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Category: UW Experts in the News

5 things you should do first thing in the morning to be happier all day

Posted on
HuffPost

Research suggests that even if you don’t actually meet up with someone or send them an email or text, it can be enough to simply send good thoughts their way. “You can start with a simple appreciation practice,” Cortland Dahl, a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, previously told HuffPost. Just bring a friend or loved one into your mind, then consciously focusing on the things you really cherish about them.

What your life would be like without an inner voice

Posted on
BBC Science Focus

Nedergaard and her colleague Prof Gary Lupyan at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the US, decided to explore the potential effects of lacking inner speech, recruiting people who scored low on a questionnaire with statements such as “I think about problems in my mind in the form of a conversation with myself.”

By coining the term ‘anendophasia’ – from the Greek an (lack), endo (inner) and phasia (speech) – Nedergaard and Lupyan hope to create a similar keyword that will help to catalyse research into those lacking inner speech.

What to know about Wisconsin’s battle over congressional redistricting

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“They could draw the districts as they wanted, and they went to town,” said Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center. “They were very successful in drawing districts that advantage their party in the state Legislature and in the congressional districts, but they also wanted the process to be different if there was going to be litigation.”

Behind a UW-Madison spinoff’s physics-based fusion plant design

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The Daily Cardinal

A common quip about nuclear fusion is that the technology is perpetually 30 years from deployment. Fusion research has not been funded to the same levels as other, already-realized clean technologies like solar, wind and fission, but new billion-dollar investments signify interest is picking up.

University of Wisconsin-Madison fusion spinoff company Type One Energy aims to bring nuclear fusion to the grid within a decade, backed by funding and a physics-based model.

Most Wisconsin wetlands would lack federal protection under EPA’s proposed rule

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Despite the proposed changes, Wisconsin wetlands are likely to fare better than most states. A 2001 law provided robust protections for isolated wetlands or those that aren’t directly connected to streams and rivers, said Steph Tai, a law professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.

“Anyone who’s looking to fill in wetlands within Wisconsin is still going to have to go through permitting through our DNR,” Tai said.

The Pentagon is hoarding critical minerals that could power the clean energy transition

Posted on
Mother Jones

Julie Klinger, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin who studies extraction and resource frontiers, says these things deserve more scrutiny. “Particularly as we’re moving into a time where there is much more overt taxpayer-funded support of critical mineral mining and processing projects, the taxpayer does need to have quite a bit more information,” she said.

Trump’s closure of national weather center may imperil UW-Madison research

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

Established in 1960, the center says it provides “state-of-the-art resources, including supercomputers, research aircraft, sophisticated computer models and extensive data sets” to the atmospheric and related Earth system science community. It’s funded through the National Science Foundation.

Among other things, the center has helped improve early warnings in weather forecasts and air safety, the American Meteorological Society said in a statement.

Control of Wisconsin government truly up for grabs in 2026

Posted on
The Cap Times

The marquee race in this battle for control over Wisconsin’s government is the gubernatorial race, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden.

“It feels as though either party could win that race. And statewide races for governor have been very close in recent years, and it’s likely to set the tone for everything else on the ballot,” Burden said.

This growing UW-Madison lab helps students create using AI, other tech

Posted on
The Cap Times

Launched in February, the lab is a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. It provides an opportunity for students from across the university to try emerging technologies — including AI, blockchain and virtual reality — and use them to potentially solve real-world problems.

“I love it because I see students progress remarkably,” said Sandra Bradley, the lab’s executive director. “When you give them a lot of … space and then hand them things that they need, the magic happens.”

America’s hidden economic crisis

Posted on
Business Insider

“My take on the inflation story is that a lot of that is uncertainty,” says J. Michael Collins, a professor of public affairs and human ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “A lot of that is, ‘I enjoyed a world better where I knew kind of what my rent was going to be in three years. Now, I have no idea how much my rent’s going to get jacked up in 2028, and that freaks me out.'”

UW scientists alarmed by Trump plan to break up national weather research center

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists are sounding the alarm over a Trump administration plan to dismantle a prominent weather and climate research center, saying it could jeopardize the future of weather forecasting.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research is based in Boulder, Colorado, but is overseen by a consortium of universities, including UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. The center allows researchers to work together on large projects that no one scientist or university could do alone.

