113 year experiment uw madison

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Longest-running Experiment

We at Flamingle HQ appreciate it when we get a question with a concrete answer, and the answer here is not only straightforward and certain but also involves a construction material made of aggregate held together with cement. The UW’s longest-running experiment was a study of concrete that began in 1910 and ends this month, meaning it lasted 113 years. In the early 20th century, concrete was high-tech, and UW engineering professor Morton Withey decided to make the stuff his specialty. He wanted to see how long concrete lasted. In 1910, he created several hundred concrete cylinders and set them aside — some in water, some in the air — to see how they’d hold up over a decade. He would then take the cylinders and put them in a hydraulic press, recording how much pressure it took to break each cylinder apart. At the 10-year point, Withey decided the study should really last 50 years, and he set some cylinders aside. He created more cylinders in 1923 and again in 1937. By 1960, it really seemed like the study should go on for 100 years. Withey passed the experiment on to his former student Professor Kurt Wendt ’27. Wendt passed it on to his former student Professor George Washa ’30, MS’32, PhD’38. And Washa passed it on to his student Professor Steve Cramer ’79. All the 1910 cylinders were used up in 2010; the smaller 1937 batch was used up at the 50-year point, in 1987. And this summer, the last of the 1923 batch is going into the press. On July 21, Cramer — with assistance from his student Ellie Thomas x’25 — began crushing. The cylinders will all be rubble before the end of August. That will end the UW’s longest experiment — and one of our longest answers.

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UW-Madison one step closer to harnessing the power of the sun through fusion research

Physicists and engineers want to make nuclear fusion a new source of carbon-free energy

For the first time, a fusion device at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has generated plasma, inching one step closer toward using nuclear fusion as a a new source of carbon-free energy.

The university’s physicists and engineers have been building and testing the device at a lab in Stoughton for the last four years, which is referred to as the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror or WHAM. The magnetic mirror device became operational on July 15.

Researchers worldwide have been working for decades to harness energy from nuclear fusion reactions that power the sun and the stars. That reaction relies on heated plasma , which is a gas of hot ions and free-moving electrons.

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Cary Forest, a UW-Madison physics professor, said generating plasma is an exciting step.

Until now, nuclear power has come from fission reactors that split atoms . Fusion reactors would join atoms together.

Unlike current nuclear plants, Forest said fusion would not produce radioactive waste, adding it’s also safer.

Forest said the university lab’s success in generating plasma is an important development toward harnessing fusion as a new carbon-free energy source to combat climate change.

“In addition to wind and solar, we’re going to need these hard, intense, always-on systems for making things and heating houses in the dead of winter,” Forest said.  “There really isn’t an alternative to either this or something like nuclear fission if we really want to get rid of carbon in our energy supply. It’s fission or fusion.”

Forest said the WHAM device is almost like a small MRI machine with very high magnetic fields at each end.

“It’s cylindrical, and in the middle where your body might go in an MRI machine is where the plasma is formed,” Forest said.

The magnetic mirror device was developed in a partnership between UW-Madison , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts-based company Commonwealth Fusion Systems .

Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, said the project aims to develop the next generation of plasma machines with the hope of eventually generating power from nuclear fusion. The company developed the magnet technology that was used in the WHAM device at UW-Madison.

It was built using high-temperature superconductor magnets that create a very high-strength magnetic field. Those magnets provide really good thermal insulation that helps hold the plasma in place.

“The higher the magnetic field, the better the insulation,” Mumgaard said. “If you can make a magnetic field that’s stronger, then you can make a plasma that is more insulated. If it’s more insulated, it’s closer to fusion conditions. It can get hotter and use less power to keep it hot.”

It’s a challenging task because of the extremely high temperatures and pressures required that are difficult to sustain.

Forest said the next step would be creating conditions in the lab that would be needed in a fusion reactor, with the ultimate goal of building a commercial plant. In order to do that, Mumgaard said temperatures would need to reach up to hundreds of millions of degrees, which is hotter than the sun. He said UW-Madison’s experiment hasn’t gotten there yet.

