Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery

Changes in Flood Frequency and Seasonality Across Midwestern U.S. Watersheds Under a Warming Climate: Insights From Convection‐Permitting Climate Simulations and Physics‐Based Hydrologic Models

Abstract We combine CONUS404 convection‐permitting climate simulations with the physics‐based WRF‐Hydro model to assess how climate warming may influence flood frequency and seasonality across the Midwestern United States. This framework captures interactions among precipitation,...

The diverse effects of side reactions on the persistence of autocatalytic cycles

A key criticism of metabolism-first theories of abiogenesis is that, in the absence of specialized catalysts, side reactions would convert too many autocatalysts to inert by-products for autocatalytic systems to persist. Here, we use algebraic analysis and numerical simulations t...

Racial Inequality in Access to the Nonprofit Safety Net: County-Level Racial and Ethnic Composition and Nonprofit Human Services Expenditures

Abstract Nonprofit organizations are a central part of the American human services safety net, yet access to their services may be unequally distributed across communities. This paper examines racial and ethnic disparities in nonprofit human services expenditures at the county le...

Making classrooms more inclusive reduces the achievement gap in STEM: evidence from a large-scale randomized controlled trial

Students from marginalized groups tend to achieve lower grades in STEM college courses than their non-marginalized peers. We tested the effectiveness of two interventions, one aimed at changing the environment and the other aimed at changing the students. The “Inclusion intervent...

Biased inter-columnar communication and short-term plasticity in mouse barrel cortex

Abstract The barrel cortex (BC) processes complex direction-, frequency-, and phase-dependent input from whiskers to analyze objects in the immediate environment. Little is known about how BC microcircuits process this information and integrate input from multiple whiskers. To in...

Genome-wide CRISPR screening identifies cellular factors controlling nonviral genome editing efficiency

After administering genome editors, their efficiency is limited by a multi-step process involving cellular uptake, trafficking, and nuclear import of the vector and its payload. These processes vary widely across cell types and differ depending on the nature and structure of the...