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Donald Trump blasted on abortion remarks

Boston Herald

Quoted: “He sensed that the abortion comment was one step too far,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “He was going to offend both the moderate and the conservatives on social issues. And if you got both of those wings in turmoil, it’s going to be tough to do well.”

The Deranged True Story Of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, The Citizen Kane Of Wasted Teenage Metalness

Deadspin

Quoted: “What we have now is this incredible body of anthropological studies that also happens to be extremely entertaining and very funny,” says Jim Healy, who runs the University of Wisconsin’s Cinematique program, dedicated to connoisseurs of obscure movies. “If you want to see how a certain demographic looked and behaved in 1986, watch Heavy Metal Parking Lot.”

For our future, someone has to think about dirt

Marketplace

Noted: An even bigger fix is in order, according to Bill Tracy, an agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This is where the Secretary of the Future would come in,” he said.Tracy said we need to think critically about having corn and soybeans as the nation’s biggest crops. There’s not only the problem of nitrate pollution from fertilizing corn to worry about, but there’s also soil erosion.

Our cave man DNA and early human inbreeding

CNN (via Channel3000.com)

Noted: The current study and previous research suggest that we can no longer think of our ancestors as interbreeding with other hominins only once, said John Hawks, professor of anthropology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It is happening repeatedly, wherever modern humans are coming into contact with these archaic people,” said Hawks, who was not involved in the current study.

James Baughman remembered as popular journalism professor

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Facing a room full of students the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, professor James Baughman distilled decades of studying the history of mass communications into one assignment: Write about it, he told the class. Like Ernie Pyle writing about the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II. Or CBS News radio correspondent Edward Murrow reporting from London as the Nazis’ bombs fell. Baughman “just came in and scrapped everything and said this is what you’re doing,” recalled Jason Stein, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter who took one of Baughman’s classes as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW cancer doctors targeting cancer at the molecular level

Wisconsin State Journal

In a conference room overlooking Lake Mendota, pictures of tumors and lists of gene names flash on a screen. Doctors discuss treatments, not based on where in the body a patient’s cancer started but on genetic mutations in their tumors. The doctors are working as a “molecular tumor board,” a new service by UW Carbone Cancer Center in Madison to help doctors and patients at UW Health and around Wisconsin benefit from a hot topic in cancer: precision medicine.

Clinton, Sanders Shift Focus to ‘Pivotal’ Wisconsin

Newsweek

Both candidates have “a real shot” at winning Wisconsin, Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor, told Newsweek. Clinton and Sanders have been effectively tied in polling since the beginning of the year, and there’s not much indication that voters are indecisive about their candidate. Midwestern states have proven to be the battleground between the two candidates—they effectively tied in Iowa, she won by a hair in Illinois, he won Michigan and she took Ohio. “Wisconsin is at the intersection of all these states,” Burden says. “That sets up a real showdown.”

How to be happy: 10 science-backed ways to become a happier person

Inc. (via WKOW TV)

Noted: “There are now a plethora of data showing that when individuals engage in generous and altruistic behavior, they actually activate circuits in the brain that are key to fostering well-being,” Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin and author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain, has explained.

Yi Fuxian, Critic of China’s Birth Policy, Returns as an Invited Guest

New York Times

BEIJING — Eight thousand miles is a long way to fly someone so he can tell you you’re wrong. That’s what awaits Chinese officials on Friday when Yi Fuxian, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, speaks at a panel on China’s population policies at the Boao Forum, an annual gathering of hundreds of politicians, businesspeople, opinion leaders and journalists.

Study details high cost of invasive species in lakes

Minnesota Public Radio News

A new study says invasive species in lakes cause significant economic damage. The study examined the spiny water flea invasion of a single Wisconsin lake and calculated the damage to the lake’s water quality at $140 million. While the study focused on one lake, it points to the need for more data about the economic impact of invasive species, said study author Jake Walsh, a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW-Madison’s Keisha Lindsay works to help students see how identity plays in politics

Capital Times

“Intersectionality” may sound like an arcane academic theory, but Keisha Lindsay says the term might be closer to home than many believe. It refers to the way people’s identities — gender, race, class — intersect to shape their experiences, particularly the experience of oppression … Lindsay, an assistant professor in political science and gender and women’s studies at UW-Madison, says her students sometimes are surprised to realize the ways in which it applies to them.

Wisconsin leads the way in the art of glass

Big Ten Network

It’s hotter than molten lava, constantly moving and requires artisans to work in a careful precision with their tools, their space and each other. It’s glass, and no other university has shaped its future as an artistic medium longer than the University of Wisconsin.

Taking the online medicine

The Economist

“Never tried sharing data like this before,” said the tweet. “Feels like walking into a country for the first time. Exciting, but don’t know what to expect.”David O’Connor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison was announcing his decision on February 14th to post online data from his laboratory’s latest experiment.

Student brewers at UW-Madison selected for another round of commercial production

Wisconsin State Journal

A trio of student brewers from a food and beverage fermentation class were named winners Wednesday of the second-annual Campus Craft Brewery contest. The winning beer, an American wheat ale with white and red wheat, will now be commercially brewed and distributed throughout the state by Wisconsin Brewing Co. in Verona, sponsor of the contest, which is designed to prepare students for work in the food and beverage industry.

