Dan Levitis and his wife, Iris, were living in Germany when they lost their first pregnancy. An ocean away from their families, they had few people they could talk to about their loss. Then they had a second miscarriage and were devastated.
Hurricane Harvey was a 1-in-1,000-year flood event, according to new calculations by the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center at UW-Madison. The research scientist who mapped this calculation explains why Harvey’s record shattering rainfall over Southeast Texas and Louisiana was so devastating.
African American children fail and drop out of school at an alarmingly high rate, but providing them with skilled teachers who bring African American culture into the classroom can reverse that trend. Gloria Ladson-Billings, an internationally acclaimed scholar of education at UW–Madison credited with the concept of “culturally relevant pedagogy,” discusses hip hop as a transformative educational tool.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s American Family Children’s Hospital will be one of 20 sites to offer one of the most promising and expensive new cancer drugs, one that will come with what amounts to a limited warranty.
Some smokers have more of an urge to light up right after they wake up, and UW-Madison researchers have identified a reason: genetic variation in a substance that breaks down nicotine in the brain.
The Institute for Foundations in Data Science, which will be part of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, will re-examine the core mathematics, statistics and computer science that make big data science possible. The ultimate mission will be to come up with new ways to more efficiently and effectively use big sets of data.
[A] report from from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS), a nonpartisan think-tank based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wants to remind Wisconsinites that the health of the economy can’t be encompassed in a single statistic.
Dairy farms generate massive amounts of data every day – too much for a farmer to analyze alone. But a new app being developed at the UW-Madison Department of Dairy Sciences called Virtual Dairy Farm Brain aims to collate all that data in real time to help the farmer make better decisions.
Wisconsin-based think tank COWS has released their latest “State of Working Wisconsin” report. We speak with Laura Dresser, Associate Director of COWS, about what headway the state has made in the last year.
The interim director of a cell and gene product development facility at UW-Madison is now the permanent managing director.Carl Ross began his new duties on July 1 after more than a year as the Waisman Biomanufacturing interim director.
UW Madison researcher Justin Sydnor and his colleagues studied a group of people of all ages and fitness levels who just joined a gym.
University of Wisconsin-Madison students didn’t win the global competition to prototype a Hyperloop pod, but they did take home an award for innovative design.
A new mindfulness-based “kindness curriculum” created at the UW Center for Healthy Minds shows promising results in early research.
“It turns out, if you look at all of the things that are associated with blue, they’re mostly positive,” explains Karen Schloss, an assistant professor of psychology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s really hard to think of negative blue things. A lot of things that we kind of think of as blue and bad aren’t really that blue.”
It may surprise you to know that UW-Madison is a major contributor to national efforts to monitor and predict these powerful storms.
“Alcohol is hitting you harder and your balance is a little off because you’re older and your bones are more brittle,” said Julia Sherman, chair of the Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “You add that all together and the danger is obvious in hindsight.”
Noted: Jihae Shin, Professor at the University of Wisconsin, designed an experiment to prove the most creative ideas come after procrastination. She asked people to come up with business ideas: one group shared ideas immediately, while another group was asked to play a simple computer game for 5 minutes before sharing their idea.
The Food and Drug Administration has deemed MDMA a “breakthrough therapy” in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, putting it on a fast track for possible approval. MDMA is also known by the street name Ecstasy. “MDMA opens up a space where people feel safe, they feel better about themselves, and they feel better about other people…,” said Dr. Charles Raison, a psychiatrist and member of the scientific advisory board of MAPS, which stands for Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
Interview with Tracey Holloway.
Quoted: “What difference does having a major research university in a place like Wisconsin make?” said University of Wisconsin Chancellor Rebecca Blank. “It’s the future of the state.” If Blank is right, then current trends put that future in doubt for much of the Midwest. Many of these same universities have suffered some of the nation’s deepest cuts to public higher education. Illinois reduced per-student spending by an inflation-adjusted 54 percent between 2008 and last year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The figure was 22 percent in Iowa and Missouri, 21 percent in Michigan, 15 percent in Minnesota and Ohio, and 6 percent in Indiana. While higher education funding increased last year in thirty-eight states, Scott Walker’s 2015–17 budget cut another $250 million from the University of Wisconsin system. The University of Iowa recently had its state appropriation cut by 6 percent, including an unexpected $9 million in the middle of the fiscal year.
