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Author: gbump

‘More than we bargained for’: Solar farm proposal roils Cambridge community

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Wisconsin State Journal

State law gives the Public Service Commission regulatory authority over electricity plants larger than 100 megawatts, leaving communities with very little say in what gets built and where, said Brian Ohm, a professor of planning and landscape architecture at UW-Madison. “Cities and villages do have limited extraterritorial authority, but in this case that’s not going to come into play,” Ohm said. “The village’s future plans can be a consideration, something that could be a consideration by the PSC, but again there’s nothing that’s going to lock the PSC into the village’s plans for growth.”

Arizona ‘bracing for impact’ of Trump-driven election report

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POLITICO

Other election experts have previously torn into the Arizona review as unprofessionally run, including a report from former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, a Republican, and Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

“The Cyber Ninjas review suffers from a variety of maladies: uncompetitive contracting, a lack of impartiality and partisan balance, a faulty ballot review process, inconsistency in procedures, an unacceptably high level of error built into the process, and insufficient security,” Grayson and Burden wrote in their June report. “Because it lacks the essential elements of a bona fide post-election analysis, the review currently underway in Maricopa County will not produce findings that should be trusted.”

Man who claimed to have bomb near US Capitol surrenders after long standoff

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The Guardian

Kelsey Campbell, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison visiting Washington as part of a class trip, said she and another student had encountered Roseberry at about 9.20am outside the nearby supreme court building. Campbell said Roseberry had been with his truck, which was parked next to the sidewalk, and had been holding a large stack of dollar bills.

Chicago Teachers to the Mayor: Put Human Needs Ahead of Banks

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The Nation

Places like Chicago remain oppressive and unequal, Smith believes, because people—politicians and citizens alike—inherit systems of inequality and accept them, bereft of any vision that things could be different. But what Chicago’s politicians may be lacking in vision—beyond bovine calls to return to normal—Chicago teachers, activists, and community members have supplied in spades. They are boldly showing the way. Now it’s up to the mayor to follow.

-Eleni SchirmerEleni Schirmer, a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, studies labor movements, social movements, and public education.

Man surrenders after claiming to have bomb near US Capitol

Posted on
Associated Press

Kelsey Campbell, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison visiting Washington as part of a class trip, said she and another student encountered Roseberry around 9:20 a.m. outside the nearby Supreme Court building. Campbell said he was with his truck, which was parked next to the sidewalk, and was holding a large stack of dollar bills. “He said, ‘Hey, call the police, tell them to evacuate this street, and I’ll give you all this money,’” Campbell recounted to The AP. “I said, ’No!’ and he threw the money at us and we started running.” Campbell said she and the other student saw some police officers standing nearby. They told the officers what happened, and the officers then went to confront Roseberry.

Madison doctors warn of increase in small toys being ingested

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NBC-15

Dr. Nicholas Kuehnel, medical director of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at American Family Children’s Hospital, said the trend in these items being swallowed has grown in the past few months to about one case per week in the ER. “We have had several kids require surgery to remove Orbeez from their airway and stomach,” said Dr. Kuehnel. “We’ve also performed several surgeries to remove dead bowel from kids who swallowed Bucky Balls.”

Badgers football up to 90% vaccinated from COVID-19

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Wisconsin State Journal

The Badgers — who open the season against Penn State at 11 a.m. Sept. 4 at Camp Randall Stadium — were at about 85% in late July, according to head coach Paul Chryst. The Big Ten Conference has yet to announce how it will handle games that can’t be played due to a COVID-19 outbreak, but a decision is expected soon.

UW-Madison grad Sara Archambault’s new doc drops at MMoCA

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The Capital Times

Sara Archambault is thrilled that the documentary she produced, “Truth or Consequences,” is playing Friday under the stars (weather permitting) as part of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s Rooftop Cinema series. And not just because she used to live in Madison as a graduate student in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Communication Arts department.

Family of Anthony Huber, killed by Kyle Rittenhouse, files suit against city of Kenosha

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The Washington Post

Steven Howard Wright, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, said the challenge for plaintiffs will be to prove an active conspiracy between the city, law enforcement and White militia members. “They are swinging for the entire community, which will make it a lot harder to sell,” he said. Because there is not a specific “smoking gun” to prove the conspiracy, he said he expects plaintiffs’ attorneys to ask the court “for the widest degree of discovery” to show that both departments had significant race problems long before the Blake incident.

Do we really need to wear masks again?

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The Daily Cardinal

Things were finally getting back to normal, or so it seemed. Now, with UW-Madison re-instituting a mask mandate on campus as of Aug. 5 and Dane County Public Health recommending that everyone mask up regardless of vaccination status, it feels in many ways like we’re right back where we started in March of 2020.

