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Author: gbump

Tennis champion Althea Gibson’s greatness captured in two new bios

Posted on
The Washington Post

In “Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson,” Ashley Brown, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, describes the scene on the grounds, which should be among the most well-known trailblazing moments in American sports: “One of the world’s leading symbols of white supremacy and White womanhood had presented a sterling silver salver to a Black woman, a descendant of slaves, while a stadium filled with colonizers cheered. These were role reversals for the ages.”

Gov. Evers creates task force to study AI’s effect on Wisconsin workforce

Posted on
CBS Minnesota

Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order creating the study group under the state Department of Workforce Development. It is to include state government leaders, representatives from the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical College Systems, and others from state and local governments, the business community, educational institutions, organized labor, the technology sector and more.

Madison heat wave forces outdoor workers to adjust

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

“These kids are extremely hard working,” said Matthew Endres, the band’s percussion coordinator. “But we still do a number of things to make sure students are healthy.”No injuries or instances of heat exhaustion have been reported, Endres said late morning.

Lincoln Ramirez

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

That same year, Dr. Ramirez joined the Department of Neurosurgery at UW Hospital and made many contributions. He was an outstanding teacher and mentor for both medical students and residents. For many years, Dr. Ramirez oversaw the success of the neurosurgical residency training program.

Barry Alvarez no longer a Big Ten football adviser

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

Alvarez said this week that he won’t return for a second season in his role as the special adviser for football. It’s something Alvarez and new commissioner Tony Petitti had discussed during Big Ten media days last month in Indianapolis.

Alcohol rules at Wisconsin Badgers hockey, basketball games

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

No brand will have exclusivity when alcohol sales expand to general ticket holders for Badgers basketball and hockey games this season, senior associate athletic director Justin Doherty said. Levy, the company that manages concessions at Wisconsin venues, will work with local distributors to stock a variety of products.

Austin Animal Center receives dozens of positive cases of distemper disease

Posted on
KXAN Austin

“As expected, the dogs testing positive are generally under a year old and have only been in the shelter for a few weeks, meaning they didn’t have time to build up appropriate vaccination immunity before being exposed,” said AAC’s head veterinarian Dr. Debbie Elliott. “We are seeing a range of symptoms, from dogs that aren’t showing any signs to dogs developing seizures. We have been working with experts at the University of Wisconsin Shelter Medicine Program as well as our partners at Austin Pets Alive! to provide treatment and slow the spread of disease through the shelter.”

Ada Deer, Native American Voice Inside Government and Out, Dies at 88

Posted on
The New York Times

Ms. Deer racked up a long list of firsts over the course of her life. She was the first member of her tribe to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the first to receive a graduate degree; she was also the first woman to lead the Menominee and the first woman to lead the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.

What to Know About Long COVID in 2023

Posted on
CNET

Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin spoke with CNET in 2021, when scientists were first getting a grip on long COVID, that the key to discerning the condition is to pay attention to new symptoms that develop or ones that never go away — about 30 days post-infection. This separates long COVID from the initial viral infection itself.

The NIH ices a research project. Is it self-censorship?

Posted on
KFF Health News

Even though the NIH has had to navigate political rapids for decades, including enduring controversy over stem cell research and surveys on the sexual behavior of teens, this is a particularly fraught moment. “It is caught up in a larger debate about who gets to decide what is truthful information these days,” said Alta Charo, a professor emerita of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has advised the NIH in the past.

Health experts say teens, young adults benefit from doctor advice about social media

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WKOW-TV 27

Dr. Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics with UW Health Kids, said the study had a surprising impact. 

“I think there was a lot of skepticism around whether a five-minute conversation with a pediatrician would have much effect,” she said. “The answer was, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ A pediatrician isn’t going to be able to go into great detail, but if our intervention got kids to talk to their parents, that is great.”

‘This is an extreme year’: Air quality alerts may become more common as climate gets warmer, drier

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WKOW-TV 27

Volker Radeloff, professor of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at UW-Madison, says while the fires are far from home, Wisconsin isn’t immune to these dry, hot conditions.

