Outside of specific genetic diseases, scientists have identified more than 250 genes that are associated with a higher likelihood of ASD. As Maureen Durkin, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained to me, some of these genes are also associated with beneficial traits. “It’s not as simple as ‘these are causes of autism, and you’d want to edit them out of the genome,’” she said.
While the documentary takes a nationwide view, there’s a lot of Wisconsin in it. Among the interview subjects is Ethelene Whitmire, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who talks about Regina Anderson Andrews, the first African American to lead a branch of the New York Public Library and a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
To learn more about the jobs Wisconsin will most need to fill in the coming years, we spoke to Matt Kures, who researches state labor and demographic trends as a community development specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension.
“Influenza infection can become severe in anyone, in particular older adults,” said Ajay Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “One of the reasons it can become severe is due to the damage that influenza does to the lungs.”
On Wednesday, UW Health physicians reflected on Med Flight 40 years after its first ever dispatch.
Most doctors are used to staying indoors whether it be a hospital or clinic, but 21 UW Health physicians prefer a different method, where they take to the sky to meet those in need.
Four UW-Madison faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“It has been many years since new nuclear power plants have been considered in the state of Wisconsin, and in that time there have been many substantial changes in the technology of nuclear energy,” said Paul Wilson, a nuclear engineering professor at UW-Madison, at the hearing.
Aquaponics is a system in which the waste of fish provides nutrients for plants which purify the water. To learn more, we talk to Johanna Oosterwyk, instructional manager of the D.C. Smith Greenhouse on the UW-Madison campus.
The day-long event featured presentations from renowned scholars including Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Dr. Fred Bonner II of Prairie View A&M University.
Professor Line Roald wanted to make a difference when she joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Now, she uses mathematical methods like risk assessment and optimization to further the development of America’s electric grid.
Seeking to help more low-income adults earn college degrees, a longtime academic program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison wants to expand into housing services.
Taylor Odle, who studies education policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said a lot of uncertainty remains on how closing or gutting the U.S. Department of Education would specifically affect students and schools. But the effects would be widespread.
“I think it would be very hard to say that there’s going to be some area of Wisconsin that isn’t impacted by these changes,” said Odle, who clarified he wasn’t speaking on behalf of UW-Madison. Wisconsin and other states are “not well-equipped to take over (the agency’s) functions,” he added.
Andrea Dutton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist, recalled researchers cataloging fossil corals in Papua New Guinea, only to find their study site uplifted by a sudden earthquake, which jumbled the geological record of historic sea levels. Aside from shifting coastlines, gravitational forces can distribute water unequally across the planet.
“That’s why it’s so important to look at many sites,” Dutton said. “They all have different stories, yet clearly one thing must have happened in terms of global sea level.”
“That whipsawing back and forth, that creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty,” said Steven Deller, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who researches the state’s agricultural and manufacturing economy. “And one thing that the economy hates is uncertainty.”
“Data centers need electricity all day, every day, not just when the sun’s shining or the wind’s blowing,” said Paul Wilson, who chairs the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Nuclear Engineering.
Our physical therapists return to prehabilitation for hip and knee replacements. Then, we talk to a surgeon and a medical physics researcher at UW-Madison about their research into a treatment for burns.
“It’s nice to see democracy in action,” said Douglas McLeod, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I’m always inspired by peaceful demonstrations that show citizen engagement.”
McLeod’s research shows that how news outlets cover protests has a big impact on how the public views the demonstrations and whether they are ultimately effective. He says traditional media coverage tends to focus on what happened at the protest rather than the issues protestors are raising — something he calls the “protest paradigm.”
Susan Brantly is a professor in the German, Nordic and Slavic department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A few years ago, she got a call from art research firm LMI Group asking her to lend her expertise in reading and analyzing 19th-century Scandinavian literature to help authenticate an artwork.
“I didn’t know initially what the call was about — that there was some painter or another,” Brantly told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “And then came the reveal [that it was Van Gogh], and I just was grinning from ear to ear. I couldn’t have been happier. I thought, ‘Oh, this is too cool for words.’”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is known for its innovations in forecasting technology, but its work could be in jeopardy if the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration loses funding.
“Weather is woven into the fabric of everyone’s life,” atmospheric and oceanic sciences professor Michael Morgan said.
About 1 in 20 people report ongoing difficulties after their psychedelic experience, Dr. Charles Raison, a professor of psychiatry and human ecology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, told CNN in a prior interview. He was not involved in the new research.
“A year later, they say, ‘I had an experience that was so distressing to me that it messed up my ability to function, or alienated me from my family, or gave me post-traumatic stress disorder,’” Raison said.
The detriment to higher education and scientific innovation, however, is crystal clear, research advocates say. Mike Wagner, a journalism and communications professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, called the NSF changes a “Friday Night Massacre of accurate information.”