“They haven’t yet gotten to fusion reactions yet, but they’re on their way. This is the first plasma, so it’s sort of like the first time you turn a car on,” Mumgaard said. “You haven’t raced it, but you’ve turned it on and shown that it all can work together.”

Physics expert says UW-Madison marks ‘fantastic achievement’

UW-Madison’s experiment is a “fantastic achievement,” according to Luis Delgado-Aparicio. He’s head of the advanced projects department at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab , a national lab with the U.S. Department of Energy.

He said the experiment revives the magnetic mirror concept that he said was abandoned about 40 years ago due to high losses. Researchers say it requires incredible engineering because the magnets are prone to destroying themselves.

“It is an achievement in many ways for the university, for the private sector, and for reviving a concept that is extremely interesting to see how we confine plasma, how we heat plasma and how we maybe get fusion energy for mankind in the future.”

Now, the WHAM device will operate as a public-private partnership between UW-Madison and the startup company Realta Fusion Inc. Forest, a co-founder of Realta, said the company was formed two years ago to compete for federal funding that reimburses the costs of fusion research. The project has received $10 million in grants from the Department of Energy.

“We imagine building power plants that are comparable to big gas-fired or coal power plants in the several hundred megawatts to gigawatt scale,” Forest said. “These systems would be on all the time, so there’s no rolling blackouts associated with lack of wind or lack of sun.”

However, he said it’s unclear whether fusion energy could become cheap enough to compete with other fuel sources.

Even so, he said there’s abundant fuel sources for fusion energy. That includes deuterium in seawater and lithium, which is used in batteries. The two are used to create tritium, a form of hydrogen that’s radioactive.

Fusion takes place when the heated plasma of deuterium and tritium ions is magnetically moved at rapid speeds in a reactor. The process releases energy that’s captured as heat, which could be used to heat homes or converted to electricity.

Delgado-Aparicio said physicists and engineers are in a race to try to confine thermonuclear plasmas for production of electric energy. The work at his lab is focusing on creating fusion inside doughnut-shaped machines known as tokamaks . The machines also use magnets to hold plasma in place and insulate it so that it gets hot enough for a fusion reaction to occur.

He said one of the biggest challenges is sustaining that power for a long period of time.

“You want to develop something that is going to give you power constantly,” Delgado-Aparicio said. “Nowadays, the machines that we have sort of operate within fractions of a second to seconds to maybe minutes.”

He said more than 40 companies are investing billions of dollars in the development of fusion energy, calling it the “holy grail of energy production” for the world. With the new magnet technology, physicists and engineers hope they can build fusion power plants within the next 10 to 15 years .

“We need the support of the public, of the private sector and also of the government in order to do that,” Delgado-Aparicio said.

Once they have a machine up and running, Forest said he thinks Realta could start construction of a fusion power plant in about 10 years under ideal conditions with unlimited funding and resources.

“It’s hard for me to think that there hasn’t been a more exciting moment in for science for me,” Forest said. “This is pretty cool.”

Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2024, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.

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First plasma marks major milestone in UW–Madison fusion energy research

A fusion device at the University of Wisconsin–Madison generated plasma for the first time Monday, opening a door to making the highly anticipated, carbon-free energy source a reality.

Over the past four years, a team of UW–Madison physicists and engineers has been constructing and testing the fusion energy device, known as WHAM (Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror) in UW’s Physical Sciences Lab in Stoughton. It transitioned to operations mode this week, marking a major milestone for the yearslong research project that’s received support from the U.S. Department of Energy.

“The outlook for decarbonizing our energy sector is just much higher with fusion than anything else,” says Cary Forest, a UW–Madison physics professor who has helped lead the development of WHAM. “First plasma is a crucial first step for us in that direction.”

WHAM started in 2020 as a partnership between UW–Madison, MIT and the company Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Now, WHAM will operate as a public-private partnership between UW–Madison and spinoff company Realta Fusion Inc., positioning it as major force for fusion research advances at the university.