“This is an extreme year,” Radeloff said. “I’m not saying this is what every year will be like, but I think there will be more years like [this].”

Opinion | Ada Deer remade history as she restored tribal sovereignty

Posted on
The Capital Times

The first member of the Menominee to graduate from the University of Wisconsin, the first woman to serve as tribal chair, the first Native American woman to run for statewide office in Wisconsin and the second Native American woman to bid for Congress, she would eventually become the first woman to head the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs — where she ushered in a new era of respect for tribal sovereignty.

Opinion | Republicans block even modest child-care subsidies, but why?

Posted on
The Capital Times

Then there are the culture wars against public universities, especially UW-Madison. Even as the state’s financial contribution has dwindled, Republicans this summer pick picked a fight over meager budgets for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and blocked construction of a UW-Madison engineering building. Inventing and then enflaming such issues is most of what Republicans offer their base.

Biden administration targets 10 drugs for Medicare cost negotiations

Posted on
Washington Post

Americans on private insurance as well. But the greatest beneficiaries may be the poorest seniors: Studying Medicare claims data, researchers at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health and the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics projected that patients had filled 50,000 more insulin prescriptions for $35 each month between January and April — and about 20,000 of them might never have been filled without the law. Rebecca Myerson, a professor who helped write the study, said the data suggest the IRA is providing some financial relief to patients who would have “otherwise gone without” insulin.

What to Know About Long COVID

Posted on
CNET

Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin spoke with CNET in 2021, when scientists were first getting a grip on long COVID, that the key to discerning the condition is to pay attention to new symptoms that develop or ones that never go away — about 30 days post-infection. This separates long COVID from the initial viral infection itself.

Getting your kids to talk about social media with their doctors improves online behavior, study finds

Posted on
Channel 3000

A new study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health finds that even a brief conversation about social media with their doctor can improve teens’ behavior on the platforms.

“I think there was a lot of skepticism around whether a five-minute conversation with a pediatrician would have much effect,” Dr. Megan Moreno of UW Health Kids and a professor of pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health said. “The answer was, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ A pediatrician isn’t going to be able to go into great detail, but if our intervention got kids to talk to their parents, that is great.”

Why is college so expensive?

Posted on
The Isthmus

The report suggests three factors that are driving the increase: exploding administrative staffs, a building boom and subsidies to athletic programs. Especially noteworthy was the finding that even as state governments slashed their support for their flagship universities, the schools continued to increase spending. They more than made up for the cuts with increases in tuition. For every one dollar in state support that was lost, these schools, on average, increased tuition and fees by $2.40.

But that apparently did not happen at UW-Madison, where tuition was frozen for about a decade. The UW was not one of the six schools that the Journal highlighted in its story, but it probably was part of the database of 50 schools that fed into the report’s median numbers.

Madison student housing provides a tough lesson in supply and demand

Posted on
The Capital Times

An online survey in June asked UW-Madison students to describe their experiences looking for off-campus housing for the 2023-24 academic year. The survey, conducted by newly elected District 8 Ald. MGR Govindarajan, who represents much of the campus area on the City Council and is himself a rising senior at UW-Madison, received over 1,700 responses.

Now is the time to transition bedtimes from summer to school schedule, doctors say

Posted on
Channel 3000

Dr. Steve Barczi, a professor of medicine at UW Health, said making a few small changes during the weeks leading up to the school year will go a long way.

“Most people project that if you can even just shift a child’s bedtime by maybe 15 minutes everyday or a couple days, until you move them back let’s say that hour that they need to be back to be able to be prepared for school, that’s a good gauge,” Barczi said.

Everybody poops. Wisconsin is a national leader in using it to monitor public health.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The CDC established the National Wastewater Surveillance System with Wisconsin and five others as founding members. Wisconsin demonstrated the value of having an academic, public health and state lab all working together on the effort, said Martin Shafer, a senior scientist at UW-Madison and the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene.

“It was an amazing couple of years where close to 70 or 80 different jurisdictions (were getting started),” said Shafer, adding, “Everybody kind of did something a little bit different. So that spurred a lot of innovation.”