abandoned land is could help people evaluate it for different uses, including climate solutions, the team theorized.
That’s particularly true in the state’s dairy farms, which are routinely staffed by undocumented immigrants, according to a 2023 report from the UW-Madison School for Workers. This has created new coalitions advocating on immigration issues in the state.
Wouldn’t it be great if ice cream didn’t melt in your hand? UW-Madison scientists want to make that a reality.
UW Health Behavioral Health and Recovery Clinic addiction medicine physician Dr. Elizabeth Salisbury-Afshar examines how incarceration impacts people struggling with mental health and substance abuse.
UW-Madison entomologist PJ Liesch is back. We talk with him about what’s hampering the spread of spongy moths in Wisconsin. We also talk about how climate change is aiding the spread of joro spiders to northern regions. Then, two WDNR invasive species specialists share success stories from across the state.
University of Wisconsin-Madison social work professor Tova Walsh is glad more people are paying attention to postpartum depression in moms. She said that’s a big improvement.
A 2023 study from a team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison demonstrated the promise of fragmentomics. Researchers used machine learning to identify patterns in fragments of circulating tumor DNA, which is genetic material that cancerous tumors shed into the bloodstream as they grow. The researchers trained an algorithm to not only detect cancer in blood samples but also to identify the specific type of cancer present.
When it began to rain in various places, the pollutants were pushed from the air and deposited on the ground. The National Atmospheric Deposition Program, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, collects these ground depositions weekly across 260 sites across North America. David Gay, who serves as coordinator of the program, routinely analyzes the data to monitor air pollutants. “If you have a lot of pollution in the atmosphere, you get a lot of wet deposition pollution at the ground,” Gay said.
Researchers expected to find some evidence of the burn 50 miles from the site, and the high levels of contamination in the samples across the vast range that it was spread was “very surprising” said David Gay, a University of Wisconsin researcher and lead author.
With a wave of new hemp-derived THC alternatives hitting the market in Wisconsin, we check in with a cannabis historian about what these products are and how they’re shaping policy discussions around marijuana in the state. Interview with Lucas Richert, professor in the School of Pharmacy at UW-Madison.
In the UW-Madison basement-level lab, the answer was largely predestined. One scoop was regular ice cream, not unlike what visitors could buy upstairs at the Babcock Dairy store. The other was a concoction of UW-Madison Ph.D. researcher Cameron Wicks, in which an addition of polyphenols — compounds naturally occurring in plants such as blueberries and green tea leaves — helps ice cream keep its shape by counteracting melting ice crystals.
UW-Madison Extension Entomologist PJ Liesch spends much of his time identifying and confirming insect sightings. This spring has brought him a number of unusual observations, including a scorpion.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded $750,000 to the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Thursday, directed toward the establishment of new residency programs in rural communities.
A team of astronomers, including from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Arizona, analyzed years of observations of a quasar—bright cores of a galaxy thought to be powered by a supermassive black hole—to find unexpected changes in the gases surrounding a black hole.
A team of astronomers, including from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Arizona, analyzed years of observations of a quasar—bright cores of a galaxy thought to be powered by a supermassive black hole—to find unexpected changes in the gases surrounding a black hole.
More than 40% of mothers in Wisconsin report having to cut back on work hours, or quit their jobs entirely, due to the high cost of early childhood education, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison research quoted by Vincent Lyles, the executive director of Milwaukee Succeeds .
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and University of Wisconsin–Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) hosted a groundbreaking ceremony on Jun. 10 in Prairie du Sac for the construction of a world-class dairy research facility that will expand the two organizations’ long-standing partnership to tackle key issues affecting dairy farms across the country.
UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences held a groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of a new dairy research facility in Prairie du Sac on Monday.
The UW Carbone Cancer Center is starting a research program for college students underrepresented in oncology this summer. The program — Science Careers in Oncology Research with Equity, or SCORE — is a 10-week program for college students to learn and participate in cancer research in a lab setting, working closely with professionals in the field as well as their peers.
