“I think a lot of people like me carry a lot of guilt.”
UW-Madison PhD candidate and teaching assistant Tehereh Rahimi came to the United States from Iran in 2018, but much of her family still lives in Iran’s capital and most populous city: Tehran.
“A lot of Wisconsin businesses have been struggling with finding employees, and they have been for a number of years, going back to before COVID,” said Steven Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison and one of the report’s authors.
Corey Pompey, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Marching Band, guest-conducted the La Crosse Concert Band during a rehearsal Tuesday at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
The American School Band Directors Association is hosting their Regional Conference in La Crosse, and in partnership with the band, the association invited Pompey to serve as both guest conductor and keynote speaker.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration had delayed grant review meetings at the National Institutes of Health and was calling for sweeping cuts to university research dollars. This left faculty scientists with limited funds to offer students.
Even though many of the review meetings are proceeding again, Wisconsin researchers said those delays have lingering effects. One of these is that fewer graduate trainees will be arriving on campus this fall.
Emily Auerbach has co-hosted “University of the Air” for 30 years. She’s a UW-Madison English professor who directs the UW Odyssey Project, so she described her work on the show as “a labor of love.” Along with Norman Gilliland, she interviewed university faculty and other guests on a range of topics, such as the Salem witch trials, the Harlem Renaissance and dyslexia.
“It’s a way to take the brilliant minds that are at the university … and share that learning with a broader audience,” she said.
“The whole idea for the (Rubin) observatory was so visionary when it was conceived (in the 1990s) that many of the technologies didn’t exist at that time” said Keith Bechtol, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
John Hawks, however—a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who also did not participate in the research—sticks with just “Denisovans,” per the publication. Like Neanderthals, Denisovans interbred with our own species, so Hawks argues both are subcategories of humans. “I’m pretty confident saying these are all Homo sapiens,” he explains to the New York Times. But the skull, he says, is definitively a Denisovan based on this work.
Written by Anthony Hernandez, a faculty member in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin—Madison (UW-Madison) who received a research award from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation for his study on leadership in Hispanic-Serving Institutions.
UW’s newly expanded $174 million facility offers plenty of high-tech tools and advanced care options—but it’s the heart behind the work that stands out.
“Across the nation, there’s a shortage of veterinary technicians and staff in the veterinary profession,” said Dr. Chris Snyder, hospital director. “Giving an opportunity to welcome them in and to see what cutting-edge veterinary care can look like—and what a career working in a teaching hospital can be—and how rewarding that is to be able to train others.”
Keith Bechtol, an associate professor in the physics department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has been involved with the Rubin Observatory for nearly a decade, is the project’s system verification and validation scientist, making sure the observatory’s various components are functioning properly.
He said teams were floored when the images streamed in from the camera.
“There were moments in the control room where it was just silence, and all the engineers and all the scientists were just seeing these images, and you could just see more and more details in the stars and the galaxies,” Bechtol told NBC News. “It was one thing to understand at an intellectual level, but then on this emotional level, we realized basically in real time that we were doing something that was really spectacular.”
The experimental Next Generation Fire System was developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, and its Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at UW-Madison. The tool detects and tracks wildfires in almost real-time using artificial intelligence to scan satellite images, helping firefighters nationwide to prioritize and quickly respond to blazes.
But delays with the institute’s five-year renewal and its fiscal year 2025 funding mean that work to develop, maintain and improve the system will pause, according to the institute’s director Tristan L’Ecuyer.
“President Trump seems very confident that the ceasefire will take effect tonight… again, I think there are a number of unknowns,” said Dr. James Davis, UW-Madison Professor Emeritus with an expertise in Iranian politics.
The excitement inside of a University of Wisconsin-Madison lecture hall Monday morning was comparable to a room full of sports lovers ready for the start of the Super Bowl.
UW-Madison political science professor Mark Copelovitch discusses how the unstable landscape of tariffs and war abroad disrupt both the overall global marketplace and the everyday lives of American consumers.
Since finishing her residency at Loyola University Chicago / Cook County Hospital in 2015, she has been an attending physician with the US Department of Veterans Affairs in Salt Lake City and a clinical assistant professor at UW-Madison, practicing with UW Health.
Edgar Lin is Wisconsin State Policy Advocate & Counsel at Protect Democracy, where he focuses on policy advocacy and litigation related to preventing election subversion. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Law School.
