Wisconsin lawmakers are considering ending “gain-of-function” research at all higher education institutions in the state.
The rare practice of modifying risky pathogens to make them more harmful to people during research has become political and controversial since the COVID-19 outbreak.
The National Institutes for Health is awarding a $150 million grant to UW-Madison researchers to study how Alzheimer’s and other dementias are affecting the brain. We talk with the study leader about Alzheimer’s and the future of dementia research.
The Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance held a public hearing Thursday on legislation to provide funding for the UW System capital projects that were used as bargaining chips in the system’s debate with legislative Republicans late last year over diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
The bill would provide more than $400 million from the state’s general fund to pay for new campus buildings, renovations, additions and the demolition of aging infrastructure. The marquee project included in the bill is funding for a new engineering building at UW-Madison.
About 5,000 students at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls will return to start the spring semester in a little over a week.
But junior Juliana Graff knows the campus is still hurting, especially after the death of Mason Crum. He was a junior studying finance. “I can’t really shake that feeling that this is going to continue, that there’s still going to be issues in this regard going forward, unless something changes,” said Graff.
States and the federal government have made efforts to increase the number of health care providers. Wisconsin has a rural residency program and a loan assistance program to draw medical students to rural and other shortage areas. The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health developed an urban program and a rural program, called the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine, to increase enrollment to address shortages. And there’s the effort of the Medical College of Wisconsin to open up two satellite campuses with 50 enrollment spots.
Cohen, who studied foreign policy and mass media’s role in shaping it, spent three decades at UW-Madison, first joining the faculty in 1959 and later serving as chair of the political science department. Cohen later transitioned into administrative roles, including associate dean of the Graduate School in the 1970s and vice chancellor of academic affairs in the 1980s.
Are you house-hunting on Milwaukee’s east side?
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is hoping to sell the chancellor’s residence at 3435 N. Lake Drive. UWM will first seek permission to sell from the UW Board of Regents, then put it on the market.
The university announced Thursday that officials will seek permission from Universities of Wisconsin regents to sell the residence along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Real estate website Zillow estimates the six-bedroom home is worth about $1.4 million. The university’s real estate foundation purchased the home in 2012 for $955,000.
No longer tied to milking cows herself twice a day, Hinchley says both she and her dairy cows are happier with the robotic milkers operating 24 hours a day.
“It’s not necessarily something that you would have to do in order to stay in the dairy business,” said Chuck Nicholson, a UW-Madison professor of animal and dairy sciences. He noted only about 8% of Wisconsin’s dairy farmers have implemented the new technology, typically family farms that want to save on labor costs. “The labor shortage is definitely a key motivating factor.”
“This judge seems to be a very activist judge,” said John Gross, a clinical law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “He seems to want to insert himself into the resolution of cases in ways that are often not appropriate, or at the very least, not authorized by any statute.”
Gross also raised concerns the restitution order, which directed money to the county that supported the victim after the assault, could set a dangerous precedent in which judges or district attorneys could use restitution to fill government coffers.
In less than six years, the number of dugout canoes known to exist in Wisconsin rose from 11 to nearly 100. Locating and studying these vessels, ranging from about 150 to 4,000 years old, is the mission of the Wisconsin Dugout Canoe Survey Project. Interview with Sissel Schroeder, a professor of anthropology with a specialization in archaeology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose lab hosts the Wisconsin Dugout Canoe Survey Project which she heads up with state maritime archaeologist Tamara Thomsen.
“That language is pretty categorical, so my sense is that no recall election could be held until new maps are adopted or the court takes some other authorizing action,” Robert Yablon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who specializes in election and constitutional law, said.
One of his big fights, which he eventually lost, but really won, was against the UW-Madison’s decision to take a piece of Bascom Hill’s John Muir Woods to build a new social sciences building just north of the hill’s celebrated Carillon Tower.
The current increase in COVID-19 cases is a continuation of an increase in the illness that began in August and started to take off after children returned to school in September, said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The surge also follows along with other respiratory viruses, although its pattern is not identical, he added.
“For someone who has symptoms for a respiratory virus infection, they may not have COVID-19 — it could very well be influenza or could be RSV,” Sethi said Thursday. Wherever they are given, “COVID tests are still useful, because it would be nice to know what virus you might have.”
Studies show that early intervention and integrated, team-based mental health services are an effective way to treat schizophrenia. However, many patients still can’t access the new approach to care. We talk to Ronald Diamond, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at UW-Madison and former medical director of the Mental Health Center of Dane County, about what’s standing in the way of patients getting the treatment they need.
The Badgers won both games against the Fighting Irish to secure the No. 1 spot in the Big Ten and extend their winning streak to nine.
The first female UW-Madison faculty member to start a biotech business, Allen-Hoffmann left her role as CEO of Stratatech after the acquisition and has since retired from her subsequent role as vice president of regenerative medicine at Mallinckrodt. She did not respond to a request for comment.
