UW In The News

Fake News? No Jobs? Prospective Journalists Soldier On

Quoted: “When I look at local news and see what’s happening, I’m pessimistic,” said Kathleen Culver, journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “When I look at 18- and 20-year-olds and see what they want to do, I’m optimistic.”

Eagle Talon Jewelry Suggests Neanderthals Were Capable of Human-Like Thought

Quoted: “We’re looking at evidence of traditions that have to do with social identification,” says John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who wasn’t involved in the study. “Why do you wear ornaments? Why do you go through this trouble? Because you notice something interesting, you want to associate yourself with it, [and] you want it to mark yourself for other people to recognize.”

Book Review: ‘On The Backs Tf Tortoises’ Challenges Us To Consider How Everything Is Intertwined

Nominally an environmental and social history of the Galápagos Islands, Prof. Elizabeth Hennessy lays bare the many intertwined issues that confront us as we attempt conservation efforts in complex situations, while faced with a sweeping ecological crisis.

Governor Declares Energy Emergency As Farms, Rural Residents Create High Demand For Propane

Joe Lauer, agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he started advising farmers to start buying propane over the summer after wet weather caused major planting delays across the state.

A controversial new study claims Botswana may be the origin of modern humanity

Quoted: It’s a compelling story, but the paper has already generated controversy. “The idea that we’re looking for a single origin [of anatomically modern humans] is out of fashion,” says John Hawks, a University of Wisconsin-Madison paleoanthropologist.

After Katie Hill, media grapples with possible onslaught of nude photos

Quoted: Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, warned that “every newsroom should be having discussions in advance about how they will handle all kinds of issues involving personal privacy and leaked information. This certainly isn’t the last time we’re going to see this kind of question.”

Opinion | It’s the End of California as We Know It

Our de facto solution to housing affordability has been forcing people to move farther and farther away from cities, so they commute longer, make traffic worse and increase the population of fire-prone areas. (Volker Radloff research.)

Want to Be More Creative? A MacArthur Genius Shows You How

Semipermanent Tattoos: Why Millennials Love Them

Amy Niu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin who’s currently conducting a study on selfie taking and self-perception among college-aged women in the United States and China, isn’t as worried. “In the U.S. sample, I found there’s no correlation between selfie taking and satisfaction with physical appearance,” Niu says.

Twitter reveals growing global public anxiety about Crispr gene-editing

Quoted: Dietram Scheufele, a social scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, says that this work can help researchers get a handle of on what worries people about new technologies, but shouldn’t replace other ways of assessing public sentiment.

Done In By A Deadline

Quoted: “In the old days, states could say that they needed to have earlier deadlines because it was a more difficult process to manage,” says Barry Burden, a political science professor who heads up the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But other states have proven that they don’t need 30 days.”

Controversial New Study Pinpoints Where All Modern Humans Arose |

Quoted: Today’s southern African populations harbour a deep mitochondrial genetic line. But the details of what the latest analysis revealed remain unclear, says John Hawks, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Frustrated Democratic governors find ways to sidestep GOP

Quoted: Turning to executive orders “is a rational reaction by an executive who finds their agenda gummed up by a state Legislature,” said University of Wisconsin political science professor Barry Burden. To be able to show voters what they’ve accomplished, governors “start to look at things they can do unilaterally,” he said.

Facebook removes pro-Trump ads it said violated its policies

Quoted: Young Mie Kim, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said the paid posts were the “best examples” she has seen of ads that “bypass transparency measures by appearing as a public education type of message when in fact the main purpose seems to be data collection.”

Meet Two MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Climate Scientists

Featured: We meet two scientists working on opposite sides of the world, both thinking creatively about rising sea levels and our changing oceans. Andrea Dutton, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Stacy Jupiter, a marine biologist and Melanesia Director with the Wildlife Conservation Society, were awarded MacArthur Fellowships this fall.

New Hamel Music Center to open

When the Overture Center for the Arts opened in 2005, Madison obtained a crown jewel of a performance venue that remains the envy of many a larger city. Meanwhile, the students, faculty and guest artists who are part of the Mead Witter School of Music at the University of Wisconsin–Madison remained trapped in Mills Music Hall, and the other inadequate facilities in the outdated Humanities building.