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113-year experiment at UW-Madison ends this year. It will be crushing

“How do (builders) know what concrete needs to be replaced and what concrete doesn’t need to be replaced? So this informs that sort of decision making.” Source: LacrosseTribune.com

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Concrete Experiment from 1910 Wrapping up at UW-Madison

by GCO | Jan 20, 2023 | Articles , experts | 0 comments

The University of Wisconsin at Madison is completing a 113-year-old experiment testing the strength and durability of concrete cylinders exposed to various conditions. The aged concrete differs greatly from modern concrete due to chemical composition, but the experiments can provide some insight into the effects various environments have on the longevity of infrastructure.

FFor more than 100 years, engineers at UW-Madison have been conducting an experiment pitting ordinary concrete against the test of time.The project, initiated by faculty member Morton O. Withey, began in 1910 as a 10-year test of the strength of concrete in the form of 6-by-12-inch cylinders. Dozens more cylinders were added in 1923, with a third batch in 1937.

Since then, a half-dozen professors have served as caretakers of dozens of concrete samples throughout their tenures. The samples were stored in different environments — some were submerged in water, while others sat in the basement of the College of Engineering building protected mostly from humidity but not from carbon dioxide exposure from the air.

The samples have been tested at intervals over the years, but final tests have happened only twice: In 1987, researchers tested the 1937 batch after it had cured for 50 years. In 2010, the initial batch was tested at the century mark.UW-Madison professor Steven Cramer was there for both final tests, which involved subjecting the samples to dozens of tons of pressure. Even though he retired a year ago, he’ll be leading the tests of the 1923 batch later this year.

The results of the tests aren’t applicable to today’s concrete, because the chemical makeup of concrete has changed, Cramer said. Today’s concrete has air added to provide durability and it is ground into finer particles to increase how quickly it hydrates and hardens.

But while these tests can’t inform how, for example, the recently poured concrete on the Beltline or the interstates will hold up after years of driving and freeze-thaw cycles, Cramer said the centurylong experiment provides a snapshot in time as they look to extend the life of concrete.

“We build a bridge and we say, ‘Oh, this bridge will last 50 years,’ or we build, even more interestingly, a nuclear power plant, and we want that power plant to last a long time,” Cramer said.

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• World’s most sensitive underground dark…

World’s most sensitive underground dark matter research experiment is up and running thanks to UW–Madison contributions

By Natasha Kassulke, [email protected]

Nearly a mile beneath the Black Hills in a gold mine in Lead, S.D., there is a hunt underway for theoretical particles known as WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles). But don’t let the acronym fool you.

These WIMPs are heavy hitters in the field of particle physics and the new underground detector located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead and led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab), is among our top prospects for explaining dark matter. The experiment, which the UW–Madison Physics Department and the Physical Sciences Lab (PSL) have been working on since 2012, is underground to protect it from cosmic radiation at the surface that could drown out dark matter signals.

Believed to make up nearly 80 percent of all the matter in the universe, dark matter has never been directly detected and is considered to be one of the most pressing questions in particle physics.

The SURF LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) detector is one of only a few next-generation liquid xenon dark matter experiments in the world and, according to the project website, is at least 100 times more sensitive to finding signals from dark matter particles than its predecessor. The facility’s depth and rock stability make it ideal for sensitive experiments that need to escape cosmic rays.

The LZ collaboration includes over 35 institutions and 250 scientists and engineers from around the world. Among those engineers who have contributed a substantial number of hours are Jeff Cherwinka, LZ’s chief engineer, and Terry Benson, both mechanical engineers for the UW–Madison’s Physical Sciences Lab (PSL).

Jeff Cherwinka coordinating the xenon cryostat head installation. Photo by Derek Lucero

Cherwinka is not new to high energy detector design and has also worked on detectors at the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in China. Both Cherwinka and Benson have worked on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory project, which is located at the South Pole.

For the LZ project, Cherwinka says he has already logged in 491 days on site and drove more than 17,000 miles back and forth from South Dakota to Madison, when flying was severely limited during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

PSL has provided over $8M worth of effort on the LZ project, including Cherwinka and Benson’s time as engineers. Other PSL staff also have contributed through efforts at PSL in Stoughton where they conducted fabrication, manufacturing, cleaning and testing. Some also worked on site and underground in the former mine.

