Quoted: “The ecosystem concept ecologists now use has been refined since it was first introduced by Tansley almost a century ago,” says Stephen Carpenter, a scientist in the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Ecosystem science studies the interactions of all the living and non-living entities in a specified place. This definition is consistent with modern concepts of energy, nutrient flow and biogeochemistry, which barely existed during Tansley’s career.”
Tag: featured
Is a vaping-linked lung illness a public health crisis? That depends on who you ask
Quoted: Communication scholar Dietram Scheufele at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said that at any point in time, roughly five issues tend to dominate a person’s memory. A constantly shuffling set of concerns struggle endlessly for one’s attention.
A Note to the Nobel Prize Selection Committee
A professor here at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Howard Temin represented what society expects from us and had the characteristics that make society willing to fund our work. People want scientists who get up every morning committed to finding the truth.
UW sports analytics, bracketology and solving the opioid crisis
Noted: According to the UW-Madison College of Engineering website, Albert researches “modeling and solving real-world discrete optimization problems with application to homeland security, disasters, emergency response, public services, and healthcare.”
The research on emergency response, for example, focuses on how to match the right resources with the right needs at the right time. In one aspect of this research, Albert looks at how to get the right mix of vehicles to an emergency.
National Academy of Sciences pulls video on possibility of designer babies
Quoted: “I am disappointed by this,” said Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin, Madison ethicist involved in past academy panels on gene editing. She said the tweet and video could further misunderstanding about editing’s most important uses or wrongly suggest that it’s possible now to bestow traits like intelligence.
Wisconsin manufacturing hub asks, ‘what factory recession?’
Quoted: “We have pretty much tapped out the labor market,” says Steve Deller, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We have companies that are saying that that’s causing part of the slowdown. It’s a bottleneck.”
What electronic games can teach us
Quoted: Green, now a cognitive psychologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, admits that the benefits of playing hours upon hours of Call of Duty may be limited in real life.
UW Study: Electric Pulses Hidden By Hats Could Help Reverse Balding
Now, a team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison think they have a promising — and discreet — solution. A device, hidden by a hat, that sends low-energy electric pulses to stimulate hair growth.
As the economy teeters, Trump’s ‘eighth wonder of the world’ wobbles with it
Quoted: “Every couple of months there’s been a different plan,” said Steven Deller, an economist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “First it was 13,000 jobs. Now it might be 1,000 jobs. They’ve really scaled back on what they plan to do.”
New Study Finds Connected Habitats See Increases In Biodiversity
Researchers measured 239 plant species over 18 years as part of a habitat experiment at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, said the study’s lead author Ellen Damschen, an integrative biology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If We Connect Fragmented Habitat, New Species Will Come, Study Shows
“Like compound interest in a bank, the number of species increases at a constant rate each year, resulting in a much larger bottom line over time in habitats that are connected by a corridor than those that are not,” lead author Ellen Damschen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says in the press release.
Connecting fractured habitats has long-lasting ecological benefits, study in Science finds
Few plants grow beneath the timber trees’ dense canopy. Spongy mats of pine needles, up to a foot thick, cover the forest floor. “I might see zero species in the understory,” said study author Ellen Damschen, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Maybe one or two.
Flash drought declared in Washington due to abnormally hot and dry weather
Quoted: Jason Otkin, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin who published a study on the characteristics of flash droughts, wrote in an email that the D.C. area “is on the northern edge of large region centered on the southern Appalachians” that has seen sudden drought onset due “to a prolonged period of much drier and warmer than normal conditions.”
Rudy Giuliani’s role in Ukraine’s investigation of Joe Biden
Quoted: Soliciting help or anything of value from foreign officials in an election is unusual and could be illegal, said Yoshiko Herrera, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It’s also uncommon for a president’s personal attorney to communicate with foreign officials on matters that could influence White House policy, she said.