ANITA was designed to search for the highest energy neutrinos in the universe, at higher energies than have yet been detected, said Justin Vandenbroucke, an associate professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The experiment’s radio antennae search for a short pulse of radio waves produced when a neutrino collides with an atom in the Antarctic ice, leading to a shower of lower-energy particles, he said.
“The models that we’re seeing right now are able to create content that is incredibly persuasive, and incredibly hard to detect as AI generated. It’s impossible to predict just how corrosive this will be to political discourse in this country,” said Annette Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “It’s just not feasible for ordinary citizens to do a ton of extra research on which content is actually legitimate.
“One of the things that you can see as a symptom of cyanide poisoning is someone having difficulty breathing,” said John Berry, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This happens very quickly.”
Berry said cyanide, which used to be in rat poisons because of its potency, can be combined with other substances to form gasses or salts that can dissolve in water. He also pointed out that cyanide is extremely difficult for someone outside of a research lab to get their hands on.
“I worry that it is being done too quickly, without appropriate scrutiny of the potential outcomes,” said UW-Madison’s Dr. Jonathan Temte.
The decision sent shockwaves throughout medical and public health circles, with Dr. Jonathan Temte, former committee chair and an associate dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, calling the removals, “totally unprecedented.”
Newly uncovered evidence from fossil corals suggests that sea levels could rise even more steeply in our warming world than previously thought.
“This is not good news for us as we head into the future,” says Andrea Dutton, a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dutton and her PhD student Karen Vyverberg at the University of Florida led an international collaboration that included researchers from University of Sydney, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Victoria University of Wellington and University of Massachusetts Amherst who analyzed fossilized corals discovered in the Seychelles islands.
Professor John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told MailOnline: “Harbin gives us a strong indication that some of them are large, with large skulls.
“But we have some good reasons to suspect that Denisovans lived across quite a wide geographic range, from Siberia into Indonesia, and they may have been in many different environmental settings.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they are as variable in body size and shape as people living across the same range of geographies today.”
John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the studies delivered a definitive answer to the question of the Harbin skull’s identity. “Mystery solved,” he said.
Very few long-term studies of psilocybin for depression have been conducted to date, said Dr. Charles Raison, a professor of human ecology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the research.
“They are very difficult to do because people drop out,” Raison told Live Science in an email. “But also because they go on all sorts of other treatments that obfuscate the degree to which any longer lasting benefits result from the psychedelic or because the participant got therapy or restarted an antidepressant.”
“I think we’ll learn a lot about what the capabilities of various A.I. protocols are from how well we can get them to generate material that’s of interest,” said Jordan S. Ellenberg, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is part of a team applying for an Exponentiating Mathematics grant. “We have no intuition yet about which problems are going to be hard and which problems are easy. We need to learn that.”
Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, said the impact was disappointing last year, especially given the amount of work exhibitors put into getting an animal ready for show.
“I’m hoping that with one year of experience under their belt, they feel more comfortable to be able to submit that testing and make sure that we have robust cow classes in these shows,” said Poulsen, whose lab processes all of the avian flu samples taken in the state. “It’s part of our culture, and we missed that last year.”
We get an insect update from UW-Madison entomologist PJ Liesch. Then, we learn about a collaboration between a children’s book author and The Nature Place in La Crosse. And then, we talk about the resilience of the Northwoods with two leaders from The Nature Conservancy.
“The income tax proposals cost the state a fair amount of money, but it’s not a huge share of the state budget,” said Ross Milton, an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The flip side of that is that the impacts to any given household in Wisconsin in terms of how much money they’ll save on income taxes are pretty modest.”
The effect on U.S. forecasting will be “like losing your eyesight: slow and torturous,” said Jonathan Martin, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Wisconsin.
Americans who have grown up amid the “unheralded revolution” of ever-more-precise weather forecasts will find themselves in a world growing blurrier — even as the weather grows ever more volatile, Martin added.
“AGE-PRO provides the first measurements of gas disk masses and sizes across the lifetime of planet-forming disks,” research principal investigator Ke Zhang, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement.
First, we talk with civics educator Sam Scinta about the importance of civic learning. Then, attorney John Scott is with us to talk about legal issues associated with condo ownership. Finally, Bassam Shakhashiri is back to talk about fireworks, plus other current issues in science.