PSL is a research and development laboratory that provides services and highly trained staff in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and physics to address the unique needs of research projects of every scale and complexity. PSL has partnered with UW Madison researchers since 1967 and has evolved to where it is able to facilitate large-scale design, engineering and fabrication projects such as the LZ.

Physical Sciences Lab staff who worked on the LZ project include (pictured left to right) Iin front of a Xenon recovery compressor at PSL. Photo by Terry Benson (using a timer) Terry Benson Jonathan Nikoleyczik Barb Birrittella Lexi Sabarots Skyler Grulke Darrell Hamilton (Rear) Mary Severson Ty Vietanen

At the SURF site, Cherwinka, a 1989 UW–Madison graduate, has contributed over the last year to 3D modeling design and planning, assembly and careful placement of the detector. PSL staff, he explains, did a lot of work on the xenon circulation system.

The heart of the detector is comprised of two nested titanium tanks filled with 10 metric tons of very pure liquid xenon. Xenon, in its gas form, is one of the rarest elements in Earth’s atmosphere. LZ is designed so that if a dark matter particle collides with a xenon atom, it will produce a prompt flash of light followed by a second flash of light when the electrons produced in the liquid xenon chamber drift to its top.

One of Cherwinka’s greatest challenges with the project was the need for extreme purification within and surrounding the detector. Dust particles can be radioactive and can emit a trace amount of radon gas, creating a background in the experiment that makes it harder to detect dark matter.

To protect against stray dust particles and radon, the entire assembly process took place within the Surface Assembly Lab, a laboratory space with a radon-reduction system and a clean room outfitted specifically for the assembly. Within the clean space, strict cleanliness protocols were followed.

Workers themselves pose a contamination risk to the experiment and anyone working on the detector was required to wear full-coverage cleanroom suits and follow a two-stage gowning procedure. Every step closer to entering the clean room was held to higher cleanliness standards and required additional levels of gear.

“At times it would take a half hour to put on the clothes needed to do the work! It’s like working in many of our labs, but it’s a mile underground.” Cherwinka says.  “I seem to be attracted to projects where you have to wear a lot of clothes.”

In a recent paper posted on the LZ website , researchers report that with the initial run, LZ is already the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector.

With confirmation that LZ and its systems are operating successfully, Cherwinka is confident that LZ will continue to work as it is designed to and that  LZ’s explorations into uncharted territory could lead to a variety of surprising discoveries.

“We did a lot of test runs, but are now getting into the real science of the experiment, Cherwinka says. “I don’t think we could have made the detector any better and I was just so excited when we turned it on and it worked. At the end of the day, that’s what our work is all about – a bunch of people trying to do science. ”

LZ is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility. LZ is also supported by the Science & Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology; and the Institute for Basic Science, Korea. Over 35 institutions of higher education and advanced research provided support to LZ. The LZ collaboration acknowledges the assistance of the Sanford Underground Research Facility.

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• University of Wisconsin-Madison

UW–Madison part of effort to advance fusion energy with machine learning

Departments:, focus areas:.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison are taking part in a new collaboration built on open-science principles that will use machine learning to advance our knowledge of promising sources of magnetic fusion energy.

The U.S. Department of Energy has selected the collaboration, led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to receive nearly $5 million over three years. The teams — including researchers at UW–Madison, William & Mary, Auburn University and the HDF group (a non-profit data management technology organization) — are tasked with creating a platform to publicly share data they glean from several unique fusion devices and optimize that data for analysis using artificial intelligence tools. Student researchers from each institution will also have an opportunity to participate in a subsidized summer program that will focus on applying data science and machine learning to fusion energy.

The data sources will include UW–Madison’s Pegasus-III experiment , which is centered around a fusion device known as a spherical tokamak. Pegasus-III is a new Department of Energy funded experiment that began operations in summer 2023 and represents the latest generation in a long-running set of tokamak experiments at UW–Madison. A primary goal of the experiment is to study innovative ways to start up future fusion power plants.

“I’m incredibly excited to be a part of projects like this one as we continue to push innovation both in the analysis and development of experimental devices and diverse workforce development initiatives,” says Steffi Diem , an assistant professor of nuclear engineering and engineering physics , who leads the Pegasus-III experiment.

