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Author: knutson4

UW researchers make cancer breakthrough

Spectrum News

For the first time, researchers have learned two cancer drivers are linked together, and some top University of Wisconsin scientists are taking the credit for the incredible discovery.

“It’s an emergent field,” lead author Dr. Mo Chen said as she explored how the two most mutated cancers markers actually work together.

“Science teaches you that you have to be open to things that are unexpected,” UW Health’s Dr. Vince Cryns said of what they found underneath the microscope.

The pain of inflation for people trying to make ends meet

PBS Wisconsin

Quoted: “As we talk about inflation, I think sometimes we hear about the price of houses or the price of big things, but little stuff that really hurts low-income families,” said J. Michael Collins, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs who studies consumer decision making. “If you think about an extra $2.50 for a gallon of gas or an extra dollar for a gallon of milk, those things just start to add up because you buy them so frequently.”

PETA is suing a Wisconsin dairy co-op for separating calves from their moms. But why do farmers do so?

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Jennifer Van Os researches animal welfare on dairy farms for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said cow-calf separation is standard for dairy farms across the U.S. and the world. She said the practice started as a way to prevent newborn calves from contracting diseases from other cows in a herd.

“Newborn dairy cows are vulnerable to disease because their immune system is still developing,” Van Os said. “Their immune system develops in a way that’s a little bit different from that of humans. So it came from good intentions, and it was done for the sake of the animal.”

Japanese beetles vs. Wisconsin gardeners: As you wage war against the despised, invasive pests, here’s what to know to get the upper hand

Green Bay Press-Gazette

Noted: Entomologist PJ Liesch is director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, aka @WiBugGuy on Twitter. He’s been studying the not-so-little buggers for nearly 15 years and graciously agreed to share his insights, offer some tips and bust a few myths.

How to Find an Old 401(k) Account

U.S. News & World Report

Quoted: “The first place you should look is the human resources department of the prior employer,” says Anita Mukherjee, an assistant professor of risk and insurance at the University of Wisconsin—Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business. “There, they should have all of the information as to the whereabouts of the 401(k) account you had with them.”

‘Heat’-ing up: Michael Mann writes sequel-prequel ‘Heat 2’

Washington Post

Noted: “Heat 2” is the first of three planned novels (one of which may be related to “Heat”), and an ambitious literary beginning for a man who had never attempted a work of fiction before. He majored in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with thoughts of becoming a teacher, but decided that would be “really immensely boring.” Asked to cite literary influences, he mentions John le Carre, but otherwise says he doesn’t read crime fiction. Instead, he looks to “primary sources,” the various killers, crooks, law enforcers and government agents he has met and befriended and whose stories he adapted for “Heat,” “Thief” and other films.

Milwaukee city committee moves ahead with stricter ordinance requiring gun owners to lock up firearms, report thefts

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: A study by the Medical College of Wisconsin and The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in March 2021 reported that firearm-related homicides in Milwaukee among non-Hispanic African Americans were 14.6 times greater than among white residents. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has also reported that there has been more than a dozen juvenile homicides as of late June.

Dr. Maria Mora Pinzón works to improve access to Alzheimer’s disease services within the Latinx community

Madison 365

“My research is [focused on] how to improve access, how to make sure that communities benefit from the research, and how to make life a little easier, at least on the healthcare side,” says Dr. Maria Mora Pinzón, a preventive medicine physician and scientist at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who focuses her research on improving access to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD) services within the Latinx community.

Pandemic support fading for 1 in 12 Wisconsinites who were food insecure

Wisconsin Watch

Noted: Before the pandemic hit, 1 in 12 Wisconsinites were food insecure — meaning they couldn’t or were uncertain they could get the food they needed. Food insecurity is linked to children struggling more in school, worse health outcomes in all age groups and greater stress on families, according to the Wisconsin Food Security Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Half dozen cases of monkeypox in Wisconsin

Spectrum News

Quoted: “[Infected people] are shedding virus through those blisters during that period, until it sort of scabs over,” said Dr. Ajay Sethi, a population health scientist at the University of Wisconsin. “They’re itchy, they can be painful. When they scab over, you’re no longer infectious. But there’s a several week period when you are infectious. It’s not that different from chickenpox.”

Five women in NHL assistant GM jobs took different paths

Associated Press

Noted: A finalist for top college player of the year, Meghan Hunter moved into coaching women’s hockey at the University of Wisconsin: “I just naturally gravitated into coaching because that’s all I really thought was available at the time.”

Hunter spent time with the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights and Hockey Canada, joined the Blackhawks in an administrative role in 2016 and climbed the ranks in scouting and hockey operations. Chicago promoted her to AGM in June.

“My path’s never been linear,” Hunter said. “I wanted to play in the NHL, so then when I realized that wasn’t a reality, I was like, ‘Wow, if I work in it, that’s pretty cool.’”

