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What Scientists Say about the Historic Climate Bill

Scientific American

Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

If the IRA passes in the House, it will mark a historic turning point for the U.S. as the first major piece of legislation to limit our carbon emissions and hence future warming of our planet. The outline of where we go from here is already written in the shortcomings of this bill: we must stop investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and make this legislation merely a first step of many more meaningful steps to come.

‘South Park’ enjoys a silver anniversary of satire

CBS Colorado

“As much as I love ’The Simpsons’ and I think ’The Simpsons’ is really important, I think ’South Park’ has definitely done things that ’The Simpsons’ haven’t,” says Dr. Jonathan Gray, a media and cultural studies professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose books include “Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality.”

The Most Obese City in Every State

24/7 Tempo

24/7 Tempo reviewed health data from the 2022 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program, to identify the most obese metro areas in every state.

Page turners: the most exciting new fiction from Africa, Latin America and south Asia

The Guardian

Kuku’s stories are delectable and fun, but they also reveal the ridiculousness of gender expectations and the sexual politics that assign men and women rigid roles in intimate relationships.

-Dr Ainehi Edoro is assistant professor of global black literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder and editor-in-chief of Brittle Paper, an online magazine for African literature

Scientists Have Re-Created The Deadly 1918 Flu Virus. Why?

Forbes

In 2007, only two years after the 1918 flu sequence was completely decoded, influenza researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Tokyo and the University of Wisconsin described, in a paper in Nature, how he and his colleagues used the sequence to create live, infectious 1918 flu viruses. To demonstrate that these really were flu viruses, they infected 7 macaques with them. Not surprisingly, the macaques got severely ill, and the scientists eventually euthanized all of them.

Should I install a garbage disposal with a septic system?

The Washington Post

When a woman answering a customer-service number for InSinkErator was asked if the company can cite any research about the effects of using disposals in homes with septic systems, she pointed to a 1998 paper on the company’s website in which a company engineer summarizes and interprets research done at the University of Wisconsin.

Mary Ann Baldwin

Wisconsin State Journal

Mary worked for over 36 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, retiring in 2003, with emeritus status; she truly enjoyed her interactions with the engineering students, especially meeting those from other countries.

Study: Active cancer, but not most previous cancer, makes COVID-19 more deadly

Wisconsin State Journal

People hospitalized with COVID-19 in the first 20 months of the pandemic were more likely to die if they had active cancer but not if they had a past history of cancer, according to a large new study led by UW-Madison researchers.

Chemotherapy and other treatments can suppress immune systems and cancer can deplete other physical reserves, making it harder to fight infections like COVID-19, said Dr. Margaret Nolan, the UW-Madison scientist who headed up the study.

Demand skyrockets in Madison as sweet corn keeps getting sweeter

Wisconsin State Journal

William Tracy, a professor of agronomy at UW-Madison, has been working with sweet corn since 1984. He said that sweetness is no accident.

“Modern sweet corns don’t lose their sugar so quickly,” he said. “We researched how to accomplish that and offered our solutions to the seed industry, who incorporated it into their breeding program and catalog.”

What Scientists Say about the Historic Climate Bill

Scientific American

Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–MadisonIf the IRA passes in the House, it will mark a historic turning point for the U.S. as the first major piece of legislation to limit our carbon emissions and hence future warming of our planet. The outline of where we go from here is already written in the shortcomings of this bill: we must stop investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and make this legislation merely a first step of many more meaningful steps to come.

Antibody drug reduces asthma attacks in urban children, UW-led study finds

Wisconsin State Journal

An antibody drug decreased asthma attacks by 27% in Black and Hispanic children and adolescents who have severe asthma, are prone to asthma attacks and live in low-income urban neighborhoods, a federally funded study led by UW-Madison researchers found.

Medications like mepolizumab have “revolutionized” treatment for adults with severe asthma, but data in children and diverse populations had been limited, said Dr. Daniel Jackson, a UW School of Medicine and Public Health professor of pediatrics who led the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Will this school year be more normal? Doctors and district administrators weigh in

WKOW-TV 27

Before the start of the 2021-2022 school year, many doctors, including UW Health’s Jeff Pothof, encouraged schools to continue requiring masks and not get rid of other precautions. “It didn’t seem that we should put kids in an environment where they could, you know, take the full brunt of COVID,” he said. “Now, you fast forward, you know, it’s just been a year — it feels like five — but things are different.”

New UW-Madison chancellor visits Milwaukee amid biggest application wave ever

CBS-58

UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin has been on the job six days as of Wednesday. She says with more applications than ever before, they’re looking forward to the school year.

Enrollment officials say they have more applicants this year than ever before, signaling that hesitation over COVID-19 precautions isn’t as bad as it once was.

“Our enrollment stayed pretty strong. But we are able now to have the full immersive experience that really is how we think our students learn best,” said Mnookin

Climate change may aggravate more than half of human pathogens

USA Today

Even after sounding warnings about the impacts of climate change on human health for more than 25 years, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute, was still surprised at the many ways researchers found climate hazards affect disease.

“They found over 1,000 unique pathways,” said Patz, who participated as a co-author. “That to me was striking.”

