The Weather Guys return to talk about the back-and-forth forecast we had at the end of the month. They also talk about Groundhog’s Day and the latest news about the Paris Climate Agreement.
“They don’t solve the long-run problem of higher input costs and low prices; they are a Band-Aid to get us through this short-term problem,” said Paul Mitchell, the director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Agriculture professor and economist Steven Deller, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar view.
“We’re hemorrhaging thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and they’re giving us pennies,” Deller said, adding that farmers want “fair markets” and a “level playing field.”
R. Alta Charo, professor emeritus of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said proving causation is “incredibly hard” and would make it very difficult to win such a case.
Co-authored by rofessor of environmental medicine, and djunct associate professor of Population Health Sciences, both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The preparation of this year’s guidelines deviated from the past years’ processes, according to associate professor in the University of Wisconsin Department of Food Science Brad Bolling.
“There was a new scientific review process that didn’t follow the established public accountability and measures that typically the dietary guidelines goes through,” Bolling said.
The revised guidelines are lacking review and thought, retired senior clinical nutritionist of UW Hospital and Clinics Donna Weihofen said. The adaptation of the guidelines into effect is scary, given the existing controversy behind them, according to Weihofen.
The layout and suggestions presented in the new guidelines also confuse Weihofen. The graphic is completely flipped, and the placement of whole grains, an important source of fiber, on the bottom is a confusing choice, according to Weihofen.
“Fiber is really an important part of our diet … so to put that at the bottom of the pyramid doesn’t seem to make nutritional sense,” Weihofen said.
“Health risks are increasing because human-cause climate change is already upon us. Take the 2021 heat dome for example, that killed (more than) 600 people in the Northwest,’’ said Dr. Jonathan Patz, a physician who directs the Center for Health, Energy and Environmental Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The new climate attribution studies show that event was made 150-fold more likely due to climate change.”
“We are often so externally focused that we don’t recognize what is going on in our minds, and when we begin to pay attention to that, it’s genuinely exhausting for most people,” Richard Davidson, a University of Wisconsin psychologist who studies meditation. It also can make us more anxious, at least at first.
Sara Richie, who works to promote aging-friendly communities as the Life Span program manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension, said it’s important for communities to be inclusive and healthy places for older residents.
“(The community groups) are ensuring that people have an opportunity to lead fulfilling and connected lives and have access to the things that they need to age in place,” Richie said. “They provide an opportunity to celebrate the strengths and contributions of older adults, and have an infrastructure that supports them, and the services to meet their needs as well.”
“For schools that were looking for ways to provide cheap and nutritious meals for school children, one of the easiest ways to do that was just to provide milk, even before they were able to provide meals,” explained Andrew Ruis, research scientist in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book “Eating to Learn, Learning to Eat: The Origins of School Lunch in the United States.”
How Bad Bunny became the global voice of a generation in crisis — and what it means when resistance becomes profitable. Includes interview with Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a professor of Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He’s the author of Puerto Rico: A National History. He is also the author of the history visualizers for Bad Bunny’s DTMF album.
To get a clearer picture of what the Constitution says on this point – and what such a proposal might entail, Decision Points reached out to Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the school’s Elections Research Center.
“The U.S. Constitution gives the states the lead role in conducting elections,” Burden said. “Although the document also allows the federal government to set the regulations for administering elections, states are granted a lot of autonomy for running elections, even more if the offices on the ballot are not federal ones.”
It’s like the World Cup. The stadium is on edge, and a player kicks the ball, scoring the winning goal.
The crowd erupts.
But at UW-Madison in Morgridge Hall, the soccer stars are autonomous humanoid robots.
Josiah Hanna, a UW-Madison assistant professor of computer sciences, leads the university’s student RoboCup team, which uses artificial intelligence to teach soccer-playing robots humanlike behaviors, all while producing research to advance the field.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discussed ethical concerns stemming from the rise of generative artificial intelligence in academia and research at a Jan. 30 panel.
The panel, which included experts from the UW-Madison Data Science Institute, Libraries and Institutional Review Boards Office (IRB), provided recommendations for researchers, offering definitions and opportunities for ethical AI use in research.
Many people think that the amount they spend on a gift is directly associated with how much the receiver will appreciate it. But as long as it meets reasonable expectations, the people you are gifting are unlikely to care too much about how you spend, said Dr. Evan Polman, professor of marketing at Wisconsin School of Business at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He also focuses on gift-giving decision-making.
The goal of gift giving should be relationship maintenance, especially on a holiday so focused on love, and gifting an activity or experience you and your loved one can do together is a great way to spend quality time together while communicating your level of care, Polman said.
