News from the social, biological and physical sciences in the College of Letters & Science. From math to physics and sociology to chemistry, the sciences are a key component in the liberal arts tradition.
Flipped classrooms. MOOCs. Clickers for real-time class surveys. New technologies are constantly changing the educational landscape. Tehshik Yoon, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is one of the professors at the forefront when it comes to thinking about and testing out new technologies while teaching. His students and colleagues say his efforts [...]
A massive telescope in the Antarctic ice reports the detection of 28 extremely high-energy neutrinos that might have their origin in cosmic sources. Two of these reached energies greater than 1 petaelectronvolt (PeV), an energy level thousands of times higher than the highest energy neutrino yet produced in a manmade accelerator. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, [...]
Professors, instructors and advisers enlighten, challenge and inspire us. They can shape our opinions, push our work to new heights and spark an interest to learn more about a topic or discipline. In the 2011-12 academic year, the College of Letters & Science asked graduating seniors to nominate faculty or staff members who impacted their [...]
Suzanne King, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently won the 2013 Plural Publishing Research Scholarship. The award is given by the Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders. King’s research focuses on the pathogenesis of vocal fold scar and the immunological response [...]
Bassam Shakhashiri, a chemistry professor and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has received the 2013 Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science. Named for the astronomer whose enthusiasm and broad scientific knowledge helped inspire a generation to look at science as a fascinating discipline that makes [...]
Historic Chamberlin Hall stands to the left; Lathrop Hall to the right. Across the street, construction crews continue working on a new development towering toward the sky. Buses and bicycles seem to ferry across University Avenue by the minute. Quiet, but not forgotten, is the University of Wisconsin-Madison Botanical Garden, a small yet well-traveled green [...]
The Department of Chemistry recently recognized 70 undergraduate and graduate students at its 2013 Student Awards Ceremony. Thanks to the generous support of alumni and friends, the department was able to recognize students for their outstanding achievements in chemistry teaching and learning, research, and outreach. This year’s award winners were: 2013 Summer Undergraduate Research Awards [...]
Deep in the Antarctic ice, more than 5,000 detector modules sit in frozen darkness, waiting for the blue bursts of radiation released by particle interactions. Optimized to detect signs of neutrinos — tiny, nearly massless particles that can travel from the edges of the universe — these basketball-sized detectors comprise the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, one [...]
Anthony Ives, Plaenert-Bascom Professor of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has been elected to membership in the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ives joins other scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders in a class of 198 new members who will be inducted in October, the academy announced April 24. This [...]
“Visualizing English Print” uses Mellon Foundation funding to advance our understanding of literature and data visualization There are hundreds of millions of books in the world, a collection so stupendously large that even the most well-read among us can’t hope to make a dent. This means our ability to make connections and spot trends across [...]
With the help of a solitary sea squirt, scientists have resolved the longstanding puzzle of the crystal structure of vaterite, an enigmatic geologic mineral and biomineral. A form of calcium carbonate, vaterite can be found in Portland cement. Its quick transformation into other more stable forms of calcium carbonate when exposed to water helps make [...]
The rules are simple, explains Mike Randall, a University of Wisconsin-Madison physicist, who is leading the Rube Goldberg lab tonight at Emerson School in Madison. “Make a contraption that starts by dropping a marble and ends by ringing a bell.” The students have a half hour to make their contraptions; then Randall starts judging the [...]
Each year, nearly a quarter of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s incoming freshmen arrive on campus interested in studying the biological sciences. But they don’t all take to it from the start. “That first year can be especially hard,” says Janet Branchaw, interim director of the Institute for Biology Education. “Students in the biological sciences are faced [...]
University of Wisconsin-Madison chemists have identified an approach to use oxygen gas to convert lignin, a byproduct of biofuel production, into a form that could allow it to replace fossil fuels as a source of chemical feedstocks. Lignin is a complex organic material found in trees and other plants and is associated with cellulose, the [...]
Trips to the South Pole usually require a lot of specialized equipment, but Nils Irland’s packing list for his November 2012 visit included some items unusual even by those standards: a specially designed video camera, extra batteries, and lots and lots of data storage. Irland, a staff member at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) at [...]
