Wisconsin State Journal Local News

If I asked what your language means to you, what would you say?

Almost 30 years ago, I was enjoying blues musicians playing outdoors at Chicago's Maxwell Street Market using electricity stolen from a ramshackle building.

There are pencil marks on a wall in our house that record a child’s growth. A pencil, a ruler, and some coaxing are all you need to quantify the precious process.

My father was born in 1936, into a world on the brink of war, and a country recovering from the depths of the Great Depression.

For years, it has been received wisdom: if you are a doctor or a nurse, the language you speak belongs to you alone. Patients can’t possibly use or understand it.

It has been said that communication is the essence of human life.

My liberal arts training strongly shaped my work.

Many mathematical discoveries happen at the boundaries between fields, when we realize connections between things that previously seemed unrelated.

As a student at UW-Madison in the early 1980s, I was awed by all of the classes available and keenly aware of satisfying my breadth requirements.

One of our most amazing human capacities is our ability to think.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s new wave of job-seeking candidates is highly skilled, brilliantly educated and full of ideas and enthusiasm.

The many tangled connections between people and the material world are the grist for material culture scholars as we try to understand the human condition.

Two thousand years ago, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote “Ex Africa semper aliquid novi,” which translates to “Out of Africa, there is always something new.”

Who are the bad guys that attacked my computer?

When I was a student taking organic chemistry, I learned that certain carbon-based materials are capable of acting like metals or semiconductors.

Knowledge accumulates. The thread of one idea is woven into another, unlocking the promise of discovery.

Since 2013, I have been part of a team working in the Rising Star cave system of South Africa. There, we have discovered one of the largest troves of fossil bones of human relatives ever found.

How should the United States deal with the challenge of a rising China, or the threat of extremist terrorism, or the complexities of climate change?

Trisha L. Andrew, Department of Chemistry 10

On this Mother’s Day, there may be no more comforting way for moms and kids to spend time together than by reading a good book.