UW In The News

Mild winter brings early allergy season

Doctors say a mild winter mixed with an early thaw means mold allergies are back earlier this season.

“When the snow starts to melt once the ground shows up that’s when we have outdoor mold,” Adult Allergist at UW Health, Dr. Tom Puchner, says. (Puchner is clinical assistant professor of allergy and immunology.)

Even though there is snow on the ground and below freezing temperatures, Dr. Puchner says current conditions can still affect those who suffer from mold allergies.

President Obama visiting Milwaukee Thursday

Noted: One of the president’s guests will be Donna Friedsam of the UW Population Health Institute.

She believes Milwaukee’s victory among 20 cities to increase health enrollment will have significant future benefits.

“It saves our employers money. It saves our communities money and it improves our quality of life overall. So, it is very important that we have people get enrolled in the coverage, so they they can get the care they need.”

Friedsam adds Milwaukee’s health coverage victory is a result of a coordinated effort throughout the city by a wide range of organizations.

New Laws Protect Consumers or Ease Restrictions on Creditors

Quoted: James M. Johannes, a professor of banking at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Business in Madison, Wis., told Bloomberg BNA that consumer debts were not bought and sold when the WCA was enacted more than 40 years ago.

Field stations in a box

Never mind Punxsutawney Phil. The thirteen-lined ground squirrels that hibernate in plastic drawers in the UW-Madison Biotron take their cues from Hannah Carey.

Washburn Observatory reopens following repairs

After being closed for nearly two years, UW-Madison’s iconic observatory will reopen tonight.

Unexpected repairs are to blame for the closure, but now everything is back up and working better than ever.

Deep-rooted alumnus named UW head of university relations

Charles Hoslet, interim vice chancellor for university relations since August, is now the permanent vice chancellor, Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced Tuesday.

UW-Madison joins Common Application for 2017 freshman class

Next fall’s class of high school seniors will have a new way to apply to UW-Madison, now that the campus has joined more than 600 other colleges and universities on the nationwide Common Application. Students will still be able to apply to UW-Madison through the University of Wisconsin System’s application process, as they have in years past, said Steve Hahn, vice provost for the Division of Enrollment Management.

Women’s products cost more. Here’s how to avoid the “pink tax.”

Quoted: “I think that if the consumer is willing to pay more for a certain color, then it’s in manufacturers’ and marketers’ best interest to charge more,” said Christine Whelan, a professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin Madison and director of the university’s MORE (Money, Relationships, and Equality) program. “But I do mind that people don’t know about this.”

Wisconsin’s Seasonal Weather Might Look Different In Next 5, 10 Years, Experts Say

Typical Wisconsin seasons might not be so typical in the coming years, particularly the Badger State’s notoriously cold winters, according to two University of Wisconsin-Madison professors. “We’ll still have winters,” said Steve Ackerman, director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at UW-Madison and a professor of atmospheric sciences. “But they will be shorter and warmer.”

The Oakhill Prison Humanities Project

Central Time talks about the Oakhill Prison Humanities Project, teaching poetry and literature to people in prison and its upcoming art exhibitition, Artists in Absentia.

Meet UW-Madison’s Distinguished Teaching Award recipients

They teach English and chemistry, genetics and computer sciences, sociology, geography and math.

But the dozen UW-Madison instructors selected for the 2016 Distinguished Teaching Awards all possess outstanding dedication to their scholarship and students.

Talk to yourself out loud? Here’s how it benefits you

Quoted: Even better, our soliloquies prove useful. For example. when it comes to looking for something, saying the word out loud makes the thing easier to find, says Gary Lupyan, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Q&A: Malia Jones digs into data to find a counterintuitive trend on poverty

An analysis of Census data by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied Population Laboratory showed some troubling trends on poverty in the state.

Much higher success rate this year for the flu vaccine

Quoted: “70 to 80% of the time we get this correct, and every now and then there’s a miscalculation,” Dr. Jonathon Temte, UW Health, says

That’s because he says they are making the predictions 9 months before the flu season.

“Last year was one of those situations where the virus that emerged or started circulating was different than what was in the vaccine,” Dr. Temte says.

Laughter may not be medicine, but it sure does help

Noted: Research “is accelerating right now,” said Dorothy Farrar-Edwards, chair of the department of kinesiology at University of Wisconson-Madison and core leader of outreach, recruitment and education at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, referencing recently passed legislation that will give $300 million to the National Institute of Health specifically for Alzheimer’s research in 2016.