Alan Rubel, who studies the ethics of data and surveillance and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, highlighted the fact that MPD wants a trade, rather than purchasing the tech.
“That’s going to be very useful for that company,” he said.
“We’ve collected this data as part of a public investment, in mugshots and the criminal justice system, but now all that effort is going to go to training an AI system,” he added.
Since 1981, Jim Latimer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus music professor, has been leading the Capitol City Band and conducting hundreds and hundreds of concerts. Ronald Reagan had just become president when Latimer first started conducting the band. “Is that right?” Latimer laughs. “I hadn’t thought of it in that context. But it has been a labor of love over these many years and I am so happy and proud to be involved with it.”
Leonard first came in 1990, as keynote speaker for the first University of Wisconsin–Madison Writers’ Institute. Leonard was famous by then, having landed on the cover of Newsweek around the 1985 publication of his novel “Glitz.”
The institute was produced by the UW–Madison Division of Continuing Studies. They had no budget for speakers. But “Get Shorty” had just been published, and Leonard was headed from his Detroit-area home to the west coast to promote it.
“I’ll put you on my book tour,” Leonard told UW writing instructor Christine DeSmet. They need only pay expenses. “He was so kind,” DeSmet told me, years later.
How much exercise is needed to counter the several hours of sitting we do every day? Our two regular physical therapists break it down. Then, we talk to a UW-Madison researcher about the science of color.
China’s divorce rate for 2024 has yet to be announced by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics, but Yi Fuxian, a Chinese demographer and senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the United States, expects it to hit 2.6 per 1,000 people, against a low of 2.0 during the Covid-19 pandemic. This compares with the most recent rates of 1.5 in Japan and 1.8 in South Korea.
Kelly Elizabeth Wright, an assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the lead editor of Among the New Words, said that it can be difficult to pinpoint when a phrase is created, and whether or not the language comes from African American Language or if it is just used within Black communities.
“I don’t think that it’s inaccurate to say that Black Twitter and other online spaces were using these terms maybe first or more visibly than when it was floating around in high school classrooms all across the country this year,” Dr. Wright said. “I also don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that young people online are using this term. I think both things can be true at the same time.”
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Florida led the project, working with colleagues at the University of Sydney, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Victoria University of Wellington, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“This is not good news for us as we head into the future,” said Andrea Dutton, a professor of geoscience at Wisconsin.
Neurosurgeon and professor Mahua Dey is concerned her team’s effort to develop a glioblastoma vaccine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison could stall as sweeping actions by the Trump administration to curb federal health funding trickle down to individual labs.
It’s important to note, however, that the study’s findings are limited — researchers conducted testing on mice and only tracked health effects for about three days after exposure. Plus, microplastics are difficult to quantify — if another team of researchers did the same study, their findings may vary, says Hoaran Wei, an assistant professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
FEMA Director David Richardson recently claimed he was unaware that there is a hurricane season in the United States. There most certainly is such a season.
The Atlantic hurricane season climatologically runs from June 1 through Nov. 30, with the most active part of the season being mid-August through mid-October.
When Ava You applied to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she looked to see if she could major in Korean.
“Honestly, I was a little disappointed considering they had a Chinese and a Japanese major already, but not Korean,” said You, an incoming sophomore at the flagship campus.
That will soon change when UW-Madison introduces a bachelor’s degree in Korean Language and Culture this fall. The Board of Regents, which oversees UW-Madison and the state’s 12 public universities, granted final approval this month. UW-Madison will be the first school in the Universities of Wisconsin to offer an undergraduate program in Korean.
A person can feel anxious on a Sunday for two reasons, said Jack Nitschke, a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You’re anticipating plans for the upcoming week, and the future is inherently uncertain.
Panetti died from acute hypoxic respiratory failure on Texas’ death row the morning of May 26, the macabre space he called home for more than 30 years. There, he was known as The Preacher, according to his longtime lawyer, Greg Wiercioch, now a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Panetti was 67 years old. He had four children.
“[The president] has made clear that his definition of what constitutes unlawful combinations, in terms of protests, is relatively low,” said John Hall, a military historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel. “So where protests emerge, he has threatened he will take similar measures to respond to those protests.”
“Moreover, he seems to be suggesting that states and municipalities that, in his judgment, are interfering with ICE’s mass deportation efforts right now are themselves obstructing the laws of the United States,” Hall continued.