Noted: University of Wisconsin, Madison, professor Menzie Chinn’s research also suggests lawmakers in the United States should look to domestic fiscal policy if they want to reduce external imbalances.
Noted: In a separate study, Professor Menzie Chinn from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said that the Trump administration will likely not be able or willing to reduce the US foreign debt, as, amongst other reasons, the Treasury notes’ safe-haven status supports capital inflows in the US.
In 1980, when Tom and Kathie Brock’s children were 3 and 5, they considered buying a vacation home “up north,” where Tom, a University of Wisconsin-Madison microbiology professor, had done research on lakes.
Noted: The study was conducted by Evan Polman, marketing professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Sam Maglio, marketing professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
The effects of air pollution on human health have been well documented. We also have research on how air pollution affects plants and wildlife.
When Lake Mendota turned the color of a bad Gatorade experiment in June, you should have seen it through Steve Carpenter’s eyes.Carpenter, who is retiring this month after 28 years at the UW Center for Limnology, talks about Lake Mendota with a subtly relaxed sense of time.
Medical “e-visits”—electronic communications between patients and physicians, primarily via secure messaging—have been touted as a low-cost method for doctors and patients to stay in touch without the time and expense involved with office visits. But, so far, they seem to be doing more harm than good, according to new research from the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
When it comes to CRISPR, our society has some important decisions to make.
People generally think that editing human genes might be OK, but most think that there’s a clear line that shouldn’t be crossed when it comes to changing traits that would be passed down to new generations, according to a survey reported Thursday.
In a survey published today in Science, two-thirds of people polled believe that using gene-editing technology to modify human cells was “acceptable.” The survey (PDF, sub required), which was carried out by researchers at the University of Wisonsin in Madison and Temple University, presented 1,600 people with various hypothetical use cases for genome editing technology. For example, it asked how people felt about modifying DNA in human germ-line cells, which can be passed down to future generations, versus genes in somatic cells, which aren’t.
The North American Manure Expo, held Tuesday and Wednesday at the University of Wisconsin’s Arlington Agricultural Research Station, offered Kasparek new insights, and not just about the different types of machinery on the market for spreading organic fertilizer on crop fields.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s tech transfer office plans to invest $60 million in startups affiliated with the school over the next eight years and has launched a separate $50 million initiative aimed at commercializing UW-Madison research and discoveries in human therapeutics.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) has started a two-year “virtual dairy farm brain” project that will use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze data in real time helping dairy farmers improve their management decisions.
A smile is often associated with happiness, but experience, and new research, will show you that it can actually say much more. In a world in which facial expressions can often convey what is unsaid, people will often use different smiles in different scenarios.
For most patients, the ability to send an email to their doctor can feel like a quick way to get their health concerns addressed. For doctors, these “e-visits” were touted as both a potential time-saver and a way to bring down health care costs. However, an updated study from the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Madison-Wisconsin found e-visits were less of a time and money saver than previously believed.
Quoted: Benjamin Cox is an assistant engineer in the Morgridge Institute for Research fabrication lab at UW-Madison and a graduate student in the medical physics department who has been working in 3D printing for seven years. He said comparing printing Filamet on a home 3D printer to the larger metal printers is “a bit of a false comparison”.
The number one rule for watching the solar eclipse on Aug. 21 is not to look directly at the sun without special eyewear, even when it is partially obscured, said Jim Lattis, who directs the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s astronomy outreach center Space Place.
Emails between patients and doctors lead to more office visits and don’t improve health, contrary to the intent of the increasingly popular exchanges, according to a UW-Madison study.
As an undergraduate nursing student at UW-Madison, Maichou Lor tried three ways of getting information about cancer screening from Hmong adults: using written surveys with true-false or check-box answers, and reading questions out loud.
Andy Mendez, who will be a junior at McFarland High School this fall and is interested in becoming a pharmacist, said his eyes were opened when he attended the UW-Madison Pharmacy Summer Program.