Also quoted: Barbara Bowers, professor and associate dean for research in the school of nursing at UW, said “decades of research” have shown that “social engagement is actually one of the most important things you can do for quality of life and longevity.”

SHINE Medical wins NRC’s OK to build medical isotope plant

Noted: Piefer was in the UW-Madison’s nuclear engineering Ph.D program, and after getting his degree, he developed the technology, he said, and forged a partnership with the private, nonprofit Morgridge Institute for Research on the UW campus.

In Vietnam, troops connected through diverse music

Noted: Bradley teaches a course on the war at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Werner, a professor and chairman of the university’s Afro-American Studies Department. A decade ago, they began talking about music at a Christmas party at the Vet Center in Madison and were quickly surrounded by a group of guys sharing stories of the music they listened to in Vietnam.

Poverty across Wisconsin reaches highest level in 30 years

Poverty in Wisconsin hit its highest level in 30 years during the five-year period ending in 2014, even as the nation’s economy was recovering from the Great Recession, according to a trend analysis of U.S. census data just released by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.

Where’s The Color In Kids’ Lit? Ask The Girl With 1,000 Books (And Counting)

Noted: Fewer than 10 percent of children’s books released in 2015 had a black person as the main character, according to a yearly analysis by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And while the number of children’s books about minorities has increased in the last 20 years, many classroom libraries have older books.

UW talks about ‘moving forward’ in conversations about race, ethnicity

University of Wisconsin administration and students tackled tough questions regarding race and diversity Wednesday in an effort to create a plan that could fuel changes to campus culture.

More than 400 people came together in an open discussion on diversity issues, possible solutions to incidents of hate and bias, increasing retention rates and cultural competency.

UW Health slashes salad bar prices; sales soar

At the beginning of 2016, UW Health cut the price of its cafeteria salad bar almost in half, from $8.00 a pound to $4.99 a pound. In just the first month of the price cut, the hospital reports it sold 5,000 more salads than it had in other months.

THIS WEEK ON FOODIE: Stoney Acres Farm

Video: Stoney Acres Farm, near Wausau, hosts a popular pizza night with ingredients from their farm. (Subjects are both UW-Madison grads who met in class as undergraduates.)

Subprime gets bad rap in ‘Big Short’ but is key to easing affordability crisis

Op-ed by Jaime Luque, Assistant Professor, Real Estate & Urban Land Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

UW professors win prestigious research fellowships

Three UW-Madison professors have been selected as Sloan Research Fellows, one of the top awards given to young researchers.

UW-Madison team helping to develop system for thwarting cyberattacks

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of three schools working with non-profit research institute SRI International under a $5.3 million federal grant to develop technology to thwart particularly costly cyberattacks.

Smart Sole Can Charge Your Smartphone as You Walk

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin have developed a new energy-harvesting technology capable of capturing energy produced as humans walk. WSJ’s Monika Auger reports. Photo: UW-Madison College of Engineering

Dalai Lama visiting Madison on March 9 for live-streamed panel on global well-being

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama will visit Madison next month for a panel event on global-well being.

The event, titled “The World We Make,” is hosted by the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and will take place on Wednesday, March 9th, at 1:30 p.m. in the Capitol Theater at the Overture Center for the Arts.

Leon Varjian honored in Madison

The Madison city council honored a man Tuesday whose humor was so remarkable that a 1992 book on college pranks dedicated an entire chapter to him.
Members passed a resolution declaring February 23 Leon Varjian Day.

The Wisconsin Idea: Alive, but how well?

Noted: Kathy Cramer, director of the UW–Madison’s Morgridge Center for Public Service, says the university’s historic role helping policy makers solve state problems has shrunk due to suspicion on both ends of State Street. However, she says, some initiatives continue, including student internships and leadership programs, and embedding graduate students from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research in state legislators’ offices.

Zika researchers release real-time data on viral infection study in monkeys

Researchers in the United States who have infected monkeys with Zika virus made their first data public last week. But instead of publishing them in a journal, they have released them online for anyone to view — and are updating their results day by day. The team is posting raw data on the amount of virus detected in the blood, saliva and urine of three Indian rhesus macaques, which they injected with Zika on 15 February. “This is the first time that our group has made data available in real time,” says David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a leader of the project, whose scientists have dubbed themselves ZEST (the Zika experimental-science team). He hopes that releasing the data will help to speed up research into the nature of the virus that has spread across the Americas.