“It’s another sign Democrats have the edge in general going into 2026,” Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, said about the election outcomes.
“When it comes to skin health and appearance, the data is pretty limited,” says Dr. Apple Bodemer, an integrative dermatologist at UW Health, and professor of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
UW-Madison researchers at a new federally funded center on campus will examine how aging influences diseases, such as cancer and neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s.
The Wisconsin Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging will fund new research that examines how metabolic changes associated with aging are linked to disease. The center’s researchers aim to develop improved treatments or methodologies that physicians can use to better address their patients’ conditions.
A new collaboration between UW-Madison, Microsoft, and TitletownTech is set to boost scientific research in Wisconsin. The partnership will leverage advanced AI tools to help researchers tackle major challenges more efficiently.
As John D. Wiley, former provost at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, correctly noted almost 20 years ago, “We are already seeing this very phenomenon of degree inflation, and it is being caused by the professions themselves! This is particularly problematic in the health professions, where, it seems, everyone wants to be called ‘doctor.’ I have no problem whatsoever with the professional societies and their accreditors telling us what a graduate must know to practice safely and professionally. I have a big problem, though, when they hand us what amounts to a master’s-level curriculum and tell us the resulting degree must be called a ‘doctor of X.’ This is a transparently self-interested ploy by the profession, and I see no conceivable argument that it is in the public interest. All it does is further confuse an already confusing array of degree names and titles, to no useful purpose.”
It’s still not certain there will be a major winter blast, but scientists are watching for colder than normal conditions to develop in the mid-latitudes — where most of the world’s population resides — over the next month or so. Once the polar vortex is disrupted, it can take a month or more to recover, said Andrea Lopez Lang, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“We can see more active and shifted storm tracks and increases in cold air outbreaks in regions across the Northern Hemisphere,” she said in an email.
Experts also expressed concerns that the process of disseminating funding or services may change once they’re moved to other federal agencies. Nicholas Hillman, a professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says he wonders, for instance, if a college that is seeking funding from an OPE grant will now be asked different questions and will have to undergo a different review process, which could potentially create “additional hurdles” for colleges that are “already stretched pretty thin.”
College is notoriously a time of exploration and experimentation. At a school like the University of Wisconsin-Madison — one of the top party schools in the country — many students say they see that reflected in the campus dating scene.
In an online presentation Nov. 17, associate professor at the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona Maha Nassar presented a history of Palestinian student activism and how students have used peaceful protest for change.
he Weather Guys’ Oct. 27 column noted that the Arctic is the world’s fastest-warming region. As the Arctic warms, the temperature contrast between the poles and mid-latitudes weakens, slowing weather systems over North America.
For Wisconsin, that means more multi-day heavy rains, multi-week summer droughts and occasional deep winter freezes, even as average temperatures rise.
It’s an eventful moment in American higher education: The Trump administration is cracking down, artificial intelligence is ramping up, varsity athletes are getting paid and a college education is losing its status as the presumptive choice of ambitious high school seniors. To tell us what’s happening now and what might be coming around the corner, three university leaders — Sian Beilock, the president of Dartmouth; Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan; and Jennifer Mnookin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison — spoke with Ariel Kaminer, an editor at Times Opinion. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
It’s been said the best teachers can be judged by the success of those they mentor. In the case of Nobel Prize winner James D. Watson, who died this month at 97, a prime example is UW-Madison molecular biologist and biochemist Richard Burgess.
The hemp industry is facing major uncertainty nationwide, but University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have developed a breakthrough strain that could protect farmers from potential fallout. The strain, named ‘Badger G’, was created at the Wisconsin Crop Innovation Center.
QTS, the company planning to build a data center in the DeForest area, on Friday announced a $1.5 million partnership with UW-Madison.
The money will go towards a new research initiative focused on data center sustainability.
When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, students almost immediately found uses for the new technology, sometimes over the objections of their teachers. But whether schools choose to ban or embrace it, AI has become a part of everyday life for students.
Question: What is lake effect snow?
Answer: Lake effect snow forms when cold air passes over the warmer water of a lake. As cold air moves over water, the lower layers are warmed and moistened by the lake below. This makes the air mass unstable. Evaporation increases the moisture content of the air mass, which is then precipitated in the form of snow on the land downwind.
