Back in summer 2013, paleontologist Dave Lovelace took some University of Wisconsin-Madison students on a dig in Wyoming. There, they found an ankle bone in an area where fossils typically aren’t found.
Tracking how widely norovirus is spreading can be challenging, because it’s not considered a “notifiable disease” that requires doctors to report infections, said Malia Jones, a public health researcher in the department of Community and Environmental Sociology at UW-Madison.
What started as an impromptu lunch (at two square tables pushed together; the round table came a year later) proved to be such delicious fun that the group returned at 1 p.m., and practically every day thereafter, inviting new lunch companions, until it dissolved in the early 1930s,” wrote University of Wisconsin history professor Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen in the New York Times.
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, knows his music knows no borders, so, alongside the project, he also released visualizers going over the history of Puerto Rico with the help of Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, assistant professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I’ve always wanted to take academic knowledge outside the ivory tower, and this project has allowed me to share our history on a global platform,” Meléndez-Badillo tells Teen Vogue in Spanish. “Art can’t be decontextualized from the moment it’s produced. There’s no way to escape Puerto Rico’s colonial reality, where we deal with blackouts, displacement, and the appropriation of our historical memory daily. Like a committed Puerto Rican, Bad Bunny is using his platform to amplify the conversations taking place in Puerto Rico.”
“Both ethanol and acetaldehyde are carcinogenic and when they touch the lining of the mouth, throat or esophagus, that can cause cancer,” Dr. Noelle LoConte, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, told Live Science in an email. Like ethanol, acetaldehyde can also disrupt DNA methylation.
“If you don’t have people framing the house, installing the drywall, you cannot have the American electricians and plumbers come in and do their work,” said Dayin Zhang, an assistant professor in real estate and urban economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dinosaur fossils discovered by paleontologists working with the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been determined to be the oldest-known fossils, presenting evidence that the species was in existence millions of years before previously thought.
For enhanced rock weather (ERW) to have a large impact by 2050, it will need to expand quickly, says Gregory Nemet, an energy scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Last May he and his colleagues published a study analyzing the combined potential of novel CO2 removal methods such as ERW, direct air-capture machines and the use of biofuels with CO2 captured from smokestacks. Between now and 2050 these methods need to grow “by something like 40 percent per year, every year,” Nemet says.
While agency appointees in Wisconsin are afforded the same powers as someone who is confirmed, their job security is much less stable. Going years without being confirmed undercuts the legitimacy of agency leaders, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I think there’s a kind of public confidence or clout that gets associated with someone who’s been through that (confirmation) process,” Burden said. “They have gotten the stamp of approval from the Legislature, even if the powers don’t change the day that happens. There’s a perception I think that makes them more effective in their jobs.”
Audrey Girard is a food scientist and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Girard explained why the effort has taken a long time. “We have other natural additives, but a lot of times they’re more expensive and not as stable,” Girard said.
Girard explained that a scientific study on rats — completed more than 40 years ago in the 1980s — first raised health concerns about the dye. “At high ingestion levels, rats can have adverse effects, like growing tumors,” Girard said.“At high ingestion levels, rats can have adverse effects, like growing tumors,” Girard said.
Mike Wagner, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told “Wisconsin Today” that these types of reductions are becoming more common in local television across the state and country.
“We’re seeing local television stations experience less investment from their owners,” Wagner said. “Reporters are tasked with doing more stories for more newscasts, plus do stuff for the web, plus do stuff for social media, all in the job of also trying to chase down the verifiable truth about important matters for their audience.”
This “love letter to Puerto Rico,” as one headline about the album puts it, isn’t just entertainment. Working with Jorell Meléndez-Badillo of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Puerto Rico: A National History,” Bad Bunny includes 17 mini-history lessons about the island, one for each song.
“[Bad Bunny] was really interested in having that sort of historical component, so people were not only listening to the songs on YouTube, but learning their history while they do so,” Meléndez-Badillo told the Los Angeles Times.
