UW In The News

With climate despair on the rise, this Christian scientist says science isn’t enough

The University of Wisconsin-Madison ecologist also belongs to an evangelical church and has struggled with deep despair over climate change. He has had a front-row seat observing the effects of a warming atmosphere through the aspen trees he has studied for decades. But he lacks the support of many within the evangelical community.

What It’ll Take to Have Actually Good COVID Summers

The more the virus is allowed to mosey about, the more chances it will have to mutate and adapt. “Variants are always the wild card,” says Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Already, America is watching BA.2—the speedier sister to the viral morph that clobbered the country this winter (now retconned as BA.1)—overtake its sibling and spark outbreaks, especially across the northeast.

‘De-Ukrainization’ is genocide — Biden was right to sound the alarm

The international community must affirm that there are universal values. It must support Ukraine and call out Putin’s lies. It must act to prevent the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.

Francine Hirsch is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg.”

Forests are reeling from climate change—but the future isn’t lost

Monica Turner was cataloging that recovery. On a sweltering July day, Turner, a professor of ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, shuffled along a line of tape she’d stretched 50 meters across the ground. She and a graduate student were counting every lodgepole pine seedling within a meter on either side. We were far enough from paved roads that there was no telling which forest inhabitants might be lurking—elk, deer, moose, wolves. The air was so hot I wondered fleetingly if the bear spray canister on Turner’s hip might explode.

The Pandemic Generation News and Research

“There’s a lot of other cues that kids can use to parse apart how other people are feeling, like vocal expressions, body expressions, context,” says study author Ashley Ruba, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Gulf Stream Collapse Will Likely Not Cause Climate Catastrophe

But most simulations of our climate’s future may be overly sensitive to Arctic ice melt as a cause of abrupt changes in ocean circulation, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The Grief of 1 Million COVID Deaths Is Not Going Away

Jeannina Smith, a doctor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, cares for organ-transplant recipients, who are on immunosuppressive drugs and are therefore particularly vulnerable to disease; she told me that she lost more patients in the Omicron surge than at any previous point in the pandemic. “They did everything right—they got vaccinated and boosted and were so careful,” Smith said, and their loved ones must now mourn them “while society is saying that COVID is over.”

How the Philippines’ brutal history is being whitewashed for voters

“Bongbong Marcos is as if Marcos Sr. rose from the dead,” said historian Alfred McCoy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who documented the Marcos dictatorship. “He is a surrogate for his father.”

Gas prices: Biden will expand ethanol gas access into summer

A Harvard study last year showed the use and production of ethanol emits up to 46% fewer greenhouse gasses than gasoline. A University of Wisconsin study has challenged that finding, saying ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline, based on changes in how land is used to grow the corn used to produce it. But the Argonne National Laboratory disagreed with the Wisconsin study last month, saying the group overestimated carbon loss from soil and double-counted some emissions, among other concerns.

Betül Kaçar: We could kick-start life on another planet. Should we? | TED Talk

“Life makes our planet an incredibly exotic place compared to the rest of the known universe,” says astrobiologist Betül Kaçar, whose research uses statistics and mathematical models to simulate ancient environments and gather insights into the origins of existence.

Physicist loses scientific honor and membership in ethics violation

Erika Marín-Spiotta, a University of Wisconsin geography professor who holds “bystander training” workshops — which teach people ways to intervene when they see harassment or bullying — stressed the importance of disclosing incidents of misconduct to the broader community.

It “is important so that the community is aware that these behaviors are happening, they are unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” she said.

Stop climate change? We have the tools to end greenhouse emissions now

“The good part of the story is that we can do this,” said Andrea Dutton, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We know what to do – we just have to decide to do it.”

‘Cancel culture’ targets Russian history amid war in Ukraine, but to what effect?

Ted Gerber, director of University of Wisconsin’s Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia, told USA TODAY that ostracizing historical figures doesn’t really help or hinder the situation in Ukraine either way.

Interns at these companies can take home six figures

About half of those students who were lucky enough to snag internships during the pandemic had to complete them remotely, according to a 2021 workforce study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Remote interns reported lower satisfaction in part because managers were less likely to assign them “high-skill supervised work,” according to the study.

