UW In The News
-
UW and Medical College win $5.5 million grant to study Alzheimer’s
The Medical College of Wisconsin and University of Wisconsin-Madison have joined forces to win a $5.5 million federal grant to study Alzheimer’s disease.
-
Chicago teen headed to college inspires others: ‘Not an easy road, but worthwhile’
Growing up in some of Chicago’s tougher neighborhoods presents a very big challenge to young people who want more for their lives than the gangs and drug dealing they often see all around them. But on Tuesday night, more than 300 youngsters were honored as part of the Chicago Scholars program.
-
UW Doctor Among Those Focusing On Physician Training To Combat Opioid Epidemic
A Dane County doctor is using a federal grant to educate colleagues about the appropriate use of strong painkillers in an attempt to help combat a national epidemic of death and addiction related to opioids. But an increasing push to focus on — and potentially change — how physicians practice has some pushing back.
-
UW scientist receives national award for brain repair work
Marina E. Emborg, an associate professor of medical physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has won the 2016 Bernard Sanberg Memorial Award for Brain Repair.
-
China must scrap remaining birth control policies to avert demographic crisis, says medical researcher
Yi Fuxian, one of the most vocal opponents of China’s birth control policies, says the government should scrap the remaining measures to address a looming demographic crisis that is pushing the nation into Japan’s path of economic stagnation.
-
Editorial: Odyssey Project students graduate with found voice, new hope
My colleague David Dahmer from Madison365 and I were talking about the many individual efforts to address racial disparities in Madison and we both mentioned the Odyssey Project as one particularly successful effort.
-
Who Are Snapchat Stars “Mystery Girl” and “Vikings Fan”?
If you’ve been online in the past 48 hours, you might’ve seen headlines about a college romance blossoming after two University of Wisconsin students saw each other on Snapchat. (Yes … Snapchat.)
-
Badgers will be on prime-time stage vs. Ohio State, Nebraska
Wisconsin football fans clamoring for more marquee opponents at Camp Randall Stadium and more night games will be giddy in 2016.
-
Meditation can help with aging, pain, depression, experts say
Everyone seems to meditate: Coworkers plan to vacation at a meditation retreat, friends chat about favorite meditation apps and countless articles praise the practice. Does meditation live up to the hype?” The science is very much in an embryonic state,” says Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, but adding “meditation plays an important part of the maintenance of well-being.”
-
How smart contact lenses will create the sci-fi eyes of the future
The feat of correcting vision with a tiny, permeable, and tear-friendly contact lens is impressive enough, but soon that will be only the beginning. Scientists are thinking bigger about what can fit in a small lens — and contacts are about to get a whole lot smarter.
-
Mindfulness therapy works for recurrent depression
Noted: “When mindfulness is combined with cognitive therapy, one of the things we see is people being trained to regard their thoughts as just thoughts and not to get ensnared by them,” said Richard Davidson, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study.
-
Laremy Tunsil case points to the perils of social media
Noted: “When you live your life out loud on social media, it can come back to haunt you,” says Katy Culver, an associate professor in University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism. “Also, it is not just what you choose to put on social media, but every time someone captures a video of you, every time there’s an exchange on Snapchat that can live on forever.”
-
The Age of Single-Sport Athletes Endures Despite Detractors’ Suspicions
Noted: Research assessing whether sports specialization leads to more injuries is not common, but this year, Timothy McGuine and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation published research suggesting there is a link.
-
Linda Scott named dean of UW-Madison School of Nursing
Linda Scott, associate dean for academic affairs at the College of Nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been named dean of UW-Madison’s School of Nursing.
-
Zika: Another warning flag of health threats due to climate change?
Noted: Author Jonathan Patz, M.D., M.P.H., is director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
-
Donors pledge $10 million for UW-Madison chancellor’s scholarship program
A group of donors has pledged $10 million to match contributions to a UW-Madison scholarship program aimed at low-income and minority students. The Chancellor’s Scholarship Program pays for tuition, fees and up to $800 worth of textbooks for 255 UW-Madison undergraduates.
-
Wisconsin Microfinance program offers hope
Catching the last plane from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, just hours before a massive earthquake struck in 2010, left Gergens Polynice with a mixture of gratitude and helplessness.