Diem is an emerging leader in the fusion research world. In 2022, she was invited to present at the White House’s Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy that launched several efforts focused on commercializing fusion energy. In a field traditionally dominated by men, Diem is also one of four women leading the new collaboration.

“Throughout much of my career, I have often been one of the few women in the room, so it is great to be a part of a collaboration where four out of the five principal investigators are women,” Diem says.

The collaboration is based around the principles of open science — Diem and her colleagues will make the wealth of data coming from Pegasus-III and other fusion experiments more accessible and usable to others, particularly for machine learning platforms.

While this approach is designed to accelerate knowledge of magnetic fusion devices, it’s also aimed at providing a more accessible path into fusion research programs for students with wider skillsets and backgrounds, particularly in data sciences. Building a more diverse fusion workforce will be tantamount going forward, says Diem.

“Fusion isn’t just plasma physicists anymore,” she says. “As fusion moves out of the lab and toward the goal of providing clean energy to communities, it requires an interdisciplinary approach with engineers, data scientists, skilled technical staff, community members and more.”

UW–Madison is supporting a broader push to diversify the fusion field. Some of the student researchers who will be participating in the new collaboration are part of the student-led Solis group , which provides gender-inclusive support for students studying plasma physics on campus.

The new collaboration fits well with Diem’s other research, funded through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, focused on reimagining fusion energy system design. That work centers energy equity and environmental justice early in the design phase to support a just and equitable energy transition.

“While there are still many challenges that lie ahead for fusion, the potential benefits are huge as we drive towards a cleaner, more sustainable, equitable and just future,” says Diem.

Featured photo caption: NEEP Assistant Professor Steffi Diem (middle) participating in a panel at the White House Summit on “Developing a Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy.” Diem has joined a collaboration across multiple institutions that will use machine learning to better understand magnetic fusion energy. Photo courtesy of Steffi Diem.

A version of this story was originally published by University Communications .

Models, Experiments, and Data Workshop

Welcome to the website of the Models, Experiments, and Data workshop ( MEAD ) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This workshop invites outside speakers, faculty members, and graduate students to present their work and receive feedback. If you’re interested in presenting at MEAD in the 2 023-2024 academic school year , please contact the graduate student coordinator. If you would like to be added to the MEAD email list , please contact the graduate student coordinator .

Unless otherwise noted, o ur meetings are held in person ( 422 North Hall) on Fridays from 1 :30 to 2:45 pm.

Our workshop will be actively discussing the presentations and general methods research on the MEAD Slack workspace! If you submit a request to be added to the MEAD listserv, you will be invited to the MEAD Slack as well.

202 3 -202 4 SCHEDULE

Faculty Directors

Adeline Lo ( [email protected] )

Jonathan Renshon ([email protected])

Graduate Student Coordinator s

Yehzee Ryoo ( [email protected] )

MEAD Calendar

What Styles of Presentations Do We Have?

(1) Practice Job Talks: 30-40 minutes presentation, followed by Q&A for 15 min, followed by feedback.

(2) Presentations:

“The Classic”: Similar to invited talks, presenters circulate a working paper and present a more detailed 30-40 minute talk after which there is audience Q&A. Discussants may be requested with enough advance notice.

“The In-Progress”: Designed to support in progress work – such as prospectuses or exploratory phases of projects, these do not require circulating work ahead of time, but are 20-30 minute presentations prefaced with specific requests on the types of feedback that would be most helpful to move the work forward. Q&A to follow.

“The EPW style”: This is primarily meant to support feedback for experimental designs. Presenters circulate a ~5 pg write up prior to the meeting, which attendees are expected to read and prepare comments for the author(s). No formal presentation expected. EPW-style sessions can host two presenters.

(3) Invited Speakers: 30-40 minutes presentation, followed by discussant comments, followed by Q&A.

