When plants are wounded, they send out warning signals that spread to other leaves, raising the alarm and activating defense mechanisms for the undamaged areas. Now, researchers have captured this burst of activity in a set of mesmerising videos that are helping to explain the tricky topic of plant “intelligence”.
As summer winds down, so does Bucky On Parade.
MADISON, Wis. – Wednesday, one of Madison’s most successful public arts projects comes to an end with the conclusion of Bucky on Parade.
Even in the most contentious of times, when tumult rules and vitriol pushes harmony aside, some days all we need is a little Bucky love.
Wisconsin’s flagship university remains one of the top public higher education institutions in the United States despite a slight drop compared to last year, according to a report released Monday.
Carol Barford, University of Wisconsin-Madison. (THE CONVERSATION) Despite whimsical ads about computing “in the cloud,” the internet lives on the ground. Data centers are built on land, and most of the physical elements of the internet – such as the cables that connect households to internet services and the fiber optic strands carrying data from one city to another – are buried in plastic conduit under the dirt. That system has worked quite well for many years, but there may be less than a decade to adapt it to the changing global climate.
Philip Farrell, University of Wisconsin-Madison (THE CONVERSATION) Imagine the thrill of discovery when more than 10 years of research on the origin of a common genetic disease, cystic fibrosis (CF), results in tracing it to a group of distinct but mysterious Europeans who lived about 5,000 years ago.
Quoted: Weibo Cai, an associate professor in biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was present at Mirkin’s presentation, says he didn’t think the heated discussion was a “big deal” and does not recall the name-calling, he writes to The Scientist in an email. “I think they probably have had the debate multiple times before,” he adds.
Quoted: Madison, home to the state’s flagship university, has seen the brunt of the flooding so far. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s center that specializes in studying lakes is itself flooded. “This is what climate change looks like,” Adam Hinterthuer, the center’s spokesperson, wrote in a blog post. On Twitter, the center posted maps of recent floods alongside projections for the worst expected floods later this century. They matched remarkably well.For Eric Booth, a climate scientist at the university, the whole thing is almost too much to comprehend.
Quoted: “It’s empowering to be able to help other people,” says Catalina Toma, an associate professor of communication science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You’re viewing yourself through other people’s eyes. If you’re the kind of person who helps others and have advice that people can benefit from… That can make people feel better about themselves.”
Quoted: The reason Minnesota imprisons fewer people, according to Kenneth Streit, a clinical professor of law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is because Minnesota saw in the 1970s how its prison population was projected to increase.
Quoted: “by coining and investing in the Girl Effect, the Nike Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm, “gave it authority and made it catchy,” says Kathryn Moeller, an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is writing a book about the Girl Effect.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will open two new cultural center “startup spaces” to serve students who have Asian and Latinx cultural, ethnic or racial identities, in response to the efforts of student organizers to create such spaces.
University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist Robert Fettiplace this week will receive a gold medal from the king of Norway, a share of a $1 million science prize, and take his place in the running for a future Nobel Prize.
Quoted: “If CNN did tell its readers and viewers that Davis did not comment when he was indeed one of their confidential sources, that breaks a bond of trust with the public,” said Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin. “It’s deceptive and wrong. And if it is the case, CNN needs to be as transparent as possible immediately and develop practices to ensure this never happens again.”
Quoted: So far, the most common complaint against the new rules is how broadly Facebook applies them. If you spend enough time on the ad archive, you’ll find news stories and even random events like a comedy show – but also, of course, the never-ending flood of political ads. University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim studied divisive advertising in 2016. And she says Facebook’s new archive still does not address one common tactic – multiple groups coordinating to push the same agenda.
In July, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison concluded that up to a thousand people die annually in the eastern US alone due to the elevated fine particulate matter from increased use of fossil fuels to cool buildings. By saving ourselves, we’ll be killing ourselves.
Right now, much of the west is affected by wildfires.An unlucky minority will have to evacuate their homes, and some will lose their homes altogether — or even their lives. But for millions more across the west, “smoke season” is a real thing.
—OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is pursuing a PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives in San Diego. Distributed by www.OtherWords.org.
