Erika Meitner joins Kevin Young to read “What Work Is,” by Philip Levine, and her own poem “To Gather Together.” Meitner’s books include “Useful Junk” and “Holy Moly Carry Me,” which won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She is currently a Mandel Institute Cultural Leadership Program Fellow, and she’s the director of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Every fraction of a degree matters,” said Andrea Dutton, a research professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was a co-author of the study. “We can’t just adapt to this type of sea-level rise. We can’t just engineer our way out of this.”
A dangerous bird flu, in other words, was suddenly circulating in mammals — mammals with which people have ongoing, extensive contact. “Holy cow,” says Thomas Friedrich, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “This is how pandemics start.”
A University of Wisconsin–Madison professor says the recent Cellcom outage may be exposing a larger problem: insufficient investment in communication infrastructure, particularly in rural regions.
Professor Parmesh Ramanathan, who teaches electrical and computer engineering, says many networks lack backup systems to keep services running when critical lines go down.
At a time when gender-affirming care in Wisconsin is under fire, providers at a speech clinic are helping transgender clients find their voice.
“Our voice is [an] external representation of us,” Maia Braden, a speech-language pathologist at the UW Speech and Hearing Clinic told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “Anytime our voice doesn’t match who we feel we are, it can be extremely distressing.”
We know sitting for long periods of time can result in back pain. A recent study has also confirmed that sedentary behavior, such as time spent scrolling on smartphones, causes neck pain, too. Physical therapists Lori Thein Brody and Jill Thein-Nissenbaum explain how to avoid this outcome.
A recent survey of Wisconsin’s farmers found that 56 percent of them believe climate change is happening. Another 26 percent think it isn’t happening, and 18 percent are unsure.
Michael Bell, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who helped conduct the study, said attitudes and behaviors don’t always match up. Bell found encouragement in how the farmers are acting, not their beliefs. The same survey asked farmers if they are practicing any of 15 different sustainable agricultural practices.
Professor Andrea Dutton of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was part of the study team, said: “Evidence recovered from past warm periods suggests that several metres of sea level rise – or more – can be expected when global mean temperature reaches 1.5C or higher.”
Mai See Thao, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that these resolutions are “long overdue.”
“Recognizing Hmong-Lao veterans is really important because they have never received the kinds of recognition that they’ve needed, given the fact that they supported the U.S. as proxy soldiers,” she said.
Preschoolers often miss the lessons we think they learn from watching Clifford, Sesame Street, and other educational programs, while teens may use TV sitcoms to broach difficult topics with their parents. Includes interview with Marie-Louise Mares, a professor of communication science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“You’re going to have a lot of spider webs on your house, and they’re going to be absolutely filled with midges,” said Jake Vander Zanden, who leads the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology.
With the study of social genomics — or sociogenomics — scientists argue that genes and environment truly coexist and influence another throughout a person’s lifetime.
University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor Silvia Helena Barcellos said social genomics really just got started roughly 10 years ago, around the same time that scientists decoded the human DNA sequence and began to better understand it.
As Elissa and Russell said their vows, Xu and Cain were working to build HistoSonics, the company they’d formed in 2009 with Tim Hall, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and J. Brian Fowlkes, a professor of radiology and biomedical engineering at U-M.
Their company created the Edison System, a device with a robotic arm that delivers precision histotripsy treatments using a specialized, high-powered ultrasound transducer through a tub of water.
“Ideally, if it’s not a huge challenge, trying to see (the) use of thumb sucking or pacifier use stop by 18 months is a good thing, but I wouldn’t get too worked up about it if it was still happening at age two, maybe even three,” said Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health who is also a pediatrician and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Early Childhood.
Chris Vagasky explains how reduced weather balloon launches and staffing shortages at the National Weather Service may compromise the ability to predict dangerous weather events.
New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that mindfulness and therapy led to lasting improvements in chronic back pain. We hear from an author of the study, Dr. Bruce Barrett.
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health OB/GYN Dr. Ryan Spencer explains the difficulties that arise when fewer obstetric providers are available to serve mothers in a community.
“There are always midges coming out of the lakes, but most people don’t really notice them because they’re not very abundant. So it’s not really on the radar,” said Jake Vander Zanden, who studies the biology of lakes as chair of the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“This year does really seem to be standing out in terms of the intensity of the midge activity,” PJ Liesch, extension entomologist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.
According to Liesch, midges are born and spend their young life down in the sediment of Madison’s lakes.
John Gross, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said he wasn’t surprised by the grand jury indictment.
“The prosecutor has an enormous amount of control over that proceeding, and so it’s never surprising to hear that a grand jury voted to indict,” Gross said.
“It is truly the pinch point. It is the one place where you have a large canal that connects the two,” said Jake Vander Zanden, who directs the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology.
Astronomers have identified hundreds of exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than our own – but very few exist in habitable zones that could support life. We talk to Thomas Beatty, an exoplanet researcher and collaborator with The Wisconsin Center for Origins Research, and Jim Lattis, director of the UW Space Place, both at UW-Madison.
