There was no Massillon/McKinley game in 1918. The game was cancelled because of the Spanish Flu pandemic. How did the pandemic affect pro sports at the time? Dr. Susan Lederer, Professor of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison joined Jon to provide some insight.
Noted: It’s worth noting that another experiment, from a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, actually found that gaiters were the most effective mask in containing a cough, though those gaiters were slightly different, containing elastic.
The Big Ten Conference won’t be playing football this fall because of concerns about COVID-19.
Noted: Sandy Stuttgen, an ag educator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison extension, says the first signs of eye irritation are tearing, tear stains and squinting, which get progressively worse as pink eye continues to develop. Pink eye may also appear as an opaque spot on the cornea. Conjunctivitis and corneal ulceration may also occur, she writes.
Ajay Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said that while case numbers in some rural parts of Wisconsin may be far lower than in cities such as Milwaukee, rates of infection in some rural counties are now higher.
Noted: Gopalan and Harris separated when Kamala as just five, according to the BBC. The reason, per Kamala’s book, The Truths We Hold: Harris took a professorship position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
With coronavirus cases still high around the country, half of U.S. elementary and high school students will attend school only virtually this fall, according to a study by Burbio, which aggregates school and community information nationwide.
That will have grave implications for minority and disadvantaged students, said Madeline Hafner, executive director of the Minority Student Achievement Network Consortium at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
The past five or six months have “really brought to light these racial disparities that have persisted for generations,” she said.
“With great uncertainty about the new school year, wealthier, predominantly White parents are using their resources to secure educational options for their individual children,” Erica Turner, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in her “Equity in Pandemic Schooling” action guide.
Noted: Developed by University of Wisconsin students in 2018, the music discovery streaming app launched for Apple’s iOS In July 2019, growing to about 100,000 users, 200,000 song uploads and 15 full-time employees in the year since.
The University of Wisconsin System will reduce central office spending by $10 million over the next two years in an effort to streamline administration and refocus resources on students, its leader announced Tuesday.
Quoted: Miriam Seifter, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said in an email that “the opinion seems to have had a chilling effect on further attempts at executive emergency response, with both the governor and the state (Department of Health Services) hesitating on or delaying actions not covered by the ruling out of fear they will lose in court again.”
“The result has been a governing gap in Wisconsin, with local governments left to try to address statewide problems,” said Seifter, who co-wrote an amicus brief in the case “on behalf of 17 legal scholars” that criticized the GOP controlled legislature’s challenge.
Quoted: Despite avoiding the worst-case scenarios predicted when the pandemic first hit, the number of deaths is still troubling, said University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist Patrick Remington.
“It’s been hard to get the general public and even some policymakers to realize how serious a disease this is,” Remington said. “These are absolutely preventable deaths.”
Quoted: Menzie Chinn, an economist at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, said the July jobs report only confirmed his suspicion that the economic recovery was starting to plateau. Now, he thinks a W-shaped recovery — where the economy improves somewhat, only to crash again — is still possible, and “a stall is more and more likely.”
Noted: While it may seem wise to separate your disposable face mask from your other garbage, Nasia Safdar, M.D., Ph.D., and professor of infectious disease at the University of Wisconsin, notes that it actually isn’t required. “The virus does not survive for prolonged periods outside the body,” she says. “Persons handling garbage must wear gloves when handling any trash, and that will protect against this [virus], as well.”
Noted: In Wisconsin, widely seen as a key 2020 battleground, a new poll coordinated by the UW-Madison Elections Research Center in collaboration with the Wisconsin State Journal, found Biden leading Donald Trump in the state, 49% to 43%. Among those who say they’re “certain” to vote, Biden’s lead grows to 52% to 44%.
Noted: A recent study by the University of Wisconsin found the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a “significant toll on the mental health and well-being” of student-athletes.
The Big Ten is likely to cancel fall sports, including football, over coronavirus concerns, according to several reports. A formal announcement is expected Tuesday.
Quoted: “What’s not obvious is that a lot of information that is contained in language, including information about cultural stereotypes, [occurs not as] direct statements but in large-scale statistical relationships between words,” says senior author Gary Lupyan, an associate professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Even without encountering direct statements, it is possible to learn that there is stereotype embedded in the language of women being better at some things and men at others.”
