State employees will have to wear face masks starting Thursday because of a surge in coronavirus cases, Wisconsin officials announced Wednesday.
The move came shortly after the two largest University of Wisconsin schools, in Madison and Milwaukee, put in place their own mask requirements. The policies are being enacted as the delta variant of COVID springs up around the world, including among those who have been fully vaccinated.
Researchers led by Guilherme Gainett from the University of Wisconsin-Madison first sequenced the genome of Phalangium opilio (technically not a spider but a close relative), thought to be among the most widespread of more than 6,000 different species of daddy long legs — also known as harvestmen — documented worldwide.
Noted: Utilizing RNA interference, researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison were able to sequence the genome of Phalangium opilio and modify six of the arachnids’ eight legs and turn them into half their normal size.
“We’ve shown… how the combinations of these genes create a blueprint in the embryo to differentiate between what’s going to be a leg that is used for walking and what is going to be a pedipalp, which can be used to manipulate food and assess the surroundings,” the study’s lead author, Guilherme Gainett at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview with New Scientist.
Researchers studying how poverty and adversity affect children’s development often track how negative experiences — be they poverty itself or factors such as having an incarcerated parent — affect decision-making, stress levels or aspects of brain function. But Seth Pollak, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, says that most of these efforts miss a crucial but long-overlooked component: children’s perceptions of their experiences.
Pollak spoke with Knowable Magazine about the importance of studying individual differences in experience.
Noted: The study started in Dane County and contains a disproportionate level of samples from that area, cautioned David O’Connor, one of the authors of the new study and a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Scientists stressed that despite having comparable levels of virus, vaccinated patients remain far less likely than the unvaccinated to become severely ill, hospitalized or die from COVID-19.
Also, O’Connor said the 83 Dane County cases showed that unvaccinated people are more than twice as likely to get the virus as those who’ve been vaccinated.
“What we’re seeing here is that the vaccines are doing a superb job of keeping people out of the hospital,” O’Connor said.
Analysis of nearly 300 COVID-positive samples collected in Wisconsin between June 28 and July 24 showed no significant difference in “viral load” between 79 fully vaccinated people and 212 unvaccinated people, according to a study by researchers at UW-Madison, Public Health Madison and Dane County and Exact Sciences.
A top university official in Wisconsin is butting heads with state Republican legislators over who has the authority to impose COVID-19 restrictions on campus.
Just hours after a Wisconsin state legislature committee on Tuesday required all University of Wisconsin schools to receive permission before issuing new coronavirus guidance, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank reinstated her campus’s indoor mask mandate.
Branches of the University of Wisconsin and school districts in Arizona and Florida are ordering students and staff to wear masks indoors in spite of statewide regulations and laws that prohibit them from doing so, as the Delta variant’s rapid spread sparks new showdowns over mask orders between state and local governments nationwide.
Dictionary will allow native speakers to understand biology terms and participate in scientific conversations, UW graduate student says.
The specific meaning of critical race theory is perhaps the element most up for debate, UW professor says.
Fans will get their first chance in over a year and a half to see the University of Wisconsin football and volleyball teams in person at a crossover event on campus later this month.
Quoted: “It’s [the delta variant] able to bind to the cells in our nasal passages and our lungs more tightly and as a result someone who gets infected is more capable of pumping out a lot more virus,” said Dr. Ajay Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at UW-Madison.
Quoted: “If they have issues with their immune system or are immunocompromised, I would say now is probably not a great time to travel, because there are so many things that are outside of your control,” said Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.
Quoted: “We know that masking allows children to be in school safely, reduces transmission of COVID, and, really importantly, if children are masked, then it provides much less disruption to kids, because they don’t need to be quarantined if they’re exposed to a case of COVID,” said Greg DeMuri, a pediatric epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
While 90% of UW Health’s staff are already fully vaccinated, there is room for further improvement and there is an opportunity to send a good message to patients, staff and the broader community, according to Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer, UW Health.
All UW Health employees will be required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the provider announced Wednesday.
UW Health is requiring employees to get COVID-19 vaccinations, the organization said Wednesday, following similar decisions by several other health care systems in Wisconsin and pleas for health care worker vaccine mandates from many health care groups.
Two days after the Journal Sentinel detailed the myriad reasons he was not retained as a men’s basketball assistant at Wisconsin, Alando Tucker used social media to deny he had done anything wrong.
Yvonne started her career at the University of Wisconsin Campus Assistance Center in 1974. She advanced in this position to become Director of the Campus Assistance Center. Yvonne then moved to the Red Gym, advancing to her position as the Director of Student Organizations. She retired as the Mission and Vision Coordinator for the Dean of Students Central Office.
Noted: Mr. Thomas, 43, said he got a taste of running a business while attending the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He was captain of his college bowling team for two years, and organized an on-campus league five nights a week. “I would call that my entry into entrepreneurship,” he said.