Quoted: Self-driving cars already have LIDAR systems for direct imaging and could conceivably someday also be equipped with SPADs for seeing around corners. “In the near future these [laser-SPAD] sensors will be available in a format that could be handheld,” predicted Andreas Velten, the first author of Raskar’s seminal 2012 paper, who now runs an active-imaging group at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
By using the Hüttenberg Formation, which formed between a billion and half a billion years ago, to study the time between Earth’s change from an anoxic environment (i.e. one lacking oxygen) to a more hospitable environment that heralded the animal kingdom, a team of researchers led by Dr. Huan Cui of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison discovered a sustained, high level of carbon.
“Insects are novel to the American diet, but they should be considered a potentially helpful food that contains important nutrients and fibres that could have benefits to our overall health, including our gut microbiome,” said the study’s lead author, Valerie Stull. She is a researcher at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The paper didn’t include healthier nursing home residents who are strong enough to undergo outpatient surgery, said Dr. Heather Neuman, a surgeon and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. These women might fare better than those who are very ill.
This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the 1988 Yellowstone fires – massive blazes that affected about 1.2 million acres in and around Yellowstone National Park. Their size and severity surprised scientists, managers and the public and received heavy media coverage. Many news reports proclaimed that Yellowstone was destroyed, but nothing was further from the truth.
A portion of the $100 million will go toward funding a new interdisciplinary research building located on the UW Engineering campus. UW and Foxconn plan to divide the cost of the new building evenly, and will determine how best to use any remaining funds, Blank told reporters.
In the paper, economists Dean Corbae, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Ross Levine, of the University of California at Berkeley, found that while intense competition among banks indeed spurs greater efficiency, it also tends to squeeze profit margins and encourage riskier investments.
Quoted: Jeff Smith, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies job programs, said a major quandary is that worthwhile training programs for the poor seldom yield stunningly positive results. “Work force development is very hard, and the results you see aren’t always great,” he said. “If these populations were easily employable, they would already have jobs.”
Quoted: According to Steve Vavrus, senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research, a combination of high humidity and a very slow-moving storm is what caused the huge amount of rainfall.
Quoted: Farmers will face a learning curve in figuring out how to take advantage of the insurance with the changing markets, said Brian Gould, professor of agribusiness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
University of Wisconsin-Madison marching band director Michael Leckrone says he’s stepping down at the end of the school year.
Chalk one up for Mother Nature.With an assist from the farmers of Oaxaca, Mexico; Mars candy company and researchers at the University of California-Davis and our own University of Wisconsin-Madison.We’re talking about growing corn. Something near and dear to Wisconsin farmers. And corn, of course, requires nitrogen — an essential ingredient for plant growth.
Quoted: Some studies suggest that sleep primes synapses for greater activity during wakefulness. Chiara Cirelli, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the Wisconsin Institute for Sleep and Consciousness, who is one of the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis’s originators, said of the new paper, “It is strong evidence that sleep need is related to synaptic activity.”
The neutrino was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. This observatory is the brainchild of Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who’s known as the “Godfather of IceCube.” He first dreamed of building the South Pole observatory thirty years ago. He talked with Anne Strainchamps about this discovery.
Quoted: “I think it’s a symptom of the legislative process becoming less participatory,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. “We see more examples . of bills being sprung very quickly without members knowing they’re coming, without the public knowing, and hearings being announced very quickly without lots of notice.”
Quoted: “I think it’s a symptom of the legislative process becoming less participatory,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. “We see more examples … of bills being sprung very quickly without members knowing they’re coming, without the public knowing, and hearings being announced very quickly without lots of notice.”
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have helped discover a corn variety that could reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizer farmers need to spread.
A report this week from Young Mie Kim, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described how a Kremlin-linked group, called the Internet Research Agency, used Facebook’s ad system to identify nonwhite voters. Then the group tried to discourage those people from voting.
Jean-BaptisteLamarck (1744-1829) formulated the first real theory of biological evolution, in which organisms acquired traits directly from adapting to the environments they faced and passed those new traits on to their offspring. If there’s one thing high-school biology students learn, it’s that Darwin was right about natural selection. If there’s a second thing, it’s that Lamarck was wrong.
—Mr. Hawks is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A new clinical trial showed that consuming crickets can help support the growth of beneficial gut bacteria and that eating crickets is not only safe at high doses but may also reduce inflammation in the body.The clinical trial, which was carried out in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States, documented for the first time the health effects of eating insects.
Featured: NPR’s Audie Cornish talks with Thulani Davis about Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul,” who died Thursday at 76. Davis says Franklin let the style of singing African-Americans knew from church blend into popular music.