Birds have different kinds of feathers, and one type is especially important in cold weather: down feathers. These feathers are very fluffy and grow close to the skin, essentially acting like a thermal base layer. “Of the several types of feathers birds possess, down feathers are excellent at trapping body heat,” says Anna Pidgeon, professor of forest and wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It is arguably harder today in 2026 than at any other time in American history to sue federal officials for money damages if they violate your constitutional rights,” said Harrison Stark, senior counsel at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
The scribe who copied Phaenomena, which details how various constellations rise and set, onto the parchment integrated descriptions of the stars’ positions that were probably based on Hipparchus’ work. The celestial objects’ coordinate system and accuracy align with references to the ancient astronomer’s writings, reports Science News’ Adam Mann. “There’s an appendix which includes coordinates of the stars discussed in the poem, and then little sketches of the star maps,” Minhal Gardezi, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who is working on the project, tells the outlet.
Health officials confirmed a second measles case in Wisconsin earlier this week — this time in Madison — and one local expert says there’s a reason to be concerned but clear ways to stay safe and healthy.
The Cap Times spoke with Dr. Joseph McBride, an infectious disease specialist at UW Health, after public health officials reported a University of Wisconsin-Madison student contracted measles, likely through international travel, and potentially exposed people on campus.
Scott Craven, emeritus professor and UW Extension wildlife ecologist, joins us for another Wildlife Wednesday.
Tensions rose in discussion over a bipartisan bill that would require state agencies, including the University of Wisconsin System, to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism for any “law, ordinance or policy” when evaluating possible discriminatory intent at a Jan. 28 public hearing.
Daniel Hummel, a research fellow with the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on U.S. relations with Israel, said there has been increased “antisemitic rhetoric around campus” since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
Dane County health officials continue to contact hundreds of people who may have been exposed to measles after a University of Wisconsin–Madison student tested positive for the highly contagious virus.
Public Health Madison & Dane County posted a growing list of exposure locations on its website, including several UW-Madison buildings such as Union South, the Genetics and Psychology buildings, multiple Madison Metro bus routes, Qdoba on Park Street and the Waisman Center.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Global Health Institute convened experts from around the world with UW-Madison faculty for a Jan. 27 webinar examining the growing complexities of infectious disease control.
The discussion, moderated by Daniel Shirley, an infectious diseases professor at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, brought together researchers working across human, animal and global health systems to address two converging crises: antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and declining childhood vaccination rates.
Clint Sprott, a UW-Madison physics professor who retired in 2008, started the show in 1984 as a free, public lecture. He still attends the show every year.
“[My] most favorite is seeing the smiles and enthusiasm of the audience,” Sprott said. “The show was a major part of my life for 40 years, and it is certainly fun to be something of a celebrity.”
Left unmanaged, deer can do a lot of damage in the UW Arboretum, which is why it hires sharpshooters who work after dark in winter to control the population.
“We do it to protect our plants, both in our gardens and in our natural areas,” said Michael Hansen, the Arboretum’s land care manager. “We also do it to maintain the health of the deer herd here.”
Written by Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
While there are still two months to go, it’s possible the race will stay muted because the stakes are different with no Supreme Court majority on the line, said Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Neither outcome will change liberal control of the court, though because the winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, it could extend guaranteed liberal control until at least 2030.
Even after 20 years of performing kidney transplants, Dr. Nikole Neidlinger is still awestruck and humbled by the role she plays between the donors and recipients of these organs.
“The operation takes two to three hours,” said Neidlinger, director of Organ and Tissue Donation at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “When we attach a kidney and open it up to blood flow, it just starts functioning. I’ve seen it thousands of times now, but every time I’m like, ‘This is a miracle. This is amazing.’”
“There is no structural or blanket barrier to states bringing a criminal prosecution against federal officials,” says Harrison Stark, an attorney who works with the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
“If a state believes that a federal official has violated state criminal law,” Stark says, “the state has broad Investigatory Powers to collect evidence, to explore that criminal action, basically in the same way they would against anybody else.”
Jake Baggott, associate vice chancellor & executive director of University Health Services, said UW-Madison has directly notified around 4,000 people who may have been exposed. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Baggott said immunization data voluntarily reported by students shows many are already protected against the virus.
“We estimate, based on our own data, that about 95 percent of our campus is vaccinated against measles, which is a good place to be,” Baggott told reporters.
On a clear, calm winter night, Earth’s surface radiates infrared energy upward toward space. With the sun already down, there is no shortwave solar radiation (and only a very little infrared energy from the overlying atmosphere) directed downward toward the surface. Consequently, with each passing second, the surface emits more energy than it receives and the surface temperature drops.
As it turns out, expanding our vocabulary as adults doesn’t work as it did when we were children in school, said Kelly Wright, an assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Young people can learn new words by doing reading exercises, acing vocabulary quizzes or listening to the grown-ups around them. But as we get older, we have to approach it differently.
