UW In The News

California caught in crosshairs of weather extremes in a warming world

“Right out of the gate, we have the potential for stronger storms, and we also have the potential for storms that strengthen very, very quickly,” James Kossin, an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and consultant for the climate risk nonprofit First Street Foundation, told The Hill.

Some Surprising Places Are at Risk of Devastating Urban Wildfires like Maui’s

That combination is ominous for extreme fire, says Jason Otkin, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Because flash droughts occur abruptly in places where they are least expected, they pose unique challenges. “People have little to no time to prepare for their adverse effects,” Otkin says.

He Needed a Liver Transplant. But Did the Risks Outweigh the Reward?

Dr. Michael Lucey, professor of gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school, said those resources are an “integral part” of performing more comprehensive psychosocial evaluations.

Biden administration targets 10 drugs for Medicare cost negotiations

Americans on private insurance as well. But the greatest beneficiaries may be the poorest seniors: Studying Medicare claims data, researchers at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health and the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics projected that patients had filled 50,000 more insulin prescriptions for $35 each month between January and April — and about 20,000 of them might never have been filled without the law. Rebecca Myerson, a professor who helped write the study, said the data suggest the IRA is providing some financial relief to patients who would have “otherwise gone without” insulin.

Uncured bacon isn’t any healthier. Here’s why.

Without these compounds, meat would spoil. “Nitrite is especially important because it has inhibitory action against microorganisms and specifically against spores of Clostridium botulinum [which cause botulism], should they be present,” says Jeff J. Sindelar, a meat science professor and extension meat specialist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Lawsuit Targets Wisconsin’s Swiss Cheese-Like Districts

“It could be that this gives the court a completely neutral basis for deciding the maps are no good,” said Kenneth R. Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.

The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think

“The world has produced nearly three billion solar panels at this point, and every one of those has been an opportunity for people to try to improve the process,” said Gregory Nemet, a solar power expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And all of those incremental improvements add up to something very dramatic.”

Maui fires: Impact of climate change, drought, hurricane winds

Maui experienced a two-category increase in drought severity in just three weeks from May to June, with that rapid intensification fitting the definition of a flash drought, said Jason Otkin, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.Otkin co-authored an April study that shows that flash droughts are becoming more common as Earth warms by human-caused climate change. A 2016 flash drought was connected to unusual wildfires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, he said.

Kimchi and the wonder of fermented foods

HUANG: So here’s what’s happening. The salt draws water out of the cabbage leaves, breaking down cell walls, and that releases sugars that feed the kimchi-making microbes. I called up fermentation professor Victor Ujor at the University of Wisconsin. He loves fermentation, and he loves talking about microbes.

VICTOR UJOR: So I think they are such beautiful things.

Are some candidates too old to be running for president? How age will play a role in the 2024 campaign

Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argued that, even if Biden’s age has not affected his ability to do the job, “some members of the public may nonetheless believe he is not mentally sharp enough or that he lacks the necessary physical stamina.”

What Kai Cenat’s chaotic giveaway in Union Park reveals about influencer culture

NPR spoke with Megan Moreno, an adolescent medicine physician and researcher at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, about the unique impact that content creators can have on young people, and how it can lead to events like Cenat’s meetup. Here’s what she told us: On the unique nature of internet celebrity with fans:For some followers, the connection to that content creator can feel so strong and so personal that they’ll start to develop what is sometimes called a parasocial relationship.

Joking around with kids isn’t just fun, it’s vital

So calibrate your comedy accordingly. You’ll know if your approach is on the right track because laughs never lie. “Interactions with your child that are filled with mirth should be unscripted and spontaneous,” says Dipesh Navsaria, associate professor of pediatrics and human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “They should involve a back-and-forth where parent and child are ‘riffing off’ each other.”

The new liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court is off to a tense start

“The court has been a contentious place, by some measures, for a decade,” said Michael Wagner, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But I do think it’s in the court’s interest to demonstrate how the decisions they make are rooted in the law and not rooted in politics. “It’s a difficult thing to do,” he added.

The NIH halts a research project. Is it self-censorship?

Even though the NIH has had to navigate political rapids for decades, including enduring controversy over stem cell research and surveys on the sexual behavior of teens, this is a particularly fraught moment. “It is caught up in a larger debate about who gets to decide what is truthful information these days,” said Alta Charo, a professor emerita of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has advised the NIH in the past.

Naked Florida man found next to body in Maryland. Was it murder?

“The jury is trying to try to figure out what the defendant was thinking in the moment, and that can be really hard to know,” said Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin law professor and expert on self-defense laws.

