UW In The News

Watch: Former Badger and Olympic gold medalist Hilary Knight rocks SNL with Leslie Jones

A beaming, gold-medal-adorned Hilary Knight made a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” segment this weekend.

Group of UW researchers spend all year in Antarctica

ANTARCTICA (CBS 58) —  Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth where the sun doesn’t shine for six months at a time, but it’s staffed by a group of scientists based out of Wisconsin all year long. Meteorologist Justin Thompson-Gee had the opportunity to talk with scientists of a research project called IceCube in Antarctica.

A Secret Superpower, Right in Your Backyard

As the verdant hills of Wakanda are secretly enriched with the fictional metal vibranium in “Black Panther,” your average backyard also has hidden superpowers: Its soil can absorb and store a significant amount of carbon from the air, unexpectedly making such green spaces an important asset in the battle against climate change.

Our Wisconsin survey results show inclusivity progress, awareness

In a recent survey, students reported a UW-Madison inclusion program effectively increased awareness of and respect for diversity on campus among first-year students in residence halls.

Carson Gulley’s legacy as television pioneer and equal rights advocate

MADISON, Wis (WMTV) — Carson Gulley and his wife Beatrice hosted the television show “What’s Cookin” on WMTV for nearly a decade and left behind a legacy as civil rights activists in Madison.

How gambling nearly destroyed this college professor’s life

After becoming a mother in her teens, Sandra Adell became a prominent professor – but a trip to a casino nearly derailed her life. Joined by addiction specialist Nancy Irwin, she tells Megyn Kelly TODAY about her addictions and recovery, as recounted in her book, “Confessions of a Slot Machine Queen.”

Seeds Only a Plant Breeder Could Love, Until Now

When his children were small, Irwin Goldman wanted to give them a beet to snack on — a beet so pretty and swirled with colors, so juicy and delicious, that they’d crunch on it raw.

Fed’s Crisis-Era, Bond-Buying Plan Was Largely Ineffective, Economists Say

The paper presented at the conference was written by David Greenlaw of Morgan Stanley , James Hamilton of the University of California San Diego, Ethan Harris of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Kenneth West of the University of Wisconsin. It argues most of what people now believe of the asset purchases is likely wrong.

Fed Should Lean on Rate Cuts, Not QE, in Next Recession: Paper

While the Fed has not set an end point, the paper’s authors – David Greenlaw of Morgan Stanley, Ethan Harris of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, James Hamilton of University of California at San Diego, and Kenneth West of University of Wisconsin – said it should not go too far and consider larger and looser run-off caps.

Cave Paintings Found in Spain Are First Known Neanderthal Art

“Neanderthals appear to have had a cultural competence that was shared by modern humans,” says John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wasn’t involved with the study. “They were not dumb brutes, they were recognizably human

Ancient cave paintings turn out to be by Neanderthals, not humans

Other experts agree with the dates and that the timing means the art must have been created by Neanderthals. There’s no fossil evidence of modern humans in Spain that long ago, says John Hawks a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wasn’t involved in the research. “There’s no secret story,” he says. “The results are just, ‘Hey, Neanderthals were making these things, and you didn’t know it.’”

In 1968, Curtis Mayfield was the voice of victory for civil rights

“I think the reaction to the song was shock; Curtis had been such a voice for harmony and reconciliation,” says Craig Werner, an Afro-American studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield and the Rise and Fall of American Soul.

The U.S. State With the Most Bipolar Politics

The tallies were always close. And when turnout in cities like Madison and Milwaukee lags, urbanites can be swallowed by rural folks — and those latter voters have become more consolidated around the Republican flag in the last decade, says Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Obama’s success in the state, and Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, proved, “Yeah, we could be very blue, but you have to excite and engage the base,” Burden says.

The women of U.S. hockey really hate Canada and really deserved a gold medal.

Hilary Knight was “crushed and heartbroken” after that come-from-ahead loss. “There was definitely an I-don’t-know-if-I-can-go-another-four-years kind of feeling,” she told NBC Sports’ Nick Zaccardi last year. Knight, who was a college star at the University of Wisconsin, had thought at one point that she wasn’t even going to make it to Sochi. She’d gone to Boston to train for the games, she told Fox Sports, and ended up calling her mom “bawling crying because my funding essentially wasn’t enough to live out here.

Teen spirit in the lab

Although still in high school, VanDommelen has logged hundreds of hours in a lab headed by biomedical engineer Melissa Skala at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The experience has sent the teenager down a career path that will probably include many more hours at the bench. “At first, I wasn’t sure that research was something that I wanted to do in my future,” VanDommelen says. “But after all of the positive experiences that I’ve had, I definitely want to continue this.”