A new poll shows voters in Wisconsin favor Joe Biden over President Trump. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center poll finds Biden leads Trump by six points. According to the poll, Biden’s drawing support from Democrats who went for other candidates than Hillary Clinton in 2016, or didn’t vote at all.
Co-authored by Dr. Adrian Treves, a Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Greene earned his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees, he was deeply influenced by jazz piano teacher Joan Wildman, who died this year. “It hit me pretty hard,” says Greene. “She was fiercely creative and always encouraged me to do my own thing.”
Noted: As a result, Kind has drawn challengers from both the left and right. In the Democratic primary, he’s facing Mark Neumann, a former missionary and pediatrician. Neumann has criticized Kind’s lack of support for Medicare-for-All, but his primary challenge hasn’t drawn much national attention. Kind is the clear favorite, according to Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: But as the outbreak drags on, and we’ve become more conscious of germs and hygiene, “some of the changes we made are likely to be really durable,” said Malia Jones, who researches social environments and infectious disease exposure at the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have captured video of invasive round gobies eating invertebrates amid mats of gooey green nuisance algae called cladophora, which grows in abundance offshore of Sleeping Bear. When the algae dies, it creates oxygen-depleted areas that are a perfect breeding ground for type-E botulism spores.
Quoted: Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agreed.
“Every minor party or independent candidate who has run in modern history has taken some votes from (both parties),” said Burden, who has authored numerous studies on the impact of third-party candidates. “It’s also incorrect to say the votes come even disproportionately from a Democratic candidate.”
Quoted: Shannon Stahl of the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the US, who developed a previous strategy to make aromatic rings from cyclohexanones, says that the new approach is ‘impressive in scope and compatibility with mild reaction conditions.’ He explains that earlier methods leveraged the use of oxygen as an oxidant and employed transition-metal catalysts to promote the dehydrogenation of the ring. ‘The present report promotes the dehydrogenation process by using light and a photoredox catalyst to generate a reactive radical, in combination with a cobalt catalyst that evolves hydrogen gas as the byproduct.’
Quoted: “Historically speaking, the back and forth of recent years is kind of unprecedented,” said Booth Fowler, a retired political scientist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Wisconsin Votes: An Electoral History.”
“Most of the time it has been a one-party state,” said Fowler, referring to the dominance of the GOP during the state’s first hundred years.
Noted: Lauren Yoder, vice-chair of the College Democrats chapter at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has more of a formal role with the convention, as a delegate.
Yoder, who is 19 and going into her second year at UW-Madison, said that before the pandemic hit “there was a lot of interest in volunteering … because we are in such close proximity to Milwaukee, being only an hour and a half away, we were definitely planning on getting people together … to bring together a lot of these young, progressive voices in one spot.”
Quoted: Christopher Coe, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he describes himself as being fairly tolerant of risk, with one caveat. That he has a sense of control and predictability about that risk.
With an invisible virus, he said the risk is a lot harder to gauge, especially when he knows there are also a lot of people who are not behaving in the right way.
“I am not afraid of pathogens per se. I do research with infectious agents,” Coe said. “But when I do, I wear the appropriate protective personal equipment. I handle the specimens in biosafety cabinets. I sanitize contaminated surfaces, etc. That is, the risk is tempered by a logical series of steps to lessen and control.”
Democrat Joe Biden led GOP President Donald Trump in Wisconsin and two other battleground states in a poll released Monday by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Gov. Tony Evers has allocated about $32 million to University of Wisconsin System schools for COVID-19 testing and protection — a significant savings from the original request — based on the availability of a rapid, less costly test.
Quoted: “As a political institution, conventions have been in decline for a very long time,” said Byron Shafer, a political scientist, expert on conventions, and retired University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.
Quoted: “Wow,” was the reaction of political scientist Byron Shafer, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and a scholar of conventions, to the news that Biden would not be present here.
“That was really all that was left” of a traditional convention, Shafer said of Biden’s now canceled-plans to accept the nomination in Milwaukee.
Noted: Nay Hinain was one of the many Lebanese citizens packed the city of Beirut on Aug. 4, rushing to stock up on supplies before the country went into a second lockdown after a rise in the country’s COVID-19 cases.
Hinain, who was born in Lebanon and graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019, was picking out nail polish colors with a salon employee when 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in the nearby Beirut port.