“Our vocabulary grows to a certain point, but then there is something that turns off, in a similar way in which we grow from a child height to an adult height. Something kicks on in our femur, but we don’t end up 11 feet tall, and the same thing happens with our language system,” Prof. Wright said. “It doesn’t mean we can’t learn new things, but after you get past that point, you have to do it actively. Say ‘Hey mind! Wake up a little!’”
Minimum-wage hikes — depending on the size — can bring a mix of positive and negative economic consequences, according to Callie Freitag, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Social Work.
“The good thing is that earnings would go up for workers. Employers would raise wages and be able to pay workers more,” Freitag said. “But the money to pay workers more has to come from somewhere.”
“Because it’s not dependent on the wind or the sun, nuclear energy operates whenever we want it, pretty much,” said Paul Wilson, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But even if we have to shut it down for refueling, that is very, very infrequent. Nuclear power plants today around the country typically operate for 18 months without shutting off.”
Leaders in Wisconsin agriculture are warning the state’s farmers to brace for another tough year for trade and market conditions.
The discussion at the annual Wisconsin Agricultural Outlook Forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focused both on the economic hardships weighing on farmers and what some producers are doing to try to get ahead.
Everyone knows it’s hard to get college students to do the reading—remember books? But the attention-span crisis is not limited to the written word.
Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies. “I used to think, If homework is watching a movie, that is the best homework ever,” said Craig Erpelding, a film professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But students will not do it.”
Josiah Hanna, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said AI tools can be valuable educational resources but are often misunderstood or misused.
“AI is a dual-use technology,” Hanna said. “You can do some really cool things with it, but yet unfortunately has this really unpleasant use case that people have found and exploited in a really harmful way.”
Hanna said AI-generated images can be particularly damaging because people tend to trust what they see, even when content is fabricated.
The Trump endorsement cuts both ways, said Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center. On the plus side, Tiffany doesn’t have to worry about draining his resources on a primary fight, and can immediately direct his focus on the general election.
The downside? Tiffany is now tied to Trump, whose popularity is suffering, and the president’s party traditionally struggles in midterm elections, Burden noted.
“He’s going to have to negotiate expressing his own identity as a candidate versus trying to take advantage of the enthusiasm that Trump voters have (for Trump) in particular, and to get them out,” Burden said.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison and Immuto Scientific have teamed up to explore new therapeutic targets in colorectal cancer. According to the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, this collaboration aims to use Immuto’s AI-enabled platform to discover novel treatments for solid colorectal cancer tumors.
Dr. Dustin Deming, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, leads the project. “Our collection of patient-derived colorectal cancer organoids enables exploration of tumor biology and therapeutic vulnerabilities in ways that traditional models cannot,” said Deming.
Within UW-Madison’s Department of Food Science, Professor Bradley Bolling has pioneered research of anthocyanins, natural pigments responsible for the vibrant hues in fruits like cranberries.
“We want to understand how the pigments in cranberry are stabilized,” Bolling said.
Bolling developed a patented process using lecithin, an emulsifier, to extract natural pigments from cranberries without using alcohol or acetone. This makes the process safer and more environmentally sustainable.
Dr. Anita Bhattacharyya, an associate professor of cell and regenerative biology in the school of medicine and public health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said she was hoping to apply for a future NIH grant to study human fetal tissue research and will now not be able to do so.
Bhattacharyya explained she currently uses human-induced pluripotent stem cells, which are reprogrammed cells that are similar to embryonic stem cells, in her work. However, the loss of NIH funding for human fetal tissue research could affect future work.
“My reaction was, ‘How are we going to do some of our research if we can no longer use human fetal tissue?'” she recalled to ABC News. “In particular, my lab studies Down syndrome and so we know that in Down syndrome, the brain develops differently to lead to the intellectual disability that people with Down syndrome have.”
Partisan media and shoddy reporting have a long history in the U.S., but one parallel stands out: the era of the so-called yellow press, which got its name from a cartoon strip published in papers featuring a child in a yellow shirt.
“It was a moment before professional news values had really set in, before there were professional codes of ethics,” says Lucas Graves, distinguished researcher at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The biggest newspapers, like the New York World and New York Journal, would run serious, reported news stories. But they “would also run stories to try to generate outrage and almost invent scandals in order to sell more newspapers,” Graves says.
“I think that there was absolutely a market decision behind selecting Bad Bunny,” says Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a professor of Latin American studies at the University of Wisconsin who has collaborated with Bad Bunny to incorporate Puerto Rican history into his shows and music videos. “The NFL wants to expand internationally, so they are looking to target a broader market beyond the United States. He has a huge following in the United States, but this stage will also be amplified internationally by having someone like him.”
Some analysis will have to wait until the new images can be processed, but the researchers are already able to decode text from many of the raw data. “It’s one of the rare examples in research where you know very quickly that you have gotten good results,” says Uwe Bergmann, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who is overseeing the experiment’s x-ray scanning.
