UW In The News

On Campus: UW students’ HIV treatment test advances in Clinton Global Initiative competition

Two UW-Madison students’ idea for a low-cost test to help people with HIV manage their treatment has advanced to the second round of a Clinton Global Initiative competition of ideas from colleges across the country.

Study details high cost of invasive species in lakes

A new study says invasive species in lakes cause significant economic damage. The study examined the spiny water flea invasion of a single Wisconsin lake and calculated the damage to the lake’s water quality at $140 million. While the study focused on one lake, it points to the need for more data about the economic impact of invasive species, said study author Jake Walsh, a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW-Madison’s Keisha Lindsay works to help students see how identity plays in politics

“Intersectionality” may sound like an arcane academic theory, but Keisha Lindsay says the term might be closer to home than many believe. It refers to the way people’s identities — gender, race, class — intersect to shape their experiences, particularly the experience of oppression … Lindsay, an assistant professor in political science and gender and women’s studies at UW-Madison, says her students sometimes are surprised to realize the ways in which it applies to them.

Wausau’s Will Hsu wins UW under-40 award

WAUSAU – Madison. Minneapolis. Boston. Phoenix. Will Hsu has lived, worked, and studied in many cities across the country. But for Hsu, there’s no place like home: Wausau.

Bronson Koenig’s buzzer-beater shoots Badgers into Sweet 16

Wisconsin’s remarkable run under Greg Gard continued Sunday night in the second round of the NCAA East Regional, thanks to one of the more remarkable comebacks in recent memory.

Tom Still: Why basic research matters at state’s colleges and universities

MADISON — There are 115 universities in the United States that can lay claim to an “R1” rating from the national organization that ranks research institutions, and Wisconsin is now home to two of them — the UW-Madison and the UW-Milwaukee, which joined the elite Research Level 1 list in February.

Stinkbug egg portrait among 2016 Cool Science image contest winners

An image of human tissue and blood cells that looks like an Impressionist painting, a blood-red moon, and a batch of stinkbug eggs are among the 10 images that won the 2016 Cool Science Image contest.

Wisconsin leads the way in the art of glass

It’s hotter than molten lava, constantly moving and requires artisans to work in a careful precision with their tools, their space and each other. It’s glass, and no other university has shaped its future as an artistic medium longer than the University of Wisconsin.

Taking the online medicine

“Never tried sharing data like this before,” said the tweet. “Feels like walking into a country for the first time. Exciting, but don’t know what to expect.”David O’Connor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison was announcing his decision on February 14th to post online data from his laboratory’s latest experiment.

University of Wisconsin activists shake up student government

A group of 17 minority student activists running for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student government secured a majority of the available positions on the Associated Students of Madison (ASM) Student Council.

Is, gulp, Wisconsin the best athletic program in the country?

March has become a month when Wisconsin celebrates the muscle of its athletic department. The last 14 years the Badgers have played in a college football bowl game and then qualified for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. It is the longest streak in NCAA history.

Student brewers at UW-Madison selected for another round of commercial production

A trio of student brewers from a food and beverage fermentation class were named winners Wednesday of the second-annual Campus Craft Brewery contest. The winning beer, an American wheat ale with white and red wheat, will now be commercially brewed and distributed throughout the state by Wisconsin Brewing Co. in Verona, sponsor of the contest, which is designed to prepare students for work in the food and beverage industry.

Madison’s Atlantis: The Lost City

The peaceful atmosphere of the UW–Madison Arboretum seems an unlikely site for a city rocked by scandal, war and nature’s cruel grip. Yet tucked within the Arboretum is Madison’s own Atlantis, its lost city.

More visibility with #TheRealUW may be mixed blessing

With many students using #TheRealUW to voice their experiences with racial prejudice on campus, a discrimination expert said there are caveats that come with greater media attention.

University of Wisconsin psychology professor Markus Brauer, an expert on discrimination, said greater visibility means students’ perceptions of racial prejudice on campus will have a concrete impact on the racial climate.

Can your address predict a premature death?

Rural counties have higher rates of smoking, obesity, child poverty and teen births, as well as higher numbers of uninsured adults than their urban counterparts, according to the report, a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. Large urban counties have lower smoking and obesity rates, fewer injury deaths and more residents who attended some college.

“What we think is going on here is that … in rural areas, there is a smaller population, fewer businesses, fewer taxes — and they’re struggling to offer as many opportunities as urban,” said lead researcher Bridget Catlin [senior scientist and director of MATCH]. “All of this has a significant impact on health.”

