UW In The News

Subnivium: The secret ecosystem hidden beneath the snow | New Scientist

ECOLOGIST Jonathan Pauli used to spend a lot of time keeping track of animals over winter – often across cold, harsh landscapes that seemed inhospitable to life. It always surprised him that as soon as the weather got warmer in early spring, insects would pop up. “Snow fleas would emerge from underneath the snow,” Pauli recalls. Where, he wondered, had they been hiding? Eventually, he discovered some old scientific papers from the 1940s and 1960s. They revealed a secret world that Pauli, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been studying ever since: a hidden ecosystem under the snow.

Why Nuclear Fusion Could Be A Clean-Energy Breakthrough

It takes more than extreme heat and pressure. It also takes precision. The energy from the lasers must be applied precisely to counteract the outward force of the fusion fuel, according to Stephanie Diem, an engineering physics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Two Cheers for the Tyrant in the Corner Office

A host of studies show that even in regular people power produces over-confidence, risk-taking, insensitivity, intolerance and a higher likelihood of treating other people as means rather than ends. The so-called “cookie monster study,” conducted by psychologists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, shows that randomly assigned “powerful people” are more likely to help themselves to second cookies, eat with their mouths open and get crumbs on their faces.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Reaches for Trump Playbook to Cover January 6 Remark

Speaking to Newsweek, Ion Meyn, an assistant law professor at the University of Wisconsin, said Greene’s comments would fall under “protected speech,” meaning she is unlikely to face any police action in response.

Good vibes: UW-Madison hip-hop class builds bridges through dance

By 2025, coal will no longer be the main way to generate the world’s electricity

But that’s changing, said Greg Nemet at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And that change matters for the proliferation of renewables.

“China is the biggest driver of it, one, because China is so big, but also because they now have much more ambitious targets for renewables and, you know, China lives up to its targets,” he said.

Before Beer Became Lager, a Microbe Made a Mysterious Journey

The finding matches with climactic modeling suggesting that Ireland would be a hospitable environment for the yeast, said Chris Hittinger, a professor of genetics at University of Wisconsin — Madison, who was on the team that found the yeast in Patagonia and not involved in the current study. What’s less clear is why the yeast been so difficult to find in the wild beyond South America, where it grows plentifully in association with beech trees and is thought to be a native species.

Trump Faces New Danger as Jan. 6 Committee Announces Criminal Referrals

“Although the DOJ is independent, such a referral is more than symbolic,” Ion Meyn, an assistant law professor at the University of Wisconsin, told Newsweek. “A referral from a congressional committee that has conducted its own investigation is particularly influential. The referral would place significant pressure on the DOJ to prosecute, and the DOJ will be expected to justify any decision to decline the referral.”

Beef shortage looms, Florida citrus in peril: US farms hit by climate change effects in 2022

Things would have been much worse if it weren’t for advances in plant breeding, said Paul Mitchell, a professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Crops are more resilient to dry weather than they were 20 years ago,” he said.

Scientist Betül Kaçar On The Value Of Early Space Science And Astrobiology Education

The focus of Betül Kaçar’s research is on the origin and early evolution of life, including fascinating topics such as the influence of geology on the development of biology. A Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the principal investigator at Kaçar Research Lab, she was one of the plenary speakers at the NASA-sponsored biannual meeting Astrobiology Science Conference, AbSciCon22. Along with her research, Kaçar is deeply interested in science education and the best ways to bring science to school-aged children.

Just how tight is Madison’s student rental market? Researchers hope to find out.

Dog Flu Is Back, Too

In 2015, it showed up in Chicago, tearing through kennels, veterinary clinics and animal shelters. “In the shelter setting, flu is not super subtle because it comes in like a tidal wave,” said Dr. Sandra Newbury, who directs the University of Wisconsin Shelter Medicine Program. (Dr. Newbury, who was part of the team that responded to and studied the Chicago outbreak, has also been working with Operation Kindness in recent weeks.)

NYC Mayor Adams’ controversial new policy on mental illness

Critics of the plan argue that the police force is not equipped to effectively deal with mental health crises without the risk of violent escalation. Amy Watson, a professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin and Sonia Pruitt, a retired police captain for the Montgomery County, MD police department discuss the mayor’s plan and the potential challenges.

This strange vine can mimic other plants. How?

Scientists have long known that plants have photoreceptors and can detect the presence of light, often in highly sophisticated ways. They can, for example, sense the color and direction of a beam, according to Simon Gilroy, a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin Madison. That’s what the telegraph plant is doing when it swivels its leaves toward the light.

2022 was the ‘keep things as they are’ election

There’s another aspect of the midterm elections that reinforces the point that it didn’t involve much change. As University of Wisconsin Madison political scientist Barry Burden pointed out on Twitter, a victory in Georgia’s upcoming Senate runoff election by Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) would mean that, for the first time since senators were popularly elected by voters, no incumbent will have lost his or her seat.

