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The record number of women running in Democratic primaries will likely outperform their Republican peers

The Washington Post

Those tallies are particularly interesting given research released this week by Barry Burden of the University of Wisconsin in Madison and Yoshikuni Ono of Tohoku University in Japan. They analyzed the extent to which gender bias affected the underrepresentation of women in elected office using a survey that presented respondents with randomly generated fictional candidates.

How Could a ‘Sand Motor’ Help the Great Lakes?

Marine Technology News

Undergraduate research scholar Briana Shea is part of the team exploring this topic. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Undergraduate Research Scholars program gives first- and second-year students a taste of cutting-edge research in a variety of fields.

Take Care of Those Hammies

How Stuff Works

Quoted: “I’m definitely doing more overuse hamstring surgeries now,” says Geoffrey Baer, an orthopedic surgeon with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and team physician for the University of Wisconsin Athletic Department.

Scientists Propose Craft to Search Venus for Life

Yahoo News

But for all the planet’s seemingly inhospitable traits, “Venus has had plenty of time to evolve life on its own,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist Sanjay Limaye, who led the new study, in a press release. Limaye points to models that suggest Venus could have sustained a habitable climate with liquid water on its surface for as long as 2 billion years. “That’s much longer than is believed to have occurred on Mars,” says Limaye.

Smiles Hide Many Messages—Some Unfriendly

Wall Street Journal

“Different smiles have different impacts on people’s bodies,” said Jared D. Martin, a doctoral student who led the study in the lab of University of Wisconsin–Madison psychology professor Paula Niedenthal. Along with poker players, psychologists have long known that our facial expressions can betray our emotions. But no one has demonstrated exactly how this works, Mr. Martin said.

5 things to know about food delivery app EatStreet as its rapid national growth continues

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Madison-based food ordering and delivery app EatStreet is one of the recent success stories in the Wisconsin startup scene. The company founded in a dorm room at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010 has become a real player in the online food ordering business across the United States. EatStreet connects diners in more than 250 cities to more than 15,000 restaurants.

New Evidence Suggests Possible Life on Venus

Popular Mechanics

But for all the planet’s seemingly inhospitable traits, “Venus has had plenty of time to evolve life on its own,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist Sanjay Limaye, who led the new study, in a press release. Limaye points to models that suggest Venus could have sustained a habitable climate with liquid water on its surface for as long as 2 billion years. “That’s much longer than is believed to have occurred on Mars,” says Limaye.

Venus’ clouds could host extraterrestrial life, researchers say

Fox News

The potential for Venus’ clouds to hold life was first examined in the late 1960s through a series of space probes, but lead author Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center says the planet’s dark patches haven’t been thoroughly explored. Instruments that have tested Venus’ atmosphere in the past were “incapable of distinguishing between materials of an organic or inorganic nature,” Newsweek reports.

Who’s going to win the Amazon hustle?

Chicago Tribune

“He is one of those executives who wants to be remembered as being on the right side of history,” said Thomas O’Guinn, a marketing professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison School of Business. “Part of the quid pro quo is there will be none of this stupid gender bathroom stuff. They are going to demand that the city do everything it can to fight voter suppression. They are going to demand high attention paid to meaningful spending on the environment and more efficient greenhouse reductions.”

Dark Splotches on Venus Could Be Signs of Life

Gizmodo

The lead author of the new study, Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center, isn’t saying there’s life on Venus, but the new paper—a self-described “hypothesis article”—suggests we should look for signs of life in the planet’s cloudtops.

Amazon’s HQ2 Search Is About Politics, Too

Bloomberg

Quoted: “He is one of those executives who wants to be remembered as being on the right side of history,” said Thomas O’Guinn, a marketing professor at the University of Wisconsin school of business. “Part of the quid pro quo is there will be none of this stupid gender bathroom stuff. They are going to demand that the city do everything it can to fight voter suppression. They are going to demand high attention paid to meaningful spending on the environment and more efficient greenhouse reductions.”