QTS Data Centers is partnering with the University of Wisconsin–Madison to advance sustainable digital infrastructure.
The initiative, Advancing Data Center Sustainability, involves a $1.5 million investment from QTS, aimed at driving innovation in responsible data center development.
Written by Susan Webb Yackee, a professor of public affairs and director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison.
QTS Data Centers is partnering with University of Wisconsin-Madison to invest $1.5 million in a new research initiative.
The new initiative, Advancing Data Center Sustainability, will help the university advance sustainable digital infrastructure though research and innovation.
Sometimes they are delivered alive in a Tupperware container that someone has neatly packed. Sometimes they arrive at PJ Liesch’s lab in a paper envelope, leaving him to piece together an insect’s broken wing or leg to identify it.
“My work, in partnership with states and national nonprofit organizations, shows that direct admissions programs can not only increase students’ early-college going behaviors but also subsequently raise their college enrollment outcomes,” said Taylor Odle, a professor of education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin. “These benefits are particularly large for students of color, those who will be the first in their family to attend college, and those from lower-income communities. States who have implemented direct admissions also consistently report higher enrollment levels following implementation.”
What citizenship has meant, and who was included, has expanded and contracted throughout American history, said Stephen Kantrowitz, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He said that while the word “citizen” is in the original Constitution, it is not defined.
“When the Constitution is written, nobody knows what citizenship means,” he said. “It’s a term of art, it comes out of the French revolutionary tradition. It sort of suggests an equality of the members of a political community, and it has some implications for the right to be a member of that political community. But it is … so undefined.”
The research team examined the audit reports of 19,200 financially distressed companies in Belgium between 2008 and 2017. The vast majority of the companies examined were private companies, as is the case with most Belgian companies. The study is authored by Kris Hardies from the University of Antwerp, Sanne Janssen of the Court of Audit, Ann Vanstraelen of Maastricht University, and Karla M. Zehms from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
ByHeart, the company linked to a botulism outbreak in infants, shut down one of its manufacturing plants this year after federal investigators found a series of safety violations, including a leaking roof and hundreds of dead bugs where infant formula was produced.
As the United States becomes more and more accepting of marijuana, many police and public health experts worry about the dangers people using those drugs pose on the road.
Heather Barkholtz has been experimenting in a laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to try to understand how cannabis products affect people’s driving.
Every Thanksgiving, Cheryl Peralez’s daughter flies out of Milwaukee to Charlotte, North Carolina, to spend time with family for the holiday.
This year, Peralez, a Cudahy resident, is worried her daughter’s flight later this month may be canceled due to the ongoing government shutdown. She is now wondering if she’ll have to drive instead of flying.
This week marks anniversaries of some strong November gales in the Great Lakes region. The most famous of these include the White Hurricane (Nov. 7-10, 1913), the Armistice Day Blizzard (Nov. 11, 1940), the Edmund Fitzgerald Storm (Nov. 9-10, 1975) and the storm Nov. 10-11, 1998.
If politics is the process by which we resolve our differences without violence and figure out how to govern, then it’s been a while since politics has worked well in America.
We study politics for a living, and we’ve never seen a time in recent history when Americans have been so divided by party lines. Everyone suffers when both major parties become so adversarial that they can’t even agree on funding the most basic government services.
Right now, the fall colors are reaching their peak. And it turns out our weather has a lot to do with the foliage we enjoy. The Weather Guys return to talk about the leaves, Great Lakes water temperatures, how weather forecasting has changed over the years and more.
The debate over daylight savings “misses a key ecological perspective,” says UW-Madison lecturer Rachelle Wilson Tollemar. Humans, like the natural world, require brighter and darker times of the year to properly function. “We are beings who also need winter to rest and summer to bloom,” she says.
November 10 marks a tragic chapter in Great Lakes history. The freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a vicious storm on Lake Superior, taking 29 crew members with her.
For many in Wisconsin, the day is more than a passing anniversary; it’s a reminder of how powerful the lakes can be.
In honor of the launch of our annual Share Your Holidays campaign, our Mark McPherson sat down with Dr. Shilagh Mirgain, a distinguished psychologist with UW Health, to break down the benefits of giving and paying it forward.
Aside from helping others and brightening their day, giving is also beneficial for the giver.