At Yale’s Singapore college, a canceled course on dissent triggers censorship claims
Quoted: Most U.S. universities that pursue such growth “recognize that their assumptions about academic freedom will need to be adjusted,” said Kris Olds, an expert on the globalization of public education, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “How far will they bend, though?”
Rates of Autism and ADHD Are Increasing Significantly for U.S. Kids
Quoted: It isn’t clear whether the greater prevalence of reported ADHD and ASD cases is necessarily a bad thing. According to Maureen Durkin, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, in an editorial appearing accompanying the study in Pediatrics, greater awareness of the disorders and better diagnosis might be largely responsible for the higher numbers.
Harry Potter’s Broadway Box Office Tactic Cloaks Drop in Demand
Quoted: “When supply is fixed (as in this case), a decrease in demand requires a decrease in price to clear the market,” stated University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Alan Sorensen.
Climate change: Landmark UN report warns sea levels will rise faster than projected by 2100
Quoted: “It drives home the message that policies that curb greenhouse gas emissions can have a strong effect on future sea level rise,” said Andrea Dutton, an associate professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin Madison. “What we do today can decide which of those pathways we’re on.”
Apparent new rise in autism may not reflect true prevalence
Diagnoses of those two conditions increase with maternal education, points out Maureen Durkin, professor of population health sciences and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Durkin was not involved in the study but wrote an editorial accompanying the work3.
Can you teach kids kindness? New curriculum hopes to reverse trend of bullying in schools
Now, a team of psychologists at the University of Wisconsin think they have a way to help reverse the trend.
Madison cartoonist Lynda Barry wins MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ award
Graphic novelist, cartoonist and creativity educator Lynda Barry of Madison is one of this year’s winners of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship, commonly known as a “genius” grant.
Why Vaping Became A Public Health Priority In Wisconsin, The US
“In Wisconsin today, 19 individuals will die of a disease directly caused by smoking cigarettes,” said Dr. Michael Fiore, who directs the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, in a Sept. 17, 2019 interview on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Central Time.
Who Are 2019’s MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant Winners? Here’s The Full List Of Fellows
Andrea Dutton, 46, geochemist and paleoclimatologist. “Furthering current understanding of sea level dynamics by reconstructing the extent and rate of sea level rise in the ancient past.”
Here are 2019?s MacArthur ‘genius grant’ winners, including cartoonist Lynda Barry and Chicago urban designer Emmanuel Pratt
On the art faculty at University of Wisconsin, she teaches students how to conceive and draw comics and does research on the deeper language of imagery and on helping people defeat the voice in their head telling them they can’t draw.
2019 MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant’ winners
Lynda Barry, 63: graphic novelist, cartoonist and education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Winners: An Algorithmic Playwright, Coral Researcher –
Ms. Dutton, who is leaving the University of Florida for a new job at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, plans to spend the next year in New Zealand. There she will work with researchers to correlate her database on ancient coral reefs with ice-sheet data and computer models from Antarctica.
How to fix student debt
Quoted: ? Fenaba Addo , Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison
We believe that in order to address the black student debt crisis, we need to eliminate racial wealth inequality.
Cap that zaps your scalp could reverse male balding
It’s a phenomenon known as the triboelectric effect and can result in faster hair re-growth than being hooked up to a machine for several hours a day. The team, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tested it out on the backs of shaved lab rats and found that when they moved it caused the flexible patch to bend and stretch.
Denisovan face and body reconstruction uses DNA methylation
Quoted: University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks, who was not involved with this research, endorsed this group’s investigation of ancient DNA methylation and called them pioneers of the technique. “It’s a line of investigation that I want to see people pursue,” he said.
This is almost certainly not what Denisovans looked like
Quoted: “Today we cannot predict very much about a person’s bone morphology,” says John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The (Not So) Secret Lives Of City-Dwelling Coyotes And Foxes
Led by wildlife ecologist David Drake at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, these researchers have observed behavior that suggests the critters may be more prone to peaceful coexistence than are their highly competitive peers in the state’s hinterlands.
