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UW In The News

  • The amount of frigid winter air is near a record low, and shrinking

    The Washington Post | February 28, 2024

    For about a decade, Jonathan Martin, a professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, has analyzed the size of the cold pool at this level — or the area of the hemisphere covered by temperatures at or below 23 degrees (minus-5 Celsius). This winter’s cold pool will finish the winter as the second-smallest on record, Martin said.

  • Snow and ice are a way of life here. See how a lost winter upended that.

    Washington Post | February 28, 2024

    In Madison, Wisconsin’s capital in the southern part of the state, temperatures rise into the triple digits in the summer but have never hit 60 degrees in January, said Steve Vavrus, Wisconsin’s state climatologist.

  • Years later, pandemic purchases trigger buyer’s remorse – Marketplace

    Marketplace | February 27, 2024

    Shopping is actually a very normal, human response to chaos. It’s what Christine Whelan, a professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, calls credible costly commitments. These are purchases we think may solve our problems.

  • Is the 100-year old TB vaccine a new weapon against Alzheimer’s?

    The Guardian | February 26, 2024

    A pilot study by Coad Thomas Dow of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues suggests that BCG injections can effectively reduce plasma amyloid levels, particularly among those carrying the gene variants associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer’s. Although the sample size was small – just 49 participants in total – it has bolstered hopes that immune training will be an effective strategy for fighting the disease.

  • Meet some of UW-Madison’s 14 students, alumni recognized as Fulbright scholars

    The Daily Cardinal | February 23, 2024

    The United States Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs recognized 14 University of Wisconsin-Madison students and alumni as 2024 Fulbright Scholar Program awardees in early February.

  • Legislature approves $740M for UW system, including a new engineering building at UW-Madison

    Wisconsin State Journal | February 23, 2024

    The Legislature on Thursday approved about $740 million in capital investments across the Universities of Wisconsin, including a new engineering building at UW-Madison that rallied massive industry support.

  • How the polar vortex could deliver one last blast of wintry weather

    The Washington Post | February 23, 2024

    “What is remarkable is we have a second disruption to the stratospheric vortex happening right now,” Andrea Lang, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said in an email. “Two major disruptions to the polar vortex in one season is not common. It has happened before, but it is not something that you expect to happen in any given winter season.”

  • Opinion | Americans Believe the Economy Is Rigged Against Them

    New York Times | February 21, 2024

    By Katherine J. Cramer and Jonathan D. Cohen. Ms. Cramer is co-chair of the Commission on Reimagining Our Economy at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Mr. Cohen is a senior program officer at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

  • Do California’s High Road worker training programs offer a step up?

    San Francisco Chronicle | February 20, 2024

    The High Road program is an improvement compared to many other workforce programs, which often prioritize training people for jobs regardless of the quality, said Laura Dresser, the associate director of the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She helped coin the term “high road” and served as a consultant to California’s workforce programs in 2017.

  • Gait speed is one of your vital signs, so make sure yours is OK

    CNN | February 19, 2024

    “For people who have certain injuries, a gait analysis can help us correct the mechanics that might cause it to recur,” said Dr. Bryan Heiderscheit, a professor in orthopedics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of Badger Athletic Performance in Madison.

  • As hunger grows, UW-Madison is redirecting excess food from the landfill to its students

    Wisconsin State Journal | February 19, 2024

    A number of programs, many of them student-led, redirect food waste from UW-Madison’s two largest food producers — University Housing, which runs multiple dining hall and food market locations across campus, and the Wisconsin Union, which oversees the Memorial Union and Union South — to student organizations or food pickup locations to give away free meals.

  • This Is Your Brain on 3-D Printing

    Wall Street Journal | February 16, 2024

    But then the journal Cell Stem Cell—always on my nightstand—reported that scientists at the University of Wisconsin had not only perfected a way to create brain tissue this way but could create brain cells that mimicked the behavior of real ones, and I knew that the breakthrough was real. Kudos to the Badger State scientists for figuring out that arranging the printed brain cells side by side, like a row of stick pretzels or a batch of linguine, would allow neurons to communicate just like those in a conventional brain.

  • How rising import prices could affect inflation

    Marketplace | February 16, 2024

    Not every type of import is raising a red flag right now. For instance, imports of industrial supplies, materials and other intermediate goods got more expensive. But those are just a small part of what goes into a finished product that a consumer buys, says Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • The Six Most Amazing Discoveries We’ve Made by Exploring Venus

    Smithsonian Magazine | February 15, 2024

    Sulfuric acid clouds circle the entire planet at a height of 25 to 37 miles above the surface. They contain tiny acidic aerosols that are about a hundred times thinner than human hair. Together the droplets resemble the air pollution in highly populated cities on Earth. “It’s like a haze that you find when you fly into, say, New Delhi or Beijing,” says Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • Is It Safe To Eat Moldy Cheese?

    HuffPost | February 14, 2024

    Some cheese varieties naturally have a moldy appearance, explained Mark Johnson, assistant director at the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The blue veins in a wedge of gorgonzola or the white rind on a wheel of brie are examples of mold.