George E. P. Box, professor emeritus of statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, passed away March 28 at his home in Madison at the age of 93. Box founded the UW-Madison Department of Statistics in 1960 and served as chair until 1969. “He shaped the department for the first 30 to 40 years,” says current department chair [...]
Independent journalist and author Maryn McKenna has been named the Spring 2013 UW-Madison Science Writer in Residence. McKenna blogs for Wired and is a contributing editor and columnist for Scientific American. She is a frequent contributor to SELF, Nature, The Guardian and TheAtlantic.com. Her work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, among [...]
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Botany is holding an open house this Saturday, April 6, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. as part of this weekend’s UW-Madison Science Expeditions. Come visit historic Birge Hall for hands-on learning activities and a tour of the Botany Greenhouses. More than 1,000 plant species from across the globe [...]
If the sheet of ice covering Greenland were to melt in its entirety tomorrow, global sea levels would rise by 24 feet. Three million cubic kilometers of ice won’t wash into the ocean overnight, but researchers have been tracking increasing melt rates since at least 1979. Last summer, however, the melt was so large that [...]
As the shapes of galaxies go, the spiral disk — with its characteristic pinwheel profile — is by far the most pedestrian. Our own Milky Way, astronomers believe, is a spiral. Our solar system and Earth reside somewhere near one of its filamentous, swept-back arms. And nearly 70 percent of the galaxies closest to the [...]
Two faculty members in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Letters & Science have received Hilldale Awards. Hilldale Awards, which honor contributions to teaching, research and service each year, are based on UW-Madison’s four divisions: biological sciences, physical sciences, social studies, and arts and humanities. The awards are sponsored by the Hilldale Fund, which supports [...]
Randall Goldsmith, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently received a 5-year, $630,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Chemistry for “Single-Molecule Spectroscopy as a Mechanistic Tool for Studying Catalyst Reaction Dynamics.” The prestigious CAREER Award funds promising assistant professors and helps them establish broad foundations for their future [...]
Any Wisconsinite worth his or her weight in cheese curds knows how to navigate through our state’s collection of tongue-twisting place names. Waukesha? No problem. Allouez? Please. Nanaweyah Ominihekan? Well, maybe there are a few that cause even native Wisconsinites to stumble. That’s where Pronounce Wisconsin comes in. The State Cartographer’s Office launched the online [...]
Within the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the late professor emeritus Howard Zimmerman (1926-2012) was widely known for two things: his pioneering research in the field of organic photochemistry and his pride in the many alumni whose careers began in the Zimmerman (or “Z”) lab. Zimmerman even maintained a world map depicting [...]
After more than tripling attendance last year, the Wisconsin Science Festival is coming back for year three with plans for more activities at more sites that reach more people. The organizers announced today the 2013 festival will be held September 26-29 and issued an open call for presenters, communities, organizations and sponsors to get involved. As in [...]
Several graduate programs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Letters & Science are ranked among the nation’s best in the 2014 edition of U.S. News and World Report’s “Best Graduate Schools.” “We’re proud of all of our graduate programs and particularly pleased that once again many have been rated so highly,” says Provost Paul [...]
Seven faculty members from the College of Letters & Science have been chosen to receive this year’s Distinguished Teaching Awards. Interim Chancellor David Ward will present the awards at a ceremony on March 19 at the Pyle Center. A reception hosted by the Wisconsin Alumni Association will follow; to attend, register here. The awards, chosen by a committee, honor [...]
Three graduate students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders won awards at last month’s Wisconsin Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology Association State Convention Research Symposium. Cynthia Chow, a fourth-year graduate student in the Au.D./Ph.D. program, won first place. Chow’s research investigates the treatment of hearing loss through regeneration of cochlear hair [...]
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Chemistry will be well represented at the June 2013 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Chemistry. Four members of the department have been selected to attend the meeting in Lindau, Germany, along with 620 other students and postdocs from 78 countries. The four participants are: Shakeel Dalal, a graduate student [...]
In 2005, Zoology Academic Curator Paula Holahan made an accidental discovery: he unearthed a priceless collection of ocean invertebrates made out of glass. Holahan revealed a collection of rarely seen glass models that depict numerous fragile figurines of jellyfish, radiolarians and sea anemones with spiky tentacles. Handmade by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka in the 19th-century, the glass works were produced in a time when the mystery of the deep-sea sparked the interest of many.