September 1 3 : Introductions + Valeriia Umanets , Yulia Khalikova, Marcy Shieh

September 20 : Priyadarshi Amar ( Political Science, UW-Madison )

September 2 6 : Yiqing Xu ( Political Science, Stanford ) 

Discussant: 

Co-sponsor:

September 27 : Practice Job Talk

October 2 : Tian Zheng ( Statistics, Columbia )

October 2: Brandon Stewart ( Sociology, Princeton )

October 3: Sven-Oliver Proksch ( Political Science, University of Cologne ) 

October 4 : Ethan vanderWilden , Saloni Boghale ( Political Science, UW-Madison )

October 11: Matthew Blackwell ( Government, Harvard ) 

October 17 : Nicholas Kuipers ( Politics, Princeton ) 

October 18: Practice Job Talk

October 2 5 : EPW Fall Pilot Grant Recap 

November 1: Job talk

November 8: Job talk

November 22 : Job talk

November 29 : Thanksgiving 

December 5 : Amanda Robinson ( Political Science, Ohio State University )

December 6 : MEAD end of semester poster-session + party

We are part of a rich network of workshops and colloquia : American Politics Workshop (APW),  International Relations Colloquium (IRC), Comparative Politics Colloquium (CPC), Political Theory Workshop (PTW), Political Economy Colloquium (PEC), Experimental Politics Workshop (EPW), European Politics Workshop, and Latin American Colloquium (LAC) .

Experts from UW–Madison can share insights as students head back to school

As parents, students, and teachers prepare for the upcoming 2024-25 academic year, experts from UW–Madison’s School of Education are ready to share their thoughts with members of the media on a range of school and education-related topics.

Supporting Black males in STEM education

As Black men continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields in the United States, Brian Burt is shedding light on the best ways to encourage Black males to engage with STEM subjects and succeed in those subjects in school, from primary school to doctoral studies. In September, he will launch a new website, five instructional videos, and complementary handouts based on his research on Black males in engineering.  Burt is a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and director of the Wisconsin Equity and Inclusion Laboratory (Wei LAB) at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER). He is also one of two School of Education faculty who will help lead the new Wisconsin Sloan Center for Systemic Change , an initiative aimed at removing barriers and improving equity in STEM doctoral programs across the country. 

Contact: [email protected]   

Engaging multilingual students in learning

Mariana Castro, the qualitative research director for WCER’s Multilingual Learning Research Center , has dedicated her career to supporting the learning of bilingual and multilingual students. This past May, she joined education leaders at the Every Day Counts Summit hosted at the White House, where she spoke about comprehensive approaches to engaging English learners in learning, developing two-way partnerships with families and community, and creating extended opportunities beyond classroom walls.

Contact: [email protected]

Developing video games that help students learn

David Gagnon is the director of WCER’s Field Day Lab , an educational game-making studio that works with researchers to create fun, academically rigorous games that get millions of plays. A typical Field Day game is played by 100,000 students a year in classrooms all around the world — including the Wisconsin classrooms where they are designed, developed, and piloted . Gagnon can speak to many topics around how students best learn through video games, and how game-playing data is used in research to better understand how people learn.

Contact: [email protected]

Improving students’ mental health across Wisconsin

With funding from UW–Madison’s Wisconsin Rural Partnership initiative , Andy Garbacz is leading a three-year project that aims to build capacity for sustained and integrated family-centered and family-school-community mental health support for children in rural Wisconsin communities. Other projects he is working on focus on promoting students’ mental health in suburban and urban schools across Wisconsin. Garbacz is a professor in the School of Education’s No. 1-ranked Department of Educational Psychology. He also serves as co-director of the School Mental Health Collaborative, a center focused on conducting research that informs policy and practice to promote the social-emotional and behavioral success of all students.

Contact: [email protected]

Taking a closer look at 4K programming

Eric Grodsky, director of the Madison Education Partnership (MEP) and a professor of sociology and educational policy studies, focuses his research on inequality in educational opportunities and achievement across the life course. With MEP specifically, he has examined the performance of the Madison Metropolitan School District’s full-day 4K program in its first and second year and is knowledgeable about 4K in general and the local characteristics of MMSD vs. community providers of 4K programming. Outside of 4K, Grodsky also studies school attendance issues.