Noted: When they were at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker and future ComedySportz founder Dick Chudnow launched the Kentucky Fried Theater comedy troupe.
The University of Wisconsin System announced a $2 million anonymous donation Monday that will help improve online classes and academic advising.
Coronavirus continues to wreak havoc with college sports.
Officials from four NCAA Division III conferences with Wisconsin members announced Monday they were either cancelling or postponing all fall sports for the 2020-21 academic year.
Quoted: “We know that voter registration numbers have been lower this spring and summer than they would normally be in a presidential election year,” said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.
Noted: Black came to Wisconsin to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her first job at Summerfest was as administrative assistant to then-Summerfest director Henry Jordan in 1974-75. At the time she was named executive director of Summerfest in October 1983, she was a member of Mayor Henry Maier’s staff.
Quoted: Trump’s rhetoric and actions, however, continue a century-long history of the federal government working with private real estate interests to develop and maintain segregated communities, especially in the suburbs, said Paige Glotzer, a historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of the book “How the Suburbs Were Segregated.”
Songbirds seem to enjoy singing. And while a great deal of research has investigated the development and production of birdsong, little is known about the motivation to sing.
New work out of Lauren Riters’ lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison teases out the relationship between singing, reward, and endogenous opioids in songbirds. The results suggest that studying songbirds can teach us about the shared neurobiological mechanisms underlying social reward in all vertebrates, humans included.
Noted: One approach focuses on improving teachers’ own mental health. Matthew Hirschberg and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that randomly assigning a group of aspiring teachers to a preservice course on mindfulness reduced those teachers’ implicit bias and fostered their provision of emotional, instructional, and organizational support to students. The 22-hour course emphasized kindness, compassion, and managing one’s emotions. Another mindfulness program, CARE for Teachers, saw similar results.
Quoted: “We don’t want Wisconsin to become a poster child of how not to do an election,” said David Canon, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: That lines up with experts that say a diverse police force is only part of the answer when the discussion centers on racism, representation, and bias in communities. Police forces are often a reflection of the communities where they serve, UW-Madison Professor Emerita of Sociology Pamela Oliver noted in an email exchange with 7 Investigates. “It isn’t clear that changing the composition of the police force when the community hasn’t changed would make much of a difference.”
A 2003 study found that higher diversity in law enforcement did not necessarily mean a lower number of deaths caused by police, and Prof. Oliver said that the overall body of research “is mixed at best” in relation to the idea that diversity alone in law enforcement will result in less implicit bias.
Noted: While getting rid of non-native plants is a pesky and time-consuming job for most humans, it’s no tough task for goats, according to UW-Madison grazing specialist Jacob Grace.
The CJC also received a report from Professor John Eason on an analysis he completed to determine the impact of jail population reduction on the incidence of COVID-19 in the jail as well as the projection of COVID-19 infection if the reduction had not occurred.
Professor Eason is currently an associate professor of sociology at UW-Madison. Eason previously served as assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, as well as assistant to associate professor of ociology at Texas A&M University. His primary research interests link race, health, punishment, and inequality to community processes.
His early research has shown that the jail infection rate would have been substantially higher had decreases in the jail population not occurred. Professor Eason will continue his research through May 2021.
“Working with the CJC to look at data and policy can bring the power of academia to the practical application of justice in Dane County” said Eason. “I am excited to work with CJC members bridging the gap between government and the UW.”
Noted: Legally, people can use slurs in a university setting. In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of free speech specifically with regard to anti-Black slurs or actions. In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, the Court unanimously struck down the city of St. Paul’s Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance and reversed the conviction of a teenager for burning a cross on the lawn of an African American family, arguing that the First Amendment protects cross burning as freedom of speech. Such legal protection was widely discussed in 2016 when a football fan at the University of Wisconsin at Madison wore a costume of President Barack Obama with a noose around his neck. University police officers asked the fan to remove the noose, and the University of Wisconsin issued the following statement: “The costume, while repugnant and counter to the values of the university and athletic department, was an exercise of the individual’s right to free speech.”
Noted: Madison365 spoke with three local experts: Public Health Madison Dane County data analyst Brittany Grogan, University of Wisconsin infectious disease epidemiologist Dr. Ajay Sethi, and Dr. Malia Jones, an associate scientist in health geography at the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin.