Three faculty members from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders were recently honored with awards at the Wisconsin Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology Association Conference. Professor Susan Ellis Weismer won the 2013 Kleffner Award, which honors an individual who has made outstanding contributions to clinical science and practice in communication science and [...]
Three faculty members from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Letters & Science are among 126 scientists from around the country who have been awarded prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships. Elena D’Onghia, assistant professor of astronomy, Christopher Ré, assistant professor of computer sciences, and Jennifer Schomaker, assistant professor of chemistry, will receive two-year, $50,000 grants from [...]
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found a new way to accelerate a workhorse instrument that identifies proteins. The high-speed technique could help diagnose cancer sooner and point to new drugs for treating a wide range of conditions. Proteins are essential building blocks of biology, used in muscle, brain, blood and hormones. If the [...]
Five promising young faculty in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Letters & Science have been honored with Romnes Faculty Fellowships. The Romnes awards recognize exceptional faculty members who have earned tenure within the last four years. Selected by a Graduate School committee, winners receive an unrestricted $50,000 award for research, supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). [...]
Five outstanding faculty members in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Letters & Science have been named winners of this year’s Kellett Mid-Career Awards. The Kellett award, supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, recognizes outstanding mid-career faculty members who are five to 20 years past the first promotion to a tenured position. Each winner, chosen [...]
As Russian scientists scramble to collect and analyze the remains of the historic meteorite that injured an estimated 1,200 people in Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15, scientists in Wisconsin are set to publish their analysis of a smaller meteorite that struck southwest Wisconsin on April 14, 2010. The Mifflin meteorite created a fireball equivalent to 20 [...]
Even “standing room only” wasn’t enough. As if the lively chatter, hearty laughter and spontaneous rounds of applause weren’t proof, the line of people snaking out the door of the Minocqua Brewing Company‘s Divano Lounge confirmed that interest was alive and thriving in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. No, it wasn’t a Packers playoff game. It was “Science on Tap.” The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center [...]
The sixth annual University of Wisconsin-Madison Physics Fair will offer physical delights and pain-free education free to all comers on Saturday, Feb. 16 on the UW-Madison campus. Features include: A tour of plasma experiments — critical to fusion energy and astrophysics A chance to levitate a small magnet above a superconductor An exhibit showing how [...]
For the second straight year, clinical associate professor Michelle Quinn and a group of graduate students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders assisted in literacy efforts in Guatemala over winter break. Quinn and eight bilingual graduate students – Rose Heckenkamp, Kaylee Cullen, Allison Petska, Nicole Breunig, Ruby Braxton, Amanda Murphy, [...]
The annual celebration of Charles Darwin’s birthday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will showcase the evolutionary expressions of sex and reproduction in the natural world. “Some fascinating examples of evolution can be seen in mating behavior,” says Alison Scott, the event organizer, “and people have always been interested in understanding how males and females get [...]
The Academic Staff Art Gallery in Bascom Hall this semester features works that combine art and science, encompassing the scientific impact of models of invertebrates, glassblowing and photography. Featured artists include Laura Halverson Monahan, curator of collections at the University of Wisconsin Zoological Museum; Tracy Drier, scientific glassblower in the Chemistry Department; and Ilia Guzei, [...]
Members of an American Chemical Society commission will discuss the need for radical changes to graduate education in the chemical sciences at a colloquium in Madison Feb. 7. “For more than half a century, steady financial support for research and education in the chemical sciences has given the United States high-quality graduate programs that attract talent from [...]
Close your eyes and picture an ocean reef: vivid violet, cool blue and tropical green intertwining in gentle curves and delicate edges. And that’s just the urchin teeth. “We take many images of sea urchin teeth in our work,” says Pupa Gilbert, a UW-Madison physics professor. “They are not at all what you would expect.” One [...]
Even if you don’t recall fallout shelters and duck-and-cover drills from the 1950s, a book discussion and exhibit will provide a window into that era and this year’s Go Big Read selection. Participants can join the moderated book discussion and view the companion exhibit on Thursday Feb. 7, from 5-7 p.m. at the Health Sciences Learning Center, [...]
