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Category: Research

These satellite photos show just how bad the situation is in Puerto Rico

CNN.com

To get an idea of how dire the situation is in hurricane-battered Puerto Rico, take a look at these before-and-after photos of the island.The images, from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite [and the UW–Madison Cooperative Institute of Meteorological and Satellite Studies], offer aerial views of the US commonwealth.

Wisconsin Strict ID Law Discouraged Voters, Study Finds

New York Times

WASHINGTON — Nearly 17,000 registered Wisconsin voters — potentially more — were kept from the polls in November by the state’s strict voter ID law, according to a new survey of nonvoters by two University of Wisconsin political scientists.

Far-off galaxies are firing rare high-energy cosmic rays at us

New Scientist

Noted: Other telescopes have also been looking at the extreme universe of high-energy particles by searching for highly energetic neutrinos and gamma rays. “The energy density in the extreme universe observed in cosmic rays, in neutrinos and gamma rays turns out to be the same,” says Francis Halzen at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the principal investigator of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. “This may point at common sources and not be an accident.”

UW-Madison ‘Kindness Curriculum’ Nurtures Emotional Awareness In Preschoolers

Wisconsin Public Radio

UW-Madison’s Center For Healthy Minds is providing its “Kindness Curriculum” to preschool teachers. Thousands of teachers have requested the curriculum, including Sesame Workshop. The researchers at the Center For Healthy Minds consulted on kindness episodes for the 47th season of “Sesame Street” premiering Sept. 18 on Wisconsin Public Television.

Planting crops by plane; new method for area farmers

WISC-TV 3

Noted: Farms in DeForest, Waunakee, Sun Prairie and Fitchburg are participating in a project to help clean up Dane County lakes. Around nine farms are partnering with Dane County land and water resources department, UW-Extension, Yahara wins, and the natural resources conservation service.

What’s the buzz? Officials helping to strengthen bee populations in Dane County

Wisconsin State Journal

Bees aren’t necessarily welcome at picnics and outdoor events, but they are essential for pollinating crops worth millions of dollars to the Wisconsin economy. To that end, UW-Madison and UW-Extension staff in Dane County are working with the Dane County Environmental Council to increase bee education and get the most out of bee-friendly land use and development.

Fire on the mountain: 2 forests offer clues to Yellowstone’s fate in a warming world

New York Times

What will happen to the forests of Yellowstone if a changing climate means not only old forests burn, but young ones, too? That’s what (former UW graduate student) Brian Harvey and his colleague, Monica Turner, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin, are here investigating. Yellowstone’s recent fires offer a rare natural experiment to see how forests regenerate after burning and reburning at short intervals.

UW lab urges hunters to test deer for CWD

Wisconsin Radio Network

The UW-Madison lab that checks deer carcasses for chronic wasting disease says new scientific research shows the importance of testing. Keith Poulsen at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, says it would be a mistake to not get your deer tested for CWD this fall.

Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Jose: View from Space

TIME

We can now watch Irma and Jose’s stunning fury nearly in real time. Researchers and engineers at the Space and Science Engineering Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison stitched together daytime and nighttime imagery for a full, composite picture of the storms, made available to TIME.

Hawks: Renewed excavations in the Rising Star cave

Medium.com

ur team is underground this month in the Rising Star cave system, in South Africa. Project leader Lee Berger and I, along with several other team members, are doing periodic updates from the site on Twitter and Facebook, with hashtags #Homonaledi, #LesediChamber, and #DinalediChamber.

This Wisconsin floor has some powerful potential

Big Ten Network

Well, if you liked reading about this innovative source of green energy, then you might want to check out University of Wisconsin-Madison engineer Dr. Xudong Wang’s equally astonishing triboelectric nanogenerator, or TENG, technology.

Marshfield study: Kids raised on dairy farms less likely to get allergies, rashes

Wausau Daily Herald

A study of rural children in the Marshfield area suggests that kids raised on dairy farms are much less likely to suffer severe respiratory illnesses, allergies and chronic skin rashes, according to the University of Wisconsin.

Christine Seroogy, associate professor of pediatrics, and James Gern, professor of pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, worked with researchers at the Marshfield Clinic on the study.

Next wave breeding

Isthmus

Inside the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, Madison chef Tory Miller stands over a tiny bamboo serving boat, concentrating as he pipes a dollop of bearnaise to finish off a bite-sized dish.“Tomato,” he says, almost reverently, placing the specimen in front of a hungry dinner guest. But it’s not your standard grocery-variety (or even garden-variety) fruit — it’s from a special breeding line developed as part of UW-Madison’s Seed to Kitchen Collaborative.

The universal cost of sex

Isthmus

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.

UW-Madison Scientist: Nothing In Historical Record Rivals Hurricane Harvey’s Flooding

Wisconsin Public Radio

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.

Hip hop/hip hope in the classroom

Wisconsin Public Radio

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.

Big data will be focus of new UW research institute

Capital Times

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.