UW In The News

Purring Is a Love Language No Human Can Speak

Carney told me that in some animals, purring could be a sort of vocal tic, like nervous laughter; cats might also be trying to send out pleas for help or warning messages to anyone who might dare approach. Or maybe bad-times purrs are self-soothing, says Jill Caviness, a veterinarian and cat expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and parent to a feline named Electron. They could even be a cat’s attempt to dupe its pain-racked body into a less stressed state.

A Genius Cartoonist Believes Child’s Play Is Anything But Frivolous

And since 2012, Barry, a 66-year-old who in 2019 received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship — the so-called genius grant — has been at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has held various positions and now does cross-disciplinary teaching on creativity. So when it comes to self-expression, to making art, it’s fair to say that she’s an expert. But in many ways, not nearly as much of an expert as your average little kid, which is something Barry has been thinking about a lot lately.

Think preparation will help you later? You will probably be right, a new study says

“This study was the first to demonstrate that participants’ expectations of how their cognitive performance ’should’ change as a result of cognitive training can influence the actual outcomes that they show,” said Jocelyn Parong, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral research associate department of psychology’s Learning and Transfer Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, via email.

Growing a New Type of Organ Donor

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are also exploring ways to customize pigs to address other medical problems. The scientists are using gene editing to create pigs with gene mutations that cause the disease neurofibromatosis type 1, or NF1. Around one in 3,000 babies in the U.S. is born with the condition, which can cause tumors on nerve tracts in the skin and eyes, learning disabilities and gastrointestinal problems.

Fact check: False claim Biden has filed for reelection

Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he found no evidence of a candidate filing by the Biden campaign on the FEC website.

Post-Roe, some areas may lose OB/GYNs if medical students can’t get training

At the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, Laura Jacques, an assistant professor, advises medical students who plan to apply to an OB/GYN residency. She says she believes Wisconsin’s recently reinstated abortion ban — which makes providing an abortion a felony offense — will have a chilling effect on the program’s ability to attract candidates.

“There’s no question that residents are going to not come to states that won’t give them the training that they value and think they need,” Jacques said.

Forgiveness: How To Forgive Yourself And Others

Another leading expert on forgiveness, Robert Enright, Ph.D, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a pioneer in the scientific study of forgiveness, defines the practice by three factors. The first factor is moral virtue. “Moral virtues deal with goodness toward others,” he says, adding that this is not contingent upon one specific religious belief, though it is part of many religions, including Christianity, Islam and Buddhism.

When Private Schools Take Public Money But Still Discriminate

Currently, the practice is perfectly legal. It’s also coming under increased scrutiny. “This is a hot button issue,” says Suzanne Eckes, education law professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’ll probably see a lot of litigation.”

People Answer Scientists’ Queries in Real Time while Dreaming

The findings “challenge our ideas about what sleep is,” says Benjamin Baird, a researcher who studies dreams at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and was not involved in this study. Sleep has classically been defined as unresponsiveness to external environmental stimuli—and that feature is still typically part of the definition today, Baird explains. “This work pushes us to think carefully—rethink, maybe—about some of those fundamental definitions about the nature of sleep itself and what’s possible in sleep.“

Biden tries to preempt Republican attacks on crime ahead of midterm elections

Yet the political environment is slightly different in Wisconsin, another 2022 and 2024 battleground state to which Biden is expected to travel next week, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center Director Barry Burden.

Jill Biden tests negative for COVID after rare rebound infection, and U.S. cases are rising in 12 states

While most Americans are now living free of face masks, one group — the roughly 7 million who are immunocompromised — are still mid-pandemic, the Guardian reported Tuesday. Dr. Jeannina Smith, medical director of the infectious disease program at University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, describes the trauma suffered by organ transplant patients who lose their transplant when the test positive for COVID in a hospital setting. One such patient, “was sobbing because she said, ‘It’s so hard for me to see that people care so little about my life that wearing a mask is too much for them.’”

The fascinating history of baby formula

“There have always been cases in which infants have not been able to be breastfed,” Rima Apple, professor emerita of women’s studies and nutrition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology and author of Mothers and Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding, 1890-1950, tells Yahoo Life. “Mothers die; mothers are ill; for some reason a baby can’t latch on.” Often, centuries ago, one solution was to hire a wet nurse, she explains, although that came with a vast range of problems, from fleeting availability to the fact that anyone employed as a wet nurse would likely need to neglect her own baby’s needs in the process.

Wild mushrooms aren’t all poisonous, but they all require caution

KidsPost asked Anne Pringle, a scientist who studies fungi at the University of Wisconsin, about fungi’s image problem.