Invasive species are known for disturbing their new homes. Whether it’s the zebra mussels in the Great Lakes or garlic mustard in native woodlands, their rampant multiplication crowds out native species. But according to research just published in the journal Diversity and Distributions, that’s not yet happening as a fish called the round goby advances up [...]
Three white-coated student interns huddle over the remains of a female African lion in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Zoological Museum’s specimen-preparation room. Huge paws, still furry and whole, hang over the table edge, while the students pick patiently at tendons and membranes in the exposed rib cage neck, and skull. Once the skeleton is completely disarticulated, [...]
Morgan Robertson did not consider working in geography until he traveled to Australia as a Fulbright Scholar in 1994. There, he researched fire ecology and management in the tropics of North Queensland, a region in the northeast of the country. The experience was enlightening enough that, upon returning stateside, Robertson decided to pursue an MA [...]
Field season is, of course, where the best photo ops and a lot of the fun of being a research scientist happens. Then there’s the arduous task of combing through specimens, which is how professor Peter McIntyre in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology and Ellen Hamann, the manager of the McIntyre lab, have spent this [...]
The dominant factors in the rise and fall of the diversity of life on Earth has been a point of debate for scientists nearly as long as they have studied the processes of evolution. In the 1970s, evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen began calling the case for biological factors (such as competition with other organisms [...]
The Wonders of Physics, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Physics Department‘s famed science outreach program, will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its annual on-campus shows next month. Clint Sprott, professor emeritus of physics, puts on the 10 shows — three on Saturday, Feb. 9, two on Sunday, Feb. 10, three on Saturday, Feb. 16, and two on [...]
Perched on a corner of a table in his biological anthropology lab, John Hawks is surrounded by an array of human skulls, jaws and skeletons – and a film crew complete with lights, camera and a microphone dangling over his head. Last spring a crew for the public television series NOVA visited Hawks, a University [...]
This is the time of year Lyle Anderson, office manager at the Wisconsin State Climatology Office, “has a pair of binoculars pinned to his head ’round the clock,” according to John Young, state climatologist and emeritus atmospheric sciences professor. It’s Anderson who tracks ice cover on lakes Mendota, Monona and Wingra, and only the latter two [...]
Technologically valuable ultrastable glasses can be produced in days or hours with properties corresponding to those that have been aged for thousands of years, computational and laboratory studies have confirmed. Aging makes for higher quality glassy materials because they have slowly evolved toward a more stable molecular condition. This evolution can take thousands or millions [...]
It’s a chilly day in Madison, and three preschoolers have important decisions to make: What should they wear? They look out the windows and are told of the frigid conditions outside. They’re already dressed, of course; this is merely an exercise designed to sharpen their cognitive skills. Their task: build suitable theoretical outfits for paper [...]
If you know that forests naturally re-generated after the 1988 Yellowstone fires and that some trees (lodgepole pines, for example) actually evolved to be fire-dependent, then you probably have Monica Turner to thank. A pioneer in the field of landscape ecology, the Professor of Zoology has spent almost three decades studying, writing, and talking about [...]
A collaboration with major participation by physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made a precise measurement of elusive, nearly massless particles, and obtained a crucial hint as to why the universe is dominated by matter, not by its close relative, anti-matter. The particles, called anti-neutrinos, were detected at the underground Daya Bay experiment, located [...]
Despite the extensive research and commercial development of solar cells, the world still has a critical need for new, high-efficiency photovoltaic (PV) technologies based on low-cost and abundant materials. The long-term goal of PV technology, which converts sunlight directly into electricity, is to compete against conventional fossil fuels to fulfill the already massive and ever-growing [...]
Trisha Andrew, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been named to Forbes magazine’s 30 Under 30 in Energy. The list recognizes talented young innovators whose work holds potential for the energy landscape of the future. Andrew, who joined the faculty at the start of the semester, was previously a postdoctoral fellow [...]
Gravity: It’s the law in these parts. But to reach the stars, humans may have to learn to live outside the law. “Gravity is the most pervasive thing on the planet, and it’s always been there,” says Simon Gilroy, University of Wisconsin-Madison botany professor. “Terrestrial biology has evolved with this constant force in the background, and [...]
As the federal government builds on its $1 billion investment to clean up and restore the Great Lakes, an international research consortium has developed innovative new maps of both environmental threats and benefits to help guide cost-effective approaches to environmental remediation of the world’s largest fresh water resource. Writing this week (Dec. 17, 2012) in [...]
