UW In The News

Fossil Discoveries Challenge Ideas About Earth’s Start

Last month, researchers lobbed another salvo in the decades-long debate about the nature of these forms. They are indeed fossil life, and they date to 3.465 billion years ago, according to John Valley, a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin. If Valley and his team are right, the fossils imply that life diversified remarkably early in the planet’s tumultuous youth.

A Proust-Apocalyptic Story

I perfectly understand that I live in a fantasy world, but I hold out hope that, as John Keating desires in “Dead Poets Society,” culture will again teach people to think for themselves, take agency, and carpe diem. If a missile alert came in on my phone, I’d keep doing what I already am: reading a good book and listening to Robert Schumann’s “Träumerei.”

-Mr. Schmiege teaches Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Counting cranberries gets easier with new technology developed at UW-Madison

With annual harvests of more than 5 million barrels — each barrel is 100 pounds of fruit — Wisconsin grows more than half of all commercial cranberries on the planet.

U.S. government to shield health workers under ‘religious freedom’

Professionals take an oath to serve people who are sick, Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison explained. They are also the only ones licensed to provide those services and must do so without discrimination, she said.

A California City’s Plan to Turn Indebted Millennials Into Local Doctors

Riverside’s death rates from cancer, liver disease, and heart disease are well above the state average, for example. In 2016, the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ranked each California county by overall health outcomes, and pegged Riverside at 40th out of 57. (Fellow Inland Empire counties San Bernardino and Imperial counties fared even worse.)

Maps As Storytelling

A new startup project out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Discovery to Product program sees maps as storytelling. We speak with LifeMapping founder and UW-Madison grad Dean Olsen about how the twists and turns in his own life inspired him to create the software.

UW Botany Professor Grows Plants In Space

Since the 1960s, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been studying how plants will grow in space. We talk with a Professor of Botany at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who has been leading a research team to study the effects of growing plants in a zero gravity environment.

Why Lupita Nyong’o’s upcoming children’s book is a major step for kids, authors, book publishers and basically everyone

The push for more diverse characters in children’s book has been a slow climb. Only 14% of kids books published in the US had black, Latino, Asian or Native American main characters featured, according to a 2015 study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. What’s more, around 80% of the people in editorial — authors, illustrators, editors — are white, according to industry data from publisher Lee and Low.

The Ad Industry Keeps Selling An American Dream That Most Aren’t Living

Would you consider yourself middle class? Chances are, whether you’re wealthy, lower income, or actually somewhere in the middle, you still identify as middle class. There are plenty of reasons why that is–“middle class” might be the most used word in modern politics–but a new University of Wisconsin study posits that it could also be because ads are telling us we’re middle class.

Case of 13 California kids allegedly tortured ‘fits this pattern we’ve been tracking for a long time’

A 2014 study by University of Wisconsin pediatrician Barbara Knox and colleagues found that in 38 cases of severe child abuse, 47 percent of parents had never enrolled their children in school or pulled their youngsters out when abuse was suspected and told authorities they were home schooling.

Ready for an anti-Trump wave in November? Look at Wisconsin.

Democrats won Wisconsin in every presidential election from 1988 to 2012, but Hillary Clinton’s strategists made the mistake of taking the state for granted in 2016. What they missed were trends brilliantly analyzed by Katherine J. Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, in her prophetic book, “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.” It was published eight months before the 2016 vote.

Luxury retailers are set to reap the benefits from tax reform

Jerry O’Brien, director of the Kohl’s Center for Retailing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told CNBC the tax cuts could result in a bigger gap between luxury retailers (i.e. Tiffany, Hudson’s Bay, Neiman Marcus and Tapestry) and other players, though he said off-price brands will continue to outperform in 2018. This leaves the “middle ground” of the industry at risk, he added.

Trump Hands Out ‘Fake News Awards,’ Sans the Red Carpet

At the time of Mr. Ross’s suspension, Kathleen Culver, the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that the president was likely to use the mistake as ammunition against his political opponents — an observation that seemed borne out by the “Fake News Awards.”

Donald Trump Gets His Sanity Grades

When we think about presidents losing their mental grip, we generally go back to Woodrow Wilson, who had a stroke in 1919 that left him bedridden and pretty much off the playing field. “Wilson was the worst case of presidential disability,” said John Cooper, a Wilson expert at the University of Wisconsin. The stroke was followed by other physical ailments and a long period of isolation under the protection of his wife, who some claimed was taking over the presidency. It left Wilson’s cognitive function unimpaired, Cooper said, “but it warped his judgment horribly.”

