The new numbers are still way below the average from the first 10 years of monitoring (about 21 acres) and what scientists consider sustainable (about 15 acres). But they still amount to good news, said Karen Oberhauser, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and one of the nation’s leading monarch experts.
“We are in a period of relative stability where the population has stopped declining,” Oberhauser, who was not involved in the new WWF Mexico report, told me.
Researchers from several prominent universities examined the self-reported sleep habits of nearly 130,000 teens. They found that the number of teens getting insufficient sleep, defined as seven hours or less a night, rose from 69% in 2007 to 78% in 2023, the most recent year for which data was available.
“We know that sleep plays a really critical role in adolescent brain development,” said Tanner Bommersbach, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the authors of the study. “So when large numbers of teens aren’t getting enough sleep, it really raises concerns about the downstream effects that that could be having on their mental health, on their academic performance, on their engagement and risk behaviors.”
According to Betül Kaçar, an astrobiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, organisms developing the ability to “eat” radiation isn’t out of the realm of possibility—in fact, it has happened already on Earth.
“Life found a way to eat pretty much anything it can on this planet. It’s quite remarkable,” she says. “If you think about it, the fact that life can capture photons [or particles of light] is ‘eating radiation.’ … For many microbes, the photons are great resources of energy. So phototrophs are an example of radiation-eating organisms on this planet.” Plants are well-known phototrophs, but sea slugs are unexpected ones, making their ability to gain fuel from radiation just as remarkable as that of the Astrophage microbes.
The importance of relationships cannot be overstated, said Robert McGrath, a University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist who gives public talks on how to live with vitality and resilience. He pointed to one of the longest-running studies on well-being, where Harvard University scientists followed the same group of men since 1938. The study revealed a simple yet profound conclusion: Good relationships lead to health and happiness.
Share experiences with others, even if it’s a solitary activity, McGrath recommended. He teaches a meditation class, for example, which is not exactly made for sparking conversation. But he sees strangers connect before and after class.
“Any form of connection is going to boost one’s mood,” he said. “Make that effort. Get out and connect.”
Physical therapists Lori Thein Brody and Jill Thein-Nissenbaum return to talk about solutions for knee and hip osteoarthritis.
Aaron Greer, an independent filmmaker and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has championed film incentives for years, said without an incentive projects would often look elsewhere.
“There’s an old saying in Hollywood, it takes ten years to become an overnight success. There’s a way it feels like that with this,” Greer said.
They’re tiny organisms, invisible to the human eye, and they’re inside you right now. This isn’t a description of a sci-fi monster but it is one of bacteria — single-celled organisms that can cause illness and death but might also help us to sleep better or find the motivation to exercise.
In short, we depend on bacteria, said Timothy Paustian, a professor in the Department of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“They’re really important for your health. You have a whole group of organisms that live inside you,” Paustian said.
“The link between physical inactivity and chronic diseases is so strong that any compromise to achieving regular exercise — in this case excessively hot temperatures — will pose broad public health risks,” said Jonathan Patz, chair of health and the environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the study.
Written by Jessica Lee Stovall, an assistant professor of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the director of The SoulFolk Collective.
Once the viruses adapted to microgravity by subtly shape-shifting, though, they became even more effective bacteria killers. “A simple microgravity experiment exposes these mutations that have much higher efficacy against pathogens,” says senior study author Srivatsan Raman, a chemical and biological engineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Written by Amy Stambach, a professor of anthropology and international studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She previously has been an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution.
Across the country, many hub participants have public defenders, says John Gross, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor who formerly worked as a public defender on the East Coast.
Public defenders are overworked, and may not have much time to spend explaining each case, he said.
“These lawyers are typically not charged with doing sort of community education and advocacy,” Gross said.
John Gross, a clinical associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said Briggs is charged because of a newer law in Wisconsin that bans making or having virtual child sexual abuse materials. The statute passed in 2024.
“We’ve added a statute like this to make sure that the law actually captures not just images that were made of actual children, but also images of children that were generated by artificial intelligence,” Gross said.
The Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin held a seminar March 11. It focused on the relationship between the effects of fires and habitat fragmentation on population dynamics of narrow-leaved purple coneflower, Echinacea angustifolia, on the ever fragmenting prairies of western Minnesota. The seminar was hosted by research ecologist at the UW Arboretum Jared Beck.
Derek Clinger, a senior attorney with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s State Democracy Research Initiative, told WPR the federal government’s use of the Civil Rights Act is an interesting approach.
“You’ve got this tricky interpretive question about whether or not this law written in 1960 was meant to apply to the concept of a statewide voter registration list, which did not exist for another four decades,” Clinger said.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Dance Department is celebrating its 100th year of operation, making it the oldest in the United States to offer an accredited dance degree. While the program was established in June 1926, founder Margaret H’Doubler began her instruction nine years prior.
The pledge “may sound good as rhetoric, but by law could not be put into practice,” said UW business professor emeritus Rodney Stevenson, founder of the Wisconsin Public Utility Institute.
“That’s a terrible idea,” said University of Wisconsin professor of public affairs Manny Teodoro, who specializes in environmental policy and utility management.
After taking community and tribal input, the Manoomin Team aimed to address mixed concerns regarding the state of the restored wild rice — some members of the community feared the rice because of the water it was living in, while others thought that if manoomin was present and growing, it must be healthy, according to Ojibway.
The Hua Lab at UW, led by associate professor within the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology Jessica Hua, has been a key partner in testing samples for heavy metals and PFAS.
“What we know so far … is that wild rice plants, the way that they grow, the way they make seed, is pretty protective of people’s health,” Erickson said. “I think we feel pretty good about people eating rice in the estuary and we can share that with people.”
Phonics—how letters represent sounds—is critical to reading. But once students have mastered its rules, the bulk of their time should be spent working with authentic texts, experts say.
“There are indications, circumstantial indications, that what’s happening is a lot of overteaching,” said Mark Seidenberg, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, at the March 2 annual symposium of the AIM Institute for Learning and Research, a literacy professional development group.
Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s a pretty safe bet that the Fed is keeping an eye on the war in Iran and its effect on energy prices.
“I think they will be eager to make sure that they show commitment to not let inflation get out of hand,” he said.
Chinn said the Fed usually focuses on core inflation, which strips out energy prices since they can jump around from month to month. But he said the Fed will also consider scenarios where the conflict drags on, keeping energy prices high for a while.
“And if it’s sustained, then that’s going to feed into core prices, eventually,” Chinn said.
“Adolescence is one of the big time periods of growth, next to infants,” said Taiya Bach, a member of the teaching faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Nutritional Sciences told Gizmodo. “They need way more calories than a grown adult does.”
“Even if you are overweight, you still have that growth piece because a bunch of your calories are still going towards hormones and development and bone growth,” Bach said.
Trump cannot simply mandate that the federal government take over election administration in a state or local jurisdiction, says Derek Clinger, senior counsel and director of partnerships at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
To do so would require federal legislation, which Clinger says seems unlikely.
Some Senate Republicans are withholding their votes because they believe the Save America Act “provides too much federal control” over elections, Clinger says. Actually “taking over” administration would be a further step with even less support, he adds.
“American elections have pretty much always been run by the states, with just a few key exceptions where Congress has passed laws impacting that,” says Clinger.
Scientists at the Wisconsin Crop Innovation Center are pioneering the future of hemp farming. Researchers at UW-Madison have received deregulation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 3 gene-edited hemp lines, allowing field cultivation without special permits.
Senior research scientist Mike Petersen explained they use a tool called CRISPR to gently edit the plant’s DNA, giving it traits like no THC or resistance to disease. Back in November 2025, the first line approved was Badger G, high in CBG, and known to reduce inflammation and other pharmaceutical benefits.
When Evers called Republican lawmakers in the past for special sessions, they often gavel in and out within seconds to avoid taking action. But University of Wisconsin-Madison political science Professor Barry Burden said this special session might have potential among Republicans.