Noted: Dave Mickelson is an emeritus professor in geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in glacial geology and the history of Wisconsin’s landscape.
Derek Clark didn’t think twice when UW-Madison researchers asked him to take a health survey, and provide blood and urine samples, six years ago.
Bizmaroon, doodinkus and splo. For over 50 years, a group of intrepid lexicographers have been documenting words like these ? regional terms and phrases that were once popular in states like Wisconsin, Kansas and Tennessee. Collected together in the Dictionary of American Regional English, the words make up a fascinating repository for old-fashioned, funny-sounding and unmistakably local language quirks across the United States.
Jim Lattis, who directs Space Place at the UW-Madison Astronomy Department, said that even if there are clouds Monday, daylight will diminish. “You would still notice the effect because even if it’s cloudy, the amount of daylight that’s reaching your location will decrease dramatically. Again, something in the neighborhood of 80 percent of the Sun’s light will be blocked. So, it’ll get darker. If it’s overcast, it’ll get even darker,” Lattis said.
Although genetic information has become more accessible through direct-to-consumer testing, the secrets it reveals are not always as clear as a crystal ball.“They’ll tell you whether you like cilantro, which is a genetic trait,” said Jason Fletcher, a professor of public affairs and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “They’re right with that — I hate cilantro. … But they’re wrong when they tell me that I shouldn’t be bald.”
Live at Four talks with a researcher to find out what your smile reveals about you.
Live at Four talks with a researcher to find out what your smile reveals about you.
We hear from Paula Niedenthal, a UW-Madison professor about a new smile study that may help us decipher what a person’s smile really means.
Sometimes in order to get to the gym, all we need is a little extra push. A new study suggests that money might not be a good enough push though. UW Madison researcher Justin Sydnor and his colleagues studied a group of people of all ages and fitness levels who just joined a gym.
Three years ago, the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association put new rules into play to limit contact in high school football practice. A University of Wisconsin-Madison study showed it’s working. Concussions were more than twice as high in the two seasons before the rule change.
Some Great Lakes scientists are concerned about possible federal budget cuts affecting their work as the fate of spending next year on Great Lakes research is still foggy.
It happens to all of us: you’re out shopping for a gift and you find something you like so much you want to get it for yourself too, but you don’t buy two because the maxim “it’s better to give than to receive” was drilled into your head at an early age. If the scenario is familiar, I have good news for you: a new study indicates it might be better for everyone for you to buy that gift — and have it too.
A new study by UW-Madison researchers finds there can be such a thing as “too many fish in the sea”: having so many romantic options, you’re less satisfied with your choice.
A UW-Madison professor is headed to Washington to write a secret history of the nation’s war against terrorism for the Pentagon.
Noted: Well, “sharing” to the extent that two people have matching copies of the same object. “The fact that a gift is shared with the giver makes it a better gift in the eyes of the receiver,” says Evan Polman, marketing professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “They like a companionized gift more, and they even feel closer to the giver.”
The income gap between rich and poor in Wisconsin remains near its highest level ever, according to a new report by the Wisconsin Budget Project and COWS at UW-Madison.
Jo Handelsman had numerous options when she changed jobs this past January. Part of that was because of the position she was leaving: advising former President Barack Obama on science. Not many jobs take you into the Oval Office.
Noted: It’s not as if we do anything meaningful with the records we manage to collect despite the protections provided to private prisons. In 2015, researchers from the University of Wisconsin School of Business secured inmate disciplinary report records from a private prison in Mississippi. Using the reports as proxy for rehabilitation (reformed prisoners, presumably, wouldn’t misbehave while incarcerated) revealed that private prisons issue more disciplinary “tickets” — twice as many, in fact — than their public counterparts.
Quoted: “The hope would have been that by targeting this, you could especially capture some of the people who early on fall off and get them to keep going for longer,” said Justin Sydnor, one of the report’s authors and a risk-management and insurance professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “These incentive programs did increase slightly how often people went, but only by about one visit, and then it really has no lasting impact.”
Noted: A few years after retiring as an Air Force colonel in 1968, Haig came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to become executive director of the Space Science and Engineering Center, where he was instrumental in the development of the first global meteorological system.