Intersystem Transfer: Supporting Our Students in Wisconsin

Inside Higher Education

The University of Wisconsin System places a high priority on improving baccalaureate completion rates, closing the opportunity gap for minoritized students and minimizing the financial and other barriers to degree attainment for all students regardless of where they begin their college career. In a collaborative attempt to remove transfer barriers for Wisconsin students, the UW System engaged in statewide initiatives and created strategic partnerships with the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) to improve credit transfer between or among institutions of higher education across the state. The system-to-system partnership is key to student success, reducing time and credits to degree, lessening student debt, and providing the workforce the employees needed to support the vitality of the state.

‘He’s keeping the fires burning’: Why Trump continues to pressure top Wisconsin Republicans on false election claims

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Trump lost Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes in 2020. It was a key state to his re-election and one that he won in a historic victory in 2016 that a Republican hadn’t pulled off in decades. The state is key to any new run for president, said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Wisconsin is one of the states where he falsely claims to have been robbed of victory, so the recent Supreme Court decision gives him yet another opportunity to explain why his loss wasn’t actually a loss,” Burden said.

“Nearly two years after an election that every judge and security expert deemed to be proper, Trump’s continual fixation has an air of desperation.”

Why Do Moms Tend to Manage the Household Scheduling?

New York Times

Noted: While some families don’t mind dividing labor in this normative way, with moms controlling the scheduling, other hetero couples would prefer to make scheduling more egalitarian. So I called Allison Daminger, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who studies how couples divide labor, to see if she had any thoughts about how to divide this work.

Daminger suggested two potential ways to help divide scheduling. One is a shared family email address or calendar. The latter is a tool my husband and I use — he’s more proactive than a lot of dads, and has organized many a playdate, but I still do more than half of the scheduling. The other is dividing tasks by area. For example: “Partner A does the school stuff and Partner B does extracurriculars,” Daminger suggested. Or Partner A does the dentist appointments and Partner B does the pediatricians’ appointments. It might help to specialize because then you can build relationships and learn all the peripheral information you may need, Daminger said — you’ll know how long the dentist appointments take and how your kid responds to them, and you’re the one who always interacts with the staff.

988 mental health crisis hotline “finally sending the right message”

WTMJ

Quoted: UW–Madison clinical professor in the School of Human Ecology Dr. Christine Whelan says this number will reduce the stigma attached to mental health care.

“This an incredibly important and frankly long overdue and much awaited necessary tool in the fight against suicide and to really raise awareness about mental health. So, when we break an arm or have a physical emergency, we might call 9-1-1, and now to have 9-8-8 for a mental health emergency is really finally sending the right message,” said Whelan.

Maine Med doctor donates kidney to former patient in Wisconsin

Portland Press Herald

Noted: Djamali became a nephrologist himself and spent more than two decades practicing at the University of Wisconsin Health Transplant Center in Madison.

That’s where he met Jartz, among hundreds of other patients.

Late last year, Djamali decided to leave the UW Health Transplant Center to take a job at Maine Medical Center. But he made another decision around the same time. He would donate his kidney to Jartz.

Direct payments of $500 to be sent to Wisconsin families every month for a year

Washington Examiner

Noted: While the deadline to apply has already passed, the city will still allow families to participate in surveys regarding the program, which will be studied to learn more about the success of the program. These surveys will be given out three times at six months apart from each other, and participants will be compensated for their time, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

Videos of IUD Insertions Have Gone Viral on TikTok — Here’s What Really Happens

Good Housekeeping

Quoted: IUD insertion pain may be another example of the gender pain gap, an adjacent topic that has recently been experiencing a swell of attention. It’s based on the understanding that there is an implicit bias in health care rooted in sexism and racism that has led to the underserving of women in medical settings. Even if your practitioner is another person with a uterus, and a person of color, they are working within a system that still doesn’t adequately legitimize pain experienced by women or marginalized folks.

“The pain gap is particularly pronounced when it comes to gynecological services, because for most of medical history, and up until now, women’s voices about what they are experiencing have been disregarded, minimized and trivialized,” says Leigh Senderowicz, a health disparities research scholar at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Patrick Michaels, outspoken climate change contrarian, dies at 72

Washington Post

Noted: Dr. Michaels received a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences in 1971 and a master’s degree in biology in 1975, both from the University of Chicago. He received a doctorate in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1979. He was a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists.

UCLA Bruins player Thomas Cole retires from college football after suicide attempt

NBC News

Noted: Since March, there have been a number of high-profile suicides of college student-athletes across the U.S., including Katie Meyer, a goalkeeper on Stanford’s soccer team; Sarah Shulze, a top runner for the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Lauren Bernett, a standout softball player for James Madison University, and Arlana Miller, a star cheerleader at Southern University and A&M College in Louisiana.

Cyber Companies and Universities Are Building ‘Cyber Talent Hub’

The Wall Street Journal

Noted: The company will contribute materials from its Mandiant Academy courses, she said, and plans to use the platform to recruit candidates who will be familiar with the company’s tools and able to staff its response jobs.

Four academic institutions—New York University, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin—will be part of the initial launch.

No room for religious liberty in abortion debate? Since when are we a one-faith nation?

USA Today

Quoted: There is no consensus among religions on these questions. In fact there is no consensus among Muslims, says Asifa Quraishi-Landes, a professor of U.S. constitutional law and modern Islamic constitutional theory at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Quranic verses can be interpreted in many ways and “Muslims simply select whichever sharia school of thought they want to follow,” she wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle. “That means it is normal for some Muslims to oppose abortion while others insist on its legitimacy.”