‘Avatar’ and the Mystery of the Vanishing Blockbuster

According to Derek Johnson, a professor of media studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “Media Franchising,” one major feature of a franchise versus a movie is not just its multiple sites of production — the theme park, the toy, the television show — but also its orientation toward the future. In order to survive, it must maintain a careful balance between novelty and familiarity, courting the next generation of fans without driving away too many of the old ones.

How to Manage Credit Card Debt When Holiday Shopping

Regardless of your age, if your finances are tight, it’s best to say so. “There are years when we can be more generous, and years when we can’t,” said J. Michael Collins, faculty director at the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “We make money a taboo, but it’s OK to be transparent.”

Kimberly Palmer: Holiday survival tips from 5 financial pros

“I know I’m going to be setting a budget so I don’t suffer after the holidays,” says Christine Whelan, clinical professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She makes a list of those she needs to buy gifts for and assigns a spending cap for each person’s gift.

How the Great Depression shaped people’s DNA

The work, published on 8 November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, adds to a cache of studies indicating that exposure to hardship such as stress and starvation during the earliest stages of development can shape human health for decades. The findings highlight how social programmes designed to help pregnant people could be a tool for fighting health disparities in children, says co-author Lauren Schmitz, an economist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

RSV surge raises questions about repeat cases: Can you or child get it again?

But these patients only account for a third of hospitalizations, said Dr. James H. Conway, pediatric infectious disease physician and medical director of the immunization program at UW Health Kids in Madison, Wisconsin.”About two-thirds of the kids who get admitted with RSV are actually healthy, normal kids,” said Conway, who’s also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Fact-checking 19 claims from Trump’s speech announcing his 2024 run

Trump is exaggerating how many people illegally cross the border. Moreover, most independent research contradicts the idea that illegal immigrants bring more crime. A 2018 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Criminology, led by Michael Light, a criminologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, examined whether places with higher percentages of undocumented immigrants have higher rates of violent crime such as murder or rape. The answer: States with larger shares of undocumented immigrants tended to have lower crime rates than states with smaller shares in the years 1990 through 2014.

FTX’s Bankruptcy Will Take Lawyers Down a Crypto Rabbit Hole

“The value of crypto assets varies so much, day to day,” says University of Wisconsin law professor Megan McDermott. “How you value them—and at what point in time—will really affect what customers and creditors can recover.”

Tyson Says Its Nurses Help Workers. Critics Charge They Stymie OSHA.

Alexia Kulwiec, associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, teaches labor and employment law and is an expert in national labor policy and workers’ compensation. She said of the on-site health clinics at Tyson, “Their whole goal is not to find serious health problems and to keep costs down. . . .  It is really circumventing the whole purpose of worker’s compensation to start with.”

Fact check: False claim that John Fetterman’s lawsuit is proof of cheating in Pennsylvania election

Barry Burden, an American politics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agreed. “It is not ’cheating and stealing’ but rather a request to reverse the Supreme Court decision on the grounds that it violates federal civil rights law,” Burden said in an email to USA TODAY.

Rising food costs take a bite out of Thanksgiving dinner

The good news? Not every item on holiday shopping lists is significantly more expensive. Cranberries had a good harvest and prices were up less than 5% between the end of September and the beginning of November, said Paul Mitchell, an agricultural economist and professor at the University of Wisconsin. Green beans cost just 2 cents more per pound in the second week of November, according to the USDA.

How the global donkey skin trade risks spreading deadly diseases

“The report draws attention to a form of international trade and movement that most people don’t know about,” says Tony Goldberg, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the research. “It’s becoming increasingly apparent that globalization is not only a problem for human diseases but also animal diseases.”

Brains of Black Americans age faster, study finds

“It’s an exemplar,” said Andrea Gilmore-Bykovskyi, an Alzheimer’s researcher and associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved with the study. “These are populations we need to be studying.”

Why you shouldn’t ‘set and forget’ your retirement accounts

“I think there’s a fair bit of lack of knowledge around required minimum distributions and retirement account rollovers, both of which contribute to our measured abandonment,” Anita Mukherjee, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business and co-author of the paper, wrote in an email.

Republicans tout benefits of fossil fuels at climate talks

Andrea Dutton, a professor of geoscience and MacArthur Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that’s not possible.“Burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases that are causing temperatures to rise rapidly, and this is the major contributor to the global warming we are experiencing,” she said in an email. “This is not a matter of belief but rather a matter of scientific evidence.”

From Ian to Nicole: The Five Worst Hurricanes of 2022 So Far, Ranked

“The season is not yet over, which means 2 things: 1) there might yet be additional damaging storms (see Hurricane Nicole right now!) and 2) it takes time for the full economic and noneconomic losses for big storms to become apparent,” Daniel B. Wright, a civil and environmental engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Hydroclimate Extremes Research Group, told Newsweek in written comments.