Study: Nearly a Third of U.S. Bald Eagles Infected With Newly Discovered Virus

“This study has opened our eyes to glaring knowledge gaps about infection in a species of great national importance,” Tony Goldberg, lead study author and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement. “It’s a more complicated story than we thought it might be at first, but that makes it more interesting.”

Trump sends message to frustrated GOP: ‘I have to do what I have to do’

Quoted: “The thing about tipping points is you never know you’re in one, until you’re actually in one,” said Ken Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Are we at least likely moving toward a tipping point? It’s more likely today than it was a few months ago.”

American bald eagles are dying, and scientists may finally know why

“It was horrible,” Tony Goldberg, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells Inverse.“We’d get calls from the public or local veterinarians that eagles were stumbling around, vomiting, or having seizures. They’d be raced into veterinary hospitals but they’d never make it.”

Traits of autism, attention deficit linked to small brainstem

“We still don’t know much about the brainstem, and many studies have omitted it from their analyses,” says lead researcher Brittany Travers, assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who presented the unpublished findings. “Our results suggest that it may be helpful in understanding the neurobiological basis of individual differences in symptom severity, both in autism and ADHD.”

Bill Would Open Up Funding To Recover Missing Wisconsin Veterans

A University of Wisconsin-Madison program aimed at identifying and recovering the bodies of Wisconsin soldiers declared missing in action would get more state funding under a proposal at the state Capitol.

Twerking onstage with Lizzo was an act of political defiance

I absolutely refuse to allow people who hate my body, my politics, or my embrace of pleasure to make me feel guilt or shame. I love who I am and what I do. I wish this level of happiness for everyone. As Lizzo says in her song “Juice,” “If I’m shinin’, everybody gonna shine (yeah, I’m goals). I was born like this, don’t even gotta try (now you know).”

Dr. Sami Schalk is an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Learn more about her at samischalk.com, and follow her on Twitter at @DrSamiSchalk.

Corey Pompey, the new University of Wisconsin-Madison marching band director, takes the baton and replaces a legend

Corey Pompey stood at the top of a red ladder as hundreds of University of Wisconsin band members, their hats turned backward to signify a victory, twirled, cavorted, danced, hopped and acted crazy.

Aaron Bird Bear Named UW’s First-ever Director of Tribal Relations

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has appointed Aaron Bird Bear to be its first-ever director of tribal of relations.

Wisconsin Second In US For Binge Drinking Rate, Study Finds

The report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Population Health Institute looks at both federal and state health data.It finds 24 percent of Wisconsin adults engage in binge drinking, compared to 16 percent nationally.

Illinois’ Automatic Voter Registration Delays Worry Experts

Quoted: “It’s helpful to have that come out in a midterm year or odd year where election officials have an opportunity to make fixes without the pressure,” said Barry Burden, a director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center. “The presidential (election) puts the most stress on any system than any other contest.”

New Survey Finds Wisconsin Fish Farmers Seeing Steady Demand

“Most of the fish farmers that we spoke with were already selling out of all their fish. So if they had more capacity, they could sell more fish,” said Bret Shaw, associate professor of life science communication from UW-Madison and an author of the study. “Some were even ordering in fish from other states and smoking it or processing it.”

UW-Madison answers demand for data science with new school, major and more faculty

Jessie Opoien: Lizzo’s magic let us all shine for a night — especially one twerking UW-Madison assistant professor

For one magical night last week, she shared that moment with Madison. And in that moment, we all got to shine — but perhaps no one more than Sami Schalk, an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Overzealous in preventing falls, hospitals are producing an ‘epidemic of immobility’ in elderly patients

Noted: Barbara King, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing, studied how nurses responded to “intense messaging” from hospitals about preventing falls after the 2008 CMS policy change. She found that pressure to have zero patient falls made some nurses fearful. After a fall happened, some nurses adjusted their behavior and wouldn’t let patients move on their own.