UW In The News

Who did the Maya sacrifice?

To try to shed some light on the matter, Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, looked at 40 human teeth recovered from different people cast into the Sacred Cenote. He and his colleagues have just published their results in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

YouTube overhauled its algorithms for kids’ content amid FTC talks

Quoted: The company also hasn’t detailed how it defines “quality” or “educational” videos. So one of the best barometers for YouTube’s metric is its Kids app, which places videos front-and-center once a viewer logs in. The educational merits of these choices are up for debate. Heather Kirkorian, an early childhood development professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, opened the app this week and found Baby Shark and Lucas the Spider, two global hits. “I wouldn’t consider them educational. I would consider them wholesome,” she said. “The term ’educational’ is used as an umbrella for ’non-harmful.’”

Before Trump’s Tweets, Why Baltimore Became a ‘Target’

Quoted: Baltimore has faced struggles in recent years, with a high homicide rate of more than 300 killings for four consecutive years, per the Associated Press, but historian Paige Glotzer says that Trump’s comments touch on a number of misconceptions about the city. Glotzer, a former Baltimore resident and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose research has included looking into the effects of housing segregation, spoke to TIME about how a long history of discrimination and segregation has contributed to effects still felt today.

A Racist History Behind Trump’s Baltimore Attack

Paige Glotzer is Assistant Professor and John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Chair in the History of American Politics, Institutions, and Political Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her book, Building Suburban Power: The Business of Exclusionary Housing Markets, will be published in April, 2020.

Scientists Built a Tiny Version of the Sun in Wisconsin

Enter the Big Red Ball (BRB), a “mini-Sun” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison built to simulate solar dynamics in a laboratory setting.

These Academics Spent $1.35 To Make Middle School Less Awful. Here’s How.

Middle school, as documented in such educational opuses as Eighth Grade and School of Rock, is legendarily awful. Students who have done well in elementary school often stumble, become isolated and fall behind. But Geoffrey Borman, a professor at University of Wisconsin Madison who specializes in education policy and analysis, and his team, think they may have found an answer.

Looking to Have a Lucid Dream? There’s a Pill for That

The results took researchers by surprise, according to Benjamin Baird, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison involved in the study. “It worked amazingly,” Baird says. “It was not at all clear that it would be this powerful of an effect.”

UW Hospital makes list of top 20 best hospitals in U.S. for first time

University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics are now among the 20 best hospitals in the entire nation for the first time ever, according to U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings released Monday.

Keller: Europe’s killer heat waves are a new norm. The death rates shouldn’t be.

On the southern outskirts of Paris, a cemetery holds the bodies of the city’s unclaimed dead. Until recently, there lay a hundred whom some consider to be the first victims of global climate change. They were mostly elderly and poor, the forgotten people of the worst weather disaster in contemporary European history: the heat wave of August 2003, which killed nearly 15,000 in France alone and thousands more across the continent.

Report: Job Growth Among High-Skilled, Higher-Paying Jobs

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Timothy Smeeding travels to different parts of the state, where he gives talks on upward mobility and stresses how important education is. School counselors and students are receptive to the message. But sometimes parents are’t, he said.

July is on track to become Earth’s hottest month on record, climate scientists say

Quoted: “Of course, we won’t know until all the tallies are in, but we’re on a good pace right now to beat that record,” said Jack Williams, director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In Hunter Biden’s career from Ukraine to China, his father is often nearby 

Quoted: Yoshiko M. Herrera, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who is an expert in Russia and Eurasian policy, said in an interview that Hunter Biden’s service with Burisma is a serious issue.

Recall Campaigns Against State Lawmakers Are On The Rise?

Quoted: Growing partisanship has made both Republicans and Democrats willing to embrace once unthinkable political tactics, such as recalls, said Howard Schweber, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Opinion | The Vicious Fun of America’s Most Famous Literary Circle

This year is the 100th anniversary of the first meeting of the Algonquin Round Table, one of the 20th century’s most famous literary gatherings.

Dr. Ratner-Rosenhagen is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Opinion | McConnell Doesn’t Want the Senate to Talk About Trump’s Tweets. Here’s a Way Around Him.

Whether Republican senators would rise to the occasion is debatable. With John McCain and Jeff Flake now gone from the Senate, it seems less likely that many of their Republican colleagues will take a stand against this racist tilt to our politics. But the only way we can know is to get them on record. A round robin would give them just such an opportunity.