In a 2024 study conducted by Chloe Grace Hart, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she found that Americans were less likely to say they believed a Black woman describing a sexual harassment experience compared to a white women describing the same thing.
“That suggests that when it comes to sexual violence, Black women survivors face a particularly steep uphill battle to be believed,” Hart previously told USA TODAY.
“The sediment deposition gets really complex,” David M. Lovelace, a geoscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led a comprehensive study of the cave’s stratigraphy, explains. “Sediment that’s washing in can leave little pockets of deposition in one area. Then the inlet or the stream will shift slightly, so it deposits in another area.” Sometimes a fresh stream cuts through older sediment to drop in new surface material. “It literally forms almost a new cave through the old sediment, so you can deposit younger material under older, previously existing material. The complexities become outstanding.”
Dr. Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin, an expert in China’s demographics and prominent critic of that country’s one-child policy, has been digging into the details of China’s population claims — and what he has found is not good.
For starters, Yi believes that China’s population is overestimated by at least 130 million — more than one-third of the U.S. population. In a recent monograph, Yi details the many discrepancies buried within China’s current and past census data.
“Without the continued research that’s made possible with federal funding, it would set us back,” said John Shutske, an agricultural safety and health specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’ve seen over the last several decades a pretty dramatic decrease overall in our farm fatality rate. And while I think [the number of deaths] would probably plateau, I don’t think we would be able to continue to make the kind of progress that we’ve had.”
Almost 15 years ago, professor Betty Chewning of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy was struck by an idea. Instead of focusing only on helping students learn how to speak with patients, what if she could help teach patients, as well?
Her idea became Med Wise Rx, an education program aimed at teaching older Wisconsinites to better communicate with pharmacists and safely manage multiple prescriptions.
Dorothea Salo, an expert in privacy at UW-Madison’s Information School, said personal data has become extremely valuable for companies to purchase.
“There is a sense that advertising and a lot of other businesses, work better, are more effective, make more money if they have access to personal data,” Salo said.
Nonprofit organization 5 Lakes Institute announced a regional fusion energy alliance at the Great Lakes Fusion Energy Summit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Tuesday. The alliance focused on “connecting the dots” between stakeholders, John Myer, 5 Lakes Institute fellow, said in a press release.
In the last few decades Wisconsin has experienced some unusual weather–lakes freezing later and thawing earlier, summer nights with the temperature never going below 70 degrees, and heavier rainfalls. Climatologists Daniel Vimont and Steve Vavrus get into the reasons for the change and discuss how we can adapt to it.
John Hitchcock, a professor of printmaking in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pitched “Ceremonial (Pow-wow ribbon chair)” specifically for the Icon staircase in the museum’s west-facing atrium.
“It is a really important moment in this three-year cycle,” said museum director Paul Baker Prindle, who took over as the head of the museum in 2024. “We’re celebrating 20 years in the building. We’re coming up on 125 years as an organization.
Written by Juliette Becker, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a founding member of the Wisconsin Center for Origins Research. She studies exoplanet dynamics and planet formation, and she is passionate about teaching UW–Madison undergraduates how to conduct scientific research.
Written by Dave Schroeder, associate director of intelligence and security initiatives in the College of Letters & Science and research director of the Wisconsin Security Research Consortium.
As of May 3, UW-Madison has been ordered to stop work on three federally funded projects and told to stop work on 10 others involving other organizations. Another 62 research grants have been terminated.
UW-Madison has appealed three of the terminations; one of those has already been denied. The numbers have been in constant flux for weeks as new cancellations are handed down and judges authorize temporary restraining orders.
“I think it’s all about energy: energy use, energy storage, and the type of pathways that are being engaged to derive energy,” said Rozalyn Anderson, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (per Business Insider).
According to Cortland Dahl, a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, a mindful body scan is a powerful way to ease chronic stress and mental rumination. You can do this simple mindfulness exercise while lying in bed.
“Bring attention to each part of your body, starting with your head and moving slowly down until you reach your toes,” he told HuffPost. “Pay attention to the sensations you notice in your body with a sense of warmth and non-judgmental curiosity. This activates the brain network critical for self-regulation and inner balance. It’s also a great way to de-stress and let go of all the tension that builds up in our busy lives.”
These statements appear to blame parents for vaccinating their kids and causing autism, a developmental and neurological condition that is overwhelmingly genetic, said Jessica Calarco, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.
“That’s very much what he’s implying and how it’s going to be read,” Calarco said.
Kevin Jarek, regional crops and soils educator with UW-Madison’s Division of Extension for Outagamie & Winnebago counties, noted, “If I were to go to counties like Shawano and Waupaca, especially the western parts of those counties, they get much lighter in soil. It’s a sandy loam texture, whereas here as we get closer to Lake Michigan, we tend to have a lot of clay.”
Whenever you do a Google search or send a Gmail, an office in Madison, Wisconsin has a supporting role.
The office, in a nondescript commercial building overlooking Wisconsin’s Capitol, is more than 2,000 miles from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. But it’s home to over 100 engineers at work on designing hardware and software for the tech giant’s data centers.