Coffee cancer warning: What science says about cancer risk, coffee and acrylamide

AP

Quoted: Amy Trenton-Dietz, public health specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the California ruling contrasts with what science shows.”Studies in humans suggest that if anything, coffee is protective for some types of cancer,” she said. “As long as people are not putting a lot of sugar or sweeteners in, coffee, tea and water are the best things for people to be drinking.”

The clouds of Venus might support alien life, says study

Science Examiner

A new study has revealed that the clouds of Venus might possibly be hosting alien life. Yes, the scientists of the study are of the notion that microbes may have evolved on Venus. Some of the models suggest that the planet once had a habitable climate and liquid water was present on its surface for about two billion years. Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, said, “That’s much longer than is believed to have occurred on Mars.”

Mexico’s fragile Lagoon of Seven Colors is threatened by development

The Washington Post

We also saw a firsthand illustration of not-so-conscious tourism. We paid a visit to the Rapids, one of the greatest collections of stromatolites in the world, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin, who have been studying these formations for a decade. Here, scores of swimmers ignore the warnings each day and clamber all over the fragile formations, some of which are believed to be up to 9,000 years old.

SciLine scores successes in first five months of operation

Science Magazine

Quoted: “We need the support and engagement of the general public and of course government and private funding agencies, and it’s always useful to practice articulating what is interesting and important in our research,” said Pepperell, who works at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “I also saw it as an opportunity to raise the profile of women in science, to increase the diversity of voices and perspectives that make up the ‘face’ of science—my hope is that all young people have the opportunity to see themselves as scientists, to consider science as a career and pursue it if that’s where their passions and skills lie.”

Here Is FEMA’s Plan If the Falling Chinese Satellite Takes Aim at a US City

Gizmodo

Quoted: So would a warning even be worth it? “I imagine perhaps if there was a public information plan, it would generate more hysteria than would be warranted for something so unlikely,” Ruth Rand, historian of science, technology, and the environment during the Cold War at the University of Wisconsin told me. “I imagine some people might respond with undue fear and you might have a crisis in your hands.”

Cambridge Analytica psychology: The science isn’t that good at manipulation

Quartz

Quoted: If the company did obtain a comprehensive set of user data from Facebook, as has been reported, then it may have gotten unique insight into what makes people vote and how. “Facebook allowed them to combine different data sources in a way that allowed them to understand voters maybe better than voters themselves did,” says Dietram Scheufele, science communication professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Leg genes give spiders segmented heads

Cosmos

That’s the somewhat surprising finding made by two scientists, Emily Setton and Prashant Sharma from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, during an investigation into the evolutionary origin of spider silk-spinning.

Colleges Make It Easier for Older Students

Wall Street Journal

Similarly, in the University of Wisconsin’s Flexible Option program, “there are no courses, credit hours or semesters,” says Aaron Brower, provost and vice chancellor University of Wisconsin-Extension. Rather than enroll in courses worth a certain number of credit hours, students pass assessments showing mastery of key skills or competencies.

74 years later, a pilot who crashed in France returns home

AP

The effort to find Fazekas Sr. began in 2014, when University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers succeeded in returning the remains of another soldier to his family. That inspired them to reach out to Department of Defense officials the next year to propose a partnership to find the missing. It would become the university’s Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project.

Reduced calorie diet shows signs of slowing ageing in people

Nature

“The CALERIE trial has been important in addressing the question of whether the pace of ageing can be altered in humans,” says Rozalyn Anderson, who studies ageing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She leads one of two large, independent studies on calorie restriction in rhesus monkeys, and began her research career studying calorie restriction in yeast.

Theoretically, Recording Dreams Is Possible…Scientists Are Trying

Discover Magazine Blog

In April 2017, a group of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison identified a “posterior cortical hot zone” in the brain that could indicate whether a person was dreaming (having a subjective experience) or not… “When we wake someone up, and they report hearing something, or there was speech for example, we find activation in a very specific part of the cortex: the Wernick’s area, which is known for processing speech,” says Benjamin Baird, a lead scientist on the study.