The amendment is more of an “idea of wanting to end partisan gerrymandering,” not necessarily about the process, Burden said, adding that the amendment has to move through the legislature, campaigning and voter ballots before it could be approved.
“It’s a long, complicated set of steps. But I think for the moment, it’s still a live issue and has some potential,” Burden said.
“When the neutrino interacts in the ice, it shatters an atom and the splinters from that direction are a lot of energetic subatomic particles,” UW-Madison professor of physics and astronomy — and frequent IceCube collaborator — Justin Vandenbroucke said. “A fraction of those have electric charge, and they make a flash of blue light.”
First, we learn about the impacts of rising gas prices in Wisconsin. Then, we talk to a researcher and an advocate about Wisconsin’s FoodShare program and new work requirements.
Amy Zelenski, associate professor and director of Education Innovation and Scholarship at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, teaches an elective class in improvisational theater.
She recently visited WPR’s “The Larry Meiller Show” to discuss the relationship between improv and improving health care.
“I started my career working with medical residents, and I realized that they could say the words, but they were struggling with the connection piece,” Zelenski recalled.
On Feb. 21, the station took home one of the highest awards in college journalism: the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System named WSUM the best college station in the nation.
Kelsey Brannan, the director of student radio at WSUM — one of the station’s two full-time employees — said WSUM’s students provide listeners with authentic shows and music that aren’t replicated on other stations or streaming services.
“You’re hearing students bring in music that you’re not hearing anywhere else,” Brannan said. “They’re telling news stories from their perspective that you’re not getting from the national news or even local outlets — it’s a really unique perspective. You’re hearing sportscasters who are students who are calling the games that their peers are participating in. There’s something really special about that.”
Ron Kean, University of Wisconsin-Madison’s poultry specialist, told Wisconsin Public Radio that poultry producers are also growing frustrated by a lack of solutions in this new era of avian flu response.
“There’s going to have to be more work on vaccination, which is a big international political issue,” he said. “That I think is one of the big frustrations for the poultry industry.”
Anna Andrzejewski, an art historian who arrived at UW–Madison in the early 2000s, is the first holder of the Wright professorship, which was inaugurated on July 1, 2025.
Andrzejewski has taught a course on Wright’s architecture and writings since 2016. The endowed professorship — which she calls “utterly transformative and inspiring” — will enhance and expand Andrzejewski’s Wright-related teaching and research while supporting student field trips to Wright-designed buildings in the region.
The law in question has been wrapped up in a yearslong debate over separation of powers that has made its way to justices in recent years, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. In many of those cases, the Supreme Court opinions have shown the justices interested in balanced branches of government.
“There seems to be an inclination to reinstate greater separation of powers between the branches and preserve the important roles of various actors, whether that’s the attorney general or the governor or the Legislature,” Godar said.
“It’s not labor digging if it’s mutually beneficial: He agrees to provide financial resources, and she agrees to make the home a haven,” said Allison Daminger, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the author of “What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life.”
“I’d probably label something like that ‘specialization,’ which has been around for a long time,” she said.
Jonathan Martin, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been tracking the size of this cold pool, tracing it back to when such reliable data began in the 1940s. Martin views the long-term cold pool data as a unique indicator of human-caused climate change.
“It’s one of the first free atmosphere, that is, away from the surface … measurements that conclusively show that the hemisphere is warming during the wintertime,” he said.
“The dice are loaded,” Martin said. As the world warms, it’s clear that cold pools are likely to keep shrinking and winters of the future are more likely to keep breaking warmth records.
“Sleep plays a crucial role in adolescent brain development,” says Tanner Bommersbach, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “It’s important for emotional regulation in teenagers and important for their overall physical and mental health.”
Mariel Barnes, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of public affairs whose research has focused on the effects of the “manosphere,” says that the latest survey results were to be expected, as she has seen “a pattern of continued misogyny and patriarchy through multiple surveys in last decade,” she says. “I think social media plays a huge role and needs to take a lot of responsibility.”
Some young people are using chatbots “to test out being flirty or being romantic or being a little bit sexy and seeing how the chatbot responds to that,” Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies technology and adolescent health, told me.
