Noted: The Badger Seal is a DIY mask fitter designed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It takes a few minutes’ time and work to assemble, but materials only run $1 per mask. You can download the instructions here.
UW-Madison and its affiliated entities are an economic engine contributing $30.8 billion a year to the Wisconsin economy, according to a new report commissioned by the university and funded by UW Foundation.
Streur pointed to a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison that shows how COVID-19 has made life in rural and low-income communities in Wisconsin, which ranks 38th for internet access out of all 50 states, even harder without broadband.
A team of university researchers led by Tessa Conroy found that even before the pandemic, those on the winning side of Wisconsin’s “digital divide” often had higher home values, improved health outcomes, better entrepreneurship opportunities and higher educational outcomes than those living without fast internet.
A team led by Professor Tim McGuine, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, undertook a study to identify the impact of playing a sport during the COVID-19 pandemic on student athletes’ health. The nature of the study was an online survey conducted in October 2020.
The task force report cites a University of Wisconsin study that showed more than 400,000 senior citizens in Wisconsin will be living in poverty by 2030, resulting in the state spending an additional $3.5 billion on public assistance programs.
New guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages Americans to make their masks work better by tightening their fit, including by using a simple, homemade tool designed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Health researchers conducted studies focused on how the cancellation or resumption of fall sports affected student-athletes’ mental health.
A University of Wisconsin- Madison professor’s study on a deadly disease found in chimpanzees is causing concern, but he does not currently believe it will affect humans.
Robinson says three principles helped guide where to spend her efforts — bring your best self, go where the people are, continuously reevaluate yourself and the field.
“It was not subtle—the chimpanzees would stagger and stumble, vomit, and have diarrhea, sometimes they’d go to bed healthy and be dead in the morning,” says Tony Goldberg, a disease ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to Ann Gibbons for Science.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently expressed concerns that a fatal disease known for killing chimpanzees could jump to humans because of the similarities in hereditary material, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The disease causes both gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms that are “not subtle,” lead researcher Tony Goldberg told Science.
Project focuses on learning primarily from the experiences of Black and Native peoples to improve anti-racism education in STEM.
“There are very few pathogens that infect chimpanzees without infecting humans and very few pathogens that infect humans without infecting chimpanzees,” said Tony Goldberg, one of the authors of the paper and a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of epidemiology.
Led by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the disease was reported on February 3rd in the journal Nature Communication.The study suggests that the disease is caused by a newly discovered bacterium that comes as the world struggles with the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A new and always fatal disease that has been killing chimpanzees at a sanctuary in Sierra Leone for years has been reported for the first time by an international team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Disease ecologist Tony Goldberg was stunned in 2016 when he learned that a mysterious infection was swiftly killing chimpanzees at a lush sanctuary in Sierra Leone’s rainforest. “It was not subtle—the chimpanzees would stagger and stumble, vomit, and have diarrhea,” recalls Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Sometimes they’d go to bed healthy and be dead in the morning.”
In 2016, Dr. Goldberg, an epidemiologist and veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and head of the Kibale EcoHealth Project, was approached by the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance to try to solve the mystery. He and his colleagues at Wisconsin joined forces with other veterinarians and biologists in Africa and elsewhere to undertake a comprehensive analysis of blood and tissue from the dead chimps that had been frozen at a nearby hospital.
But cases kept coming. In 2016, the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, an umbrella organization for the continent’s primate sanctuaries, reached out to epidemiologist Tony Goldberg, Owens’ advisor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Goldberg was immediately intrigued. “This is an unknown infectious disease that poses a serious risk to the health and survival of an endangered species, which happens to be our nearest relative,” he says.
The bacterium, Sarcina troglodytae, causes a disease called Epizootic Neurologic and Gastroenteric Syndrome, or ENGS. Although the illness has yet to be found in humans, “there are very few pathogens that infect chimpanzees without infecting humans,” said Tony Goldberg, one of the authors of the paper and a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of epidemiology.
Proteins are the workhorses that run all biological systems. Controlling when and how a protein performs its function provides bioengineers with exquisite control to manipulate or monitor a biological system. In this paper, researchers at Northwestern and the University of Wisconsin–Madison demonstrate a powerful design strategy for splitting bioactive proteins into fragments that only recombine under specific conditions.
“Previous studies demonstrated that patients with lupus nephritis who had atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) were significantly younger than those without lupus nephritis, and ASCVD risk was 42 times higher in patients with lupus nephritis who were aged 30 to 39 years,” Shivani Garg, MD, MS, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told Healio Rheumatology. “The risk of ASCVD starts early, at the time of lupus nephritis diagnosis. Often traditional risk factors alone do not explain the accelerated ASCVD risk in such patients.
UW-Madison ranked eighth in research spending among hundreds of institutions in the latest year — again falling outside the top echelon where it had perched for decades — according to the latest figures by the National Science Foundation.
UW-Madison ranked eighth place in the national research rankings for both public and private universities, the same ranking as the last survey covering the 2018 fiscal year. UW ranked sixth among public universities, which was also the same ranking as in fiscal year 2018.
University of Wisconsin researchers and their collaborators at Yale published findings in early November which changed current understandings of the way cells in the pancreas regulate the release of insulin, UW announced in a press release.
Liquid nitrogen is so cold that it freezes anything it touches, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It clocks in around 320 degrees below freezing. Because it’s so cold, liquid nitrogen immediately boils when it touches anything room temperature, which is what causes the cloudy smoke seen in fancy cocktails and frozen desserts.
Noted: One way to appeal to youth on Covid-19 is by placing the wellbeing of their social group on their shoulders, said Dominique Brossard, a professor specializing in science communication at University of Wisconsin at Madison.