 

New Census Data Show Wisconsin Population Trends Recovering From Recession

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted:  David Eagan Robertson of the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said a closer look shows that counties like Winnebago, Sheboygan, and Calumet have grown, which is a reversal of recession era trends. “The manufacturing counties in the state as a group are actually now, in this most recent year, are seeing an increase in the domestic migration number,” said Robertson. “So, that’s a bit of a turn.”

Group of UW researchers spend all year in Antarctica

CH 58- Milwaukee

The two scientists arrived at the South Pole on November 1 and are part of a team of researchers from UW-Madison working at IceCube all year long. Associate Director of the program Albrecht Karle says the goal of IceCube is to, “Look for extremely energetic neutrinos which appear in energetic processes in the Universe.”

Losing access to weather data means the next storm could be a lot more deadly

A set of new satellites will capture and send, with unprecedented timeliness, weather data and imagery that meteorologists, emergency managers, government agencies, universities, and companies use to minimize the role of the weather on transportation and commerce, ensure planes land safely, and protect Americans from severe weather. But this satellite data relay is in serious risk.

Can Nicorette Really Help Smokers Quit?

The Daily Beast

“There’s no magic bullet as far as quitting smoking, but I think the contribution of NRTs has been an important one,” Dr. Michael Fiore, director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, told The Daily Beast.

Bomb Cyclones, Nor’easters, and the Messy Relationship Between Weather and Climate

The New Yorker

Throughout her career, (Francis) had focussed on how global warming was affecting the Arctic, and after many months staring at the sea she began to wonder how Arctic warming was affecting the global weather system. On her return to New Jersey, where she is a professor at Rutgers University, she and her colleague Stephen Vavrus, a climate modeller at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, set about examining changes in the behavior of the polar jet stream since the early nineties.

UW students to install solar panels in Puerto Rico

CBS 58

A group of at least 30 students from University of Wisconsin-Madison has started Solar Para Niños, a project to implement solar energy in Puerto Rico.The students plan to design and install a distributed solar system at Hogar Albergue para Niños Jesus de Nazaret, a nonprofit shelter for physically abused children located outside the city of Mayaguez.The shelter serves newborns to 11-year-olds, and currently hosts 14 children. “These are kids who have been taken from their homes who have had horrible home lives,” said Allie Stephens, a project manager from the university’s Engineers Without Borders chapter.

Arizona women went to a Tempe mosque and mocked Islam

The Washington Post

In a 2016 column outlining myths about sharia, Asifa Quraishi-Landes, a University of Wisconsin law professor, wrote that sharia is not necessarily a law in the sense that the West sees it. “Sharia is not a book of statutes or judicial precedent imposed by a government, and it’s not a set of regulations adjudicated in court,” she wrote. “Rather, it is a body of Koran-based guidance that points Muslims toward living an Islamic life.”

Wider Access To Naloxone: Harmful or Beneficial?

The Fix

In the study, Doleac and co-author Anita Mukherjee, who is an assistant professor at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studied the effects of increased naloxone access across the country. Doleac and Mukherjee “estimated the effects of naloxone access laws across the 50 states and made comparisons across regions.”

Russian Twitter trolls stoked racial tension in wake of Milwaukee rioting before 2016 election

KVUE

A team that included University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Chris Wells found last month that at least 116 articles from U.S. media outlets included tweets from @TEN_GOP and other Russian-linked accounts, with the tweets usually cited as examples of supposedly ordinary Americans voicing their views. Wells said that the tweets found by the Journal Sentinel seemed similar.

How Cheese, Wheat and Alcohol Shaped Human Evolution

Smithsonian

You aren’t what you eat, exactly. But over many generations, what we eat does shape our evolutionary path. “Diet,” says anthropologist John Hawks, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “has been a fundamental story throughout our evolutionary history. Over the last million years there have been changes in human anatomy, teeth and the skull, that we think are probably related to changes in diet.”