Sleep monitors and poop tests: Health-tracking gifts find a place under the tree

Posted on
The Wall Street Journal

Giving health testing and monitoring gifts comes with some tricky etiquette questions.

“There is some risk of offending,” says Evan Polman, a consumer psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has studied gift giving. It could convey that the recipient is somehow inadequate, he says.

If you are giving devices that track both sleep and physical activity, such as those from Oura and Whoop, Polman suggests highlighting the sleep monitoring—not the fitness.

When giving health-testing and tracking devices, he suggests buying them for yourself, too. “If we’re doing it together, I think it takes away almost all of the judginess,” he says.

UW Health encourages living organ donation

Posted on
WMTV - Channel 15

“Living donation is the gift of a lifetime because a kidney from a living donor often lasts longer than a kidney from a deceased donor,” said Dr. Dixon Kaufman, the director of the UW Health Transplant Center and a professor of surgery at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “We see the urgent need for more donors every day, which motivated us to launch this initiative.”

MMSD works to reduce seclusion and restraint incidents involving students with disabilities

Posted on
Channel 3000

Andrea Ruppar, a special education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, describes seclusion and restraint as traumatic.

“Restraint and seclusion are two ways of restricting students movement within a school. And they are interventions that are meant to be used very rarely and only in cases of emergency,” Ruppar said.

Donald Trump is making Joe Biden’s fatal mistake

Posted on
Newsweek

“Part of President Trump’s power has been his ability to make many people in the United States feel seen and heard,” said Katherine Cramer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Telling them that the economy is doing fine, when their every day reality tells them otherwise, runs the risk of weakening that power. Particularly for people who aren’t super interested in politics—that is, most people—every day indicators of affordability like gas and grocery prices have a big effect on how well people think the economy is doing.”

Experts worry new strain and low vaccination rates could mean severe flu season in Wisconsin

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“It’s still early in the season, but we’re starting to see things start to go up,” said Dr. James Conway, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Global Health Institute. “We fortunately seem to be later than some areas of the country, which is good, but our immunization rates are well below where they need to be.”

Afghans in Wisconsin feel fear amid immigration restrictions, rhetoric

Posted on
Channel 3000

Najib Azad, a lawyer, author and faculty staff at University of Wisconsin-Madison, also came to America in 2021 and now lives in Stevens Point. He previously served as press secretary for the former Afghan president.

“The entire Afghan community was profiled, they were judged, and then in the hour after that, in the second or third hour, almost every immigrant in this country was judged,” Azad told News 3 Now.

Local educator discusses Trump Administration’s $12 billion in aid for American farmers

Posted on
WXOW, Ch. 19 -- La Crosse

“It will help a lot—especially with cash flow issues—because by then, they will be finishing up paying for a lot of the inputs for the ’26 crops,” said Paul Mitchell, University of Wisconsin-Madison Agricultural and Applied Economics Professor. “It will be nice to get some cash flow in from not selling your crop from the payments.”

UW Health doctors detail response improvements one year after ALCS shooting

Posted on
WMTV - Channel 15

“Between our child life specialists talking with siblings with our social workers’ help with identification, that was absolutely critical,” said Dr. Nicholas Kuehnel, vice chair of clinical operations for UW Health’s Dept. of Emergency Medicine. “Even our environmental services teammates that worked to help us turn the room over, get beds into place, get the linens on. None of this would be able to happen as smooth as it does without these individuals really helping each step along the way.”

Changing climate reflected when Lake Mendota freezes each winter

Posted on
WKOW - Channel 27

UW-Madison Limnology scientist assistant, Zach Feiner, explained that organisms in the lake time their life cycles based on when the lake freezes and thaws.

“You have things like fish that hatch and they don’t have enough food to survive, or they have zooplankton that emerge and they’re mistimed with their algae food resources,” said Feiner. “So it can really mess up lake food webs by having these seasons mistimed and altered by climate change.”

Richland Center residents fight to spare park from city’s affordable housing plans

Posted on
Wisconsin Watch

But “from a legal perspective, I’m not sure that there’s anything stopping the city in this instance,” said Derek Clinger, a senior staff attorney for the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

On Nov. 21 residents submitted a second petition, which the city acknowledged but says conflicts with the Oct. 7 ordinance it passed authorizing the sale.