Contact: [email protected]

Helping teachers and students harness the power of AI

Shamya Karumbaiah, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology who studies AI bias, is partnering with colleague Sadhana Puntambekar to explore how artificial intelligence could be made more useful for students and teachers. Puntambekar, a Sears-Bascom Professor of learning sciences, has for several years examined how well an artificial intelligence tool called PyrEval can help students learn to write better essays. This year Karumbaiah joined the effort to evaluate PyrEval’s feedback and how it compares to language models like ChatGPT. Just one element in a broad swath of artificial intelligence research , Karumbaiah is also developing a tool to support teachers in understanding the benefits and harms of using an AI tool in their classrooms, and examining how large language models can be made more equitable for multilingual students.

Contact: [email protected]  

Disrupting bullying of transgender students

A new study by Mollie McQuillan is shedding light on preventing bullying of transgender and gender-expansive students, with a focus on the crucial role of school administrators . An assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, McQuillan’s research shows four distinct ways elementary through high school leaders model support for bullying, and also reveals ways they can interrupt it. Broadly, McQuillan’s research examines the intersection of educational policy, social relationships, and health of LGBTQ+ students and educators.

Contact: [email protected]

Teacher Pledge: Developing potential solutions to address the educator shortage

With staffing challenges straining schools across the nation, the UW–Madison School of Education Wisconsin Teacher Pledge is an innovative, donor-funded program that’s designed to help bolster the teacher workforce. The initiative “pledges” to pay the equivalent of in-state tuition and fees, testing, and licensing costs for all teacher education students. In return, graduates “pledge” to teach for three or four years at a pre-kindergarten through 12th grade school in Wisconsin. The Teacher Pledge was extended through the 2029-30 academic year in April , thanks to $8 million in new donor support. Contact Tom Owenby, the School of Education’s associate dean for teacher education and director of the Teacher Education Center, to learn more.

Contact: [email protected]

Understanding polarization’s effect on young learners

Jeremy Stoddard, a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, studies how political polarization is impacting young people and civic education in K-12 schools. In June he helped organize a research convening to examine this issue with scholars from around the country. He has also published studies examining how teachers engaged their students in the 2018 and 2020 elections. As we enter another contentious election cycle, Stoddard says building a better understanding of how polarization is changing classrooms is more important now than ever. “We need to dig into the research we already have on these important subjects to figure out what else we need to know and what we can do about it,” he says. 

Contact: [email protected]

Are you a reporter who needs some help connecting with these faculty members? Or are you looking for education experts in other areas? Email Jody Moen, ​the School of Education’s public relations specialist, at [email protected] .

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University of Wisconsin closes laboratory, ending cat experiments

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Oil edges up as Libyan supply woes offset lower-than-expected U.S. stock draw

Oil prices edged up on Thursday after two sessions of losses, as supply concerns over Libya returned to focus, while a smaller-than-expected draw in U.S. crude inventories sapped demand expectations.

The W Project: A First Glimpse into Being a Badger

Written by Mia McCauley, Student Affairs Intern

While almost anyone can throw up a celebratory W, there’s much more to the Wisconsin Experience than meets the eye. Every year, thousands of new freshmen and transfer students gather at Camp Randall Stadium to celebrate The W Project: Bucky’s 5th Quarter , aka a crash course in being a Badger. This year, the event will be held on Thursday, August 29 at 6:00 p.m. at Camp Randall Stadium.

Just as every great club or society has a set of traditions to establish its identity, so does our Badger community. The W Project introduces new students to time-honored chants and songs that are not only a blast, but prepares them for events attended throughout their time at UW–Madison.

At such a large university, events like this are truly special, as they allow a space for all new students to gather together. Incoming freshmen and transfer students can take this opportunity to connect and celebrate with fellow classmates, as well as enjoy appearances by Dean of Students Christina Olstad, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Fernie Rodriguez, Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin, and Bucky himself ! To end the evening, students step onto the field to form the very “W” the event is named after. Attendees can even get a free copy of the new W Project poster when they attend New Student Convocation on September 3.

By participating in the W Project, new students ensure the continuation of rituals we all hold close to our hearts. So, rep our university proudly – and deck out in your favorite Badger red gear! We need the support of all our Badgers.

