While it may seem there are more of the pesky biters this year, it’s not clear if the number of ticks is higher this year than other years, said PJ Leisch, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison insect diagnostic lab.
Wisconsin Assembly lawmakers voted Tuesday night to approve a two-year state budget that looks very different from the spending plan proposed by Gov. Tony Evers earlier this year.
Assembly Republicans approved a state budget late Tuesday that would cut taxes by more than $3 billion over two years, clear the way for an expansion of I-94 in Milwaukee and end the 8-year-old freeze on in-state tuition at University of Wisconsin schools.
Noted: Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison looked at data on covid-19 cases across the U.S. reported during the spring of 2020 and focused on comparing counties with prisons and jails to those without them. After controlling for other variables linked to covid-19 spread, like nearby nursing homes or population density, they found a clear link between having a state prison in the area and increased covid-19 cases.
“Our big takeaway from this research is that prisons are a particularly vulnerable type of facility when it comes to risk for disease spread, which may add additional stress to rural healthcare systems that are already struggling to cope with the pandemic,” study author Kaitlyn Sims, a doctoral student in agricultural and applied economics at UW–Madison, told Gizmodo in an email.
Noted: There are between 1,272 and 5,093 refugees in Brown County, according to a 2020 report by UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs. However, the report found that many people in this community still need help with essentials like employment, housing, access to food and public aid and even school enrollment.
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is recruiting volunteers for a study testing a treatment that aims to help prevent the earliest memory loss due to Alzheimer’s disease.
Noted: Some athletes have already begun making plans to cash in on their renown. Jordan Bohannon, a men’s basketball player at the University of Iowa, has announced plans for an apparel line that will debut on Thursday, and the University of Wisconsin’s starting quarterback, Graham Mertz, posted a video with a personal logo.
The centerpiece of the two-year budget is a GOP-authored plan to cut $3.3 billion in income and property taxes, made possible largely by the state’s unprecedented $4.4 billion surplus. The budget also would end an eight-year freeze on University of Wisconsin System tuition and hold K-12 funding largely flat. All in all, the budget would spend about $4 billion less than Evers proposed.
The Assembly late Tuesday passed the $87.5 billion Republican-authored 2021-23 biennial budget, which cuts taxes largely on businesses and the wealthy more than $3 billion, lifts a UW tuition freeze and rejects many of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ top priorities.
Quoted: While it may seem there are more of the pesky biters this year, it’s not clear if the number of ticks is higher this year than other years, said PJ Leisch, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison insect diagnostic lab.
“It’s my overall impression that it’s rather variable depending on where you are in Wisconsin,” he said. “In some areas, ticks are having a good year, in other spots, it’s typical levels.”
Alvarez’s backstory is well-documented as he nears the end of a legendary run at UW that began when he took over the football program in 1990 and will end Wednesday, his final day as athletic director.
Quoted: The Maricopa County review “does not meet the standards of a proper election recount or audit,” said an evaluation of the ballot review by Trey Grayson, former Republican Kentucky secretary of state, and Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist.
But by those same parameters, if we were observing our own solar system from afar, we might think Venus should be Earth-like too. “If you can’t understand Venus, which is our closest Earth-like neighbor, what chance do you have of believing anything some astrophysicist tells us about exoplanets?” says planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Limaye is part of a contingent of Venus researchers interested in finding out whether its cloud layer could still host microbial life. In 2020, investigators reported in the journal Nature Astronomy seeing signatures of phosphine—a chemical known thus far only to come from biological sources—in the atmosphere. Though claims about the possible discovery didn’t pan out, the news helped to spotlight the planet as an overlooked astrobiology target.
Elections experts are already warning that any conclusion drawn from the Arizona review will be untrustworthy. A report from the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, co-authored by former Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Trey Grayson and Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, ripped into the Arizona effort as being poorly run and not transparent.
Jim worked for Wisconsin Porcelain and the UW Grounds Department.
She was sentenced to three days in jail, placed on probation for two years and ordered to pay a $30,000 forfeiture. She applied to the University of Wisconsin Law School while she was still on probation, but noted on her application that the charges had been dismissed.