Expect more increases ahead. “If you are thinking about housing expenses, you probably shouldn’t rely on historical data on premiums and don’t assume that this is a high point that will be a flash in the pan,” says one of the paper’s authors, Philip Mulder, a University of Wisconsin professor of risk and insurance.
Knowing your rights in your own home is just as important, said Raffi Friedman, an attorney and clinical instructor with the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For example, some immigrant households are made up of mixed-status families — parents who are undocumented and children who were born in the United States and are legal citizens.
“Those who are U.S. citizens should definitely apply for U.S. passports and have them on them,” Friedman said.
Between 1990 and 2020, the number of homes in fire-prone parts of California grew by 40 percent, according to research led by Volker Radeloff, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. By contrast, the number of homes in less-flammable areas — such as downtowns — only grew by 23 percent.
The winter months’ colder temperatures and constant gray skies can really take a toll on your mood. We talk with Shilagh Mirgain, a psychologist at UW Health, about how to cultivate hope and optimism during this dark time of year.
About one third of all houses live within a mile-and-a-half of a forest, grassland or another ecosystem, said Volker Radeloff, a professor at UW-Madison who investigates wildfire risk. Scientists call this zone the wildland-urban interface. Researchers at UW-Madison, along with Radeloff, have been tracking this population movement towards natural spaces.
Of course, $3.65 is just an average. Egg prices are similar across most U.S. states but can vary slightly, said University of Wisconsin-Extension poultry specialist Ron Kean.
“I would say the Midwest tends to be a little bit cheaper, but, by and large, prices are pretty similar, because we can ship eggs pretty easily,” Kean said. “So, if they’re a lot cheaper in one place, people will probably ship (those) eggs to the more expensive areas.”
Antitrust expert Peter Carstensen, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, discusses the soccer monopoly trial starting up in Brooklyn.
“Thinking about how the central part of the country or even the Gulf Coast states get cold air isn’t just thinking about what’s happening locally,” says Andrea Lopez Lang, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “You have to really zoom out and take a big-picture perspective.”
Others like Chris McCahill, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and managing director of the State Smart Transportation Initiative, point out one negative to the tax — is electric vehicle owners already pay more than those with gas powered vehicles when registering their vehicle each year.
“So now with this new surcharge, the folks will be paying the state twice to try and compensate for those lost gas tax revenues,” said McCahill.
A confirmed case of mumps in Clark County, which has one of the state’s lowest rates of vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, has public health officials on alert.
Dr. Jonathan Temte, a professor of family medicine and the associate dean of Public Health and Community Engagement for the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, spoke with WPR’s Shereen Siewert to explain the symptoms of mumps and the broader implications involved.
Hearing aid technology has advanced significantly. Many of these devices are now AI-enabled, track other aspects of your health and can be purchased over the counter. We talk to UW-Madison audiologist Rachel Lee about the latest in hearing aids.
With the discovery of a new dinosaur species, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have challenged a long-held belief about where dinosaurs originated and how the ancient reptiles spread throughout the planet.
Freshwater organisms are sensitive to salt, so when too much road salt gets flushed into waterways it has lethal consequences, said Jessica Hua, an associate professor at UW-Madison who studies human influence on aquatic ecosystems. Even small amounts can build up over time.
UW-Madison sociology professor Chad Alan Goldberg discusses researching the roles of economic anxiety, political alienation and social status in the rise of populism and considers impacts of Jan. 6.
“(Middle class) is often equated with this idea that you’re financially comfortable,” says Megan Doherty Bea, an assistant professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Increasingly, more and more families do not feel financially comfortable.”
Lucas Graves, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches misinformation and disinformation, said that arguments about the alleged bias of fact-checking initiatives were made in bad faith.
“In any healthy democratic discourse, you want people offering evidence in public for what kind of statement and what kind of claims should be believed and what shouldn’t, and of course it’s always up to you to make a judgement on whether to believe what you hear,” Graves told Al Jazeera.
