UW In The News

Earth’s Magnetic Field Reversal Took Three Times Longer Than Thought

In their paper published today in Science Advances, Brad Singer of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues calculate that Earth’s last magnetic field reversal took roughly 22,000 years.

Earth’s Magnetic Field Went Completely Haywire During Last Reversal and Took 22,000 Years to Get Back to Normal

In a study published in Science Advances, a team led by Brad Singer, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at lava flows to trace back the last major reversal and find out how long it took.

Earth’s Magnetic Field Could Take Longer to Flip Than Previously Thought

“[Polarity reversal] is one of the few geophysical phenomena that is truly global,” says Brad Singer, professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and lead author of the study.

Earth’s Last Magnetic-Pole Flip Took Much Longer Than We Thought

“We found that the last reversal was more complex, and initiated within the Earth’s outer core earlier, than previously thought,” lead study author Bradley Singer, a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Space.com.

Earth’s roaming magnetic poles create longer periods of instability, study says

“Reversals are generated in the deepest parts of the Earth’s interior, but the effects manifest themselves all the way through the Earth and especially at the Earth’s surface and in the atmosphere,” said Brad Singer, study author and University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist. “Unless you have a complete, accurate and high-resolution record of what a field reversal really is like at the surface of the Earth, it’s difficult to even discuss what the mechanics of generating a reversal are.”

Major surgeries linked to small decline in mental functioning in older age

“Our data suggest that, on average, major surgery is associated with only a small cognitive ‘hit,’” said Dr. Robert Sanders, an assistant professor in the department of anesthesiology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the study’s senior author.

Retailer, Legal Expert Say Legal Clarity Needed For Wisconsin’s CBD Industry

Quoted: Jeff Glazer, an attorney and clinical associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic, said state law creates a straightforward process for how to legally grow hemp, but it doesn’t provide enough clarity on manufacturing and retail of hemp products.

Is an adversarial justice system compatible with good science?

Quoted: Keith A. Findley, Center for Integrity in Forensic Science, University of Wisconsin Law School: I would urge some caution on the idea of court-appointed experts. While independent, court-appointed experts can sometimes be helpful to minimize the bias inherent in the adversarial process, it is dangerous to think that a court-appointed expert or experts will necessarily reflect true neutrality or truth in science.

Trump’s China Problem Is That a Weak Yuan Is a Strong Weapon

Quoted: “If he’s trying to encourage jobs and producing things here by taking away from other countries, the tariff could in principle do that, but it’s got to inflict pain upon somebody,” says Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

UW research ‘angels’ help find and identify American MIAs

Tens of thousands of American service members never returned home.

People who pulled on American uniforms, raised their right hand to support and defend the Constitution before dying in foreign lands and waters far from their homes, and worried families who never got the chance to bury their loved ones.

But the missing in action have not been forgotten. Not by a nation that sent them to war and not by a dedicated group of volunteers and researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Camera that can see around corners created by UW scientists

Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Universidad de Zaragova in Spain reported their results Monday in the journal Nature.

African university gets course on pollution problems with help of UW grad team

Why Poor Couples Crave Strong Relationships

Economists study poverty using hard data – but the numbers don’t always reflect personal experiences. University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor Sarah Halpern-Meekin joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about how low-income parents struggle for family and community — and how a vacuum of social ties can perpetuate the cycle of hardship. Halpern-Meekin’s new book is called “Social Poverty: Low-Income Parents and the Struggle for Family and Community Ties.”

How avocados shape Americans’ views on trade policy

Avocados, however, are a different story. They are a good that many Americans purchase regularly, and whose cost, therefore, they know intimately. While consumers can ignore abstract line charts about trade wars, they can’t ignore the price in the supermarket of their favorite fruit. Telling the stories about tariffs through everyday objects allows consumers to understand how such dense policies might impact them, and just might change the political calculus.

Sarah Anne CarterSarah Anne Carter teaches material culture in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is author of “Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material World.”

Craving Freedom, Japan’s Women Opt Out of Marriage

Quoted: “The data suggests very few women look at the lay of the land and say ‘I’m not going to marry,’” said James Raymo, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has written extensively about marriage in Japan. Rather, he said, they “postpone and postpone and wait for the right circumstances, and then those circumstances never quite align and they drift into lifelong singlehood.”

Climate change is affecting travel. Here’s how to prepare for stormier weather.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of certain extreme weather events, said Stephen Vavrus, a weather researcher at the University of Wisconsin. With the warming climate, we’re likely to see more heavy rainfall, storms and extreme heat, all of which affect travel, said Vavrus.

This ‘Big Red Ball’ Can Replicate Solar Winds on Earth

Now a team at University of Wisconsin–Madison is hoping to clear up some of these lingering mysteries surrounding solar wind by building what they call the “Big Red Ball,” a device that can actually mimic solar winds.

What’s The Buzz With All The Yellow Jackets?

Quoted: But as we enter the late summer months and the unfriendly guests begin to show up in full force, it’s time to rethink the yellow jacket, said P.J. Liesch, manager of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab.

Fact-checking Marianne Williamson on school funding in the United States

Quoted: “They are far from the only source of revenue,” said Andrew Reschovsky, professor emeritus of public affairs and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Facebook and Twitter give right-wing extremists more leeway than Islamists. This explains why. – The Washington Post

When the Islamic State started to use social media heavily a few years ago, big platform companies such as Facebook and Twitter responded with efforts to track and remove its content. Now politicians are calling on social media companies to use those tools to regulate all kinds of terrorist content. Social media companies’ responses have been uneven.

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.