That kind of experimentation may be more common among boys, who generally engage in more risky behavior online than girls, Moreno said.
Bamboo is more absorbent and “can hold more moisture without feeling wet, compared to cotton,” Majid Sarmadi, textile expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.
So are these sheets actually bamboo? Technically, yes. They’re made from the bamboo plant, but that’s not the full picture. Sarmadi compared the process of creating bamboo rayon to making spaghetti noodles. “When you make spaghetti, it is 100% wheat, but it’s in a different shape,” Sarmadi said. In short, you grind wheat into flour, then mix it with other ingredients to create dough. So, think of bamboo cellulose as wheat. There are different ways to extract and treat it, but the cellulose eventually becomes the yarn you weave into fabric. The result is far different from bamboo stock, but it’s still part of the origin.
The link to mental health also has a physiological basis that researchers like Dr. Charles Raison are trying to understand.
“High heat administered for a time-limited period is an antidepressant and a pretty good one,” says Raison, a professor of psychiatry and human ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Regular guests and wildlife specialists Jamie Nack and David Drake are back to tell us about the return of migratory birds, coyotes in towns and cities, research on foxes and more. They also answer your questions about wild animal sightings and behavior.
:The bigger and broader your network is, the earlier you’re going to get data and direct access to global outbreak intelligence and alerts,” said Janis Tupesis, a Madison public health official and a global health expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “That is super beneficial to the state.”
Wisconsin currently has 274 licensed hemp growers, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Last November, that number was 470.
The decline could be due to people waiting to see how the law plays out and if the loophole will close or not, said Shelby Ellison, an agricultural professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It might be clearer in another month how many people reapply for licenses through the USDA.
UW-Madison Data Science Institute associate professor Anna Haensch raised concerns with the potential electrical demands of data centers. In 2024, Wisconsin’s peak demand was 14.6 gigawatts, and the Wisconsin Policy Forum expects it to increase about 17 gigawatts by 2030.
Additionally, Haensch emphasized the need to separate hyperscale data centers from the broader cultural narrative surrounding artificial intelligence.
“Connecting data centers so explicitly to AI has made these projects almost untenable,” Haensch said, noting that AI is often framed in apocalyptic terms.
“The siting study includes looking at nuclear energy systems, anything from similar to today’s reactors that are operating to a variety of advanced reactor concepts, including microreactors and other smaller reactors, as well as fusion energy systems in the future,” said nuclear engineering professor and department Chair Paul Wilson.
Researchers can’t definitively say whether any of the men buried in the Kazakhstan mausoleums were related to Khan because they “still do not have a reference genome from Khan’s true relatives,” says lead author Ayken Askapuli, an integrative biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to the Badger Herald’s Allison Hayden.
“It’s going to hang in that $18 to $19 per hundredweight price for 2026. It doesn’t look like it’s going to rebound very strong this year,” said Aerica Bjurstrom, a regional dairy educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension. “Everybody has a different breakeven point; that’s not breakeven for a lot of dairy producers. It’s going to be a tough year.”
Political science professor emeritus Howard Schweber of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said several factors play into why students are protesting.
One of those factors is that ICE raids have taken place near schools. In some school districts, teachers have been arrested and students have disappeared. In some areas of Minneapolis, schools have had to switch to remote learning because students feared ICE raids, Schweber said.
UW-Madison School of Education professor Erika Bullock describes how the daily necessities of life — from family and food to housing and health — can impact how children learn in classroom settings.
Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said this race is drawing less money and attention than recent cycles, in part because the ideological balance of the court is not at stake this time.
“It looks this year like at least some conservatives have kind of thrown in the towel and have said this is not a race that we’re likely to win. So they’re really putting their efforts into the fall election, especially in the governor’s race behind Tom Tiffany,” Burden said.
“Colorectal cancer is the number two most common cancer in the United States,” Dr. Noelle LoConte, M.D., said. “It is decreasing, but not fast enough.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison President Edward Birge did not want the university to be known as a dancing school.