We know that pleasure, even non-sexual pleasure, is political because some people’s pleasure is encouraged, valued and protected, while others’ pleasure is shamed, criminalized or policed, says Sami Schalk, a professor of gender and women’s studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I think about how many times the police are called on people who are experiencing pleasure in public ― sleeping on a bench in the sun, BBQing, listening to loud music ― simply because other people don’t take pleasure in it,” she said.
“It was basically the size of a chicken but with a really long tail,” says lead author Dave Lovelace, a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum. “We think of dinosaurs as these giant behemoths, but they didn’t start out that way.”
Analysing the data up to 2004, Prof. Jane Allyn Piliavin and her colleague, Erica Siegl, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that people who were regularly involved in these activities tended to report better physical and mental health. This might be expected: if you are feeling well, you are more likely to have the capacity to help others.
Tom Friedrich, professor of virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, said more details are needed to understand what led to the patient’s death. But he pointed out that other countries have already seen deaths caused by similar H5N1 viruses, especially in people who are sick enough to be hospitalized.
“There’s over 50 percent case fatality when people have these severe infections,” Friedrich said. “So it’s not unheard of in other parts of the world, even though this is the first time it’s happened in the United States.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers recently made what they call surprising discoveries about how childhood trauma affects mental health in adolescence, thanks to a national trove of childhood health data.
“The court continues to be a place in Wisconsin politics where big issues are decided,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist and elections expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The state still has a Democratic governor and Republican Legislature who don’t get along and don’t do much productive lawmaking together … so a lot of the disputes between the parties end up being settled in the courts and eventually in the state Supreme Court.”
The same issues that animated the 2023 race in which liberal Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly are likely to come up again this year, said Howard Schweber, professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It would “require something extraordinary” for a court to strike down the voter ID law if it’s in the state constitution unless justices decide it conflicts with another part of the constitution, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden.
“You wouldn’t rely on just anyone to stop your toilet from leaking, but Meta now seeks to rely on just anyone to stop misinformation from spreading on their platforms,” Michael Wagner, from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told AFP.
“Normally, strong winds this time of the year simply present a risk for wind damage,” said Jason Otkin, an associate research professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in an email Tuesday. “But this time, they could also lead to explosive fire growth due to the very dry vegetation.”
The songs on the album were released with visualizers on YouTube, each one of them including historic messages written by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, highlighting different eras of Puerto Rico’s political past and its social justice heroes.
“The virus has circulated for at least 60 years, and genetic evolutionary studies suggest that it diverged from a bird virus between 200 to 400 years ago,” says John Williams, a pediatrician and infectious diseases professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who has studied HMPV for more than 20 years. “HMPV causes regular annual seasonal epidemics, similar to the more widely recognized influenza virus and RSV. The typical HMPV season is late winter to early spring. So this isn’t totally unexpected.”
Dr. Nick Hillman, school of education professor and director of the Student Success Through Applied Research Lab (SSTAR) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek: “Leaving college with debt but no degree is one of the biggest factors that makes it hard to repay loans. Say a student borrows $10,000 for college but then has to leave before earning a credential. They don’t have the degree to show for it, but they have the debt. This can make it really hard to get established in the labor market and, as a result, to stay on top of monthly loan payments.”
Yohishiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo, said the the death “highlights the need for vigilance in avoiding contact with the virus wherever possible.”
At the same time, however, Kawaoka said it was “important to note that the individual was over 65 and had underlying health conditions, which may have contributed to the severity of the illness.”
A lead researcher on the study, Sarah Halpern-Meekin, who’s a professor in the School of Human Ecology and director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said at the end of the day, people want to feel like the work they’re doing is meaningful.
Barry C. Burden, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of political science and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, said there is not sufficiently reliable data to conclude which candidate got more votes among young people — or any other age group – in Wisconsin.
