Can filmmakers make a good pandemic film five years after the globe-changing year of 2020? The recently released “Eddington” makes an attempt, but focuses on a hyper local experience with a fictional small town in New Mexico. On the Buzz to talk about the movie is Jeff Smith, a professor specializing in cinema studies in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I think it is always hard to come down on the side of ‘no, this technology should not be used in this space,’” said Jeremy Morris, a professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I think the more interesting question is ‘how do we use it and how does that come to define the things we listen to?’”
Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has studied how best to teach African American students. She told us an encouraging teacher can change a life.
“Many of our young people have their ceilings lowered, that somewhere around fourth or fifth grade, their thoughts are, ‘I’m not going to be anything special.’ What I think is probably happening at St. Mary’s is young women come in as, perhaps, ninth graders and are told, ‘Here’s what we expect to happen. And here’s how we’re going to help you get there.'”
The University of Wisconsin’s new indoor practice facility has a name: the Kellner Family Athletic Center.
Wisconsin officially unveiled the moniker for the $285 million facility at an event before Thursday’s football season opener against Miami (Ohio) at Camp Randall Stadium.
Written by ssistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The reason why it resonated with students … is because it felt like an opportunity for them to be met on their own ground and to have a kind of shared ground with which to meet instructors or meet ideas,” says Nate Marshall, award-winning poet and assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Ultimately, like, the role of an educator is to connect the students in order to serve the students. So, if that’s not your way to connect with them, that’s cool. You find other ways.”
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that automation apps, like iPhone’s ‘shortcuts’, can be a vehicle potential abusers use to control their partner’s activities on their mobile device.
Rahul Chatterjee, an assistant professor of computer science at UW and founder of the Madison Tech Clinic, said Madison Tech Clinic helps individuals who have been virtually stalked or harassed by their partners.
“A lot of the participants in our trials have tried one or more different types of either behavioral treatments or pharmacological treatments,” Christopher Nicholas said. “They’re looking for another option.”
He’s optimistic psychedelics paired with therapy will give patients a new tool. He worked on a 2023 study that found participants’ depression scores improved about six weeks after a single dose of psilocybin.
“The labor market has cooled and so companies now are starting to feel they have more leeway, more leverage with their employees,” said Barry Gerhart, a professor of management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A new report published by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in the journal Current Biology may hold clues to an unfolding mushroom mystery: the origins and possible consequences of the invasive golden oyster mushroom.
John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the work, said the find is exciting because it opens a window into a critical and mysterious period of human evolution between 2.5 million and 3 million years ago. He said he’s eager to see the work published but noted that such finds raise as many questions as they answer.
Written by rofessor of cultural anthropology and international studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Invasive golden oyster mushrooms, a wood decay fungus, can threaten forests’ fungal biodiversity and harm the health of ecosystems that are already vulnerable to climate change and habitat destruction,” said Aishwarya Veerabahu, a mycologist and graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who recently co-authored a study on the species.
Written by ssistant professor of natural resource economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Written by Jordan Ellenberg, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Written by Ph.D. candidate in botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It feels like home when I hear it,” says Kelly Elizabeth Wright, an assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who grew up in Tennessee. “It’s from where I was raised. But it makes me feel included and welcome. And I think that’s part of why people are embracing it, because it has this capacity to make others feel included and welcome.”
“The theme and the ethos of this record is sort of affirming that Puerto Rican culture in the face of cultural and physical displacement of Puerto Ricans,” said Meléndez-Badillo, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is attending one of the concerts this weekend.
Data on the long-term health effects is limited, because vapes are relatively new and constantly evolving. Many people who use them are in their teens or 20s; it might take a while before further effects become apparent.
Even so, “common sense tells you — your mom would tell you — that a superheated chemical inhaling right into your lungs isn’t going to be good,” said Dr. James H. Stein, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine. Increasingly, research is pointing to the reality that while vapes do not contain the same dangerous chemicals as cigarettes, they come with their own harms.
The shape of a cloud, where water accumulates in the cloud, and how dry the air is between the cloud and the ground in different locations, are all factors that might influence how much rain hits the ground in a certain location, according to Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist and manager of the Wisconsin Environmental Mesonet at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Getting those very precise measurements at those very precise locations is something that we’re still working on, improving that science,” Vagasky says. Progress hinges on more advanced computer modeling and a better understanding of how precipitation forms in clouds.
The Black Males in Engineering (BME) video series, led by UW-Madison School of Education faculty member Dr. Brian Burt, recently received a Silver Telly Award in the Campaign – Education & Training category. The honor recognizes non-broadcast video campaigns created for general educational purposes and underscores the series’ impact on addressing critical gaps in STEM education support.