-John Milton Cooper is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A Piece of IceCube Arrives at the Smithsonian

Kael Hanson, IceCube’s director of operations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that some 200 collaborators were in Madison the day the sensor was sent to D.C., so it turned into a farewell ceremony.“It’s a great honor,” Hanson says. “It’s the Smithsonian. It’s an invite-only club.”

Taking Advantage of Aloha

Financial abuse is often paired with domestic violence. A study by the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin-Madison indicated that economic abuse occurs in 99 percent of domestic violence cases. This can take the form of an abuser managing family funds, preventing a victim from working, hiding assets or otherwise asserting financial dominance in the relationship.

Wisconsin and Minnesota Are Waging an Extremely Friendly War Over Who Has More Lakes

Quoted: For all their poetry, these definitions are turbid, according to Jake Vander Zanden, the director of the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Viewpoint: Why CRISPR-edited crops should be allowed in organic agriculture

Quoted: Bill Tracy, an organic corn breeder and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, says, “Many CRISPR-induced changes that could happen in nature could have benefits to all kinds of farmers.” But, the NOSB has already voted on the issue and the rules are unlikely to change without significant pressure. “It’s a question of what social activity could move the needle on that,” Tracy concludes.

Finally, Scientists Know Why Toxoplasma Has Sex in Cats

Now Laura Knoll of the University of Wisconsin at Madison has thrown her fellow researchers a lifeline. Her team finally worked out why Toxo only has sex in cats.

To unlock the youth vote in 2020, Democrats wage legal fights against GOP-backed voting restrictions

Quoted: “We know from long-standing research that young people are more sensitive to changes in election law,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Young people haven’t established a voting habit yet. So these things either get in the way or enable them to get that habit started.”

In a first, AI created from sheet of ‘smart’ glass without using any machinery

Scientist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered a way to generate AI-enabled smart glass that is able to identify images without the need for any kind of sensors, circuits or a power source.

Mass layoffs: a history of cost cuts and psychological tolls

Charlie Trevor of University of Wisconsin–Madison and Anthony Nyberg of University of South Carolina found that downsizing a workforce by 1% leads to a 31% increase in voluntary turnover the next year.

Piece of skull found in Greece ‘is oldest human fossil outside Africa’

Quoted: John Hawks, a palaeontologist at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, voiced similar doubts: “Can we really use a small part of the skull like this to recognise our species?” he said. “The storyline in this paper is that the skull is more rounded in the back, with more vertical sides, and that makes it similar to modern humans. I think that when we see complexity, we shouldn’t assume that a single small part of the skeleton can tell the whole story.”

Rush for the exits? After Swalwell drops out, Democratic field unlikely to shrink soon

Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center, predicted many of the hopefuls would be stubborn and persist because “the race appears to be in flux.”

Female Soccer Players Suffer Concussions More Often Than Men, And Researchers Are Paying Attention

Quoted: In fact, high school and college-age girls and women who play soccer get concussions at a higher rate, and in some cases three times more likely, than their male counterparts, said Snedden, who is also an assistant professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin Farmers Facing More Pests, Higher Costs After Late Spring Planting

Quoted: “Usually we say (corn is) ’knee high by the Fourth of July’ but most of the time, corn is chest high or more by the Fourth of July in many areas of Wisconsin. That’s just not the case this year,” said Joe Lauer, agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW team helps rewrite evolution of birds with new discovery

The fossil, known as Lori, was found in 2001 and shows a deeper evolution of when birds gained the ability to fly as well as confirmed that feathered dinosaurs did exist in North America, according to a report released Wednesday, led and co-authored by UW-Madison researchers.

Indoor carbon dioxide levels could be a health hazard, scientists warn

Quoted: “There is enough evidence to be concerned, not enough to be alarmed. But there is no time to waste,” said Dr Michael Hernke, a co-author of the study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, stressing further research was needed.

Believing in Fairies: Marie Kondo and Our Oriental Attachments

Japan’s “floating world” has long provided the West with fantasies of both attachment and detachment, with the promise of refashioning our lives by “decluttering” and surrounding ourselves with only the most exquisite objects. Marie Kondo offers us a dream of minimalist Japanese beauty not unlike the dream of Japan that first enchanted the West in the Victorian period.