Even after sounding warnings about the impacts of climate change on human health for more than 25 years, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute, was still surprised at the many ways researchers found climate hazards affect disease.
“They found over 1,000 unique pathways,” said Patz, who participated as a co-author. “That to me was striking.”
Steve Ackerman and Jon Martin are respected meteorology professors at the University of Wisconsin who have a long-running series called “The Weather Guys.” On their website, they discussed another way dogs “detect” storms changes. They write, “Thunder, the loud noise that accompanies lightning, gives this nimbostratus cloud the name thunderstorm. Some dogs don’t like loud sounds, whether from a thunderclap or fireworks.”
“This is an assessment by an international scientific body that looked at all of the data and said monarchs are endangered,” says Karen Oberhauser, an expert on monarch butterfly biology and conservation and the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. “That means they’re in danger of their population going so low that it wouldn’t be able to recover.”
“If climate is changing, the risk of these diseases are changing,” said study co-author Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Glioblastoma is one of the most deadly forms of cancer, often returning with a vengeance after surgery to remove it. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have now developed an immunity-boosting hydrogel that can be injected into the brain after surgery to clear out remaining cancer stem cells.
Carol D Ryff at the University of Wisconsin’s Institute of Ageing told me about stereotype embodiment theory, which was proposed by the Yale psychologist Becca Levy. It says that the culture presents older people as moving slowly, being hard of hearing, talking too loud, and unable to read small print. These depictions are funny when we’re young; then we grow old and enact them, and they undermine a person’s sense of wellbeing.
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On her first day as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jennifer Mnookin said she is working to build a “bold vision” for the state’s flagship campus by connecting with stakeholders, including state lawmakers who opposed her chancellorship.
Dr. Donoughe contacted Christopher Rycroft, an applied mathematician now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and showed him the dancing nuclei. ‘Wow!’ Dr. Rycroft said. He had never seen anything like it, but he recognized the potential for a data-powered collaboration; he and Jordan Hoffmann, then a doctoral student in Dr. Rycroft’s lab, joined the study.
“These changes in recent years have prompted approaches that are beginning to make a real impact on improving the care and outcome of children with diseases thought incurable 10 years ago,” says Paul Sondel, the Reed and Carolee Walker professor of pediatric oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and a pediatric oncologist for more than 40 years. “Nevertheless, while we are seeing new progress, we know there is still a long way to go to be able to cure all children with cancer.”
Jennifer Mnookin spent her first day on campus meeting with students, faculty and campus leaders as she takes on the role as UW-Madison’s 30th chancellor.
Mnookin, who comes to Madison from her previous role as dean of the UCLA School of Law, said her primary goal is to have conversations with UW-Madison students and staff and community and state leaders to discuss ways to keep UW-Madison affordable, while also addressing challenges like accessibility, funding and diversity.
New University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin met with students and staff members Thursday during an ice cream social to mark her first day on campus.
Scientists identified the moth with the help of the University of Wisconsin Diagnostic Lab.
Coyotes have become practically ubiquitous across the lower 48 United States, and they’re increasingly turning up in cities. The draws are abundant food and green space in urban areas.
-David Drake, Bret Shaw, Mary Magnuson
Lizzo’s lyric change in June primed people to recognize the language in Beyoncé’s album, said Sami Schalk, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the upcoming book “Black Disability Politics.”“The important thing is that it was brought up again and slowly over time, we will hopefully see more people thinking differently about this word,” Dr. Schalk said.
“It’s literally the most popular flavor and fragrance in the world, and it’s a multimillion-dollar industry,” University of Wisconsin botany professor and vanilla expert Ken Cameron said recently to On Wisconsin, the UW-Madison alumni magazine.
At Grandparents University, the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s intergenerational education program, learners young and old enroll for a taste of campus life, the chance to learn from college instructors and an opportunity to spend time with their loved ones.
That’s when Martin and his colleagues — Joanna Bundus, a biology post-doctoral fellow at UW-Madison, and Susana Wadgymar, an assistant professor of biology at Davidson College in North Carolina — founded Project ENABLE (Enriching Navajo As a Biology Language for Education), an online dictionary of biology terms translated from English to Diné Bizaad, a Navajo language.
Silicon Valley is the perfect example of the international hiring phenomenon. Researcher Sarah Edwards from the University of Wisconsin-Madison explains that “the expansion of Silicon Valley into increasingly intimate and global spaces” will result in the decentralization of the Valley as the leading startup city. Other cities like Miami are thriving in the industry thanks to digital nomads and increased job mobility (as was shown during the Great Resignation.)
Talk to your family and friends as well as other members of your community to find out whether they’ve had Covid recently or know anybody who has or recently had Covid, Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. Because you’re more likely to interact with people in your network, you may get a better sense of incidence in your community and what your own risk of getting sick may be.
Now, engineers at The Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed battery-free sweat sensors that can measure several chemicals and give accurate readouts at a range of concentrations. Their sensors can be worn like a necklace or even implanted into the skin, where they would work throughout a user’s lifetime.