UW-Madison history professor Sasha Maria Suarez describes programs by tribal nations, K-12 schools and higher education institutions to teach Wisconsin’s Indigenous languages to learners of all ages.
Poker puts into focus the same gender dynamics that can create anxiety for women in a patriarchal society, says Jessica Calarco, a sociologist, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of ”Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.” “You’re expected to read the room, stay composed, and manage risk — much like women do every day in a world that asks them to carry everything without appearing to struggle,” she tells me.
UW-Madison researchers, who study Wisconsin’s lakes, are grappling with uncertainty as cuts to the National Science Foundation (NSF) could threaten decades of freshwater research.
Professors Emily Stanley and Hilary Dugan from the UW-Madison Lab for Limnology have dedicated their careers to studying freshwater systems, with Lake Mendota serving as a key research site.
Many falls can be prevented, said Dr. Gerald Pankratz, a geriatrician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That makes him “optimistic about this issue,” he said.
In his practice, Dr. Pankratz said, it is not unusual for people assessed as having a 50 percent chance of falling over the next year to cut their risk in half by taking action to avoid slips and trips.
University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Annette Zimmermann is a political philosopher of AI and co-lead of the school’s Uncertainty and AI research group.
“Much like many other experts working in this area, I’ve been deeply concerned about imposing such a heavy handed blanket ban on any sort of state-based efforts to effectively regulate this space,” Zimmermann said. “Right now, unfortunately, we’re in a regulatory landscape where we are heavily relying on individual states to think very hard about how to protect ordinary citizens and consumers from these kinds of harmful outputs.”
UW Health and SSM Health said removing and changing DEI language on parts of their websites doesn’t change their commitment to care — but advocates for marginalized communities say it’s cause for concern.
Dr. Ajay Sethi, a professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Journal Sentinel in May he worries changes in federal guidance may encourage adults who were already on the fence about the COVID-19 booster to skip it.
“ACIP has been, across the entire world, the paragon of good, solid, well-thought-out, evidence-based vaccine policy. I hate to say this. We are heading in the direction of U.S. vaccine policy becoming the laughingstock of the globe,” said Dr. Jonathan Temte, former chair of the ACIP and a professor at the University of Wisconsin.
“There’s this shifting mentality that the state is the owner of these institutions — it’s not the students, it’s not the alumni,” said Isabel McMullen, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies public university boards.
James Li is the A. A. Alexander Associate Professor of Psychology and an investigator at the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that Kennedy’s statements on the harms of medications like Adderall aren’t based in science.
“The evidence is quite clear that the medications that are currently FDA-approved and prescribed to treat ADHD in particular are fairly well tolerated. They don’t lead to early mortality … and they are generally very beneficial when used properly under doctor’s orders,” Li said.
Dr. Eric Sandgren, a professor emeritus at the UW-Madison who headed the university’s animal research operations for a decade, ending in 2016, calls these directives “nothing new.” Researchers, he says, have for some time been moving away from the use of animals as other models have become viable. “This just formalizes something that’s happening already.”
Federal vaccine recommendations matter not just because the public pays attention to them, but because it can affect which vaccines insurers decide to cover, said Patrick Remington, emeritus professor at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health.
Dr Jae-Hyuk Yu, a professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recommends using a bleach solution (one tablespoon of bleach per gallon of water), an Environmental Protection Agency-registered kitchen disinfectant, or an alcohol-based spray for sanitizing hard surfaces, especially after preparing raw meat. And when handling cleaning chemicals, use gloves and ventilate well. He recommends cleaning fridge shelves monthly and ensuring your fridge is consistently under 40F (4C) to prevent bacteria from lurking around.
Breakouts of Fusarium graminearum infections already naturally occur in dozens of U.S. states — basically any state that produces wheat and barley — and has been established in the U.S. for at least 125 years, Caitlyn Allen, a professor emeritus of plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told ABC News. In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture keeps a list of potential agroterrorism agents, and Fusarium graminearum is not on that list, Allen said.
“We’re not talking about something that just got imported from China,” Allen said. “People should not be freaking out.”
“Ticks have been active for quite a while now,” said P.J. Liesch, the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab. “It’s something that can often catch folks off-guard. We might not be thinking about ticks in those winter months — January, February, March — but once temperatures get above freezing consistently and we maybe hit 40-degrees with no snow on the ground, ticks can be active.”