But after physical education instructor Margaret H’Doubler began teaching dance classes in 1918, that’s the direction things were headed. Hundreds of students signed up each semester, and H’Doubler and her students were being invited to colleges and universities across the country to share their methods.
Birge took away H’Doubler’s travel privileges, to no avail.
“It was too late. Other institutions were inviting H’Doubler all the time, and if she couldn’t come to them, they would come to her,” said Andrea Harris, professor of dance history and Buff Brennan faculty fellow in dance at UW-Madison. “The interest outweighed any pushback that there was at that time.”
“It’s a huge problem,” UW-Madison journalism professor Katy Culver said about the sheer volume of artificial intelligence-fueled misinformation online. “It predates AI, but AI is making the information more believable for a lot of people.”
On Feb. 25, UW Madison assistant professor of Latin American and Caribbean History Jorell Melendez-Badillo shared his research on Puerto Rico for UW’s premier history honor society, Phi Alpha Theta.
Puerto-Rican superstar Bad Bunny understands the importance of Puerto Rican history and is incorporating it into his music, which is currently the most streamed in the world. Melendez-Badillo’s study of Puerto Rico is so comprehensive that Bad Bunny himself reached out for assistance for his Grammy-winning album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” after reading his work.
Melendez-Badillo shared how he was asked to provide a historical lens for the album as a public historian. His main task was to create 17 historical narratives to accompany the songs’ YouTube visualizers, from “conquest to present.” These videos reached a massive audience, with the video for the “DtMF” alone reaching 115 million views.
“It’s hard to control the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, right, at the local level. But you can think about the things you can control,” says Zach Feiner, a fisheries biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Maybe that means you make different harvest decisions. You keep fewer walleye. Maybe you decide to go fish for something … more resilient to harvest like a largemouth bass or bluegill that are more of a warm-water fish.”
James Davis, a UW–Madison professor emeritus who studies Iranian politics, said speculation about regime change overlooks key political realities inside Iran.
“Coming back to the present, at this time, there is no recognized opposition movement. There is no recognized leader,” Davis said. “So, if the current regime were to collapse, what would take its place? At this time, we have no idea. I don’t know. The U.S. government doesn’t know. The CIA doesn’t know. Nobody knows.”
“I only recommend devices that are cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA-clearance indicates that the product was submitted to and reviewed by the organization,” says Dr. Apple Bodemer, a board-certified dermatologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Milwaukee School of Engineering came out on top, which apparently did not sit well with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Two UW-Madison economists dove into earnings data by program. Their recent report, “Degrees of Deception,” found their university came out on top for the most majors of any Wisconsin school. But this point of pride was obscured in the overall rankings because the university offers some lower salary-producing programs that MSOE doesn’t offer, such as music and social work.
Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, a board member and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s vice chancellor for research, expressed concern that fewer solicitations will lessen junior faculty’s ability to receive awards that jump-start their careers. She also said the agency’s practice of frontloading the funding of previously multiyear grants further reduces how many researchers receive grants in a year.
A study led by a University of Wisconsin researcher shows the first empirical documentation of digital voter suppression on social media and foreign election interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The study was published Jan. 26 in the official journal of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Historically, people valued the ice for other reasons. “There’s a long history of ice harvesting in this region,” says Hilary Dugan, a limnologist — someone who studies inland waters — at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “So [there was] just a lot of commercial activity on these lakes, cutting blocks of ice out of the lakes all winter.”
Beyond Lake Mendota, Ho-Chunk ancestors left their mark on the landscape through a massive collection of effigy mounds used for gathering, ritual and burial, with at least 4,000 remaining throughout Wisconsin. Today tourists can visit the roughly 200 mounds in Madison, and take the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s First Nations Cultural Landscape Tour – a walking tour that explores upwards of 12,000 years of human history (running between 1 March and 30 November).
“I think the tours are so important for campus,” said Omar Poler, an Indigenous education coordinator in the Office of the Provost and a member of the Sokaogon Chippewa Community. “They’ve changed the way that UW-Madison sees and understands its own place,” Poler notes, adding that this is especially true of the tour guides.