Dr. Nathaniel Chin, who grew up in Watertown and got undergraduate and medical degrees from UW-Madison, planned to specialize in infectious diseases. But during his internal medicine residency at the University of California-San Diego, his father — a family medicine doctor in Watertown — was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
OBERHAUSER: If you see it, you report it. So in the United States, you can report it to a program called Journey North, which is something that we run out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. And the final thing that people can do now that you’ve heard this interview, you are an expert on monarchs, so you can spread the word.
RASCOE: That’s Karen Oberhauser. She directs the arboretum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is the founder and director of the Monarch Lava Monitoring Project. Thank you so much for talking with us.
Written by Andrea Dutton, an international expert on climate change and sea level rise who is a MacArthur Fellow and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
A named source like Bernard is a good start, said Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin. If the Star had other sources, it may not have wanted to provide them at the risk of identifying the victim, she said.
Even before the Supreme Court decision, there was evidence that some people tried to self-manage abortions with things like herbs, physical trauma and uterine trauma, said Jenny Higgins, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Ajay Sethi, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, still works at home, and avoids eating with strangers indoors. He masks in crowded places, but at home, as contractors remodel his bathrooms, he has decided not to—a pivot from last year. His chances of suffering from the virus haven’t changed much; what has is “probably more my own fatigue,” he told me, “and my willingness to accept more risk than before.”
“They’re not just going to be pretty pictures necessarily,” said Dr. Michael Maseda, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “There’s going to be scientific information that is probably fundamentally new.”
“I’m not anti-CBD,” said Barry Gidal, a professor of pharmacy and neurology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who co-wrote the study and worked as a consultant for the Epidiolex manufacturer. “There needs to be oversight so that patients know what they are getting.”
“Liberals or even most moderates never listen to it, they don’t pay attention to it, they don’t see it, they don’t hear it,” said Lewis A. Friedland, a professor who studies radio at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So you don’t know it exists, you don’t know how widespread and how powerful it really is.” In Wisconsin, he said, local radio stations play “extreme right-wing propaganda” five or six hours a day.
“In 1801-1802 the Federalists are on their way out,” Joshua Braver, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, told Newsweek. “They lose in the revolution of 1800 and the election to Jefferson, and they’re really afraid of Jefferson.”
“These are really hardball tactics,” said Barry C. Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies elections and democracy issues. “It’s not unlike the United States Senate refusing to confirm Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court to hold open a seat for Republicans.
Each of the original 13 states was tasked with ratifying the proposed constitution. By virtue of its prominent place among those original states, Virginia was critical to the process, said John Kaminski, director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution at the University of Wisconsin.
Newsweek asked two experts —retired judge Nancy Gertner and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School Joshua Braver—to explain whether adding more justices to the Supreme Court is possible at all, how likely such a move is to succeed and why some Democrats are asking for it to happen, while others oppose it.
“I hadn’t heard much about the ban until quite recently,” said Jenny Higgins, a professor of gender and women’s studies and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. “Folks didn’t really believe that overturning Roe was possible, or palatable, until recently.”
“It would be surprising for guidance to be issued before the court hands down the Dobbs opinion,” said Miriam Seifter, a professor of administrative law, constitutional, and state and local government law at the University of Wisconsin.
Turning more attention to the bowl is a boom in microbiome research that “has made it apparent just how important the organisms living in our gut really are,” says Joshua J. Coon, Ph.D., a professor of biomolecular chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Research provides some support for this idea. In one small study, researchers at the University of Wisconsin created a game based on Jamal Davis, an imaginary Black male science student who experiences discrimination in his PhD program. Players took the role of Jamal Davis and experienced what he experiences because of his skin color. When questioned afterward, the players said they understood how he felt and could take on his perspective, indications that they felt empathy.
Co-authored by Tova Walsh, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network and Alvin Thomas, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
Dr. James Conway, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. said it was hard to pinpoint how much protection either vaccine might provide given that newer, more contagious versions of the virus are now circulating. “You’re kind of playing Whac-a-Mole,” he said.
“Time is really of the essence here,” said Justin Boutilier, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Survival from cardiac arrest decreases by between 7 to 15% for every minute that you go without treatment.”
Boutilier describes obstacles to emergency response —such as traffic or difficult-to-reach rural locations — as “the perfect storm.” He has been designing a prototype drone that takes off as soon as someone calls 911.
Or the world could simply leave the United States and its kludgy economy behind. Gregory Nemet, a public-affairs professor at the University of Wisconsin and the author of How Solar Energy Became Cheap, argues that the world is now on track to transition no matter what the United States does. “There’s so much momentum right now in this clean-energy transition. It will still happen, but it will happen more slowly” if no bill passes, he told me.
“Is it very unlikely that the numbers would show up 13 to 19? Yes,” said Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor at University of Wisconsin at Madison who wrote about the lottery in his book “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking.”But any other set of numbers is “equally unlikely,” Ellenberg quickly added, speaking by phone from his front porch in Madison. “On the one hand, it’s very striking. On the other hand, a very improbable thing happens every time the lottery numbers are drawn. Every particular outcome is very unlikely. Otherwise people would win too much.”