Gold for 4 former Wisconsin Badgers as U.S. beats Canada in shootout thriller in women’s hockey

Captain Meghan Duggan, forward Brianna Decker and backup goaltender Alex Rigsby also were among the former Badgers players celebrating. On the other side, it was heartbreak for five former or current UW players with Canada: forwards Blayre Turnbull, Sarah Nurse and Emily Clark, defenseman Meaghan Mikkelson and backup goaltender Ann-Renee Desbiens.

Give Peace Corps a chance: UW ranked No. 1 in volunteers for 2nd year in a row

For the second year in a row, Wisconsin’s flagship university tops the list of large schools providing volunteers to the Peace Corps, with 85 alumni currently volunteering worldwide.

David Muir, anchor of ‘ABC World News Tonight,’ to be UW-Madison commencement speaker

David Muir, an accomplished journalist and anchor of “ABC World News Tonight,” will provide advice and insight to UW-Madison graduates during the spring commencement ceremony.

Why social media appeals after mass shootings have done little to change gun laws

University of Wisconsin researchers found a similar trend in their study of Twitter conversations after 59 mass shootings from 2012 to 2014. That research, which has not yet been published, analyzed 1.3 million tweets and 700 related hashtags, using machine learning to sort them into various categories, said political science professor Jon C. W. Pevehouse, who co-authored the study with Dhavan V. Shah, a journalism professor, and several others.

Should You Exercise When You Are Sick?

There’s some evidence that very intense exercise—running a marathon, say—can briefly suppress your immune function, says Dr. Bruce Barrett, a professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. But in general, physical activity is a great way to shield yourself from illness, he says.

Has Donald Trump ‘been much tougher on Russia’ than Barack Obama?

“The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to undermine the credibility of the FBI and intelligence agencies in their investigation and assessment of the threat to the integrity of U.S. elections by Russian operatives,” said Yoshiko Herrera, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Is democracy decaying in Wisconsin? University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism students investigate

A University of Wisconsin-Madison investigative journalism class is examining the health of Wisconsin’s democracy and residents’ power to affect state policy at a time when major forces have changed the political landscape.

The Importance of ‘White students having Black teachers’: Gloria Ladson-Billings on Education – Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo

Gloria Ladson-Billings retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison last month. She is the newly elected President of the National Academy of Education and a Senior Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute.

Bacterial sex: the promiscuous process driving antibiotic resistance

A year after the initial discovery of bacterial conjugation, Joshua Lederberg married Esther Zimmer, who had just earned a master’s degree in genetics from Stanford University while working in Tatum’s lab. The young Lederberg team — Joshua was 22 and Esther 24 — moved to the University of Wisconsin, where they began to explore the strange world of bacteria sex.Esther Lederberg was an exceptionally talented bench scientist.

Radio Chipstone: Bound Together by Cloth

If you look to your left as you walk into the School of Human Ecology on the UW Madison campus, you will see something wondrous in the Design Gallery window. The exhibit is called “Whirling Return of the Ancestors: Egúngún Arts of the Yorùbá in Africa and Beyond.” The garment in the window is worn in what’s called a Masquerade.

“Bucky’s Tuition Promise” aims to make UW more accessible

The cost of tuition can be a deciding factor on where students go to college, but a recent decision by University of Wisconsin-Madison officials plans to make it possible for any Wisconsin student to become a Badger.

How to talk to children about school shootings

As adults we have a lot of questions after Wednesday’s deadly school shooting in Florida, but children have their own concerns. Karyn Riddle is an associate professor at the UW School of Journalism and Mass Communications where her research focuses on the effects of exposure to media violence.

Why Is It So Hard for Democracy to Deal With Inequality?

Before reform, Byron Shafer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, writes in “Quiet Revolution: The Struggle for the Democratic Party and the Shaping of Post-Reform Politics,”

there was an American party system in which one party, the Republicans, was primarily responsive to white collar constituencies, and in which the other, the Democrats, was primarily responsive to blue collar constituencies.

Jobs, relationships elude adults with autism

Understanding the daily lives of adults with autism will help researchers identify the types of resources they need to succeed in various areas of life, says lead researcher Megan Farley, a senior psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Waisman Center.

University of Wisconsin will have huge influence in USA-Canada women’s hockey game

There’s red in the red, white and blue. There’s red in the Canadian flag. And when Team USA and Team Canada face off in a women’s hockey preliminary game Thursday at the Pyeongchang Olympics, they’ll be seeing red.