Dr. Kathy Cramer, a political science professor at UW-Madison, told the Cardinal institutions like UW-Madison have become more strict with pushing back on student activism in recent years.
“I think it’s part of a broader public trend where there’s just so much less trust in political institutions and institutions across the board,” Cramer said. “I think students feel that, too.”
Anthony Gitter, a computational biologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, had a grant about using deep learning for protein modelling flagged by the Cruz report. It contained a single sentence about offering summer research opportunities to underrepresented minorities as part of the broader impact statement. The Cruz report “plays into the narrative that universities are these elitist places that harbour out-of-touch academics that are no longer doing science,” he says. “But it’s out of touch with the data.”
UW-Madison officials’ sense of relief Thursday was almost palpable at the official groundbreaking for the new engineering building.
Over 100 faculty members, teaching assistants and activists rallied Thursday on Library Mall to oppose the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education, demanding the University of Wisconsin-Madison provide support for international students facing visa terminations and join other Big Ten universities to pool money for a shared defense fund.
Campus leaders and Gov. Tony Evers broke ground Thursday on a new engineering building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, after long delays and a protracted political funding battle.
A panel of University of Wisconsin-Madison professors and academic experts discussed the significant challenges facing higher education Wednesday in the wake of the Trump administration’s sweeping budget cuts, emphasizing the critical role of federal funding in public health and scientific advancements.
“I have never seen anything like it during my 40 years of work in this field,” says Julie Underwood, former School of Education dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an expert in civil rights and education law.
Underwood says that, normally, if a district or state were in violation of civil rights laws, they would have a chance to prove their case.
“They would have due process. You’d have to go through the procedures that are set out in the statute and regulations in order to cut those federal funds,” she explains.
If changes in the global gadolinium market make it harder to source the fluid, “patient care will suffer,” said Thomas Grist, a professor of radiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s a very important agent to enhance contrastfor MRI,” he added, explaining there are no direct alternatives.
The report cards, compiled by Manuel Teodoro, a professor at UW-Madison’s La Follete School of Public Affairs, evaluated 572 water utilities using data from 2022 and 2023 provided by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Teodoro’s research team.
Recent visa terminations are making international students in Wisconsin worry about their future, and take precautions like removing social media and not participating pro-Palestinian organizing.
“January and February were just a disaster,” Ron Kean, a poultry specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension, said in an interview last month. “We’ve been pretty fortunate here in Wisconsin, knock on wood.”
Written by Luke Fuszard, a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Senior Fellow at the High Road Strategy Center.
“The relative size of the atmosphere compared to the size of the planet is pretty close to the thickness of an apple skin on top of an apple. That’s what we’re trying to measure,” says Thomas Beatty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not part of the study team.
“The more you look for it, the more you find,” said Dr. Maureen Durkin, a professor of population health sciences and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has long studied autism. Dr. Durkin is one of the authors of the C.D.C. report.
In the Amazon, far more land is legally protected, and rules dictating how much farmers can clear their own land are much stricter. “Our published research shows that there is very little land that’s suitable for soy and that can be legally cleared in the Brazilian Amazon,” said Lisa Rausch, who studies Brazilian deforestation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This is less privacy than the legal system typically affords young people, confirmed Cary Bloodworth, who directs a family law clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Bloodworth said both child welfare and juvenile courts tend to keep records confidential for a number of reasons, including that what happens in a person’s youth will follow them for a lifetime.
“I certainly think having a higher level of privacy for kids is a good thing,” Bloodworth said, adding that she thinks the publication requirement is unnecessary for people of any age.
“If there were no fungi in the soil, I don’t think there would be life on Earth. Plants likely colonized land alongside fungi and without them, the world as we know it might never have existed,” said Aishwarya Veerabahu, a scientist with the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The poverty guidelines are “needed by many people and programs,” said Timothy Smeeding, a professor emeritus of economics at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin. “If you’re thinking of someone you fired who should be rehired, Swenson would be a no-brainer,” he added.
University of Wisconsin-Madison public affairs professor Mariel Barnes, whose research focuses on backlash to gender equality and the manosphere, says the manosphere started to coalesce online around 2008 and grew with the rise of blogging websites.
“If you are constantly consuming this content and you are isolated and women are responsible for the bad things that are happening to you, it’s very dehumanizing, right?” said University of Wisconsin-Madison public affairs professor Mariel Barnes, whose research focuses on backlash to gender equality and the manosphere. “You don’t see women as humans anymore, or as peers or as friends, and that dehumanization gives you permission to treat them as less than human.”
Liz Haynes, an biologist in the Department of Cell and Regenerative Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, also got a tattoo to mark a pivotal moment in her scientific career. The image, of the plant she studied in her undergraduate laboratory, serves as a reminder of the positive experience and the lessons she learnt from her mentor at the time.