Timothy Bertram, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Wisconsin, is one of many scientists who are eager to both see SOARS in action and contribute to its upcoming investigation of the sea-air boundary.
Then in mid-May, a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison found that eliminating pollution from fossil fuel combustion in power plants could avoid as many as 11,600 premature deaths in the U.S. every year, with an annual value of $132 billion. The researchers looked at five additional sectors: industrial fuel use; residential and commercial fuel use; on-road vehicles; non-road vehicles; as well as oil and gas production and refining. They found that exposure to the small particulates emitted by combustion in these six sectors combined resulted in 205,000 deaths in one year. And, due to the disparities in the siting of power plants and other facilities, the victims of this pollution are far more often low-income and people of color.
From Crayola polls to legitimate peer-reviewed studies, the BBC investigated the science of how we perceive color and found that not only do we adore blue, but our perceptions of color are shaped by our experiences. Highlighting research from University of Rhode Island associate professor Lauren Labrecque and University of Wisconsin psychology professor Karen Schloss, the BBC reports that our preference for blue is longstanding, and that we start to give meaning to colors as we age.
“Individual people’s politics is so much more about who they think they are in the world as opposed to policy stances,” Kathy Cramer, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me. “It’s about ‘Am I being heard? Am I being respected?’” To have any hope of clawing back their former terrain, Democrats need to make voters feel like the answer is yes.
“There are places that have already lost all of their topsoil,” Jo Handelsman, author of “A World Without Soil,” and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told CNBC.
“Bumblebees are a vitally important group of pollinators [and] the new findings are especially important given the widespread global use of glyphosate,” said Prof James Crall, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, US, who was not part of the study team. “[Current] environmental safety testing is insufficient for identifying often unpredictable effects on behaviour, physiology, or reproduction that occur at sublethal exposures.”
Fossil fuel spikes could well accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels in favor of wind and solar, according to Greg Nemet at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Joining me now is Betül Kaçar. She’s an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the department of bacteriology. She’s also the principal investigator of Project MUSE, a major NASA-funded astrobiology research initiative. Betül Kaçar, thanks very much for being here.Betül Kaçar
Betül Kaçar (18:33): Thanks for having me.
Ultimately, the question of whether the dollar will remain a global reserve currency answers itself. To misquote a famous authority on political economy, “A day may come when the dollar loses its central role as the dominant global reserve currency, but it is not this day.” It is not even this decade, and quite likely not even this century. It won’t even become a possibility until the E.U. becomes a true fiscal and political union — or until China develops an accountable liberal government and much more developed private financial markets and finally accepts the free movement of capital flows. None of those scenarios seems likely to happen soon.
Mark Copelovitch (@mcopelov) is professor of political science and public affairs and director of European Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author (with David A. Singer) of “Banks on the Brink: Global Capital, Securities Markets, and the Political Roots of Financial Crises” (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Reading experts have praised the plan, but said that the details of the implementation would be key. Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist and reading expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that all students could benefit from better reading instruction.
“Right now, it’s a giant white-elephant-type project,” said Steven Deller, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The water lines that they ran into it, the highway infrastructure that they ran into it, the electric lines that they ran into it—it’s all way overcapacity,” he said.
Of course, none of this is inevitable. History shows that it is the victor who gets to organize postwar tribunals. For Ukraine to bring Putin and his circle to justice, it will first have to win the war. There is also a dark alternative: a Nuremberg-type tribunal of Ukrainian leaders held by Russia. This would inevitably be a Soviet-style show trial—a kangaroo court that would degrade international law and could taint the meaning of Nuremberg forever.
-Francine Hirsch, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II(Oxford, 2020).
“Right now, it’s a giant white-elephant-type project,” said Steven Deller, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The water lines that they ran into it, the highway infrastructure that they ran into it, the electric lines that they ran into it—it’s all way overcapacity,” he said.
Another problem with children learning these stereotypes at such a young age is that once stereotypes are learned, it’s nearly impossible to unlearn them. Patricia Devine, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison explained to Wisconsin Public Radio, “A lot of people sincerely embrace egalitarian values, but being socialized into our culture, they learn stereotypes very early in childhood, around age three, four and five. They’re firmly ingrained; they’re frequently activated, very well-practiced, and they end up being the default, or habitual kind of response.” She adds, “I’m not sure if it’s possible to unlearn them…I know I shouldn’t act based on the stereotypes, but it’s not as though my awareness or my knowledge of those stereotypes just goes away.”
Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said that while he found some of the revisions “encouraging,” he was concerned that “objectionable” concepts remain.
“These [particles] get deep into the lungs and cause both respiratory and cardiac ailments,” says Jonathan Patz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the authors of the study. “They are pretty much the worst pollutant when it comes to mortality and hospitalization.”
“We have the technologies available to get us to essentially an emissions-free electricity sector nationwide in the U.S.,” said Nicholas Mailloux, the lead author of that study and a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Some other sectors will be trickier, like aviation.”