Mark Lederer Obituary (1952 – 2022)

Wisconsin State Journal

While working in the Wisconsin State Senate, at UW Extension in the Chancellor’s office and in the Local Government Center, Mark approached all his activities as a teacher, whether explaining UW Extension to legislators or helping local government officials navigate state and local regulations. In his final job before retiring, Mark taught UW students in the Department of Child and Family Studies about the direct impact of government policy on Wisconsin families.

Kathie Hanson Obituary (1941 – 2022)

Wisconsin State Journal

After graduation in 1963, she worked at the UW for three years and then moved to California and worked for a year. Upon returning to Madison, she continued her career in nursing at the UW, primarily in post anesthesia and trauma until 1980.

Stormy Weather And Dogs – 4 Things You May Have Overlooked

Forbes

Steve Ackerman and Jon Martin are respected meteorology professors at the University of Wisconsin who have a long-running series called “The Weather Guys.” On their website, they discussed another way dogs “detect” storms changes. They write, “Thunder, the loud noise that accompanies lightning, gives this nimbostratus cloud the name thunderstorm. Some dogs don’t like loud sounds, whether from a thunderclap or fireworks.”

COVID grads face college

AP

Angel Hope looked at the math test and felt lost. He had just graduated near the top of his high school class, winning scholarships from prestigious colleges. But on this test — a University of Wisconsin exam that measures what new students learned in high school — all he could do was guess. It was like the disruption of the pandemic was catching up to him all at once.

Are monarch butterflies endangered in the US?

Popular Science

“This is an assessment by an international scientific body that looked at all of the data and said monarchs are endangered,” says Karen Oberhauser, an expert on monarch butterfly biology and conservation and the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. “That means they’re in danger of their population going so low that it wouldn’t be able to recover.”

What Is Proper Drainage And Why Is It So Important For Houseplants?

House Digest

The most likely issue to be experienced with a poorly drained houseplant is root rot. As explained by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Horticulture, this is the common name for any number of diseases that kill off a plant by destroying its roots. Many of these diseases are caused by four different species of fungi, which are commonly found in wet soil: Pythium, Phytophthora, Rhizoctonia solani, and Fusarium.

Trump wished his military officials were more like ‘German generals’ of Nazi Germany

MSNBC

Even during the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, many scholars of fascism were sharply divided over whether Trump should be characterized as a fascist based on the vision he articulated — or lack thereof. University of Wisconsin historian Stanley Payne argued that Trump shouldn’t be described as such because, among other things, he never embraced “a coherent new revolutionary ideology.” (Personally I’d call Trump’s first term proto-fascist and say his second presidential run could mark the maturation of that tendency.)

World Juniors 2022: Connor Bedard, Dalibor Dvorsky, Charlie Stramel headline top eligible prospects for the 2023 NHL Draft

Sporting News

If you’ve watched any of the U.S. NTDP games this season, it’s hard not to notice Stramel. Listed at 6-3, 215 lbs, he plays a power forward role, never shying away from the physical aspect of the game. He suited up in 26 games for the national program, recording 22 points, and is set to play at the University of Wisconsin this fall.

A casual call decades ago led Wisconsin volleyball coach Kelly Sheffield to get into coaching

Wisconsin State Journal

Editor’s note: State Journal reporter Dennis Punzel chronicled the University of Wisconsin volleyball team’s rise under coach Kelly Sheffield and last season’s run to the national championship in a recently released book titled: “Point Wisconsin! The Road to a National Title for Kelly Sheffield & the Wisconsin Badgers.” Here is an excerpt from the book.

Orrin Rongstad

Wisconsin State Journal

Orrin took a position at UW in the Department of Wildlife Ecology, serving as advisor, teacher, researcher and department chair.

Could learning algebra in my 60s make me smarter?

The Guardian

Carol D Ryff at the University of Wisconsin’s Institute of Ageing told me about stereotype embodiment theory, which was proposed by the Yale psychologist Becca Levy. It says that the culture presents older people as moving slowly, being hard of hearing, talking too loud, and unable to read small print. These depictions are funny when we’re young; then we grow old and enact them, and they undermine a person’s sense of wellbeing.

Trump rallies in Wisconsin, where Republicans are embattled

The Hill

“I think it does, especially on the question of whether the 2020 election was legitimate or not,” said Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the director of the school’s Elections Research Center, when asked if the different endorsements raised questions about the direction of the party.

The Mysterious Dance of the Cricket Embryos

The New York Times

Dr. Donoughe contacted Christopher Rycroft, an applied mathematician now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and showed him the dancing nuclei. ‘Wow!’ Dr. Rycroft said. He had never seen anything like it, but he recognized the potential for a data-powered collaboration; he and Jordan Hoffmann, then a doctoral student in Dr. Rycroft’s lab, joined the study.

More scientists are studying pediatric cancer

The Washington Post

“These changes in recent years have prompted approaches that are beginning to make a real impact on improving the care and outcome of children with diseases thought incurable 10 years ago,” says Paul Sondel, the Reed and Carolee Walker professor of pediatric oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and a pediatric oncologist for more than 40 years. “Nevertheless, while we are seeing new progress, we know there is still a long way to go to be able to cure all children with cancer.”