How Imelda’s Prolific Rain, Flooding Compares to Harvey in East Texas
Quoted: According to an analysis by Shane Hubbard from the University of Wisconsin, Harvey’s 20-inch-plus rainfall footprint was about 13 times larger than Imelda, a whopping 28,949 square miles. That’s an area slightly smaller than the entire state of South Carolina.
Is Reversing Baldness Really As Easy As Wearing a Hat?
Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed a noninvasive, low-cost hair-growth-stimulating technology unobtrusive enough to fit under a cap.
A hat that zaps the scalp with electricity helps reverse male balding
To overcome this hurdle, Xudong Wang at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues have developed a wireless patch that sticks to the scalp and generates electric pulses by harnessing energy from random body movements.
Jacqueline Woodson Transformed Children’s Literature. Now She’s Writing for Herself.
In 1985, of the estimated 2,500 children’s books published in the United States, only 18 were by black authors or illustrators, according to research by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Moving plants indoors for winter? Ease them into it gently
Quoted: Quarantine houseplants for a time after bringing them indoors, said Diana Alfuth, an Extension horticulture educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
What Is The Ketamine-MDMA Drug Cocktail In Hustlers?
Quoted: Both MDMA and ketamine can lead to memory loss, meaning that the Hustlers storyline makes sense. But according to Lucas Reichart, Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy and author of Strange Trips: Science, Culture, and the Regulation of Drugs, the women wouldn’t be able to count on the mixture working the same every time.
Paul Ingrassia, Prizewinning Auto Industry Reporter, Dies at 69
He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master’s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Seeds Of Tomorrow: Defending Indigenous Mexican Corn That Could Be Our Future
The potential has also attracted the interest of American researchers, including those at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of California, Davis, and at the private company Mars Inc., who have studied the corn.
Nuclear could be the clean energy source the world needs (opinion)
CEM is not alone in reconsidering the role nuclear energy could play. In fact, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in partnership with Idaho National Lab and the University of Wisconsin, have gone so far as to say nuclear energy is “essential” to expand energy access and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
What Does Magnesium Actually Do for You?
Magnesium is abundant in the body. Hundreds of biological processes, including the creation of new proteins, energy production in cells, and DNA synthesis, depend on it, explains Colin MacDiarmid, a senior nutrition scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Telehealth program boosts diabetic eye screening
Patients at Mile Bluff Center in Mauston can walk in and have a retinal photograph taken in a matter of minutes. Dr. Yao Liu is an assistant professor of opthalmology at the UW School of Medicine.
We Know It Harms Kids to See Smoking on TV. What About Rape?
Quoted: Karyn Riddle, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches the effects on children and adolescents of viewing violent media, echoes Ms. Murphy’s concerns. “Watching sexual violence could be traumatizing,” she explains, “and that fear could stay with you for many years.”
A Beautiful Sight: ‘Huge Wave’ Of Monarch Butterflies Prepare To Migrate
Quoted: “What people are seeing when they are looking into their backyards and along the shores of Lake Michigan, they are seeing a part of a huge wave of monarchs that are moving south right now,” said Karen Oberhauser, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Arboretum.
Wisconsin Crops Continue To Lag Behind As Harvest Nears
Quoted: “Usually we’re (harvesting silage) pretty heavily by about the middle of September,” said Joe Lauer, agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s going to be delayed a week or two due to not only some of the cool weather we had in the spring but also due to the fact that there’s a lot of corn that was just planted late.”
Kids Are Now Being Taught About 9/11 As Part Of History
Quoted: Another study, led by professor Jeremy Stoddard of the University of Wisconsin/Madison School Of Education, found that “the most popular method of teaching about 9/11 and the War on Terror was showing a documentary or ‘similar video,’” TIME reported.