How Quitting a Job Changed My Personal Finances

The Karles represent a group of individuals and families who have made a change and are now dealing with the financial consequences, for better or worse. “The pandemic made people really think and take stock of their living situations,” said Cliff Robb, an associate professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We saw so many different employment opportunities become flexible in their structures, so people started to reassess it all.”

Presidents can’t declassify documents with Green Lantern superpowers

Written by Kenneth R. Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of “With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power” (Princeton, 2002).

The Court’s Liberals Still Have Power

About the author: Joshua Braver is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

To become law, a Supreme Court opinion needs the backing of five justices. That reality has forced progressive justices for almost 50 years to compromise with center-right justices, resulting in legal doctrine rife with contradictions and loopholes, which conservatives have ruthlessly exploited to pare back the rights of women, racial minorities, and the gay community. Progressive justices had to make these bargains in order to get the five votes needed to be in the majority. That’s how things work.

As prison education expands in Wisconsin, incarcerated students find success

In addition, the Odyssey Beyond Bars program expanded its English 100 college-credit course to four state prisons this past semester. The University of Wisconsin-Madison organization will add an intro to psychology class next year.

In collaboration with UW-Madison and four other campuses, the UW System will also soon offer incarcerated students a pathway to a bachelor’s degree through its Prison Education Initiative. Last December, the program received a $5.7 million grant from Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.

What Scientists Say about the Historic Climate Bill

Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

If the IRA passes in the House, it will mark a historic turning point for the U.S. as the first major piece of legislation to limit our carbon emissions and hence future warming of our planet. The outline of where we go from here is already written in the shortcomings of this bill: we must stop investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and make this legislation merely a first step of many more meaningful steps to come.

‘South Park’ enjoys a silver anniversary of satire

“As much as I love ’The Simpsons’ and I think ’The Simpsons’ is really important, I think ’South Park’ has definitely done things that ’The Simpsons’ haven’t,” says Dr. Jonathan Gray, a media and cultural studies professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose books include “Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality.”

The other reason why food prices are rising

“There’s a direct relationship with what we’re seeing in fuel prices and fertilizer prices,” Jo Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told CNBC.

Unpaid Internships Are Still Common — Here’s What to Do When Asked to Work for Free

Ah, internships: a time for exploring new interests, hands-on learning, and…exploitation?

Not always. But often. Data from the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates somewhere between 31% and 58% of internships in the United States don’t pay.

Clean Tech Comes Back Around: Elements by Liam Denning

On the latest Energy Transition Show podcast, host Chris Nelder asks Gregory Nemert, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in the process of technological change, the big question: How will this transition thing actually happen?

Why the FBI Might Want Scott Perry’s Personal Cellphone

But Ion Meyn, an associate law professor at the University of Wisconsin, said investigators would have had to present a judge with sufficient evidence linking the information stored on Perry’s personal phone to the commission of a crime before obtaining the warrant.

What Scientists Say about the Historic Climate Bill

Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–MadisonIf the IRA passes in the House, it will mark a historic turning point for the U.S. as the first major piece of legislation to limit our carbon emissions and hence future warming of our planet. The outline of where we go from here is already written in the shortcomings of this bill: we must stop investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and make this legislation merely a first step of many more meaningful steps to come.

How to View the Last Supermoon of the Year

“The difference is only obvious in photographs comparing the perigee full moon with an apogee full moon,” said James Lattis, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Climate change may aggravate more than half of human pathogens

Even after sounding warnings about the impacts of climate change on human health for more than 25 years, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute, was still surprised at the many ways researchers found climate hazards affect disease.

“They found over 1,000 unique pathways,” said Patz, who participated as a co-author. “That to me was striking.”

Stormy Weather And Dogs – 4 Things You May Have Overlooked

Steve Ackerman and Jon Martin are respected meteorology professors at the University of Wisconsin who have a long-running series called “The Weather Guys.” On their website, they discussed another way dogs “detect” storms changes. They write, “Thunder, the loud noise that accompanies lightning, gives this nimbostratus cloud the name thunderstorm. Some dogs don’t like loud sounds, whether from a thunderclap or fireworks.”

Are monarch butterflies endangered in the US?

“This is an assessment by an international scientific body that looked at all of the data and said monarchs are endangered,” says Karen Oberhauser, an expert on monarch butterfly biology and conservation and the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. “That means they’re in danger of their population going so low that it wouldn’t be able to recover.”

Climate hazards have worsened risks of most infectious diseases, study finds

“If climate is changing, the risk of these diseases are changing,” said study co-author Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Injectable hydrogel fills surgical cavities to keep brain cancer at bay

Glioblastoma is one of the most deadly forms of cancer, often returning with a vengeance after surgery to remove it. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have now developed an immunity-boosting hydrogel that can be injected into the brain after surgery to clear out remaining cancer stem cells.