Quoted: “There’s no way to overstate what Aretha meant to the generation that came of age during the Civil Rights Movement,” Craig Werner, professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told NBC News.
Quoted: “There is evidence to suggest that vinegars can inhibit enzymes that break down food and change up how we digest carbohydrates,” Cassie Vanderwall, a nutritionist at University of Wisconsin Health, told TODAY. “(But) I don’t think the evidence is strong enough to recommend it (for weight loss.)”
Quoted: But Monica Turner, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said this argument doesn’t address the bigger problem.“Making minor changes in the fuels [which] you then have to do repeatedly for many years is not going to solve the bigger problem of having to face climate change,” she told The Washington Post. “We cannot clear or thin our way out of this problem.”
Quoted: “What we expect is more heat waves like this, and we expect that as the climate changes and heat waves become more common, species will experience heat stress, migrate away from periods of heat, or in the case of trees start dying,” said Jack Williams, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin. “There’s a saying that species have opportunities of moving, adapting, persisting or dying out.”
Noted: A small number of people naturally have lucid dreams, meaning they can recognise when they’re dreaming and steer the storyline they experience. Some others can learn to induce them using cognitive techniques.The practice is most commonly used to pursue fantasies like flying, but it may also help to overcome fears and nightmares, says Benjamin Baird at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: However, David Canon, professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said not too much could be read into Tuesday’s turnout given several hot contests in the state.
The annual Money Magazine Best Colleges for Your Money list out on Monday puts UW-Madison at 48th overall and 30th among public universities, based on affordability, quality of education and outcomes.
“The realisation that these skills are actually trainable with video games is important because they are predictors of emotional well-being and health throughout life, and can be practised anytime–with or without video games,” said lead author Tammi Kral, graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.
According to the researchers, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, empathy is the first step in a sequence that can lead to prosocial behavior, such as helping others in need.
According to the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Other parts of the cost of attendance, including living costs, transportation, books and supplies, and personal expenses make up between 50 percent and 80 percent of sticker price. As a result, low-income students can be faced with making difficult financial choices. For example, tight finances among low-income students can lead them to sacrifice food and housing to stay in school.”
Lead author Tammi Kral, graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, said: The realisation that these skills are actually trainable with video games is important because they are predictors of emotional well-being and health throughout life, and can be practised anytime – with or without video games.
A group of researchers led by Dr. Valerie Stull at the University of Wisconsin-Madison set out to see how eating crickets affects gut microbiota and if it functions as an anti-inflammatory. The resulting experiment showed that crickets are, indeed, very good for one’s gut health.
Quoted: “On balance, the overall impact of social media on political knowledge appears to be negative,” write University of Wisconsin–Madison scholars Sangwon Lee and Michael Xenos. “Political social media use does not have a significant effect on political knowledge, while general social media use has a modestly negative effect.”
Aaron Williams was never a bird expert or even a bird enthusiast. But somehow, he’s found himself coordinating a flock of volunteers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison as part of a large-scale effort to protect local and migrating birds.
Quoted: “Extreme droughts and high winds are increasing as climate is warming,” said Monica Turner, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has spent three decades researching fires at Yellowstone National Park. “That’s the ultimate driver behind what’s happening in California.”
Quoted: “One tick can crank out females in fairly large numbers,” said Thomas Yuill, a retired pathobiologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was one of the first to raise alarms about the invaders.
Noted: Wisconsin and other battleground states were targeted by a sophisticated social media campaign, according to a recent University of Wisconsin-Madison study headed by journalism professor Young Mie Kim.
A new report out of the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Applied Population Lab found that white births are now outnumbered by white deaths in 26 states, up from 17 in 2014 and four in 2004.
Featured: According to the U.S. Census, more than 43 million Americans were living below the poverty line in 2016. But a recent report released from the White House says initiatives to reduce poverty in the United States over the last 50 years have largely been a success. Timothy Smeeding–Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics and former Director of the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty–joins us to talk about the report and what it could mean for social programs in the future.
Featured: In the last installment of our series on the trade-offs of technology and what it means for our kids, Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talked with Dr. Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin who studies how media use affects kids.
Quoted: “It’s hard to know if they were lying now or if they were incompetent before,” said Ian Baird, an expert on Laos at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, referring to Laotian officials. But he said the confusion was to be expected, with a risk-adverse authoritarian government in a poor country that is not accustomed to responding to disasters of this magnitude.