“Exit polls such as the one Gagnon references are the most immediate source for understanding how groups voted in the election, so they are widely used to explore voting patterns,” Burden said in an email. “But exit polls are known to have systematic errors, especially for estimating vote choices in subgroups such as 18-24 year olds, who make up a small share of the sample and can be a difficult group to survey. There is also a margin of error to consider, as in any other survey. As a result, it is not reasonable to conclude at this point that Trump won over young voters in Wisconsin.”
“From a strictly cancer perspective, there is no safe amount of alcohol,” says Dr. Noelle LoConte, associate professor of hematology, medical oncology, and palliative care at the University of Wisconsin who authored the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s policy statement on alcohol and cancer.
Written by ostdoctoral Research Associate in Microbial Genomics and Systems Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“When we engage in this practice, our physical brains change,” says Dr Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With regular meditation, the complex networks in our brain that control our emotional responses and executive functioning can be rewired. “This enables meditation to produce effects that are enduring,” Davidson says.
Pallavi Tiwari, a radiology and biomedical engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has spent the last 18 years developing artificial intelligence models to help study cancer.
Much of that work includes using machine learning to find ways to help predict cancer diagnosis, outcomes and drug responses, she said.
“This idea of advertising is not new, but I think what is new is the amount of time and the wide variety of exposure that our young people have to this influencer culture,” said Melissa Bublitz, a consumer researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Almost all aggregate economic indicators indicated strong macroeconomic economic fundamentals for 2024, and yet there was substantial discontent. Even disaggregate measures for slices of the income distribution suggested pretty good conditions (wages exceeding inflation).” — Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Allison Daminger, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin who studies the division of household labor, told me Fair Play is the program she tends to refer people to when they tell her they’re struggling with chore management. But people who seek it out, she said, often struggle with “overload, maybe some conflict in the relationship.” These are the very things that become hurdles to doing Fair Play.
Wisconsin ski hill owners are feeling the effects of warming winters due to climate change, but many are already adapting to keep business up, University of Wisconsin researchers have found.
A new program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is aimed at supporting Indigenous graduate students through the hoops and hurdles of academia.
Keith Poulsen’s jaw dropped when farmers showed him images on their cellphones at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. A livestock veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Poulsen had seen sick cows before, with their noses dripping and udders slack.
While non-gun owners might think that asking about guns feels overbearing, research, perhaps surprisingly, shows that gun owners welcome the conversation, says Nick Buttrick, a psychologist who studies the symbolism of gun ownership at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. People in focus groups who own guns say that talking about gun safety is actually really important to them. “The anticipated friction stops people from having the conversation,” Buttrick says, “but when they actually have it, they’re received with a lot more positivity than they might have imagined.”
We call it “adulting” when young people face grown-up situations. But there are actual classes that teach independent living, financial literacy and health maintenance skills. Amanda Kostman, a UW-Extension Family Living Educator, joins us to explain.
The video shows “a recognizable part of the western sky” including the bright star Altair that is consistent with the sky around 7 p.m. in early December, James Lattis, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison astronomy department’s Space Place, said in an email.
Lattis said the “vast majority” of the objects are satellites that are visible because they are reflecting sunlight to the observer, and “the rest of the objects are probably a mixture of satellites in higher inclination orbits and aircraft.”
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have collected brain scans in a first-of-its kind study on Alzheimer’s disease.
“Speedcubing offers a unique combination of cognitive challenge, [alongside] social connection, and personal achievement that contributes to happiness”, says Polina Beloborodova, research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Centre for Healthy Minds.
It might seem remarkable that she recognized the find for what it was: Dugout canoes, the world’s oldest boat type found to date, are simply hollowed-out logs. In 2018, however, Thomsen had teamed up with Sissel Schroeder, an archaeologist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to help an undergraduate student catalog Wisconsin’s extant dugout canoes. When the project began, historians believed 11 existed in collections across the state. Less than a year later, after scouring private collections, supper clubs, local museums and more, the team had counted 34.