Next week, world leaders will descend on the port city of Belém, Brazil for the United Nations’ COP30, which begins Nov. 10.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the largest and most significant annual gathering in global efforts to address climate change, and the U.S. government will likely not attend. The Trump administration has made it clear that it wants no part in international efforts to take action on a rapidly warming planet.
UW Health encourages lung cancer screenings, as it is the leading cause of cancer death and the second most common cancer in the U.S. excluding skin cancer.
Dr. Cheryl Czerlanis, a medical oncologist and UW Health and a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, says screening is a critical tool for early cancer detection.
There’s a certain kind of candy that instantly takes you back-not to Halloween or the movie theater, but to your grandparents’ house. It’s those shiny red-and-green strawberry candies that lived in a glass dish on the coffee table. Unwrapping one revealed a hard, glossy shell that eventually gave way to a soft, jammy center bursting with strawberry sweetness.
In a groundbreaking study that may redefine our understanding of chromosome stability and its link to certain devastating diseases, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have identified a critical new role for the human replication protein A (RPA).
So how can you tell when your favorite candy changes? I compared current labels on the packages of Mr. Goodbar, Rolo caramels, and Almond Joy with past ingredient lists using the crowdsourced database Open Food Facts, a U.S. Department of Agriculture ingredient database, and data compiled by Richard Hartel, a food science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who each year writes down ingredients in common chocolate bars for one of his classes.
Does Halloween candy expire? Yes, but not in the same way that perishable items such as eggs, chicken and produce do. When candy goes bad, it’s “almost always a physical (drying out) or chemical (lipid oxidation, flavor change) change and not microbial,” Richard W. Hartel, a food science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says.
As darkness fell over the state capital Oct. 25, Makeela Magomolla, Tayah Dean and George Whitney led a group of more than 40 people on the winding paths of UW-Madison’s Lakeshore Nature Preserve.
Migratory birds are driving up avian flu cases across the country, reviving concerns about U.S. readiness to respond to outbreaks, especially during the government shutdown.
Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall in both Jamaica and Cuba in the last two days, followed what has unfortunately become a familiar pattern for major storms in a warming world.
After suffering a cardiac arrest while performing on stage last year, local musician Rökker is speaking out regarding his efforts to provide Automated External Defibrillators to public spaces.
Rökker collapsed on stage at the Gamma Ray Bar, and with the help of bystanders, he was taken to UW Health.
People in Madison are working to help Jamaicans prepare as a Category 5 hurricane is hitting the islandon Tuesday.
Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica as a Category 5 storm. It’s currently tied for the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the Atlantic. At least seven people have died from the hurricane.
Co-owners of Fya Syde Kitchen in Madison say they have been trying to stay in contact with their family, who are still in Jamaica, to make sure they know just how devastating this storm is.
Part of the shipment of food to be prepared for the next week’s University of Wisconsin football game arrived as usual at Camp Randall Stadium on a Thursday last year.
The collection was short in one product that in Wisconsin almost certainly would get noticed if concession stands ran out early: There weren’t enough brats.
The UW-Madison professor who contributed as a historian to Bad Bunny’s most recent album says his selection to headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show is a “victory” for Puerto Rico.
Bad Bunny and his team reached out to Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, UW-Madison associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean history, to write 17 historical narratives, which were made into videos called “visualizers,” to accompany his songs for his album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.”
The Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory was activated in 2022 to help the state monitor and track the disease, testing samples from poultry and wild birds across the state. Since then, scientists there have continued running surveillance year-round as detections rise and fall with migration seasons.
“Since then, we’ve lost several hundred million birds,” said Dr. Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. “It changes a little bit. Flu changes all the time, right? But this is still considered really the same outbreak that started in 2022. And it’s the biggest foreign animal disease outbreak in U.S. history.”
Dobby Stucki, a board-certified geriatric physical therapist and lecturer in the Doctor of Physical Health program at UW-Madison, joined second-year physical therapy student Zachary Carden at News 3 Now Live at Four on Thursday to discuss practical solutions for winter wellness.
A recent University of Wisconsin study found that overfishing is hurting the Wisconsin and Minnesota fish population more than climate change.
