UW In The News

Wisconsin’s catastrophic flooding is a glimpse of the Midwest’s drenched future

Quoted: Madison, home to the state’s flagship university, has seen the brunt of the flooding so far. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s center that specializes in studying lakes is itself flooded. “This is what climate change looks like,” Adam Hinterthuer, the center’s spokesperson, wrote in a blog post. On Twitter, the center posted maps of recent floods alongside projections for the worst expected floods later this century. They matched remarkably well.For Eric Booth, a climate scientist at the university, the whole thing is almost too much to comprehend.

How Reddit helped me tackle my biggest insecurity

Quoted: “It’s empowering to be able to help other people,” says Catalina Toma, an associate professor of communication science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You’re viewing yourself through other people’s eyes. If you’re the kind of person who helps others and have advice that people can benefit from… That can make people feel better about themselves.”

Mike McCabe says Minnesota is imprisoning half as many people as Wisconsin, with same crime rates

Quoted: The reason Minnesota imprisons fewer people, according to Kenneth Streit, a clinical professor of law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is because Minnesota saw in the 1970s how its prison population was projected to increase.

If Nike Is Serious About Oppression Against People of Color, They Should Pay Their Own Workers

Quoted: “by coining and investing in the Girl Effect, the Nike Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm, “gave it authority and made it catchy,” says Kathryn Moeller, an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is writing a book about the Girl Effect.

UW-Madison announces new cultural centers for Latinx and Asian students

The University of Wisconsin-Madison will open two new cultural center “startup spaces” to serve students who have Asian and Latinx cultural, ethnic or racial identities, in response to the efforts of student organizers to create such spaces.

UW scientist Robert Fettiplace wins share of $1 million prize considered portent of Nobel

University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist Robert Fettiplace this week will receive a gold medal from the king of Norway, a share of a $1 million science prize, and take his place in the running for a future Nobel Prize.

CNN said a source declined to comment. Except he actually did. Is that a problem?

Quoted: “If CNN did tell its readers and viewers that Davis did not comment when he was indeed one of their confidential sources, that breaks a bond of trust with the public,” said Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin. “It’s deceptive and wrong. And if it is the case, CNN needs to be as transparent as possible immediately and develop practices to ensure this never happens again.”

Are Tech Giants Doing Enough To Fight Against Foreign Powers Trying To Influence Elections?

Quoted: So far, the most common complaint against the new rules is how broadly Facebook applies them. If you spend enough time on the ad archive, you’ll find news stories and even random events like a comedy show – but also, of course, the never-ending flood of political ads. University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim studied divisive advertising in 2016. And she says Facebook’s new archive still does not address one common tactic – multiple groups coordinating to push the same agenda.

In Defense of Air-Conditioning

In July, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison concluded that up to a thousand people die annually in the eastern US alone due to the elevated fine particulate matter from increased use of fossil fuels to cool buildings. By saving ourselves, we’ll be killing ourselves.

Here out west, ‘smoke season’ keeps getting worse

Right now, much of the west is affected by wildfires.An unlucky minority will have to evacuate their homes, and some will lose their homes altogether — or even their lives. But for millions more across the west, “smoke season” is a real thing.

—OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is pursuing a PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives in San Diego. Distributed by www.OtherWords.org.

The New Science of Seeing Around Corners

Quoted: Self-driving cars already have LIDAR systems for direct imaging and could conceivably someday also be equipped with SPADs for seeing around corners. “In the near future these [laser-SPAD] sensors will be available in a format that could be handheld,” predicted Andreas Velten, the first author of Raskar’s seminal 2012 paper, who now runs an active-imaging group at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Earth’s oxygen increased in gradual steps rather than big bursts

By using the Hüttenberg Formation, which formed between a billion and half a billion years ago, to study the time between Earth’s change from an anoxic environment (i.e. one lacking oxygen) to a more hospitable environment that heralded the animal kingdom, a team of researchers led by Dr. Huan Cui of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison discovered a sustained, high level of carbon.

Could eating crickets boost your health?

“Insects are novel to the American diet, but they should be considered a potentially helpful food that contains important nutrients and fibres that could have benefits to our overall health, including our gut microbiome,” said the study’s lead author, Valerie Stull. She is a researcher at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Breast cancer surgery: For nursing home patients, surgery is risky

The paper didn’t include healthier nursing home residents who are strong enough to undergo outpatient surgery, said Dr. Heather Neuman, a surgeon and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. These women might fare better than those who are very ill.