In Wisconsin, Clinger said, a direct legislation attempt, in this case the residents’ petition, can’t be used to pass a city ordinance that clearly conflicts with an existing city ordinance. But the city’s actions could certainly have political consequences in future local elections, he noted.

Wisconsin’s 32 Most Influential Black Leaders for 2025, Part 2

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Madison 365

Dr. Earlise Ward is faculty director for the Cancer Health Disparities Initiative (CHDI) and co-director of the T32 Primary Care Research Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. She conducts community-engaged clinical intervention research focused on African American adults’ mental health and culturally competent mental health services. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Baruch College, master’s degree in counseling and Brooklyn College and PhD in counseling psychology at UW-Madison.

Donald Dantzler is an alder for the City of Fitchburg, candidate for Dane County Board, and a Survey and Research Specialist for the Madison Metropolitan School District. He was previously faculty and adjunct faculty for UW-Whitewater, and has also worked as a research associate at Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory and a project assistant for the UW System Administration Office of Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Success.  He earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UW-Whitewater and is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis program at UW-Madison.

Immigrants in Alabama can face harsher sentences than citizens for the same crimes

Posted on
ProPublica

Academic research has found that incarcerated immigrants face tougher punishment on average, with sentences that are longer by months or years than nonimmigrants. Michael Light, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at the role of citizenship in both federal and state courts in California and Texas, which, unlike Alabama, keep detailed information about defendants’ citizenship status.

He found the starkest differences in Texas, where noncitizens received sentences 62% longer than citizens, even with the same charges and criminal backgrounds. The disparities exceed those between white and nonwhite citizens. Another researcher, University of California, Los Angeles law professor Ingrid Eagly, found similar results in her study of Harris County cases in Houston.

In manure, UW-Madison researcher Brayan Riascos sees the future of plastic

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

When Brayan Riascos looks at the Wisconsin cattle herds, he sees untapped potential.

A third-year Ph.D. civil and environmental engineering student from Colombia, Riascos’ research looks at what most consider the least attractive part of dairy and beef cattle — the piles of manure — and he sees what could someday be the building block of a more sustainable plastic than traditional petroleum-based production.

Any plastic made from manure undergoes several chemical makeovers before it’s a finished product, and certainly looks — and thankfully, smells — nothing like its source material.

Mental health, community key on 1-year Abundant Life shooting anniversary

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Child survivors of gun violence, and their parents, require special attention in the aftermath of a school shooting, said Janet Hyde, professor emeritus of psychology and gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Under the right circumstances, returning to school can be a form of exposure therapy, especially if schools can emphasize learning, social activities and have an open channel for students to express their feelings, Hyde said, who authored the book, “The Psychology of Gun Violence.” It can also build resilience, which helps kids cope and manage stress.

Wisconsin’s 32 Most Influential Black Leaders for 2025, Part 1

Posted on
Madison 365

Maurice Thomas is chief operating officer at Greater Holy Temple Christian Academy, a 4k-8th grade Christian school in Milwaukee. He is an alum of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and expects to earn a master’s degree in education leadership from Harvard in 2027.

Jerry Jordan is a nationally-known painter working in the style of contemporary realism. He counts the unsung artists of the Harlem Renaissance as his artistic role models. By day, Jordan is an academic and multicultural advisor with the UW-Madison School of Education. He holds a degree in art from UW-Whitewater.

Dr. Bashir Easter is founder of Melanin Minded, a company that aims to empower Black and Latino communities by culturally appropriate resources and support for individuals affected by Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias. He began his career in elder care nearly 15 years ago with Milwaukee County as an elder abuse investigator, human services worker, and dementia care program specialist, and later served as associate director of the All of Us Research Program at UW-Madison.

 

CPS lunchroom workers near six months without a contract: ‘No one sees us’

Posted on
Chicago Tribune

Across the country, many school districts are experiencing high vacancy rates and turnover in cafeterias — largely because of low wages, according to Jennifer Gaddis, a University of Wisconsin Madison associate professor who studies food labor and policy. A 2024 study found that school food service workers make an average of $3.16 less than custodial staff.