-
Researchers find tsunamis on the Great Lakes
New research has found the Great Lakes may have a type of tsunami after all. They are not tsunamis caused by earthquakes. These tsunamis are caused by organized areas of thunderstorms.
-
UW Researchers See Promise In Cancer Drug To Help Fragile X Syndrome
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers say a study performed on mice with fragile X syndrome shows a possible path to improving memory and learning for people with the condition. Fragile X is the most common cause of inherited intellectual disability.
-
Wisconsin researchers land NIH dementia grant
Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin- Madison have received a four-year, $5.5 million grant to better understand how communication between parts of the brain changes as the result of normal aging or of dementia.
-
Mike Leckrone defines leadership
UW-Madison marching band director Mike Leckrone said he’s often compared to a coach. It’s a parallel he agrees with.
-
UW Researchers Are Exploring The Link Between Climate Change And Zika Virus
University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists are looking into whether climate change may lead to the faster spread of diseases like the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus.
-
UW-Madison Researchers Are Making Progress In The Hunt For New Antibiotics
As more infections become resistant to antibiotics, a University of Wisconsin research team’s search for new ways to knock down bad bacteria and fungi has become increasingly urgent.
-
How the Other Fifth Lives
Noted: Timothy Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin, has explored how the top quintile is pulling away from the rest of society. In an essay published earlier this year, “Gates, Gaps, and Intergenerational Mobility: The Importance of an Even Start,” Smeeding finds that the gap between the average income of households with children in the top quintile and households with children in the middle quintile has grown, in inflation-adjusted dollars, from $68,600 to $169,300 — that’s 147 percent.
-
Researchers discover ‘tsunamis’ on Great Lakes
They may not wipe out entire cities or occur after earthquakes, but two University of Wisconsin researchers say the Great Lakes have tsunamis that can wreak havoc of their own.
-
Wonkblog: The sinister, secret history of a food that everybody loves
Noted: Increasingly, anthropologists say that the key to understanding the rise of civilization is to study political and religious institutions. Many now believe that societies took up farming not out of necessity but for cultural reasons — to please a king or to satisfy their religion. T. Douglas Price, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the origins of agriculture, argues that farming was a conscious choice made by societies with pre-existing levels of political sophistication.
-
Hyperloop and UW-Madison’s BadgerLoop Team
Hyperloop is the name of a potential transport system, with the idea of shooting people in pods through a tube at speeds of over 700 mph. Does this sound like a pipe dream straight out of science fiction? Not for Elon Musk. You know him – he’s the owner and innovator of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. But for Hyperloop, he invited over 100 teams from around the world to a competition to present their ideas on how to make Hyperloop work. Well, a team from UW-Madison made the cut.
-
With Deflategate Ruling, Roger Goodell Is Firmly in Control
Quoted: Linda S. Greene, the Evjue-Bascom law professor at the University of Wisconsin, draws a sharp distinction between how Goodell successfully handled the Brady case and how he mishandled the Ray Rice investigation, protecting a star player and his team in a clear case of domestic abuse.
-
The ‘nasty effect,’ and why Donald Trump supporters mistrust the media
People are less receptive to new information when they are offended. That was one of the key findings of a 2013 study by communication scientists at the University of Wisconsin. Researchers tested the effect of “uncivil” reader comments appended to online articles — remarks like, “You must be dumb if you think X.””The results were both surprising and disturbing,” study co-authors Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele wrote in a summary published by the New York Times. “Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.”They called this phenomenon the “nasty effect.”
-
If you’re a distracted media multitasker, take a few deep breaths to get your focus back
Do you text while watching TV, or listen to music while reading? Media multitasking is known to distract people not only when they are doing it, but when they aren’t consuming media – which is detrimental to performance at school or work, for maintaining relationships and for general well-being. A new study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States shows that a short meditation exercise involving counting one’s breath – inhaling and exhaling nine times – can sharpen one’s focus, and especially so for heavy media multitaskers.
Featured Experts
Jonathan Martin: Extreme Cold in Wisconsin
Jonathan E. Martin, a professor in the UW–Madison Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, can speak to what’s driving the… More