Most species of fish are impacted primarily by overfishing, though climate change has a detectable impact on the upper midwest region of the United States, co-author of the study and associate professor Olaf Jensen said. “When we compare the magnitude of [climate change and fishing], for most species, fishing is still having a much larger impact than warming,” Jensen said.
University of Wisconsin Ambrose-Hesseltine professor of U.S. military history and retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel John Hall said it is unlikely troops will be sent to Madison, Wisconsin, as the federal government is limited in its capacity to deploy the National Guard in the way it has thus far.
From Tennessee classrooms to university research labs, artificial intelligence is helping teachers tailor instruction to every student. Developers like Kira’s Andrea Pasinetti and professors like Shamya Karumbaiah say that AI can act as a digital teaching assistant, tracking progress and giving real-time feedback, but only if it supports, not replaces, the human teacher.
Older Americans are often the victims of ageist attitudes. Then, a new UW department forms to improve treatment of larynx disorders. Then, we learn about possible cures for disease coming out of cell therapy research at the UW.
Dr. Jim Conway, the medical director at UW Health’s immunization program, said some pharmacies may be concerned about a state law which generally requires a prescription before a pharmacist administers a vaccine to someone under 6 years old. Even so, Conway said the state directive was intended to clear that up, by specifying that prescriptions aren’t required for the COVID vaccine.
“It’s not just flipping a switch,” Conway said. “We had to get vaccine ordered and get it shipped in and then get it distributed to the clinics. So that was happening … and then everything was finally in place and we were ready to go. We’re very excited.”
According to University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Zachary Morris, the university has experts in nearly every area of a rising field of cancer research called theranostics.
Morris, a faculty member at the School of Medicine and Public Health and Chair of the Department of Oncology, leads the UW-Madison Initiative for Theranostics and Particle Therapy. He told The Daily Cardinal the theranostics field has quickly been gaining traction over the past decade, and UW-Madison is poised to be at the forefront.
A study of Wisconsin school board policies has found that nearly all districts have policies protecting students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and the vast majority protect students from discrimination based on gender identity.
“I don’t think there’s enough work that describes the environment that we’re in. But then the project gained some urgency when we started hearing from educators across the state about the need for some sort of description of the state of guidance affecting teachers and students,” said Mollie McQuillan, lead author of the school board policy research and an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at UW-Madison.
The trial, led by the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Davis will look at hundreds of thousands of mammograms at UW Health and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s medical school, as well as academic medical centers in four other states. Wisconsin researchers say it’s an important foray into better understanding both the potential benefits and drawbacks of using AI in cancer screenings.
Talking to oneself out loud—known in psychology as “self-talk” or “thinking out loud”—is a common and beneficial behavior, not a sign of irrationality. Rather than indicating madness or social isolation, self-talk serves as a powerful cognitive tool with a range of psychological benefits. Gary Lupyan, associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, explains that this practice can improve memory and concentration, challenging the stereotype that talking to oneself is a symptom of instability.
In one experiment, participants who named objects out loud were able to locate them more quickly than those who remained silent. As Lupyan explains, “Even though we all know what a banana looks like, saying the word out loud helps the brain activate additional information about that item, including what it looks like.” Verbalizing names or thoughts engages both visual and contextual processing in the brain, enhancing identification and recall.
“Research shows we can actually train our attention and our meta-awareness, and that this is a learnable skill,” says Richard Davidson, PhD, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds.
“Because this idea of ‘morning sickness’ is common, a lot of women don’t report their symptoms,” says Cynthie Wautlet, MD, an OB-GYN at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Reporting your symptoms is especially important since early detection and prevention are the best ways to control nausea.
“Eating every two hours — just a small amount — can be easier on the stomach,” says Wautlet. To feel full from these smaller meals, she adds that high-protein, nutrient-dense foods will help. But you should avoid foods with smells or spices that may trigger your nausea.
“In Wisconsin overcrowding is a huge issue. Assigning more people to a room than they’re supposed to, which, of course, affects your sleep,” said Farah Kaiksow, associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, who has researched aging and care in prison.
Benefits that people with low incomes do receive may be outweighed when considered alongside other provisions in the bill, said Andrew Reschovsky, professor emeritus of public affairs and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This is especially true of cuts to safety net programs such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Reschovsky said.
“This is the dilemma – if you count those things in with the tax side, the net will be that a lot of people are going to be worse off.”