“It is much harder to not only improve meal quality, but also to provide a really caring, constructive environment for young people in schools when you’re dealing with that much turnover,” Gaddis said.

Wisconsin school pool safety largely left to districts, with little state oversight

Posted on
Appleton Post-Crescent

University of Wisconsin-Madison education law professor Suzanne Eckes said that, ultimately, schools are responsible for maintaining a safe environment for their students.

When she’s teaching the basics of education law and liability, she often uses scenarios from physical education classes.

Just because there’s a student injury doesn’t mean that a school district is negligent, Eckes said. First, an injury has to occur in a situation where a teacher has a duty to supervise. Then, the teacher or instructor would have to breach that duty by, for example, “leaving a pool unattended while students were swimming, playing on their phone during class, talking with teacher friends instead of supervising the playground during recess,” she said.

Why hundreds of loud swans are flocking to Madison’s lakes

Posted on
Madison Magazine

Each November and December, two swan species pass through Madison during their fall migration from the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic to Chesapeake Bay and the mid-Atlantic Coast. The length of their stay on Lake Mendota and Lake Monona depends on weather conditions and can range from days to weeks, according to Stanley Temple, the Beers-Bascom Professor Emeritus in Conservation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

‘We need each other’: UW-Madison faculty grapple with Trump administration’s higher education rhetoric

Posted on
The Daily Cardinal

A panel of University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty called for higher institutions to rebuild public trust during a panel Dec. 3, sharing both hopeful and pessimistic sentiments about the Trump administration’s threat to higher education.

History professor Giuliana Chamedes said the ability of students, faculty and staff to speak up has been “central” to restoring democracy and academic freedom. She referenced similarities between the Trump administration’s policies and historical attacks on higher education from fascist regimes, highlighting higher education’s historical ability to overcome persecution.

The new allowance

Posted on
The Atlantic

For working-class parents, however, allowances are more likely to serve an actual budgetary purpose. Parents may say, “Here, you get $5 a week,” J. Michael Collins, a professor of personal finance at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me, because that is all they can afford to give their kid to spend for fun. But that type of budgeting offers kids a valuable lesson.

Elections Redistricting fight shifts to Wisconsin, where judicial panels may pick new maps

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NBC News

“Yes, it’s the first time a three-judge panel for a redistricting action has happened in Wisconsin state court. But a three-judge panel for redistricting challenges or Voting Rights Act challenges are what happens in federal court,” said Bree Grossi Wilde, the executive director of the nonpartisan State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “This is how redistricting battles played out in federal court.”

How David Stevenson, a guy with a hybrid car and a solar rooftop, helped take down a burgeoning US energy sector.

Posted on
Mother Jones

“You want a healthy amount of skepticism in a democracy…You don’t want 100 percent believers,” said Dietram Scheufele, a social scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies public perspectives on science and technology. But he warned that skepticism in the US is ​“on steroids,” pushing people from the middle into polarized political camps and toward conspiratorial thinking.

Moms’ ‘mental load’ is pushing them to the brink, new survey shows

Posted on
USA Today

“Our collective expectations of fathers have shifted. We expect dads to be more involved with their kids,” says Allison Daminger, author of “What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life” and a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

“At the same time, the expectations on breadwinning and dads hasn’t changed. We’ve added to their job description. I think younger dads are starting to feel that strain.”

2 men linked to China’s salt typhoon hacker group likely trained in a Cisco ‘academy’

Posted on
Wired

To try to determine the probability of those name repetitions being a coincidence, Cary checked two databases of Chinese names and consulted with Yi Fuxian, a professor of Chinese demography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The name Qiu Daibing—or 邱代兵 in Chinese characters—turned out to be a relatively unlikely name to show up twice just by chance, he says. The surname 邱 alone, Yi confirmed to WIRED, represents just 0.27 percent of Chinese names, and in combination with the specific 代兵 given name would represent a far smaller percentage.

‘Pride in ourselves’: Indigenous UW-Madison students learn to sew ribbon skirts

Posted on
The Cap Times

“It’s important to be able to express ourselves through our clothing and kind of use it not only as a statement … that we’re still on campus, but also just have some pride in ourselves and our traditional attire,” said Miinan White, an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.