Newscast – Goodbye Dot Cotton

In its latest report, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we need to cut emissions immediately and use technology to suck CO2 from the atmosphere. One of the authors, Gregory Nemet, tells Lewis Goodall that there’s reason to be optimistic.

Why Paper Flowers Are This Hardcore Gardener’s Guilty Pleasure

“Paper was a very precious material in the pre-Industrial era, when it had to be made by hand,” said Beverly Gordon, professor emeritus of design studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Drug-releasing hydrogel keeps cancer from returning after surgery

After surgery to remove tumors, some cancer cells can be left behind where they can grow back or spread to a new part of the body. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have now developed a hydrogel that can be applied post-surgery to prevent or slow tumor regrowth

The world is ‘perilously close’ to tipping points of irreversible climate change. These are 5 that keep scientists up at night.

“We can’t kick this can down the road any longer,” said Andrea Dutton, a geoscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UN: 18 nations have gone green on climate, raked in green

Such countries “can export a model that shows we can reduce emissions and still have high levels of well-being,” said Greg Nemet, a professor of energy and public policy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs. ”We can export policies that have played a role in achieving that.”

UN: 18 nations have gone green on climate, raked in green

Such countries “can export a model that shows we can reduce emissions and still have high levels of well-being,” said Greg Nemet, a professor of energy and public policy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs. ”We can export policies that have played a role in achieving that.”

Renewables Are Key to Cutting Emissions Over Next Decade, U.N. Panel Says

“We’re talking about offsetting about 10% of our emissions,” said Gregory Nemet, a public policy researcher who studies energy and climate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a lead author of the report. “The rest of the work, that’s 80 or 90% of the emissions reductions, has to be done elsewhere.”

Russia denies atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine, saying images of apparent war crimes are fabricated

That type of response is common these days among Russians, said Anton Shirikov, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who studies Russian state propaganda. The Kremlin’s misinformation “might not work in the sense that people believe everything, but people who are on the side of the government think that some of it must be true,” he said. Or they think, “We, the Russian army, cannot be that bad, so the other side must be bad.”

CIRDC dog disease: The kennel cough outbreak in Florida explained

Serrano and Arce said dog owners should make sure their dog is up to date on its vaccines. There isn’t a vaccine dedicated to preventing illness from CIRDC as it is “not a vaccine-preventable condition” according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.

UW-Madison First Wave students and alums fuse dance, theater and music

Over the past semester, University of Wisconsin-Madison dance professor Chris Walker worked with freshmen and alumni of First Wave — a scholarship program for hip hop and urban arts — to bring Danez Smith’s poem “summer, somewhere” to life, fusing dance, theater and music.

At 8, he could see the whey: UW-Madison’s lone master cheesemaker shares his knowledge with Wisconsin

Could the avian flu outbreak increase the cost of chicken? : NPRN

Whether the 2022 avian flu will affect the price of eggs and poultry depends on how widespread it becomes, says Ron Kean, a poultry science expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences.

Was Everyone Really Just Doing Drugs In Regency England Like They Are In ‘Bridgerton’?

Today, there are strict rules and laws that separate recreational and medical drug use. There are also plenty of drugs that are legal, and others that are illegal. But in Regency England, these boundaries didn’t exist. “The legal structures just weren’t in place,” says Lucas Richert, PhD, a historian of drugs and medicines at the University of Wisconsin—Madison School of Pharmacy.

Vladimir Putin’s Empire of Delusions

Nor did things change when the Bolsheviks surged to power a century ago. As scholar Francine Hirsch notes in her seminal work on the creation of Soviet republics, the Bolsheviks swiftly realized they’d be better off maintaining the tsarist-era empire, even if in “many regions … the Bolsheviks had no indigenous support whatsoever.”

How the Soviet Union Helped Establish the Crime of Aggressive War

Diplomats and lawyers have been talking in recent days about convening an international tribunal on the Nuremberg model or something akin to it to try Russian President Vladimir Putin and those in his inner circle for waging a war of aggression against Ukraine. And rightly so.

South Asian Americans’ complicated relationship with the swastika

“There have been swastikas found in ancient civilizations from the Americas to Greece and the Mediterranean, in China, even in ancient synagogues,” said Brandon Bloch, an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies religion, politics and 20th-century Germany.