Botulism spores are common in the environment and can be found in most foods at very low levels, said Kristin Schill, a botulism expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Healthy adults consume Clostridium botulinum spores every day without becoming sick. But babies have immature guts that may not be able to prevent the spores from germinating and growing. Once they do, the spores produce a toxin that can cause paralysis and death.
Spores can be found everywhere, including in milk, though typically at low levels, Schill said. Pasteurization doesn’t kill the germs. They can be present in the processing environment, too.
“Cracks can happen at anything below the freezing temperature, so 32 degrees Fahrenheit or zero degrees Celsius,” said Scott Bowe, a professor and wood products specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Bowe clarified that the noises, known as frost cracks, are not caused by expanding sap.
“Some people have explained it as the sap is expanding like ice and causing the crack that actually is not what’s happening. It’s actually the drying of the wood that causes the crack to happen,” said Bowe.
Professor Laura Albert, a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has studied EMS deployment and logistics for decades. She said many departments are being asked to stretch limited resources further than ever before.
“So often these public service agencies like EMS departments are asked to do more and more with less,” Albert said. “You can do that up to a point, but this is kind of hitting a crisis point.”
“In certain neighborhoods, perhaps in Atlanta or Philadelphia or Chicago, maybe you’re reaching a much higher market saturation point,” said Kurt Paulsen, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studies urban planning. “I’ve not seen any evidence of any even modest market penetration of that product in Dane County and Madison.”
John Dunne, a Buddhist philosophy scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, offers a helpful explanation if you’ve ever wondered why everyone seems to talk about mindfulness in a different way. Dunne says mindfulness isn’t one single thing, but a “family” of related practices shaped by different traditions, purposes and cultural backgrounds.
A growing number of states, including Illinois, prohibit openly carrying “long guns” — meaning rifles and shotguns — at protests. Those rules aim to prevent armed confrontations between protesters, counterprotesters and law enforcement, said University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor John Gross. “What (law enforcement) don’t want,” he said, “is a situation where you have two armed groups facing off against one another with the police in between them.”
Andrew Reschovsky, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, said Wisconsin has a particularly complex system of school funding.
“The legislature said we are not going to increase state aid at all, not by one penny of general aid,” Reschovsky said.
Written by Vilas Research Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Written by rofessor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said Madison’s argument is “conflating two different things.”
“The Legislature has, in these absentee voting statutes, made clear that it considers absentee voting to be a privilege, in that absentee voting as a method is not constitutionally required, and that the Legislature can impose some additional procedures on absentee voting that it maybe couldn’t impose on in-person voting,” said Godar. “That privileged language does not mean that when you vote absentee, you don’t have a right to have your vote counted.”
An assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences wants to improve sheep’s quality of life.
Sarah Adcock focuses her research on the welfare of farm animals, including specializing in the docking of lamb tails, a routine procedure on farms that can lead to acute and sometimes even chronic pain for the animal.
Statewide, school enrollment data tells a similar story: throughout the 2000s and 2010s, enrollment in suburban school districts increased, while rural school enrollment continually declined, according to Sarah Kemp, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Applied Population Lab. Urban school districts, including Milwaukee, saw relatively steady enrollment through the 2010s, but the pandemic brought a sharp decline in student enrollment in most Wisconsin cities.
“There’s maybe not housing available for those young families to move into, or maybe the opportunities aren’t there for young families to find employment, and that may then show up in the school districts with declining enrollment,” Kemp said.
“We don’t have the fountain of youth— nobody ever found it,” said Dudley Lamming, co-director of the Wisconsin Nathan Shock Center (WiNSC) and professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “but can we find ways [to] get to the end of our lives, still fit and functional?”
UW-Madison Athletic Director Chris McIntosh considers impacts of a decline in Wisconsin Badgers football season ticket sales for the 2025 season and the significance of that revenue to the university.
UW-Madison researchers argue undisclosed organizations targeted users based on race and location to discourage them from voting.
Young Mie Kim is a coauthor of the report and a media professor at UW-Madison. Kim was one of the first independent researchers to discover Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“It was just difficult just to surgically target these people, until now,” Kim said. “But with (today’s) data-driven, micro-targeted, algorithm-based information environment, it’s much more effective.”
Wisconsin legislators haven’t directed a ton of their attention to higher education issues during the current legislative session, lobbyist Jack O’Meara said.
“It just seems generally that it’s not at the top of the list of items that are being discussed … so I don’t see a whole lot of bills moving,” said O’Meara, who advocates on behalf of faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison through an organization called PROFS.
“I am just a lot more concerned about how we design the digital landscape for kids than I am about whether we allow kids to use screens or not,” said Heather Kirkorian, an early childhood development researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I haven’t seen concrete evidence that convinces me that screen use itself is creating problematic behavior.”