Is your favorite chocolate bar actually made of chocolate?

Posted on
Today

Rich Hartel, a food science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, studies chocolate for a living. He said one of the most common ways manufacturers cut costs is removing a key ingredient from their chocolate.

“Cocoa butter’s probably the most expensive component in chocolate. So if you can replace some of the cocoa butter with a different, cheaper fat, then you’re saving money,” he said.

UW-Madison’s woodworking program combines art and craft

Posted on
Isthmus

Their very first assignment is hand carving the utensil out of a block of poplar. But there is a reason that Katie Hudnall — the director of UW’s woodworking and furniture program — calls it the “not a spoon” assignment.

“If the project was just shaping a perfect wooden spoon, they wouldn’t really get the chance to design something for themselves,” says Hudnall. “The assignment is really to create not just a spoon. The design element is what gets them to unlock their art brains.”

Need a study buddy? Students explore AI tutors

Posted on
The Daily Cardinal

As final exam season starts, many University of Wisconsin-Madison students are increasingly turning to a new kind of study partner — one that never sleeps, charges hourly rates or judges a panicked 2 a.m. homework question.

Artificial Intelligence tools like ChatGPT have become embedded in student life with 86% of students using AI in their studies, according to a study by the Digital Education Council, marking a rapid cultural shift in how students prepare for exams and complete coursework.

Women’s work: the hidden mental load of household decision-making

Posted on
The Cap Times

“I really saw a turning point during the pandemic when parents were really struggling, and moms in particular were really struggling,” said Allison Daminger, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the division of labor in adult romantic relationships.

Daminger’s book, “What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life,” examines how gender shapes household duties and why women are more likely to carry the mental load.

Wisconsin reviews registration of EPA-approved pesticides that are said to contain PFAS

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Supporters of isocycloseram said it could help with a pest that’s long shown resistance to insecticides. Russ Groves, an entomology professor and Extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the insecticide has been evaluated in Wisconsin to gauge its effectiveness at controlling the Colorado potato beetle. The pest eats the leaves off potato plants, resulting in serious yield losses.

“We’ve evaluated this tool alongside others, and we see that it’s a very good fit,” Groves said. “It performs well in controlling the insect.”

Americans drank more milk in 2024, reversing a decade-long decline

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Leonard Polzin, dairy markets and policy outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension, said whole milk has benefited from the diet craze around protein, driven in large part by health and fitness influencers online.

“The more protein, the better. Consumers are all about that,” he said. “The other portion is kind of a shift towards healthy fats too. So for example, cottage cheese is having a real moment right now.”

State health leaders condemn change in hepatitis B vaccine recommendation

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Dr. Jonathan Temte, associate dean of public health and community engagement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said Friday’s vote was not based on new scientific evidence. And he believes it will have consequences for people’s health care.

“This creates a great deal of confusion for parents, for clinicians, for public health providers, for vaccine managers,” Temte said. “I believe there have been purposeful approaches to create as much havoc and a great deal of parental concern over safety when none of this is necessary.”

‘The next step:’ UW-Madison details $80 million college focused on AI

Posted on
WMTV - Channel 15

 For the first time in more than 40 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a new college.

Approved by the UW Board of Regents on Thursday, the “College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence” is set to open in July.

“We see the new college as kind of the next step,” UW-Madison Interim Provost John Zumbrunnen said. “We envision it as a hub around computing, data and AI on our campus, but really beyond our campus too.”

Matchmaking website could connect retiring farmers with younger farmers

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

“If we want land to be available to new or beginning farmers, figuring out ways that the land can be affordable for them and still provide the income that the owner generation needs is key,” said Joy Kirkpatrick, a farm succession outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.

UW-Madison’s new Hub envisions seeding students’ startups across Wisconsin

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

Surrounded by tools and wires in his lab at UW-Madison, Luis Izet Escaño holds up a tiny object, 3D-printed with metal powder in a device he created. It’s a little product that could lead to something much bigger, and he’s crafted it through his startup company.

That effort is getting some help from a new program at UW-Madison, through which he gets some seed money from the university and one year of training, with the help of campus experts, to get his company out of the door and pitch it to real-world investors.