Monumental discoveries were made. Critical projects were finished. Laudable programs were celebrated. And scholars and alumni were remembered in the College of Letters & Science’s 124th year.
These were just some of the markers of 2012 in L&S. Here are some of the moments that made 2012 a memorable year for the College.
In Professor David Baum’s Botany 130: General Botany course, students learn about the basic biology of plants. Baum isn’t afraid to use creative ways to impart that knowledg
The school day has ended, but there’s another assignment awaiting the small group of fourth- and fifth-graders gathered in the library of Shorewood Hills Elementary School in Madison. They must build a story or game in Scratch, a computer programming language as their final project in an after-school computer science club run by University of [...]
Scott Gilbert, a professor of biology at Swarthmore College noted for using stories, images and analogies to get scientific points across, will give two free public lectures in Madison Dec. 12 and 13. “Scott Gilbert has this amazing ability to talk at multiple levels at once,” says Lynn Nyhart, professor of the history of science at the University [...]
A remarkable new view of the dark side of our planet from space released today by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is just a peek at the nighttime capabilities of the agencies’ newest weather satellite, the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. Named for the father of satellite meteorology, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Verner Suomi, [...]
Four researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Letters & Science are among about 250 newly named fellows of the American Physical Society, an honor bestowed upon no more than half of one percent of the professional society’s membership. The peer-awarded designation is given in recognition of significant research advances or innovative contributions in the [...]
Near-normal rains in October did little to alleviate the long-term drought that has gripped the Badger state since the spring, says State Climatologist John Young. South-central Wisconsin, the region that encompasses Dane County, gets 35 inches of rain in the average year, but received just 23 inches in the 12 months that ended Oct. 31. “Especially [...]
It took seven years and the efforts of an international collaboration of scientists to turn the South Pole ice into the world’s largest, most innovative telescope: the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. A new outreach project is now bringing the benefits of this worldwide effort back to its Wisconsin roots. IceCube is a Wisconsin-based project, with key partners [...]
A new company making a high-speed, accurate and user-friendly instrument that reveals the molecular structure of proteins, drugs, and other important materials is the latest spinoff from the University of Wisconsin-Madison chemistry department. Spectrometers analyze the interaction between a sample and beams of light, and are widely used to identify atoms and molecular structure. The [...]
Matthew Hoffman (BS’09, Zoology), an MD/Ph.D. student pursuing a Ph.D. in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, recently received a Graduate Student Scholarship from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Hoffman studies the physiology of voice production and swallowing in normal and disordered states under the direction of Profs. Jack Jiang and Timothy McCulloch. His dissertation [...]
With the help of a new grant from NASA, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are guiding the search for signs of life on distant planets — while keeping their feet firmly planted on Earth. The Wisconsin Astrobiology Research Consortium, led by geoscience professor Clark Johnson and including partners from across the U.S. and world, specializes in defining and identifying [...]
Two doctoral students in the College of Letters & Science are combining their skills and knowledge in an effort to protect the endangered leatherback sea turtle. Samantha Greene (BS’08, Geography and Biological Aspects of Conservation, MS’10, Geography), a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography, and Peter Dudley, a Ph.D. student in the Department of [...]
Chemistry Professor Bassam Shakhashiri will give his 43rd Christmas “Science is Fun” presentation Dec. 1 and 2 on the UW–Madison campus. The event will be shown on Wisconsin Public Television later in December. As always, the show will focus on astounding demonstrations from the world of chemistry and beyond. “Chemistry is the science of how atoms bond [...]
Computer sciences professor Shuchi Chawla and physics professor Karsten M. Heeger have been selected as Kavli Frontiers of Science fellows, and recently participated in the Kavli Foundation’s Frontiers of Science symposium. Sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the Kavli Foundation, the symposium – held Nov. 2-4 in Irvine, Calif. – brought together outstanding young scientists to discuss exciting advances [...]
The question is simple: Can a lake be cleansed of a pernicious invader by simply raising the water temperature? The answer so far: maybe, maybe not. In an experiment playing out on a small lake in northern Wisconsin, scientists from UW-Madison are deploying a novel lake-mixing technology to alter the lake’s temperature profile and see [...]
