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Author: gbump

The Facts on Trump’s Post-Election Legal Challenges

FactCheck.org

It said the clerks did so following “illegal guidance” from the Wisconsin Election Commission, but the campaign has presented no evidence of wrongdoing. David Canon, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor, said such charges sounded more like something that belonged in a lawsuit rather than a request for a recount.

“In a recount, all you are doing is recounting the ballots to make sure they were recorded properly,” Canon told WMTV, an NBC affiliate in Madison.

Gen Z’s Next Victim: The Lawn

Sierra Club

Landscape architects like Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the lush meadows of Central Park, brought the status symbol to the masses by designing sweeping, pastoral parks for public use, says Paul Robbins, dean of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are.

Can Cats and Dogs Be Allergic to Humans?

Discover Magazine

Maybe, says Douglas Deboer, a dermatologist at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There has been some research and experiments that suggest the possibility that pets can be allergic to humans, but nothing conclusive. If there are cats or dogs with these allergies, they are extremely rare.

“Anything’s possible,” Deboer says. “But it seems clear that it is not very common, if it exists at all.”

Don’t waste money on removing a rock — John Luther

Wisconsin State Journal

Letter to the editor: It appears UW-Madison is planning to spend lots of money to remove a historical rock planted on the side of Observatory Hill many years ago during glacial times. This action is another example of bowing down to the vocal minority.

Doyle, Susan E.

Wisconsin State Journal

Sue took a position at UW School of Medicine and Public Health where she worked with Allergy/Asthma research.

‘Checks and balances’: Inside the life cycle of a Wisconsin absentee ballot

Wisconsin State Journal

“The result of the election was not terribly different from four years ago; it went to the Democrats rather than the Republicans, but Wisconsin remains a narrowly divided state,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at UW-Madison. “I think election officials managed to operate in that highly partisan environment quite well.”

Bird, Robert Byron

Wisconsin State Journal

Bob received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, where he continued for over 60 years as a professor in the chemical engineering department and as Professor Emeritus after his retirement.

VandeBerg, Gale L.

Wisconsin State Journal

He was invited to join the Madison faculty in 1954, as the nation’s first CES Training Specialist. In 1956 he was awarded a Fellowship in the newly established National Center For Advanced Study in Extension Administration, sponsored by The W.K. Kellogg Foundation. There, in January of 1957, he was granted the nation’s first Ph.D. in extension administration.

UW Radio alums snag a British legend

Madison Magazine

It required Peckham to rise at 1 a.m. It was six hours later in England. Peckham showered, got on Skype, and told the unlikely story of how a bunch of former University of Wisconsin–Madison student radio geeks lured a wonderfully eccentric British radio legend named Deke Duncan to their internet radio station.

WCER director helps conduct research on teaching across globe

Daily Cardinal

The Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) — a video study in part conducted by a WCER director, looking into the practices and presentation of mathematics education approaches — has been recently acknowledged for its originality by the Paris branch of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

What Trump Showed Us About America

POLITICO

Katherine J. Cramer is professor of political science and chair of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is author of The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.

The past few years have taught me just how removed the cultural elite in the United States is from many of the other people in this nation. By cultural elite, I mean those of us who create the knowledge and the media content people consume, as well those of us in positions of political and other decision-making power. There is a deep well of people in this country who are sure the system is not working for them, and we seem to be only coming around to recognizing how deep it goes.

President Trump is seeking a recount in two Wisconsin counties, but what he’s really doing is preparing for a lawsuit.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the recount effort is clearly not actually about changing the election result given the margin. Instead, he said, Trump’s goals could be to put a cloud over the election results, raise suspicions, and to lay groundwork for the future.

Nickel: He missed 15 months of football, lost a friend to suicide and caught COVID-19. Life is different for UW’s Scott Nelson.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

What is college football for, anyway? Not for our entertainment or our diversion, not ideally. Not to make billions. At least it shouldn’t be. It’s meeting challenges. It’s sportsmanship. It’s gaining life lessons and handling them with the learned skills of discipline, delayed gratification and truly understanding what it means to be part of a team.

Movie Theaters Get State Boost

WORT-FM

According to Tino Balio, a Professor Emeritus of Communication Arts at UW-Madison and an expert on the history of American cinema, the 1918 pandemic ultimately didn’t leave a lasting impact on the industry.  “Throughout the 1920s, the film industry grew exponentially and it became well-entrenched and, during that period, there was a tremendous theater construction boom,” he says. But, Balio makes that caveat that things are different this time around.

Alzheimer’s Research Looks at Hot Spots Across the U.S.

Wall Street Journal

In another of the studies released earlier this year, researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health found that, based on autopsies, people who lived in the poorest neighborhoods at the time of their death were about twice as likely to have brain changes typical of Alzheimer’s disease as people who lived in the wealthiest neighborhoods. Researchers used the Neighborhood Atlas, a map developed by the University of Wisconsin that charts neighborhoods by socioeconomic status.

“We are in the baby steps of trying to understand what is driving this,” says Ryan Powell, a scientist who helped lead the study.

What History Can Tell Us About Who Will Lead HHS In A Biden Administration?

Health Affairs

More recently, Donna Shalala came to the job after serving as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She returned to academia to helm the University of Miami, and in 2018, she ran for Congress and was elected to represent Florida’s 27th District. (Shalala lost her seat in 2020.) Sylvia Mathews Burwell was the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget prior to her tenure at HHS and is now president of American University. The incumbent secretary, Alex Azar, served as general counsel and deputy secretary of the department in President George W. Bush’s administration and then was president of the US division of drug maker Eli Lilly and Company.

COVID test before Thanksgiving? Colleges fear travel will spread virus

USA Today

By mid-September, counties with a significant population of college students were fueling the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. As those outbreaks continued, state and local governments cracked down, ordering students quarantined to campus, like at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, or asking colleges to send students home, like at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Importance of diversity training poses questions among faculty

Badger Herald

“If there is diversity training, I would like to see who offers that diversity training and whether they have evaluated the kind of training they offer and whether that meets the desired outcome,” Brauer said. “Some kinds of diversity training make things worse, and actually deteriorates relationships between groups, so the blanket statement that UW needs more diversity training is one that I would not support or subscribe to.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court Hears Arguments In Challenge To Evers’ Emergency Powers

Wisconsin Public Radio

Evers has used his powers to declare three public health emergencies this year. The first came March 12, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second, issued July 30, led to the first mask mandate and came as COVID-19 cases were beginning to climb. And the third, declared on Sept. 22, extended the mask mandate as COVID-19 cases were surging on University of Wisconsin campuses.