UW In The News

Emmy award winning screenwriter, actor talks being black, queer

Lena Waithe, an Emmy award winning screenwriter, producer and actress, spoke as the Black History Month keynote speaker, fielding questions on her experience in the entertainment industry and identity as a queer woman of color.

Congress debates DACA and immigration: The psychology that makes America a nation of immigrants

Smiling, and showing emotions in general, is more common in countries that are historically diverse than in homogenous places, say researchers from Niedenthal Emotions Lab, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Individuals in diverse societies have to rely on emotional expression to navigate the panoply of foreign cultures, social norms, and languages they came across during the course of everyday life.

There’s a Type of Tsunami on the Great Lakes You May Not Have Heard of Before

Lake Michigan and Lake Erie typically have the most frequent meteotsunami activity, according to Dr. Chin Wu, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW-Madison Study Finds Reason Behind Bald Eagle Recovery

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison knew the bald eagle population grew by leaps and bounds over the last 50 years. They just didn’t know why.

22 jokes you have to be a current UW-Madison student to understand

Nothing will make you feel like hopelessly out-of-touch fuddy-duddy like perusing the UW-Madison Memes for Milk-Chugging Teens group on Facebook.

USA’s Granato Takes Anonymous Squad on Olympic Mission

Granato joined the New York Rangers after the Calgary games and went on to a 13-year playing career with three NHL clubs. He turned to coaching in 2002 and worked as an assistant or head coach with three NHL teams until taking over in 2016 as head men’s hockey coach at the University of Wisconsin, where he had a standout collegiate playing career.

High cancer-related expenses take a toll on quality of life

“When cancer patients spend more on their cancer treatment and other health care, they have less to spend on activities they enjoy and other needs, which can negatively affect their well-being,” said coauthor Joohyun Park, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy.“It turns out that financial burden is directly related to health and well-being,” Park told Reuters Health by email. “The more a cancer patient spends on health care, the worse the quality of life and mental health.”

UW-Madison Program To Cover Four Years Of Tuition For Incoming Freshman Whose Family Income Is $56,000 Or Less

A University of Wisconsin-Madison program, Bucky’s Tuition Promise, will cover four years of tuition and segregated fees for incoming Wisconsin resident students whose families make $56,000 or less per year. We talk with the school’s director of Financial Aid to learn more.

UW-Madison Program To Cover Four Years Of Tuition For Incoming Freshman Whose Family Income Is $56,000 Or Less

A University of Wisconsin-Madison program, Bucky’s Tuition Promise, will cover four years of tuition and segregated fees for incoming Wisconsin resident students whose families make $56,000 or less per year. We talk with the school’s director of Financial Aid to learn more.

How to Stay Warm At a Bitter-Cold Olympics? Face Tape and a Whistle-Like Gadget

In 1988, University of Wisconsin researchers studied the device, called a Lungplus, when used by 91 subjects in various cold-weather conditions. Over all, Lungplus users reported more comfort breathing in very cold temperatures. The researchers noted that Lungplus breathing at minus 15 degrees Celsius received similar scores, in terms of comfort, as regular breathing in 20 degrees Celsius, according to the research published in Applied Ergonomics.

Sinclair Broadcast Group solicits its news directors for its political fundraising efforts

Given that tradition, Sinclair’s policy “violates every standard of conduct that has existed in newsrooms for the past 40 or 50 years,” said Lewis Friedland, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin and a former TV news producer. “I’ve never seen anything like this. They certainly have the right to do it, but it’s blatantly unethical.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison offers free tuition to financially strapped freshmen

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has joined the growing list of colleges that now offer free tuition to certain students.

The Price-Fixing Scandal Rocking Big Chicken

Because these lawsuits are private litigation, they will likely not result in structural reform to the poultry sector, says Peter Carstensen, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches competition and regulation in the meat sector. And, he says, the lawsuits probably won’t have “much effect” on the “very serious problem” of how processors “exploit the farmers who raise their chickens.”

Study: Mississippi River Shutdown Would Cost Millions

The study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates that a shutdown of the river at Hannibal, Missouri, would require trucks to move more than 12 million tons of grain during a nine-month shipping season, costing millions of dollars and damaging roads.

The Gap Between The Science On Kids And Reading, And How It Is Taught

Seidenberg is a cognitive scientist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In his latest book, Language at the Speed of Sight, he points out that the “science of reading” can be a difficult concept for educators to grasp. He says it requires some basic understanding of brain research and the “mechanics” of reading, or what is often referred to as phonics.