Global investors remain committed to real estate

Quoted: Erwan Quintin, associate professor at Wisconsin School of Business, said liquidity was a concern, as were a shortage of opportunities. Nevertheless, conviction plays a role, he said: “People are investing in those sectors because they feel that the sector has a future that justifies investing in it.”

Is Agent Orange Still Causing Birth Defects?

Quoted: Vietnam claims its data are sound, but the disagreement has sustained tension for years, particularly about effects that might be passed down to subsequent generations. Although U.S. laboratory tests in animals show that genetic damage caused by dioxin can be passed on to offspring, susceptibility varies widely by species, and no studies have been done in humans. Whether animal findings reflect the human experience “would be notoriously difficult to prove,” cautions Robert Moore, a toxicology researcher at the University of Wisconsin– Madison.

Financial Literacy Poses Lifelong Challenges

Noted: Knowing what one should do is different from actually doing it, though. That difference is why financial security scholar J. Michael Collins, a University of Wisconsin-Extension family and consumer economics specialist, prefers the concept of “capability” over “literacy.”

Burden & Hsu: Will record Republican turnout in the primaries translate into a Trump win in November? Probably not. Here’s why.

At his news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort on the night of several Super Tuesday victories, Republican front-runner Donald J. Trump bragged about the new voters he had drawn into to the party’s nomination process. As he explained:

Nosy fish inspires help for the eyes

Presbyopia is a common visual condition, in which the eye’s lens stiffens to the point that it can’t focus on close objects. Glasses, surgery and regular contact lenses do help, but they also cause a loss in contrast, sensitivity and night vision. That’s why scientists from the University of Wisconsin, Madison are developing an alternative – self-focusing contacts that are inspired by a fish.

Tips For Treating Seasonal Allergies With Multiple Medications

For those who are on multiple medications for easing symptoms, here’s a few things to be aware of courtesy of Dr. Casey Gallimore, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy.

Handful of Biologists Went Rogue and Published Directly to Internet

Quoted: And many #ASAPbio supporters retweeted John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist from the University of Wisconsin, who found himself recently at an African university where a paper on African genomes was unavailable because it could not pay the fee for the journal where it was published, and no preprint was available. He expressed his frustration with a profanity.

MPD officers could be in mindfulness study

A possible pilot study would investigate the effects of mindfulness training on Madison police officers. MPD Chief Mike Koval says he’s working with the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin to plan the project to determine how mindfulness training affects a police officer’s physical and mental well-being.

Why Even Wealthy Black Students Have More Student Loan Debt

Noted: The study shows both “how racial wealth inequalities are created, but also how they are compounded intergenerationally,” said Fenaba Addo, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the study’s authors, in a release.

Maria Sharapova And What Is Sports Doping?

Interviewed: Dr. Norman Fost, professor emeritus of pediatrics and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is also the director of the Bioethics Program.

Auto-focus contact lenses that help you see in the dark thanks to liquid film

If you are one of a billion people who rely on glasses to read small print, a self-adjusting liquid contact lens could one day restore perfect vision.

UW-Madison wins Snowmobile Challenge, MacLean-Fogg Cup

Perennial frontrunner University of Wisconsin-Madison took home the MacLean-Fogg Cup Saturday as winners of the ASE Clean Snowmobile Challenge 2016 Internal Combustion-class competition. UW-Madison topped a dozen other teams in the challenge’s most competitive class.

The Promise and Peril of Cluster Hiring

Perhaps the most scrutinized cluster-hiring program has been that at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Starting in 1998, the university has hired about 140 faculty members to fill nearly 50 clusters. Michael Bernard-Donals, vice provost for faculty and staff programs, says that early challenges, such as determining service loads or the best way to evaluate publication records, have largely been worked out. It helped, he says, that the campus rolled the program out over a five-year period, enabling leaders to iron out kinks along the way. (Subscription required.)

Ask Well: Can Naps Make Up for Sleep Deficits?

Quoted: But it’s always a good idea to make up for lost sleep, regardless of the time of day, said Dr. Ruth Benca, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A Few More Words From Wisconsin’s Nigel Hayes

This sounds too good to be true, a little too convenient, but I promise you it happened: On the afternoon I went to go see Nigel Hayes at Wisconsin, the Official Word of the Day was “catawampus.”