“One of the things that I took away was that I really wanted to be that for someone in the future, help show them the pathway on this career, help guide them into grad school, influence them positively and really give them a home in the lab,” she explains.
At Wisconsin Sea Grant, the program’s director Christy Remucal said NOAA funding is the largest source of revenue for the program that’s operated for 57 years on state and federal support. Federal funding makes up 32 percent of the program’s funding, or $2.4 million. Wisconsin Sea Grant and its 30 staff support conservation of Great Lakes resources and communities through research, education and outreach.
“We have staff that are working directly with communities and really making a difference on so many different things whether it’s flooding or clean marinas or invasive species,” Remucal said.
Volker Radeloff, a forest and wildlife ecology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the interface of wild land and urban areas accounts for roughly 10 percent of the state that’s potentially at risk of wildfires.
President Donald Trump imposed and then last week rolled back tariffs he imposed on much of the world. But he increased tariffs on products made in China, which include most electronic devices. We talk to UW-Madison’s Beth D’Angelo about what this means for American consumers.
And then, able to solve problems exponentially faster than classical computing, quantum computing could potentially revolutionize entire industries. We learn the basics of quantum computing from Swamit Tannu, a UW-Madison assistant professor of computer sciences.
Co-authored by James H. Stein, MD and Robert Turell Professor of Cardiovascular Research at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and Chad Alan Goldberg, PhD and the Martindale-Bascom Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Pioneering doesn’t always come with a lot of flash.
In a darkened auditorium on the UW-Madison engineering campus Friday, a bright green laser beam shone over a model airplane wing.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will host its second annual Earth Fest from April 21 to 29, a celebration of the planet over the week of Earth Day prioritizing environmental education, sustainability practices and climate justice.
Written by John Gross, a clinical associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and director of the Public Defender Project.
Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin, said, “People are maximally confused.”
To show how uncertainty plays out, Chinn gave an example of potential homebuyers: Lowering interest rates might entice them, but worries about a big drop in home prices over the next year — the kind that might arise from a recession — might scare them away.
“It’s better news, but washed out by this bad uncertainty,” Chinn said.
“Many politicians, law enforcement personnel and ordinary citizens are nonetheless incensed because this person should not have been in the country and thus capable of committing a crime,” said Michael Light, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has studied the issue. “This view that the person’s undocumented status is an aggravating factor is also likely a reason why these crimes generate such strong responses.”
Dr. Megan Moreno, the principal investigator of the social media and adolescent health research team at the University of Wisconsin Department of Pediatrics, called the USF survey a “groundbreaking” addition to ongoing research, because too many studies do not include the possibility of there being positive outcomes to kids having phones. “It is just so rare for studies to consider both benefits and risks,” she said.
Co-authored by Cortland Dahl, Ph.D., a scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the author of A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism; Otto Simonsson, Ph.D., is with the Karolinska Institutet, and Simon Goldberg, Ph.D., is with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Even if your dog wears a GPS tracker, Dr. Jessica Pritchard, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, says microchipping is still essential. Your dog’s collar could become detached, or they may wander into an area without a signal. Pritchard, who previously used a tracker with her dogs, says that microchipping and GPS trackers work together like locking your doors and installing a home security system.
Paul Robbins, dean of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former board member for the ICF, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that counting cranes might seem like a simple task, but it’s the only way to get a snapshot of the population around the state.
“Conservation is really based on pretty small numbers of beings in the world, so you actually have to find them and see them,” he said. “And that really requires people to be on the ground.”
More than $12 million in research grants destined for the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been cut by President Donald Trump’s administration, according to a lawsuit filed by Wisconsin and 15 other states. Democratic state Attorney General Josh Kaul says the administration is “sabotaging medical and public health research.”
Under the tariffs, the price of a drink at a coffee shop could go up 3-5 cents per dollar, while the price of coffee at the grocery store could rise 10%, said Andrew Stevens, University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of agricultural and applied economics.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health used artificial intelligence to screen the electronic health records of patients admitted to the UW Health University Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, between March and October 2023, for any sign that they were at risk of or had an opioid use disorder.
Michael Wagner, who leads the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that universities could make a greater effort to get the work of misinformation researchers into the public’s hands.
Universities must do “a more aggressive job of promoting the work, even when it highlights partisan asymmetries, even when it highlights other kinds of things that might leave universities open to attack from those who don’t like the fact that universities exist,” said Wagner, who noted that his center has been subpoenaed by Congress. “[That] is something they need to do a better job of, to help the researchers who are trying to do this stuff get their work out there to folks so that they can engage with it and decide how they want to incorporate that information into how they live their lives.”
The poverty guidelines are “needed by many people and programs,” said Timothy Smeeding, a professor emeritus of economics at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin. “If you’re thinking of someone you fired who should be rehired, Swenson would be a no-brainer,” he added.