Pablo Moreno-Yaeger from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is presenting the research at the conference, said in a statement: “Our study suggests this phenomenon isn’t limited to Iceland, where increased volcanicity has been observed, but could also occur in Antarctica. Other continental regions, like parts of North America, New Zealand and Russia, also now warrant closer scientific attention.”
Written by meteorologist and research program manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Slower wage growth has an outsized impact on the cost of services, said Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Because services are provided, you know, the main input is going to be labor,” he said.
But Chinn said there are factors that could actually lead to higher wages in the service sector. For instance, employees might ask for higher wages to help them cover the cost of tariffs.
Biologists interested in reconstructing the family trees of spiders and their relatives have long sought a complete sea spider genome, said Prashant Sharma of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is an author of the new paper. Because sea spiders are members of a group that are siblings of arachnids on land, characteristics they share with modern land spiders could be traced to a common ancestor.
“A new party is going to benefit most from Musk if they can draw on his resources but keep him in the background,” said Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Elections Research Center. “And if he can portray himself as an innovator and a tech entrepreneur — and somebody who is really contributing to the American economy and funding this new operation without being its front person — I think that’s probably going to lead to the most success.”
Written by ssociate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and tudent in computer science, both a the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Written by rofessor of Scandinavian Studies, Folklore, and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW’s newly expanded $174 million facility offers plenty of high-tech tools and advanced care options—but it’s the heart behind the work that stands out.
“Across the nation, there’s a shortage of veterinary technicians and staff in the veterinary profession,” said Dr. Chris Snyder, hospital director. “Giving an opportunity to welcome them in and to see what cutting-edge veterinary care can look like—and what a career working in a teaching hospital can be—and how rewarding that is to be able to train others.”
Keith Bechtol, an associate professor in the physics department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has been involved with the Rubin Observatory for nearly a decade, is the project’s system verification and validation scientist, making sure the observatory’s various components are functioning properly.
He said teams were floored when the images streamed in from the camera.
“There were moments in the control room where it was just silence, and all the engineers and all the scientists were just seeing these images, and you could just see more and more details in the stars and the galaxies,” Bechtol told NBC News. “It was one thing to understand at an intellectual level, but then on this emotional level, we realized basically in real time that we were doing something that was really spectacular.”
UW-Madison political science professor Mark Copelovitch discusses how the unstable landscape of tariffs and war abroad disrupt both the overall global marketplace and the everyday lives of American consumers.
“I think we’ll learn a lot about what the capabilities of various A.I. protocols are from how well we can get them to generate material that’s of interest,” said Jordan S. Ellenberg, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is part of a team applying for an Exponentiating Mathematics grant. “We have no intuition yet about which problems are going to be hard and which problems are easy. We need to learn that.”
Kelly Elizabeth Wright, an assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the lead editor of Among the New Words, said that it can be difficult to pinpoint when a phrase is created, and whether or not the language comes from African American Language or if it is just used within Black communities.
“I don’t think that it’s inaccurate to say that Black Twitter and other online spaces were using these terms maybe first or more visibly than when it was floating around in high school classrooms all across the country this year,” Dr. Wright said. “I also don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that young people online are using this term. I think both things can be true at the same time.”
UW-Madison history professor Sasha Maria Suarez describes programs by tribal nations, K-12 schools and higher education institutions to teach Wisconsin’s Indigenous languages to learners of all ages.
Many falls can be prevented, said Dr. Gerald Pankratz, a geriatrician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That makes him “optimistic about this issue,” he said.
In his practice, Dr. Pankratz said, it is not unusual for people assessed as having a 50 percent chance of falling over the next year to cut their risk in half by taking action to avoid slips and trips.
University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Annette Zimmermann is a political philosopher of AI and co-lead of the school’s Uncertainty and AI research group.
“Much like many other experts working in this area, I’ve been deeply concerned about imposing such a heavy handed blanket ban on any sort of state-based efforts to effectively regulate this space,” Zimmermann said. “Right now, unfortunately, we’re in a regulatory landscape where we are heavily relying on individual states to think very hard about how to protect ordinary citizens and consumers from these kinds of harmful outputs.”
James Li is the A. A. Alexander Associate Professor of Psychology and an investigator at the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that Kennedy’s statements on the harms of medications like Adderall aren’t based in science.
“The evidence is quite clear that the medications that are currently FDA-approved and prescribed to treat ADHD in particular are fairly well tolerated. They don’t lead to early mortality … and they are generally very beneficial when used properly under doctor’s orders,” Li said.
All that most students see of the University of Wisconsin Zoological Museum (UWZM), located in the Noland Zoology Building, is the fourth floor staircase’s sign prohibiting entrance from all other than museum staff.
Behind the locked doors, however, the museum’s extensive collections of animal skins and skeletons serve as a powerful resource for research and learning.
The Orion Initiative, administered through the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, aims to invest in partnerships between frontline rural providers and the academic medical community.