Madison’s Atlantis: The Lost City

Madison Magazine

The peaceful atmosphere of the UW–Madison Arboretum seems an unlikely site for a city rocked by scandal, war and nature’s cruel grip. Yet tucked within the Arboretum is Madison’s own Atlantis, its lost city.

More visibility with #TheRealUW may be mixed blessing

Badger Herald

With many students using #TheRealUW to voice their experiences with racial prejudice on campus, a discrimination expert said there are caveats that come with greater media attention.

University of Wisconsin psychology professor Markus Brauer, an expert on discrimination, said greater visibility means students’ perceptions of racial prejudice on campus will have a concrete impact on the racial climate.

Can your address predict a premature death?

CNN (via Channel3000.com)

Rural counties have higher rates of smoking, obesity, child poverty and teen births, as well as higher numbers of uninsured adults than their urban counterparts, according to the report, a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. Large urban counties have lower smoking and obesity rates, fewer injury deaths and more residents who attended some college.

“What we think is going on here is that … in rural areas, there is a smaller population, fewer businesses, fewer taxes — and they’re struggling to offer as many opportunities as urban,” said lead researcher Bridget Catlin [senior scientist and director of MATCH]. “All of this has a significant impact on health.”

Global investors remain committed to real estate

IPE Real Estate

Quoted: Erwan Quintin, associate professor at Wisconsin School of Business, said liquidity was a concern, as were a shortage of opportunities. Nevertheless, conviction plays a role, he said: “People are investing in those sectors because they feel that the sector has a future that justifies investing in it.”

Is Agent Orange Still Causing Birth Defects?

Scientific American

Quoted: Vietnam claims its data are sound, but the disagreement has sustained tension for years, particularly about effects that might be passed down to subsequent generations. Although U.S. laboratory tests in animals show that genetic damage caused by dioxin can be passed on to offspring, susceptibility varies widely by species, and no studies have been done in humans. Whether animal findings reflect the human experience “would be notoriously difficult to prove,” cautions Robert Moore, a toxicology researcher at the University of Wisconsin– Madison.

Financial Literacy Poses Lifelong Challenges

Wisconsin Public Radio

Noted: Knowing what one should do is different from actually doing it, though. That difference is why financial security scholar J. Michael Collins, a University of Wisconsin-Extension family and consumer economics specialist, prefers the concept of “capability” over “literacy.”

Nosy fish inspires help for the eyes

Gizmag

Presbyopia is a common visual condition, in which the eye’s lens stiffens to the point that it can’t focus on close objects. Glasses, surgery and regular contact lenses do help, but they also cause a loss in contrast, sensitivity and night vision. That’s why scientists from the University of Wisconsin, Madison are developing an alternative – self-focusing contacts that are inspired by a fish.

Handful of Biologists Went Rogue and Published Directly to Internet

New York Times

Quoted: And many #ASAPbio supporters retweeted John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist from the University of Wisconsin, who found himself recently at an African university where a paper on African genomes was unavailable because it could not pay the fee for the journal where it was published, and no preprint was available. He expressed his frustration with a profanity.

MPD officers could be in mindfulness study

Channel3000.com

A possible pilot study would investigate the effects of mindfulness training on Madison police officers. MPD Chief Mike Koval says he’s working with the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin to plan the project to determine how mindfulness training affects a police officer’s physical and mental well-being.

UW-Madison wins Snowmobile Challenge, MacLean-Fogg Cup

The Daily Mining Gazette

Perennial frontrunner University of Wisconsin-Madison took home the MacLean-Fogg Cup Saturday as winners of the ASE Clean Snowmobile Challenge 2016 Internal Combustion-class competition. UW-Madison topped a dozen other teams in the challenge’s most competitive class.

The Promise and Peril of Cluster Hiring

Chronicle of Higher Education

Perhaps the most scrutinized cluster-hiring program has been that at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Starting in 1998, the university has hired about 140 faculty members to fill nearly 50 clusters. Michael Bernard-Donals, vice provost for faculty and staff programs, says that early challenges, such as determining service loads or the best way to evaluate publication records, have largely been worked out. It helped, he says, that the campus rolled the program out over a five-year period, enabling leaders to iron out kinks along the way. (Subscription required.)

WATCH: Shadow Of The Moon Crosses Earth During Solar Eclipse

NPR

The Himawari geostationary satellites, operated by Japan’s meteorological agency, captured the sight of the moon’s shadow traveling across the Earth. Yasuhiko Sumida, a scientist visiting the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, stitched them together into the video above. It was shared on the CIMSS Satellite Blog.

Recruiting from the reservation: UW boosts effort to train Native American medical students

Wisconsin State Journal

In high school near Green Bay, Justin Meyers worked at a hospital, delivering food to patients. In college, at UW-Madison, he joined Air Force ROTC. His dream of becoming a doctor won out over thoughts of being a fighter pilot. But he didn’t know any doctors like him, a Native American. At UW School of Medicine and Public Health, he talked to two Native American doctors who encouraged him to apply.

Dalai Lama brings message of peace, nonviolence to Madison

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds and a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the Dalai Lama’s main message to the audience was that “we need to take responsibility now for cultivating positive qualities like kindness and compassion.”

Madison’s “little” museums offer big ideas

Wisconsin Gazette

Gone are the days when museums were dusty archives of half-forgotten lore. Wisconsin is full of bright, interactive learning environments that stress teaching important lessons over merely archiving historical minutiae, and some of the most interesting and unique examples are tightly condensed into downtown Madison.