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Author: gbump

Greta Thunberg: Coronavirus proves ‘we are not thinking long term’ about potential global crisis

Washington Examiner

“You have these complex networks of interactions that you wouldn’t be seeing under less disturbed circumstances,” Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told the Washington Post. “And that provides a lot of opportunities for these diseases to explore alternate hosts and acquire some of the features that would be necessary to make them” jump species.

Furlough Plans Begin To Emerge At UW System Campuses

Wisconsin Public Radio

Seven University of Wisconsin System campuses have announced initial furlough plans for employees to address unprecedented budget shortfalls caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Details vary by campus and range from intermittent furloughs for faculty to several months of consecutive, unpaid leave for staff unable to work remotely.

Fox News Poll Shows Biden Leading Trump by 8 Points in Michigan and Pennsylvania

Newsweek

Barry Burden, a professor of political science and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek that while Trump flipped Michigan from blue to red during the 2016 election, the 2018 mid-term elections signaled a possible shift as Democrats swept the state’s Senate and gubernatorial races.

The $600 Unemployment Booster Shot, State by State

The New York Times

Just over half of workers in Arizona, which had a relatively high minimum benefit of $172 before the crisis, are estimated to make more on unemployment than if they were still working, according to Noah Williams, the director of Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Team spirit

The Week

In Hyderabad, Bharat Biotech is collaborating with virologists at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison and vaccine company FluGen on a “unique intranasal vaccine” called CoroFlu.

US Food Supply Strained Even as Farmers Keep Producing

Voice of America - English

“Seldom does a consumer go to a grocery store and want to buy a 5-pound bag of shredded cheese,” said Mark Stephenson, director of Dairy Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “They wanted maybe 1-pound bags at a time. You can’t just put 1-pound bags through a 5-pound line. Not possible. You have to have a different piece of equipment set up differently. We’ve had an industry that’s had to shuffle a great deal to move product from where it was produced before to where it needs to be today.”

How a six-year-old Russian girl became YouTube’s most popular child star

The Star Online

Quoted: While other YouTube child performers tend to adopt the site’s popular blogging style, speaking directly to viewers as they unbox toys or shop in a mall, “Like Nastya” videos usually involve short, episodic plots. The storylines are simple enough for a three-year-old to follow. Heavy doses of sound effects, jump cuts and slapstick humour are like sugar for young audiences, said Heather Kirkorian, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies cognitive development and media. “It’s like ‘The Three Stooges’,” she said. “That plays really well with preschoolers.”

Wisconsin Republicans Sue to Dump Safety Rules

Progressive

Public health experts do not agree with the Legislature’s assessment that now is the time to lift restrictions. Thanks to the Safer at Home order, “the curve is looking a lot more flat than three weeks ago,” says Malia Jones, assistant scientist in Health Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied Population Laboratory. “That does not mean that the pandemic is over. There’s another step that has to happen or we’ll be right back where we were.”

UW Health begins sterilizing N-95 respirators

WKOW-TV 27

“We worry that at some point that if we were to see a large surge, or if we had many large surges in the country, the supply of N95s may not keep up with how we need to use them,” said Dr. Jeff Pothof, the UW Health chief quality officer.

Madison organizations step up COVID-19 testing

NBC-15

“We are now going to be able to offer testing to people who are symptomatic, but are not having severe symptoms, who may not necessarily be high risk,” UW Health Chief Quality Officer Dr. Jeff Pothof said. “It helps us understand the prevalence of the disease in the community, but two, it allows us to contact trace.”

UV light machine cleans masks

NBC-15

Bruce Winkler started his innovation skills at UW Madison, and they haven’t stopped 30 years later. He is the founder of Innovation Strategies LLC. where his company is shifting their focus to ways they can help frontline workers battling Covid19.

UW Health leadership, doctors take pay cuts to offset revenue losses

WISC-TV 3

In an email sent to employees, UW Health CEO Alan Kaplan said that the CEO, senior executives and clinincal department chairs would take a temporary pay cut of 20%. All vice-presidents, faculty physicians, non-physician faculty physicists and faculty clinical psychologists will all take a 15% pay cut. All directors, managers and non-physician providers will take a 10% pay cut.

Protests to reopen the economy flare as some businesses face permanent closure

Sinclair Broadcasting Group

Quoted: “Every day it’s shut down it becomes more costly to reopen and recover, there’s no doubt about that,” said Ian Coxhead, an applied economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Depending on how long before we can begin to reopen the economy, there will be more people and more businesses added to the rolls of those who are not going to come back to the labor force of the business world.”

Vote by Mail in Wisconsin Helped a Liberal Candidate, Upending Old Theories

The New York Times

Qutoed: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is among the academics who have produced studies that found no partisan advantage to mail voting, said the Times analysis of the Wisconsin data did not align with any previous studies from states such as Colorado and Utah, which transitioned to fully vote-by-mail systems in recent years.

Deep learning takes on tumours

Nature

Sharing bioimaging data sets and deep-learning models will also be a priority for the Center for Open Bioimage Analysis, an effort funded by the US government and led by Carpenter and Kevin Eliceiri, a bioengineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

State details back-to-work plan

Wisconsin Examiner

In fact, DHS data shows that the number of infections has been rising by about 150 to 190 cases per day, doubling about every two weeks, according to calculations posted by professor Brian Yandell, interim director of the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As of Monday afternoon, DHS reported 4,449 people with positive tests for the infection, including 230 people who have died.

Unemployment checks: Elizabeth Brandeis and Paul Raushenbush invented Great Depression insurance for jobless

The Washington Post

E.B., as she was known to family and friends, wanted a career at the intersection of economics, labor and the law. She hoped to attend an elite East Coast law school, but those programs, including Harvard, where her father studied, didn’t accept women. With her father’s approval, she chose the University of Wisconsin, where the “Wisconsin Idea” — fusing academic research to solving social problems — was flourishing.

Morning Sickness During Pregnancy: What to Do and How to Cope

The New York Times

The good news: experts say there are practical steps you can take to help find relief, from home treatments to prescription medications. While it may be difficult to get rid of all symptoms, “this is a treatable condition and we can break the cycle and get people feeling better,” said Dr. Sumona Saha, M.D., an associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Are Face Masks the New Condoms?

The New York Times

Quoted: David O’Connor, who studies viral disease at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: “If a substantial amount of transmission occurs before people feel sick, how do you stop that? By the time people feel sick and seek care, all the testing and isolation in the world would be too little, too late.”

High-School-daughter’s teen lover to stand trial in brutal murder of Doctor-Prof Mom

Crime Online

As ABC News report, a Wisconsin judge has determined there is enough evidence to proceed with charges against Khari Sanford and Ali’Jah Larrue, both 18, for the shooting deaths of Dr. Beth Potter and her husband Robert Carre, who were found with gunshot wounds to the head in an arboretum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on March 31. Carre was pronounced dead at the scene, and Potter survived for about an hour at a hospital before she too died.

How Our Ancient Brains Are Coping in the Age of Digital Distraction

Discover Magazine

Quoted: In recent years, scientists have identified about two dozen genetic changes that might have helped make our brains not only bigger but incomparably capable. “It’s not just one quantum leap,” says University of Wisconsin-Madison paleoanthropologist John Hawks. “A lot of adaptations are at play, from metabolic regulation to neuron formation to timing of development.”