Here’s how forests rebounded from Yellowstone’s epic 1988 fires – and why that could be harder in the future

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the 1988 Yellowstone fires – massive blazes that affected about 1.2 million acres in and around Yellowstone National Park. Their size and severity surprised scientists, managers and the public and received heavy media coverage. Many news reports proclaimed that Yellowstone was destroyed, but nothing was further from the truth.

–Monica G. Turner Professor of Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

UW-Madison, Foxconn announce $100 million research partnership

A portion of the $100 million will go toward funding a new interdisciplinary research building located on the UW Engineering campus. UW and Foxconn plan to divide the cost of the new building evenly, and will determine how best to use any remaining funds, Blank told reporters.

Better Regulations Needed for Competitive Banking System to Work, Paper Says

In the paper, economists Dean Corbae, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Ross Levine, of the University of California at Berkeley, found that while intense competition among banks indeed spurs greater efficiency, it also tends to squeeze profit margins and encourage riskier investments.

$1.7 Billion Federal Job Training Program Is ‘Failing the Students’

Quoted: Jeff Smith, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies job programs, said a major quandary is that worthwhile training programs for the poor seldom yield stunningly positive results. “Work force development is very hard, and the results you see aren’t always great,” he said. “If these populations were easily employable, they would already have jobs.”

Climate Change Models Show Possibility Of Future Storms

Quoted: According to Steve Vavrus, senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research, a combination of high humidity and a very slow-moving storm is what caused the huge amount of rainfall.

Wisconsin dairy farmers may benefit from new federal program

Quoted: Farmers will face a learning curve in figuring out how to take advantage of the insurance with the changing markets, said Brian Gould, professor of agribusiness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW Marching Band Director Michael Leckrone Stepping Down After 50 Years

University of Wisconsin-Madison marching band director Michael Leckrone says he’s stepping down at the end of the school year.

Journal Times editorial: Self-fertilizing corn potential game-changer

Chalk one up for Mother Nature.With an assist from the farmers of Oaxaca, Mexico; Mars candy company and researchers at the University of California-Davis and our own University of Wisconsin-Madison.We’re talking about growing corn. Something near and dear to Wisconsin farmers. And corn, of course, requires nitrogen — an essential ingredient for plant growth.

SNIPP Proteins May Point to Why We Get Sleepy

Quoted: Some studies suggest that sleep primes synapses for greater activity during wakefulness. Chiara Cirelli, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the Wisconsin Institute for Sleep and Consciousness, who is one of the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis’s originators, said of the new paper, “It is strong evidence that sleep need is related to synaptic activity.”

How To Catch A Neutrino

The neutrino was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. This observatory is the brainchild of Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who’s known as the “Godfather of IceCube.” He first dreamed of building the South Pole observatory thirty years ago. He talked with Anne Strainchamps about this discovery.

Analysis: Bills Moved Faster in Wisconsin Capitol Under GOP

Quoted: “I think it’s a symptom of the legislative process becoming less participatory,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. “We see more examples . of bills being sprung very quickly without members knowing they’re coming, without the public knowing, and hearings being announced very quickly without lots of notice.”

After Gov. Scott Walker Took Office, Bills Moved Faster Through Wisconsin Legislature

Quoted: “I think it’s a symptom of the legislative process becoming less participatory,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. “We see more examples … of bills being sprung very quickly without members knowing they’re coming, without the public knowing, and hearings being announced very quickly without lots of notice.”

New Research On Tropical Corn Could Help Reduce Fertilizer Used By Farmers

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have helped discover a corn variety that could reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizer farmers need to spread.

‘Weaponized Ad Technology’: Facebook’s Moneymaker Gets a Critical Eye

A report this week from Young Mie Kim, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described how a Kremlin-linked group, called the Internet Research Agency, used Facebook’s ad system to identify nonwhite voters. Then the group tried to discourage those people from voting.

‘Lamarck’s Revenge’ Review: Inheriting the Wrong Ideas

Jean-BaptisteLamarck (1744-1829) formulated the first real theory of biological evolution, in which organisms acquired traits directly from adapting to the environments they faced and passed those new traits on to their offspring. If there’s one thing high-school biology students learn, it’s that Darwin was right about natural selection. If there’s a second thing, it’s that Lamarck was wrong.

—Mr. Hawks is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Scientists recommend eating of crickets to stay healthy

A new clinical trial showed that consuming crickets can help support the growth of beneficial gut bacteria and that eating crickets is not only safe at high doses but may also reduce inflammation in the body.The clinical trial, which was carried out in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States, documented for the first time the health effects of eating insects.