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November 20, 2020

Research

Potent new antifungal discovered in the microbiome of marine animals

New Scientist

A new antifungal compound that is effective against even multidrug-resistant fungi has been found in the microbiome of a marine animal.Fungal infections affect hundreds of millions of people globally each year. “They’re particularly a problem for people whose immune system is suppressed,” says David Andes at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. This includes people being treated for cancer, organ transplant recipients and premature babies.

Higher Education/System

Campus life

Health

Athletics

Nickel: He missed 15 months of football, lost a friend to suicide and caught COVID-19. Life is different for UW’s Scott Nelson.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

What is college football for, anyway? Not for our entertainment or our diversion, not ideally. Not to make billions. At least it shouldn’t be. It’s meeting challenges. It’s sportsmanship. It’s gaining life lessons and handling them with the learned skills of discipline, delayed gratification and truly understanding what it means to be part of a team.

Opinion

UW Experts in the News

What Trump Showed Us About America

POLITICO

Katherine J. Cramer is professor of political science and chair of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is author of The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.

The past few years have taught me just how removed the cultural elite in the United States is from many of the other people in this nation. By cultural elite, I mean those of us who create the knowledge and the media content people consume, as well those of us in positions of political and other decision-making power. There is a deep well of people in this country who are sure the system is not working for them, and we seem to be only coming around to recognizing how deep it goes.

President Trump is seeking a recount in two Wisconsin counties, but what he’s really doing is preparing for a lawsuit.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the recount effort is clearly not actually about changing the election result given the margin. Instead, he said, Trump’s goals could be to put a cloud over the election results, raise suspicions, and to lay groundwork for the future.

Movie Theaters Get State Boost

WORT-FM

According to Tino Balio, a Professor Emeritus of Communication Arts at UW-Madison and an expert on the history of American cinema, the 1918 pandemic ultimately didn’t leave a lasting impact on the industry.  “Throughout the 1920s, the film industry grew exponentially and it became well-entrenched and, during that period, there was a tremendous theater construction boom,” he says. But, Balio makes that caveat that things are different this time around.