Noted: Taft’s interest in weather began in the U.S. Air Force, which he joined as a 19-year-old radar technician. He eventually became a combat pilot, spent a year in Vietnam, taught aviation and flight planning, and earned a degree in meteorology from the University of Wisconsin in 1969.
Quoted: “It takes a brave actor to stand up and run against the boss,” Lanny Glinberg, director of the University of Wisconsin Prosecution Project, says.
Glinberg also points to the decline of local news as an impediment to contested races. If the community isn’t aware of the daily goings on in the courthouse, how will they know if there have been any problems?
“Another factor — how well informed is the public of the role of district attorney?” he says. “The most powerful actor in the criminal justice system in terms of discretion. The public needs quality investigative journalism to know that. That’s in shorter and shorter supply.”
Many businesses are open. Mask orders have been implemented as cases are trending up. We are tracking the numbers, but many of you have questions about how we can protect ourselves and others. What can we do to slow the transmission of COVID-19?
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has assembled a panel of experts from the University of Wisconsin’s Madison and Milwaukee campuses. They will periodically answer questions from readers.
Quoted: “Even though states are putting the 14-day quarantines up, there are big questions about how it’d be enforced on a campus and for students who live off campus,” said Nicholas Hillman, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The impact seems really uncertain unless it’s strictly a residential campus.”
While a minority hiring program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison values skin color, there is less value placed on political minorities of color on the right.
Quoted: “I don’t think (the finding) was surprising, but it was good to see data that actually described it,” said Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control and prevention at UW Health in Madison.
Noted: Other staples of everyday life, especially the resumption of school, may differ widely in cities and towns across the country. Without data to measure the effect of different educational methods on the spread of the virus, the U.S. will soon embark on what amounts to “uncontrolled experiments,” said Tony Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW virologist and influenza expert Yoshihiro Kawaoka said that although he is confident COVID-19 will become endemic, he believes the lifestyle changes people have made should not become permanent.
“Once everyone gets vaccinated we should be able to go back to normal life,” he said, predicting that day might come “in three years, maybe four years.”
Noted: To understand what’s really going on, we spoke to a dozen experts and dove deep into the data. Working with data provided by William H. Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Diversity Explosion, we looked at twenty years of migration by state, and compared that to changes in presidential voting patterns using data from the website 270toWin. And finally, we studied migration patterns by age from a database at the University of Wisconsin.
Chad Gibbs is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a George L. Mosse Graduate Exchange Fellow to the Hebrew University. His research focuses on Jewish resistance at the extermination camp Treblinka.
Quoted: It’s also critical for avoiding what Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, calls “prevention fatigue.” For example, if teachers at a school, who otherwise feel perfectly healthy, come to dread their twice-weekly swab, surveillance testing will quickly become unreliable. “They’ll say, ‘I feel fine’ and find a way to skip it,” O’Connor says. “We’re a nation of wusses, myself included.”
Noted: Research by Scott Sanders, a professor in the mechanical engineering and electrical and computer engineering departments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has shown that in situations where people can social distance, three-layered masks are best, with cotton for the internal layer, a non-woven synthetic for the middle and an outer layer of polyester.
But even if there is leaking from the mask, some kind of barrier is better than nothing, said Ajay Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences at UW-Madison.
And, the masks should really be combined with social distancing, added Sethi, who is part of a team developing a model to forecast potential surges in hospitalizations in southern Wisconsin.
Quoted: Tessa Conroy, an assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Agricultural and Applied Economics Department who specializes in regional economic development, said it’s encouraging to see unemployment improving across the state. However, she said the numbers show that the economy has not gotten back to normal for a lot of people in Wisconsin.
“Even though things are better, we’re still quite a ways from where we were before the pandemic hit,” Conroy said. “So if we were to compare to say a year ago, we have a ways to go in terms of improving things again.”
The best explanation of how Donald Trump took the Midwest, and so the White House, came in a book published eight months before he did it. Kathy Cramer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison spent years interviewing small-town voters, such as retired farmers in rural petrol stations chatting over bad coffee. She asked how Wisconsin, a once-placid sort of place, had become bitterly confrontational. Her book, “The Politics of Resentment”, tracked how Scott Walker, the two-term Republican governor who left office in 2019, inspired fury from half the population and adoration from the other half. In every election of the past decade, voters were herded into rival camps.