The W Project: Bucky’s 5th Quarter is a featured event hosted via Wisconsin Welcome and the Office of Student Transition and Family Engagement as part of Student Affairs . This multi-week celebration invites new freshmen and transfer students to discover Madison, meet fellow Badgers, and find their campus community. Visit go.wisc.edu/welcome for additional information and events. 

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UW–Madison has long been a leader in fusion research and education

Steffi Diem, professor of engineering physics in the College of Engineering, checks out the Pegasus-III Lab in the Engineering Research Building. Photo: Bryce Richter

On Tuesday, U.S. Department of Energy scientists announced a crucial advance in the quest to mimic the nuclear fusion that powers the Sun — a long-held goal of researchers seeking a clean, stable and essentially limitless energy source.

The breakthrough at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility is significant because it’s the first time scientists have been able to produce “ignition” — a nuclear fusion reaction that creates more energy than it consumes.

While the advance marks a potential turning point in fusion energy production, experts say it will take several more decades of research — at a minimum — before the technology is ready for widespread use. The December 2022 experiment that first produced ignition was itself a product of decades of investment in research on nuclear fusion and the plasma that powers it.

Over more than a half-century, the University of Wisconsin–Madison has become a national leader in the field, with dozens of researchers working on multiple large-scale projects across three departments and two colleges. While fusion and plasma experiments at UW–Madison differ from the effort at Livermore, they each contribute to the scientific understanding of nuclear fusion and plasma.

“This result is a real demonstration of how important scientific understanding is to making fusion generate net energy,” says Cary Forest, a UW–Madison physics professor and expert in experimental plasma physics for nuclear fusion. “A few years ago, many were ready to shut (the) National Ignition Facility down, but wiser heads prevailed and they went into a very careful study of how to make improvements. The payoff is huge.”

Forest is among a number of researchers across the departments of physics, engineering physics and electrical and computer engineering working on fusion and plasma research . In addition to furthering scientific knowledge of nuclear fusion, these experiments offer students hands-on experience in the design, construction and operation of complex facilities that could eventually help pave the way to a fusion-powered society. UW–Madison fusion and plasma work includes:

• The Wisconsin Plasma Physics Lab (WiPPL) — a Department of Physics facility that houses two devices — the Big Red Ball and Madison Symmetric Torus — used to investigate fundamental plasma processes and fusion.
• The Pegasus-III Experiment — An experiment based in the Department of Engineering Physics contributing to a global effort to better understand magnetically confined high-temperature plasmas. The ultimate goal of the research is to lower costs of future fusion energy production.
• The Helically Symmetric Experiment (HSX) — Housed in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the HSX is a unique device with a special kind of magnetic field structure used for studying major issues in plasma fusion like turbulence and plasma edge physics.
• The Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror (WHAM) — This experimental device is under construction and will serve as a prototype for future next-generation fusion power plants. Housed in the Department of Physics, the WHAM experiment is a partnership between UW–Madison, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
• The Center for Plasma Theory and Computation — An interdisciplinary research center that addresses theoretical questions that stem from plasma experiments both on campus and with national and international collaborators.
• The Fusion Technology Institute — This research program, started in 1971, is the largest program for advanced degrees in fusion engineering. The institute seeks to develop clean, safe and economical fusion energy sources.

Additionally, UW–Madison researchers and alumni have applied their expertise in fusion technology to private sector startups, including Type One Energy , Shine Fusion and Realta Fusion.

Much of UW–Madison’s fusion research centers on magnetic confinement fusion — a different approach to fusion energy production from the one behind the Livermore announcement. Still, the experiments and modeling that led to the breakthrough at Livermore are progressing in the magnetic confinement field too, according to Stephanie Diem, a professor of engineering physics who leads the Pegasus-III Experiment.

“With deeper physics understanding, advances in modeling and advanced manufacturing open up the possibility of making magnetic fusion more economically feasible,” Diem says.

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Tags: College of Engineering , physics

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Music 113 Question

So I am in music 113, or clap for credit. I looked at the Exam review guide and it's super long and extensive stuff that would seem to take hours to know for a 1 credit, 97% A class. Has anyone taken this exam? What should I focus on? Thanks in advance

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