July Was Likely Earth’s Hottest Month on Record

“The reason that setting new temperature records is a big deal is that we are now being challenged to find ways to survive through temperatures hotter than any of us have ever experienced before,” University of Wisconsin–Madison climate scientist Andrea Dutton tells Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press. “Soaring temperatures place ever-increasing strains not just on power grids and infrastructure, but on human bodies that are not equipped to survive some of the extreme heat we are already experiencing.”

Journalism Is a Public Good and Should Be Publicly Funded

Other journalism models—including nonprofits such as MinnPost, collaborative efforts such Broke in Philly and citizen journalism—have had some success in fulfilling what Lewis Friedland of the University of Wisconsin–Madison called “critical community information needs” in a chapter of the 2016 book The Communication Crisis in America, and How to Fix It. Friedland classified those needs as falling in eight areas: emergencies and risks, health and welfare, education, transportation, economic opportunities, the environment, civic information and political information.

Climate change is hitting close to home for nearly 2 out of 3 Americans, poll finds

“It’s really hard to bring people on different ends of the political spectrum together on this issue,” said Nan Li, an assistant professor in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Bots Are Grabbing Students’ Personal Data When They Complete Assignments

“We behave differently if we know we’re being watched. We get timid, we get shy, we spend a lot of our cognition on what people are going to think. … That’s not what we want” in higher ed, said Dorothea Salo, a teaching faculty member at University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Information School. This is especially the case in today’s political climate, where exploring topics like gender identity and abortion can put people in danger.

Phoenix Heatwave Poised to Break Record for American Cities

Another aspect of heat waves that disproportionately affects certain communities is the urban heat island effect, where cities are warming because of buildings and lack of trees and greenspace, said Dr. Jonathan Patz, a professor of health and the environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Environmental markets should guide federal land use

Allowing markets to operate on federal land would put different American values on more equal footing, thereby reducing conflict. This might harm some political and special interests in the short run, but the change will be a win-win for free markets and for the environment.

-Dominic P. Parker is an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a senior fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, and the Ilene and Morton Harris visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institutio

Second Alzheimer’s drug to slow disease’s progression may be approved in the US this year

“The modest benefits would likely not be questioned by patients, clinicians, or payers, if amyloid antibodies were low risk, inexpensive and simple to administer,” wrote UCSF’s Dr. Eric Widera, SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Dr. Sharon Brangman and the University of Wisconsin’s Dr. Nathaniel Chin. “However, they are none of these.”

Rasmussen Reports Is Using Its Polls To Push Conspiracy Theories

That level of influence is “sort of like Walmart, in a way,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center and a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Nearly 1 in 10 U.S. children have been diagnosed with a developmental disability, CDC reports

“It’s been a constant increase, it seems, with these national surveys, every time they measure it, it seems to go up,” said Maureen Durkin, chair of University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Population Health Sciences.

Climate change ratchets up the stress on farmworkers on the front lines of a warming Earth

Climate change makes extreme heat more likely and more intense. Farm work is particularly dangerous because workers raise their internal body temperature by moving, lifting and walking at the same time they’re exposed to high heat and humidity, said Dr. Jonathan Patz, chair of health and the environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Greece migrant boat disaster: Mapping a tragedy on coast guard’s watch

Till Wagner, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Navid Constantinou, a physical oceanography research fellow at the Australian National University and Ian Eisenman, a professor of climate science and physical oceanography at the University of California at San Diego, used weather and ocean current data obtained from MarineTraffic to estimate the drift velocity using a method described in a 2022 study.

UW-Madison IceCube researchers produce first neutrino image of Milky Way

New data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s IceCube neutrino detector has led to the first ever image of our Milky Way galaxy using the subatomic “ghost particles.” An international team of researchers also found the Milky way is a neutrino desert compared to others.

Scientists Find Ghostly Neutrino Particles From the Milky Way

“Only cosmic rays make neutrinos, so if you see neutrinos, you see cosmic ray sources,” Francis Halzen, a member of the IceCube team and physicist at the University of Wisconsin, tells Popular Science. “The goal of neutrino physics, the prime goal, is to solve the 100-year-old cosmic ray problem.”

2 Leading Theories of Consciousness Square Off

Dr. Melanie Boly, a neurologist at the University of Wisconsin, came onstage to explain the other contender: the Integrated Information Theory. What makes consciousness special, Dr. Boly argued, is the way it manages to feel at once rich and unified over time.

A.I. Is Coming for Mathematics, Too

These days there is no shortage of gadgetry for optimizing our lives — diet, sleep, exercise. “We like to attach stuff to ourselves to make it a little easier to get things right,” Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said during a workshop break. A.I. gadgetry might do the same for mathematics, he added: “It’s very clear that the question is, What can machines do for us, not what will machines do to us.”