UW In The News

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.

Super Bowl 2018: Undrafted rookie Corey Clement could be the X-factor for Eagles

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The underdog theme has been embraced like no other by the Super Bowl-bound Philadelphia Eagles, and that continued into Monday’s Opening Night at St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center, where a handful of rubber dog masks surfaced among media and players.

What should I take for flu? Remedies that do and don’t help

Cough medicines that contain opioids like codeine should never be given to children, the Food and Drug Administration warned in early January.“Children should not take any cough or cold medications,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin Health. “They are not beneficial and might be harmful.”

Be ready to fight if a pet insurer, like a people insurer, denies a valid claim

“These are very different cancers,” he told me. “It’s like saying a dog had an infection and then got another infection years later, so it’s a preexisting condition.”Dr. David Vail, an oncologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, said he “would tend to agree that the two are unlikely to be related.”

In Cave in Israel, Scientists Find Jawbone Fossil From Oldest Modern Human Out of Africa

“This would be the earliest modern human anyone has found outside of Africa, ever,” said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist from the University of Wisconsin, Madison who was not involved in the study.

Jaw fossil discovered in Israel looks human, but it’s much older than it should be

This new find adds another important clue towards solving the mystery of this earlier spread of humans out of Africa, write the authors of a commentary published with the study. “I think that’s pretty cool,” agrees John Hawks, an paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You have a modern-looking upper jaw in Israel that was there much earlier than it was supposed to have been.” He cautions, however, against getting too attached to the label Homo sapiens: with only a small chunk of bone to go on, it’s hard to say for certain. It’s possible that it could be from another, unnamed relative of modern day people, for example.

The Lovely Tale of an Adorable Squid and Its Glowing Partner

A few years ago, in a laboratory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, I walked into a mostly dark room, with a single light illuminating a plastic cup. Within the cup were dozens of tiny white blobs, each smaller than a pea. They were baby Hawaiian bobtail squid, and they were adorable. Their diminutive arms trailed behind them as they bobbed in the water, and the pigment cells that would eventually allow their adult selves to change color gave their infant faces a freckled appearance.

UW-Madison School of Social Work conference reaches out to community

Protein Plight: Brazil Steals U.S. Soybean Share in China

Another study – conducted by the University of Wisconsin and paid for by the Illinois Soybean Association and the U.S. Soybean Export Council – suggests that farmers can better compete with synthetic alternatives by planting beans with a specific amino acid balance.

A Push To Get Older Adults In Better Shape For Surgery

The Patient Preferences Project at University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health has developed and is testing a list of useful questions for older patients. Even if your local hospital doesn’t have a program like those at Duke, Michigan Medicine or UCSF, you can ask your surgeon to address these questions.

The ‘Ice Road Truckers of science’ and why we need them

Government money applied to things that we as a society think are important — from space travel to the internet — produces major results in every area, in the medical, mechanical, electric, and even retail space.To stay competitive in this global economy, we must value and support basic research. And that means allowing the “Ice Road Truckers of science” to pursue their curiosity in order to drive discovery.

Rebecca Blank is chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Brad Schwartz is CEO of the biomedical Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison.

GOP Rigs Elections: Gerrymandering, Voter-ID Laws, Dark Money

African-Americans, who voted for Clinton over Trump by an 88-to-8 margin, were three times more likely than whites to be kept from the polls. “Thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of otherwise eligible people were deterred from voting by the ID law,” said University of Wisconsin political scientist Kenneth Mayer.

Lunar eclipse 2018: how to watch this “super” blue moon turn red

A supermoon is when these two cycles match up and we have a full moon that’s near its perigee. The result is that the full “super” moon appears slightly larger and slightly brighter to us in the sky. This occurs about one in every 14 full moons, Jim Lattis, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin Madison, notes.

New Developments in Eagle Protection

The bald eagle population is still rebounding in the United States. But a new study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey found that protecting eagle nests from humans can help aid in their reproduction. We talk with one of the researchers about what this means.