  • Some Americans say Valentine’s Day gifts are worth going into debt

    Scripps | February 13, 2024

    “Everyone appreciates and remembers experiences more than ’stuff,’” said J. Michael Collins, professor of public affairs and human ecology at the University of Wisconsin. “There are lots of fun and memorable experiences that are not expensive, from moonlight walks to scavenger hunts to simple at-home dinners. Being creative can be better than bling.”

  • Monarch Butterfly Numbers Are Down Sharply at Wintering Areas in Mexico

    The New York Times | February 8, 2024

    It’s normal for insect population totals to swing up and down drastically, but drops become dangerous when they have been chronically eroded, as with monarchs, said Karen Oberhauser, professor emerita of entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has studied monarchs for decades.

  • Why did the bank sell my mortgage?

    Marketplace | February 7, 2024

    “Some banks are good at originating, and they don’t have the capacity to hold these loans on their balance sheet,” said Anthony DeFusco, associate professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And so it frees up resources for them if they sell your loan.”

  • A special milestone: UW-Madison celebrates 175 years on Founders’ Day

    Spectrum News | February 6, 2024

    Founders’ Day celebrates the first day of classes at UW-Madison. On Feb. 5, 1849 twenty students gathered at UW’s temporary quarters near the Wisconsin State Capitol for the university’s first classes.

    Now, Wisconsin Alumni Association chapters around the world host special Founders’ Day celebrations every year to commemorate this milestone.

  • Scientists have 3D bioprinted functioning human brain tissue

    Popular Science | February 6, 2024

    As detailed in the new issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have developed a novel 3D-printing approach for creating cultures that grow and operate similar to brain tissue. While traditional 3D-printing involves layering “bio-ink” vertically like a cake, the team instead tasked their machine to print horizontally, as if playing dominoes.

  • Hurricanes becoming so strong that new category needed, study says

    The Guardian | February 6, 2024

    Michael Wehner, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, said that “192mph is probably faster than most Ferraris, it’s hard to even imagine”. He has proposed the new category 6 alongside another researcher, James Kossin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Being caught in that sort of hurricane would be bad. Very bad.”

  • Putin’s Top Generals Have Gone Missing

    Newsweek | February 5, 2024

    Mikhail Troitskiy, professor of practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek via email on Friday that Russia’s relative silence is unsurprising considering the ongoing conflict and a lack of incentives to publicly disclose the whereabouts and/or deaths of top military commanders.

  • Capitol Hill lawmakers tell tech CEOs that they have failed to protect children

    NPR | February 2, 2024

    We called Dr. Megan Moreno to talk about this because she teaches medicine at the University of Wisconsin and she’s a co-medical director of a center at the American Academy of Pediatrics dedicated to social media and youth mental health. And she was at the White House yesterday to talk about kids’ online safety and health.

  • A pit of bones discovered under a castle could unlock key questions about what makes us human

    NBC News | February 1, 2024

    John Hawks, a University of Wisconsin-Madison paleoanthropologist who studies ancient human relatives but was not involved in this research, said the study helps solidify the theory that patches of different human cultures were developing as Neanderthals neared their end.

  • Here’s the Happiness Research that Stands Up to Scrutiny

    Scientific American | January 31, 2024

    Such rigor is admirable, but it also means one can miss things, says Simon Goldberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studies the effects of meditation, including research among people who have psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. He noted that because of Dunn and Folk’s strict criteria, they omitted hundreds of studies on meditation’s benefits. “It’s, in the spirit of rigor, throwing lots of babies out with the bathwater,” he says. “It’s really very obvious that meditation training reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression.”

  • What are the symptoms of an enlarged prostate and how is it treated?

    ABC News | January 29, 2024

    It’s a common result of aging, said Dr. Stephen Nakada, a University of Wisconsin urologist.

  • A high school wrestling evolution: Out with vomiting, in with hydration

    The Washington Post | January 29, 2024

    These habits can only lead to negative physiological and mental effects and also can make wrestling more dangerous. A University of Wisconsin study, published in 2022 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, followed 67 Division I college wrestlers over seven seasons and found that a 1 percent loss in body weight correlated with an 11 percent higher chance of injury during competition.

  • What’s driving a special education teacher shortage and how schools are responding

    PBS | January 29, 2024

    Special education teachers and administrators share how the shortage is affecting them, and John Yang speaks with Kimber Wilkerson, professor of special education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to learn more.

  • A rare fungal infection is popping up in an unexpected part of the U.S. 

    NBC News | January 25, 2024

    There are a number of things that could be happening, said Dr. Bruce Klein, a professor of pediatrics, medicine and medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These pathogens can hitch a ride on shoes when people travel. New developments can stir soil — and the fungi they harbor — releasing spores into the air in places they weren’t thought to exist.

  • Opinion | A.I. Should Be a Tool, Not a Curse, for the Future of Work

    New York Times | January 25, 2024

    Katherine Cramer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist, said that lower- and middle-wage workers have “pretty basic” expectations for the future of their work. “One man in Kentucky said, ‘I’m not looking for a mansion on a hill.’” What he and others want, Cramer said, is jobs that don’t destroy their humanity, that are meaningful and that give them time with their families. Many don’t feel they have that now. .

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