The award-winning UW-Madison Odyssey Project is graduating its 22nd cohort tonight during a ceremony from 6-7:30 p.m. at the Great Hall in the Memorial Union on the UW-Madison campus.
Earlier this year, Dr. Avtar Roopra, a professor of neuroscience at UW-Madison, published research that shows a drug typically used to treat arthritis halts brain-damaging seizures in mice that have a condition similar to epilepsy. The treatment could be used to provide relief for a subset of people with epilepsy who don’t get relief from other current treatments.
In an Instagram story, Li Chiao-Ping Dance noted that its production of “Dirty Laundry” — a “multimedia dance theater work that explores Asian American identity, culture and historical events including the Stop Asian Hate movement” — no longer qualifies either. Produced by University of Wisconsin-Madison dance professor Li Chiao-Ping’s company, which is a resident of Overture Center, “Dirty Laundry” had been granted $15,000 over two years.
“This is a major setback to us all,” the company wrote, “but it won’t keep us down. I know we will all create the work anyway.”
Dr. Ryan Spencer is an OB/GYN at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He says the state is in a maternal health care crisis, in part due to years without Medicaid expansion.
“I think we’re actually in the long-term impacts of having not addressed those for decades,” he said. “Any expansion to Medicaid is highly likely in any given area or state to improve access that women have to prenatal care, intrapartum care, and postpartum care.”
Birders, hikers, anglers and hunters are out and about enjoying nature this spring. Retired wildlife ecologist Scott Craven tells us what they’re encountering. Then, we talk to two UW-Madison Extension geologists about a new map of Wisconsin.
In the woman’s case, a contingent of supporters just want to fight cancel culture, said Franciska Coleman, an assistant professor of law at University of Wisconsin Law School, who has written about cancel culture and social regulation of speech. For some it can include donating “to everyone who they in quotes try to ‘cancel.’”
Some people are focused on how “it just seems too much that this mother of two young kids is getting death threats and rape threats,” Coleman said.
“It amounts to an extraordinary, unprecedented, dangerous assertion of almost unlimited executive or presidential authority,” said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of American politics at University of Wisconsin-Madison who authored a book on executive orders by U.S. presidents.
Tariffs enacted under the Trump administration could have significant impacts on the agriculture industry in the U.S. and particularly on the dairy industry in Wisconsin, according to University of Wisconsin associate professor of agriculture and economics Chuck Nicholson.
“The tariffs have a number of different impacts, whether that be the tariffs we are placing on imports from other countries or the tariffs that other countries will place on us,” Nicholson said.
Ditto for potential candidates weighing the rigors of a campaign, says Joel Rogers, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s High Road Strategy Center: “Running for office is a drag for sure, and has become much more dangerous to one’s mental health and a happy family life.”
Written by Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, MPH, MSLIS, MD, FAAP, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and also holds master’s degrees in public health and children’s librarianship.
Anna Bierbrauer, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Milwaukee could get more out of its RiverWalk by smoothing out some of that incongruity and making it a more accessible thoroughfare for users year-round. Stairs and elevators like those Milwaukee has are not uncommon to riverwalk systems, but Bierbrauer said they’re “a temporary solution that is not realistic if we want to think about really using the area as a long-term network to move people downtown,” Bierbrauer said.
We talk with Steven Deller, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about what a decline in the country’s gross domestic product means for Wisconsin.
In a demonstration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, weather researchers showed WISN 12 News how it works.
“The balloon is launched from the ground and rises up into the atmosphere, can rise up to 50,000, sometimes 60,000 feet or so, and gathers temperature, moisture and wind data as it rises through that column of the atmosphere,” Derrick Herndon said.
Daniel Smith with UW Extension’s integrated pest and crop management says that since February, the temperatures have warmed up and had more precipitation.
Kristin Litzelman deals with data sets and research studies in her work studying caregiving as an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But she wanted to contribute something artistic for “In Care Of: Postcard-Sized Portrayals of Caregiving in Wisconsin,” a new exhibit she helped put together at UW-Madison’s Nancy Nicholas Hall, 1300 Linden Drive.
The administration for Mental Health Services at University Health Services is working to connect with the student body at the University of Wisconsin to shut down rumors of inaccessible mental health services that may prevent students from seeking mental health support.
Learn how Black communities in the Midwest formed before the Great Migration with University of Wisconsin-Madison historian and professor Christy Clark-Pujara.
Written by meteorologist and research program manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Democrats in Congress are trying to find a unified message in opposition to President Donald Trump’s agenda, and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan said the focus should be on the economy. Howard Schweber, a UW-Madison professor emeritus of political science, said the arrest of a Milwaukee County judge was a political message to judges around the nation.
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 higher education. He has been recognized with four teaching awards at UW-Madison. He led the evaluation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) in Dane County, Wisconsin for two years.
Niemeyer has described the instinct to blame livestock deaths on coyotes and wolves as “hysteria.” The roots of such hysteria trace back to America’s early European settlers, who believed (wrongly) that the eradication of wolves was necessary for livestock production, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison environmental science professor Adrian Treves.