Rising housing costs have been forcing some Wisconsinites to delay medical care, which can lead to negative health outcomes for residents and communities.
That’s according to a new report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension as part of a project examining livability in rural communities led by Tessa Conroy, associate professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison.
Book review written by Porter Shreve, director of the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
According to Nasia Safdar, an infectious disease professor at the University of Wisconsin in the US, this concept has attracted interest from the pet food industry. The idea would be to develop products marketed as promoting the growth of beneficial bacteria in cats and dogs, which might then be transferred to their owners, she says.
“That angle has been an attractive one for people to fund, because for most of us, it’s the human condition that we’re interested in,” says Safdar. “So what role can the animal play in that?” she asks.
While many kids will reach for screens, Dr. Shilagh Mirgain, a distinguished psychologist with UW Health, said this doesn’t have to be the default.
She suggests going to the library with your kids and having them check out books.
She also recommended parents take their kids to a local or state park, even going as far as planning a picnic. “Think about bringing your food outside to eat. Kids outside thrive,” she said.
Written by James Pikul, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UW-Madison.
Written by ssociate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Collaborative for Reproductive Equity released a study this spring showing that during the 13-month period in which abortion was largely unavailable in Wisconsin, OB-GYNs struggled to provide care for pregnant patients and treat pregnancy complications because of unclear legal guidelines.
Clausen was born March 28, 1941, in Minneapolis, but grew up in Jamestown, N.D. He earned degrees from North Dakota State University, the University of Wisconsin and Boston’s Berklee College of Music. He later studied film scoring with Earle Hagen and was a two-year member of Lehman Engel’s BMI Musical Theater Workshop.
“Cave ecosystems are so fragile that if you start pulling on this thread, what else are you going to unravel that may create bigger problems in the cave system?” said University of Wisconsin–Madison wildlife specialist David Drake to the Badger Herald’s Kiran Mistry in December.
The gradual retreat from telework “presents a valuable opportunity for companies that continue to offer remote work to differentiate themselves from the competition,” said Anyi Ma, an assistant professor of management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “These companies now have the chance to attract and hire the most talented employees who prefer remote work.”
While the documentary takes a nationwide view, there’s a lot of Wisconsin in it. Among the interview subjects is Ethelene Whitmire, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who talks about Regina Anderson Andrews, the first African American to lead a branch of the New York Public Library and a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
With the 100th day of President Donald Trump’s second term in office approaching, University of Wisconsin-Madison professors and staff met Thursday to take stock of the growing threats to higher education and U.S. democracy and to discuss collective action to push back.
Two years ago, Dr. James A. Bigham, a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, began teaching medical students on the issue, not just providing statistics around firearms injury but also arranging for instruction from firearms trainers on how guns function and why someone may want to own one.
Back in summer 2013, paleontologist Dave Lovelace took some University of Wisconsin-Madison students on a dig in Wyoming. There, they found an ankle bone in an area where fossils typically aren’t found.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, known for helping UW-Madison commercialize discoveries such as vitamin D enrichment, a blood thinning drug and stem cells, may seem like a solid presence on campus whose existence was never in doubt.
But WARF, the nation’s first university technology transfer office, had to fight for survival from its founding in 1925 until at least 1980, when the federal Bayh-Dole Act said universities could retain patent rights on federally funded research.
UW-Madison is adding a business partnership floor to its upcoming engineering building, aimed at opening a direct pipeline between students and the kinds of businesses that may one day employee them.
The university announced the ranking change Monday alongside an announcement that it had spent a record-breaking $1.7 billion on research for fiscal year 2023, a 13.7% increase over the prior year. UW-Madison’s growth outpaced the national increase of 11.2% spent on university research and development, bringing the national amount spent to $108.8 billion.
Nuzzo also pointed to a recent study published in Nature, led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, an H5N1 expert at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, that showed the virus that infected the first reported dairy worker in Texas had acquired mutations that made it more severe in animals as well as allowing it to move more efficiently between them — via airborne respiration.
“From my perspective, self experimentation is not fundamentally unethical,” said Alta Charo, a professor emerita of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “It may be unwise. It may indeed be tainted by an unrealistic set of expectations. … But I don’t see it as fundamentally unethical.”
This is when schools are more likely to see departures from special education teachers, said Kimber Wilkinson, a special education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. New teachers often tell her about their concerns with morale and heavy workloads once they land a role at a school.
“The Senate candidates are often well known to voters” because they run intense campaigns with a flood of advertisements, said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And because turnout was similar for the presidential and the Senate races in most states, he argued, it is likely that some people are still splitting their ticket between the two parties.“So voters in some places are making real distinctions to say this is not somebody who is aligned with Trump or represents him in the same way, or this is someone who has the state’s interest in mind in a way that other candidates don’t,” he said. “And that really is a different story from one state to the next.”