The Unvaccinated Gift: A Masked Campus

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The Daily Cardinal

Why, America? More and more I have asked this question to myself as I read through the hideous headlines about COVID-19, almost all pertaining to the problem the unvaccinated have caused. It has never made sense to me, even before the pandemic, why some folks legitimately do not trust vaccines. Even with experts and statistical data affirming the vaccine’s success, anti-vaxxers consistently have an endless list of excuses to sharply defend their reservations.

Students fumble resale football tickets

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The Daily Cardinal

For the 2021-22 football season, the first season allowing guests since the COVID-19 pandemic, football tickets sales were digitized. The new system requires students to transfer tickets digitally rather than providing them with paper tickets to sell in person.

An evaluation of freshmen living amidst the housing crisis

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The Daily Cardinal

Although UW-Madison Housing has offered make-do dorm rooms to its incoming freshmen class, it does not mean students are willing to take them. UW-Madison residence halls can feel like a shoe-box when shared with just one roommate. Further overcrowding living conditions are clearly far from ideal.

Opinion: UW should teach history, not expunge it

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The Capital Times

Letter to the editor: I am writing with regard to the removal of the Chamberlin Rock from Observatory Hill on the UW campus, because it is regarded as a racist symbol. Yes, the 1925 Wisconsin State Journal article describing its installation uses an exceedingly racist noun to describe the rock. Regrettably, that term was common in American lingo for generations, as a descriptor for such rocks. I heard it while growing up in Iowa in the ’40s and ’50s but never used it.

Student resilience shines through the pandemic

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The Daily Cardinal

College in a “normal” year is hard for most students, but attending college during a global pandemic can amplify these challenges. Despite pandemic-enhanced challenges, UW-Madison students have shown their resilience and strength as a campus community.

State Republicans Are Gambling with the Delta Surge

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The New Yorker

This followed a demand by state-senate Republicans that the twenty-six campuses of the University of Wisconsin submit all covid safety protocols to legislators for approval. A few hours later, the University of Wisconsin at Madison announced indoor mask requirements to protect students and staff. “Today’s action feels like a political statement,” a university spokesman told reporters, explaining that university leaders “are doing what needs to be done now to safely open for in-person teaching this fall.” (The university system is led by Tommy Thompson, a pragmatic Republican former governor, who once served as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.)

Internal-wound-healing wafer is powered by patients’ muscles

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New Atlas

Led by Prof. Xudong Wang, scientists at the University of Wisconsin have developed a patch-like tissue-stimulating implant that gets around such problems. It’s known as a piezoelectric wafer, and it contains crystals of the non-toxic amino acid lysine. Via a self-assembly process, those crystals form and align themselves between two sheets of a flexible, biocompatible, biodegradable polymer called polyvinyl alcohol (PVA).

CNN’s Chris Cuomo breaks silence on Andrew Cuomo resignation: What does anchor’s future hold?

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USA Today

“What happens to him at CNN is less important to me than what happens to all the other journalists whose ethics will be questioned and whose bond of trust with the citizens they serve could be damaged by the choices he made,” wrote Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication in an opinion piece for USA TODAY published this week.

Managing back-to-school anxiety in advance of first day

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NBC-15

Dr. Marcia Slattery is a UW-Madison Professor of Psychiatry & Pediatrics. She specializes in child and adolescent psychiatry and anxiety disorders in kids, adolescents, and adults. Dr. Slattery expressed concern that some teens may feel they are behind the curve after a year of virtual learning. She said getting a consistent sleep routine in check will help them balance out these emotions and get their brain and body back in sync.

Allow campuses to keep kids safe — Patricia M. Giesfeldt

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Wisconsin State Journal

Letter to the editor: So Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, thinks he knows more than both interim University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson (a very well-respected former Republican governor) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when it comes to keeping our college students safe during this uptick of the pandemic.

Dodson, Virginia (Joseph)

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Wisconsin State Journal

Ginny worked as a lecturer in zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and later she graduated from MATC in 1986 with a degree in computer sciences.

How to Get Smarter: Start With the Brain Itself

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WSJ

“If we can make these things less and less invasive while making sure we are engaging the nerves, we can start to move beyond just doing this for people who have injury or ailments,” says Justin Williams, a Darpa-funded neuro-engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is studying how nerve stimulation can impact learning.

Exact Sciences, UW researchers search for cancer in ‘liquid biopsies’

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Wisconsin State Journal

UW Health has opened its own lab for cancer blood tests and recruited a scientist who helped invent a related technology licensed by Exact Sciences. For some cancer patients whose tumors are hard to reach or might have genetic mutations targeted by available drugs, UW doctors have started ordering blood tests instead of traditional tissue biopsies, typically with quicker results to guide treatment.