Uber Could Save Billions in Taxes With This Little-Noticed Move
Quoted: The new IP value generated a big set of “deferred tax assets”—like pre-paid tax payments or credits—in the Netherlands of $6.1 billion, according to Dan Lynch, an associate professor of accounting and information systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who read the quarterly filing. The taxes would be calculated through multiplying profits by the tax rate. The rate could be either 25% or 7%, the lower number reserved for profits from IP “innovation” developed in the Netherlands, according to Dudley.
The profound perspective of geoscience can unite students
It’s 1 p.m. and students gather in long lines as they wait to enter the lecture hall, a spacious wood-adorned auditorium at the top of Henry Mall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It’s a charismatic octagonal space that is 116 years old and the largest lecture hall on campus.
With States and the Feds Investigating Google and Facebook, the Legal Pressure Is Ramping Up
Quoted: “The nightmare for the companies is having 50 different state proceedings, which could indeed wind up commanding different results,” said Peter Carstensen, a former attorney at the antitrust division of the DOJ and a professor of law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
Dane County inmates record audio books for kids
A special partnership between the University of Wisconsin-Madison ?Jail Library Group, the Dane County Library Service and the Dane County Jail gives inmates a unique chance to share quality time with their kids through special audio book recordings.
Why school cafeterias should be the front lines of policy change
Across the country millions of children are returning to school with the promise that school lunch will be “great again”. – Jennifer E Gaddis is an assistant professor in the department of civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of the forthcoming book The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools
Ruth Bader Ginsburg shows no sign of slowing down amid health scares
Quoted: Ryan Owens, a professor of political science and affiliate faculty at the University of Madison-Wisconsin law school, told The Hill that while Ginsburg’s travel is not unusual, it is consistent “with her desire to let people know she is still out there and doing her thing.”
Opinion: The future of high school students with autism
Quoted: Currently, mostly families from higher incomes are able to help their autistic high school students succeed. According to an article by University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Adityarup “Rup” Chakravorty, “Children living in census tracts with lower socioeconomic development [are] less likely to be diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder than children living in areas with higher socioeconomic indicators.”
Lynda Barry Explores the Language of Art
Making Comics is Barry’s latest collage of comics and instruction, drawn from the course that she teaches at the University of Wisconsin–Madison art department, where she’s an associate professor.
Can Vape Pens Cause Lung Disease? Symptoms, Deaths Reported
Quoted: The lung illness “gets worse really quickly,” said Jeffrey Kanne, a radiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which has had patients. On scans, “these are like what you see with acute lung injuries,” such as inhaling toxic substances in an industrial accident.
Tips for surviving — and thriving during — school transitions
The transition from elementary to middle school is “extraordinary,” according to Geoffrey Borman, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, because students are leaving behind what’s become a comfortable, “caring” environment for an unknown school, which can often seem “imposing.”
Superfans: A Love Story
At the time, Henry Jenkins was a twenty-eight-year-old doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He had grown up reading Famous Monsters of Filmland and bonded with his wife, Cynthia, over “Star Trek.” (He explained to me that the preferred term is Trekkers, not Trekkies.)
UW-Madison rank rises to 13th best public college in America, report says
The bump in rank comes after several years of slight drops. The university fell out of the top 10 public schools two years ago to No. 12 and dropped down to the No. 15 spot last year.
UW launches new school of computer science, responding to student demand and workforce need
The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced on Thursday the creation of its first new school in two decades, responding to high demand from students and a burgeoning need in the state’s workforce.
Toforest Johnson is on Alabama’s death row for a crime he almost certainly didn’t commit
The investigators appear to have been afflicted with tunnel vision, a form of cognitive bias that is common in wrongful convictions and especially in high-profile cases. Tunnel vision, writes Keith Findley of the University of Wisconsin Law School and the Wisconsin Innocence Project, “leads investigators, prosecutors, judges, and defense lawyers alike to focus on a particular conclusion and then filter all evidence in a case through the lens provided by that conclusion.