‘A perfect petri dish’: After finding ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water, Rhinelander educated residents to avoid panic

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

One of the experts Frederickson enlisted to help chart that path was James Tinjum, the director of the geological engineering program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In addition to helping the city develop an easy-to-understand guide to PFAS for residents, Tinjum and some of his graduate students also launched research in Rhinelander, putting together a map of how water flows and interacts in the water table beneath the city and its surrounding areas.

“It’s a way to draw analysis to what types of compounds are contributing to the ‘fingerprints’ of the wells, whether it’s an organic sludge, (firefighting foam), or a more dispersed pattern of PFAS typical of landfill situations,” Tinjum said. “If we don’t have this information, we don’t know how to fix the problem.”

How Close to Death Does a Person Have to Be to Qualify for an Abortion Ban Exemption?

Mother Jones

Quoted: The ambiguity in Wisconsin’s state abortion ban, for instance, has left doctors like Abigail Cutler, an OBGYN in Wisconsin, in an impossible bind. Wisconsin’s law, written in 1849, allows abortions to “save the life of the mother.” “Where’s that line?” Cutler asks. “How close does a patient need to be? On the brink of death for me to step in and intervene? What if I wait too long and she dies in front of me? Or what if in the eyes of some prosecutor who’s not a doctor, not at the bedside, not staring at the patient bleeding or infected in front of them—to them, what if I intervene too soon, and I’m charged and risk going to prison?”

Wisconsin health providers navigate a new world without abortion rights

Wisconsin Examiner

Quoted: Prof. Tiffany Green, a health economist at the University of Wisconsin who studies health equity, particularly in the area of obstetric and reproductive care, calls expanding access to reproductive health services “crucial and important in helping people to exercise their right to reproductive autonomy.”

At the same time, “it is not a substitute for abortion care access,” she said, adding that she believes that Madison and Dane County officials understand that as well.

Green said it will be important as agencies expand their services that they do so in ways that reach out to the communities they serve and take time to understand and respect their needs and preferences. That will include being careful about scheduling times when they provide their services. It will also include being culturally responsive and respectful to people of color and to other marginalized groups, including transgender and gender-non-conforming people, she added.

It will also include heeding and respecting the contraceptive choices that their patients want to make, rather than “pushing a kind of contraception on them they do not want,” Green said. “There is a history of doing that with Black people.”

UW Health reminds people to maintain skin safety

CBS 58

It’s hard to resist the urge to spend as much time outside as possible in the summer.

But, experts at UW Health in Madison say it is important to maintain skin safety while enjoying all that sunshine.

“Over the years, we’ve started to bring awareness about skin cancer in general and interestingly enough we are still seeing an increase in incidents of melanoma across the United States,” said Medical Oncologist at UW Health Dr. Vincent Ma.

In Fight Against Ableism, Disabled Students Build Centers of Their Own

The Chronicle of Higher Education

When Katie Sullivan arrived as a first-year student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison last fall, she encountered one barrier after another to her college education: classrooms with limited accessibility for students in wheelchairs; an elevator that was broken for months, forcing some disabled students to take a freight elevator; buses with only two spots for students in wheelchairs; a professor who she said refused to accommodate her academic needs.

Biden and Democrats set to sharpen ‘ultra-MAGA’ attacks as third Trump bid looms

Washington Examiner

Quoted: For University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center director, Barry Burden, Democrats are in trouble if 2022 remains a referendum on Joe Biden.

“If Trump enters the race, then 2022 could transform into a contest between Joe Biden and Trump, which could help soften the blow for Democrats,” Burden said. “Trump is also likely to derail attention, campaign dollars, and the agenda from his fellow Republicans.”

“At the same time, Trump will energize some supporters who would otherwise sit out the midterm election, particularly those with lower levels of education tend to vote less in nonpresidential election years,” Burden countered.

’30 by 30′ calls for 30% of police recruits to be women by the year 2030

NPR

Noted: This is the second year on the job for Patrol Officer Nicole Schmitgen. She patrols Madison’s Central District around the state capitol and part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. She says while people think policing is about guns and drugs and driving fast, it’s more about communication and helping people.

University of Wisconsin law professor Keith Findley is a member of Madison’s Police Civilian Oversight Board. He says there’s a plethora of research that shows women on the force have a positive impact on police departments and communities. He says they are often better at communicating and de-escalating tense situations.

“They are sued less frequently than their male counterparts,” Findley says. “They make fewer discretionary arrests, especially of non-white residents. They use force less frequently and excessive force less frequently than their male counterparts.”

Medical residents struggle to receive training after Planned Parenthood halts abortion services in Wisconsin

Kenosha News

Noted: Once regulations are changed, UW must provide its students with a method to learn abortion procedures out of state to remain an accredited by NACGME.

“While the OB-GYN residents previously had access to clinical training in abortion, that access is now significantly limited,” UW Health said in a statement. “It remains too soon to predict what options we will pursue, but we are focused on training OB-GYN physicians to provide the most comprehensive care possible.”