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October 24, 2022

Top Stories

Research

Is Hand-Washing Still Important in the COVID-19 Pandemic?

The Atlantic

This realization is not an entirely new one: A 1987 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that a group of men playing poker with “soggy,” rhinovirus-contaminated cards were not infected, while a group playing with other sick players were.

Higher Education/System

Campus life

Q&A: UW GSCC discusses fostering community space for LGBTQ+ students

The Daily Cardinal

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Gender and Sexuality Campus Center (GSCC) works to support and foster community among UW’s trans and queer students. The organization planned a day-long community-building event and trans film festival on Oct. 24, the same time as conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s talk at Memorial Union. GSCC organized several other initiatives throughout the fall to support LBGTQ+ students on campus.

“It placed a hunger in me.” UW Odyssey Project celebrates 20 years of changing lives

Madison 365

The potential for adults returning to school to reach goals of obtaining degrees and knowledge is often most affected by external factors that can make everyday life and returning to academics a difficult balance. The UW Odyssey Project is a remedy to that problem, and over their 20 years working to bring adults to higher education, they have gone the extra mile every time.

The Odyssey Project started in 2002 and quickly started changing lives. Acting as an avenue for adults to return to higher education through the resources and knowledge that run throughout UW-Madison has allowed the Odyssey Project to serve a plethora of people each year to achieve their academic, career, and personal goals. A celebration at the UW-Memorial Union was only fitting.

State news

Why Hispanic voters are a focus in Wisconsin’s 2022 election

Wisconsin Watch

Quoted: “They vote for the Democrats. And it’s been pretty consistent,” said Marquez, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in Chicano and Latino studies.

“The Democrats have to have a good strategy for reaching out to Latino voters. They have to make contact on the ground. They have to convince them that the election is important, that their vote matters, and that they should go to all of this trouble to get out and vote for a party that oftentimes doesn’t deliver,” he said.

With inflation top of mind for voters, Wisconsin governor candidates tout tax cuts. Here’s why that could make things worse

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Some studies have shown more than 60% of the inflation Americans are feeling today can be directly attributed to the supply chain shortages of last year, said Mark Copelovitch, a political science and public affairs professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Second is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine is a major exporter of grain and Russia is a major supplier of oil, so wartime disruptions and U.S sanctions on Russia have contributed to rising food and gas prices.

Stimulus spending has also been a factor.

“The other part of the inflation is the demand side, especially when we were all sitting home, spending out stimulus checks when we could not go out (during the pandemic),” Copelovitch said.

Viral false COVID vaccine claim lands in Wisconsin governor’s race after Tim Michels tweet

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Patrick Remington, a former epidemiologist for the CDC and director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said COVID-19 vaccines have turned out to not be as effective as initially hoped but “the one aspect that every scientist agrees is that this is one of the safest vaccines ever produced, if not the safest vaccine.”

“I think it’s very worrisome that any politician would view information that is not scientifically sound or that maybe comes from a conspiracy theory,” he said. “I would be very concerned if that information resonates with their base, because then we’ll have policy that is being determined not by science and evidence but by superstition and by conspiracy, and that should be concerning for everybody.”

Former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, who served as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and has endorsed Michels, promoted COVID-19 vaccines to college students while he was president of the University of Wisconsin System during the coronavirus pandemic but did not mandate them.

Thompson said Friday he hadn’t seen Michels’ comments on the CDC and COVID-19 vaccines because he has been traveling out of state. He said spreading rumors about COVID-19 vaccine mandates is a bad idea.

“This rumor now about CDC requiring children being vaccinated should not be spread,” Thompson said.

Health

UW’s Dr. Joseph McBride: Respiratory illnesses in children surge, COVID changed seasonality of sicknesses

WTMJ

Hospitals across the nation are experiencing a surge in respiratory illnesses among children.

And hospitals in Wisconsin aren’t immune.

University of Wisconsin assistant professor of adult and pediatric infectious disease Dr. Joseph McBride says practitioners are “without a doubt” seeing higher numbers of respiratory issues in children. He specifically points to “respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.”

“RSV is a common seasonal virus that pediatricians, healthcare providers, young parents and families are well aware of year-in and year-out,” McBride says. “What’s interesting about RSV is that in the setting of COVID and all the mask use, it kind of threw off our normal seasonality of it. Usually it’s pretty predictable each year starting toward the end of fall, in to the winter during our normal cough-and-cold season that we would see spikes in RSV.”

Helium shortage: Doctors are worried that running out of the element could threaten MRIs

NBC News

“You get these sharp images, and you can distinguish soft tissues,” said Dr. Scott Reeder, chief of MRI at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “It’s central to many things we do in modern medicine.” MRIs help doctors diagnose brain tumors, strokes, spinal cord injuries, liver diseases and cancer. The 3D images, experts say, are irreplaceable.

Athletics

Opinion

The Jan. 6 committee is fueling unwarranted distrust of the Fifth Amendment

The Hill

But the committee gains nothing by highlighting the advisors’ decision to plead the Fifth, and it risks further eroding one of the most important rights in the American criminal justice system.

-Steven Wright teaches criminal constitutional law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. He is also the former co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project.

UW Experts in the News

Ancient DNA Reveals the First Known Neanderthal Family

Smithsonian Magazine

Studying Neanderthals is like “putting together a puzzle where we have many, many missing pieces,” John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin not involved in the study, tells the Associated Press’ Maddie Burakoff. And now, the new study means “somebody’s dumped a bunch more pieces on the table.”

15 Plants With Red Leaves Perfect For Your Indoor Space

House Digest

The angel wings, also known as (Caladium ’Red flash’) is a tropical plant that is purposely grown for its large and showy foliage. The surface of the leaves features a combination of green shade, red veins, and pink dots that are extremely eye-catching. This pot plant doesn’t have stems; the leaves grow directly on petioles that emerge from the tuber underground (via the University of Wisconsin-Madison).

UW-Madison Related

Nicholas Goldberg: Where have all the English majors gone?

LA Times

In 2015, Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker stumbled gracelessly into this debate when he tried to alter the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin by deleting the words that called on the university to “search for truth” and “improve the human condition.” In their place he wanted to substitute words calling on the university to “meet the state’s workforce needs