When States Make It Harder to Enroll, Even Eligible People Drop Medicaid

“Without being tremendously well organized, it can be easy to fail,” said Donald Moynihan, a professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is writing a book on the effects of administrative burdens. Researchers have studied the ways complexity can reduce sign-ups for workplace pension plans, participation in food stamps and turnout in elections, he noted. “These sorts of little barriers are ways in which humans get tripped up all the time when they’re trying to do something that might benefit them.”

Research Associates Bird Deaths In Lake Michigan With Warmer Water, More Algae

New research suggests warmer water in Lake Michigan could mean more bird deaths along the shoreline. The study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and U.S. Geological Survey found warmer water could favor the growth of algae with toxins that are killing off birds.

Deadly Aztec Epidemic “Cocoliztli” Linked to Salmonella

“From a gut instinct I would suspect there were multiple agents involved in that epidemic,” says Caitlin Pepperrell, a researcher who studies infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved with the study.

New documentary chronicles the brief but brilliant life of Lorraine Hansberry

Raised as part of a prominent, groundbreaking family on Chicago’s South Side (her father, a successful real estate broker, was dubbed “The Kitcheonette King”), Hansberry spent a brief period at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before moving to New York in 1950 where, before turning to the theater, she worked as a journalist and political activist. Along the way she would cross paths with everyone from Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois and James Baldwin to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Report Predicts Thousands Of ‘Advanced Energy’ Jobs Could Be Added To State

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Energy Institute and a national nonprofit called The American Jobs Project have issued the look at job growth in what’s called the advanced energy sector — think of products like energy-conserving water heaters and thermostats.

Call it the ‘Nick’: New UW recreation facility to honor philanthropists Ab and Nancy Nicholas

Meet Julia Nepper, who earned a UW-Madison Ph.D. at 23

“It’s OK to be wrong. Until you acknowledge what you don’t know, you cannot progress,” said the North Carolina native who, at age 23, received her Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison last month.

How Scientists Saved Bald Eagles From Destruction in Minnesota

Over two-and-a-half decades later, it’s being hailed as an unqualified success. On Tuesday, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey announced in the Journal of Applied Ecology that bald eagle populations at Voyageurs have been tremendously rehabilitated to stable numbers thanks to nest protection. Collected data in reveals that the breeding population of these birds has risen from 10 pairs in 1991 to 48 pairs in 2016.

In a fast-warming world, scientists say recent cold wave was exceptionally weird

Their finding that the intensity of Arctic cold is easing in a warming world is supported by many other studies. For example, Jonathan Martin, a meteorology researcher at the University of Wisconsin, has documented considerable shrinkage of the pool of frigid air surrounding the Arctic in recent decades.

This Is When Your New Year’s Resolution Will Fail

Make sure the quick win isn’t too hard or too easy, adds Alex Stajkovic, assistant professor of management and human resources at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin. “Easy goals are not motivating, and goals perceived to be beyond our ability may cause cessation of effort,” he says.

UW Study Questions Effectiveness Of Killing Wolves To Protect Livestock

Scientists at the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies looked at 230 verified wolf attacks on livestock in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan from 1998 through 2014.

The Olympics in the Korean Crisis

According to David Fields, Center for East Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Korean-American complex is like a precarious iron tower, which is strong but brittle, ready to collapse from any unexpected action like a preemptive strike of North Korea by the Trump administration.

Climate Change Is Altering Lakes and Streams, Study Suggests

“We’re monkeying with the very chemical foundation of these ecosystems,” said Emily H. Stanley, a limnologist (freshwater ecologist) at the University of Wisconsin — Madison. “But right now we don’t know enough yet to know where we’re going. To me, scientifically that’s really interesting, and as a human a little bit frightening.”

New Chazen Art Museum director brings industrial Midwest background

Amy Gilman has lived in Madison only a few months — but will likely become one of the more visible faces in the city’s art world.

The Olympics in the Korean Crisis

Noted: According to Daniel Fields, Center for East Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Korean-American complex is like a precarious iron tower, which is strong but brittle, ready to collapse from any unexpected action like a preemptive strike of North Korea by the Trump administration.

Martin Luther King spoke to UW-Madison and UWM students 1 year after winning Nobel prize

More than four decades ago, a crowd estimated at almost 3,000 packed the Stock Pavilion on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus to listen to the wisdom of the most recent Nobel Peace laureate.