Cities May Be Altering the Natural Instincts of Foxes and Coyotes

Under a dimly lit streetlight in Madison, Wisconsin, a woman witnessed a standoff between a fox and a coyote—two predators that have made the city their home. In an email to wildlife researcher David Drake at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she described the brief (and quite frankly, anti-climatic) interaction: For about 15 seconds, they stood face-to-face, about 10 feet part. They then turned around—and sauntered off in the opposite direction.

Polisis AI Reads Privacy Policies So You Don’t Have To

Today, researchers at Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Wisconsin and the University of Michigan announced the release of Polisis—short for “privacy policy analysis”—a new website and browser extension that uses their machine-learning-trained app to automatically read and make sense of any online service’s privacy policy, so you don’t have to.

UW-Madison To Offer Free Tuition For Families Making $56K Or Less A Year

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has unveiled a plan to offer free tuition to students whose families make $56,000 or less a year.

New NASA instruments aim to answer atmospheric unknowns

The PREFIRE team consists of experts in Earth system modeling, Arctic ice, and remote sensing, and is led by Tristan L’Ecuyer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW-Madison to cover tuition, fees for in-state students from families below median income

Part spider, part scorpion creature captured in amber

The discovery, “could help close major gaps in our understanding of spider evolution,” says Prashant Sharma, an evolutionary developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who was not involved in the work.

Alumni, students celebrate UW-Madison’s 169th year in Founders’ Day celebrations

Exactly 169 years ago today, a group of Badgers attended UW-Madison’s first classes. Now, Feb. 5 — Founders’ Day — is celebrated by students and alumni around the world.

Zero-deforestation pledges need help, support to meet targets, new study finds

“These companies stand poised to break the link between commodity production and deforestation,” co-author and environmental scientist Holly Gibbs of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said in a statement. “To do that, more immediate action is needed to demonstrate commitment to change and to clear the haze surrounding these efforts.”

Black Panther: does the Marvel epic solve Hollywood’s Africa problem?

Murphy was apparently saddened at criticisms that Coming to America stereotyped Africans, says Tejumola Olaniyan, professor of African diaspora cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has written on how the movie “others” Africa. “It was actually meant to be a positive portrayal of Africa: they are rich Africans, not poor. They are noble, they are humble. He wanted to overturn Hollywood’s images. It was still a kind of romanticisation but the movie only happened at all because of Murphy’s power in Hollywood.”

To help cranberry growers, UW researchers prototype crop-scanning technology

As a University of Wisconsin-Madison computer and electrical engineering professor, Susan Hagness doesn’t typically field emails about cranberry farming. Her background is in cancer detection, not agriculture.

University Research Park wants to add coffee shops, companies and camaraderie

Change is afoot at University Research Park — at least, if the park’s leaders and tenants have their way — and it could urbanize the sprawling tech-transfer center into a place where you can buy a cup of coffee, grab lunch or play a game of racquetball.

Cold Temperatures Are Not All Bad News: 3 Reasons to Be Thankful for Frigid Weather

Susan Paskewitz, the chair of the Department of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Popular Science that cold is a limiting factor for the Asian tiger mosquito, which can carry the Zika virus.

UW-Madison introduces new sexual harassment and sexual violence policy

University of Wisconsin campuses are updating or introducing new sexual harassment and sexual violence policies, following a mandate from the regents in December 2016 saying each campus needed its own, set guidelines.

The future of nuclear power? Think small

“The NuScale reactor has crossed a very important safety threshold,” said Todd Allen, professor of nuclear engineering at University of Wisconsin. “It’s an inflection point for advanced reactor designs. The question we can’t answer yet is, will they make it work in the market?”

Discovery of ancient stone tools rewrites the history of technology in India

“These data show that was wrong,” says John Hawks, an anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study. Today’s findings reveal that Levallois tools emerged in India roughly 385,000 years ago — right around the same time they started showing up in Africa and Europe. That means “India is part of this network of cultural innovation that included Neanderthals and Africans,” Hawks says. Michael Petraglia, a professor of human evolution at the Max Planck Institute in Germany who also did not participate in the research, agrees that the discovery is a key piece of the puzzle. “It fills an important gap in our knowledge of an important crossroads,” he says.