Author: jplucas

Sports like hockey create many opportunities for infectious diseases to spread among players, according to James Conway, a professor of infectious disease at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Quoted: “Laos was a repressive society before Sombath was disappeared, and it’s a repressive society now,” emphasizes Ian Baird, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who lived in Laos for many years. “But this is the first time that somebody close  to a lot of foreigners, somebody with an international reputation, has been disappeared.”

Noted: The University of Wisconsin-Madison conducted a study that was reported on in the American Review of Public Administration, and it determined that giving while at work — and getting involved in work-sponsored causes — not only improves well-being at work, it makes people feel more committed to their work and less likely to quit.

Noted: Superspreaders can be a big problem among farm animals. For example, the virus causing bovine viral diarrhea can infect dairy cows early in life, causing them to shed large amounts of the virus but without showing symptoms themselves. “They become immunologically tolerant so they don’t become sick,” said Tony Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine. But other infected cows will produce less milk or suffer reproductive problems, he said.

Quoted: Dr. Justin Sattin, a neurologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison who was not involved in the UK research, said the importance of bystanders stood out for him.

Noted: In fact, women and men may be strangely alike. When the psychologist Janet Shibley Hyde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison analysed mountains of research on male-female differences in 2005, she found only a few innate differences. As the American Psychological Association summed up: “Men could throw farther than women, were more physically aggressive, masturbated more and held more positive attitudes about sex in uncommitted relationships.” Hyde thought most other differences resulted from people trying to live up to expected gender norms.

Quoted: The historical influence of other languages on our regional English happened in “weird, twisty ways,” said Joe Salmons, the Lester W.J. “Smoky” Seifert professor of Germanic linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: However, data is suggesting that we may want to revisit the idea of projecting an image. Research shows that onlookers subconsciously register lack of authenticity. Just by looking at someone, we download large amounts of information others. “We are programmed to observe each other’s states so we can more appropriately interact, empathize, or assert our boundaries, whatever the situation may require,” says Paula Niedenthal, Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We are wired to read each others’ expressions in a very nuanced way. This process is called “resonance” and it is so automatic and rapid that it often happens below our awareness.

Noted: Gary Radloff, an analyst with the Wisconsin Energy Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says, those new technologies “decrease an electric utility’s traditional revenue pathway. Basically the electric utility business model, which we’ve had for over 100 years, is starting to become obsolete.”

Noted: With grain prices rallying in the past two months, profit margins are returning to normal after surging earlier this year to the highest since at least 2000, said Brian Gould, a dairy economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Farmers “are very concerned we have this drop in the price,” he said.

Noted: With the weather upon us, increasingly images of the Pineapple Express are popping up in Twitter accounts. All of them point back to the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which bills itself as “The Mecca of Satellite Meteorology.” I don’t doubt it. There’s a lot to dig through over there, not the least of which is the map above, animated with the past 72 hours of data, and putting this week’s rain into an amazing world-wide context.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Political Science Professor Ken Mayer wrote a book on presidential powers. Mayer said there are law professors who know their stuff on both sides of this issue, but he said he’d be “extremely surprised” if this lawsuit succeeded.