She pointed to the decades-old “Friends don’t let friends drink and drive” slogan in the U.S. as one successful campaign that helped lower incidence of youth drunk-driving. Simply relaying information about the virus may have limited effectiveness with the younger generation, who are accustomed to being bombarded with a constant stream of content.
When public servants face a challenge, AAAS Member and newly elected 2020 AAAS Fellow Dr. Laura Albert finds solutions. Whether helping police tackle the opioid crisis, or assisting election officials in protecting voters during a deadly pandemic — which was one of her most recent feats — the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor uses mathematical models and analytics to recommend safe, economical and often innovative remedies.
Noted: The house was in use for more than 200 years before an earthquake destroyed it during the early seventh century. Excavation by the Sardis Expedition of Harvard University is being conducted with the permission of the Turkish government, and is directed by Professor Nicholas Cahill of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Dr. Thomas Friedrich, a professor of virology at UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, says his lab focuses on understanding how viruses that cause pandemics overcome evolutionary barriers to get transmitted.
All students participating in not only in-person learning but also other in-person activities are required to participate in the weekly testing, according to officials. Students will be using self-administered, non-diagnostic saliva tests developed by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
These life-cycle models often find that there is a much smaller retirement crisis than suggested by a focus on replacing preretirement income. For example, one 2008 study—“Are All Americans Saving ‘Optimally’ for Retirement,” by John Karl Scholz and Ananth Seshadri of the University of Wisconsin-Madison—found that only 4% of households had a net worth that was below their optimal levels. The NRRI at the time was 44%.
Another key point? It doesn’t make sense to be happy all the time. “The goal isn’t to be happy 24/7,” Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center For Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told HuffPost.
In that test, the children correctly identified the emotional expression on uncovered faces about 66% of the time, well above the odds of just guessing, psychologist Ashley Ruba at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said. Looking at faces in surgical-type masks, however, the children were only able to correctly identify sadness about 28% of the time, anger 27% of the time, and fear 18% of the time.
“For very young children, I think it is still an open question as to how they’ll navigate these situations,” said Dr. Ruba, who studies how children learn to understand other people’s emotions. “Infants can use all these other cues, like tone of voice.”
But the problem may be worse than we thought, according to a new UW Extension study, with implications for health, education and prosperity — problems that are further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has pushed nearly every aspect of daily life — from business to school and even health care — online. “People are choosing to live in places they can have access,” said Tessa Conroy, an assistant professor of applied economics and the lead author of the study. “More and more it’s connected to so many facets of life.”
Noted:
It’s too soon for scholars to have studied how those in poverty have used their $600 stimulus checks. But in a study of the way Americans spent their first round of pandemic-related stimulus checks in April — many of those around $1,200 each — scholars from the University of Wisconsin and the University of Virginia showed that people spent a great deal of their allotment on food, helping to stave off hunger.
Noted: Their study was published in “Functional Ecology,” a journal of the British Ecological Society, and involved a collaborative team of researchers from the U of I, Washington State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and U.S. Geological Survey. It looked at how the risk of heat stress from a warming climate might affect milk production in grizzly bears. It also investigated how bears respond, including their use of soaking pools.
Noted: Scientists at the University of Wisconsin Madison are blasting bacteria with high doses of ionizing radiation to watch them evolve radiation resistance in real time and study which genes are involved.
Noted: According to a Jan. 6 preprint of a study conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, if you develop a fever while you have COVID, you may be immune to COVID for a longer period of time.
“Such an inflammatory response may be key for developing a strong anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody response,” according to the study’s authors. And if you want to stay safe, These 3 Things Could Prevent Almost All COVID Cases, Study Finds.
Microsoft’s AI for Good Research Lab is working with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), the University of Wisconsin, and the Quebec AI Institute (Mila). Mila was founded in 1993 by professor Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian computer scientist renowned for his work on artificial intelligence (AI) and neural networks. Professor Bengio was the principal investigator on the project.
In 2012, Koning, then a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, began investigating the Ngao valley reserves to see how widespread and successful they truly were. Over the next eight years, he spent a total of 18 months living with communities across the region, where he documented around 50 different reserves. He selected 23 to study in depth, interviewing villagers and snorkeling the waters inside and outside the reserves to count and measure fish, along with study co-author Martin Perales.
That said, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a battery-free implant that’s powered by stomach movements.
This new study, led by Fanny Mofette, a postdoctoral researcher in applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at the effects of these alert messages on deforestation. Mofette and their team observed an 18% drop over two years in 22 African countries. The carbon emissions avoided with this reduction could be saving anywhere between $149 million and $696 million in economic damages, University of Wisconsin-Madison officials said in a statement.
Much of the South’s early communications infrastructure was installed in the 1960s, expanded during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and remains in use today. According to industry experts and data from institutions like the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, it is nearing the end of its life span. Without serious intervention by federal and state governments, these systems may not hold up to extreme weather events as they grow in intensity and frequency due to climate change.
The research was led by Fanny Moffette, a postdoctoral researcher in applied economics in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Moffette collaborated with Jennifer Alix-Garcia at Oregon State University, Katherine Shea at the World Resources Institute, and Amy Pickens at the University of Maryland.
Richard J. Davidson, director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has discovered that optimism practitioners are more active on the left side of the prefrontal cortex. This area of the brain, among other circuits, is responsible for our cognitive control and emotional response. Davidson proved that by consciously directing attention, we can influence our emotional reactions.
The news should be welcomed by the most hard-nosed of business people and economists as well. According to a recent news article published by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the savings resulting from the reduction in carbon emissions range anywhere from $149 million to $696 million. These fiscal numbers are “based on the ability of lower emissions to reduce the detrimental economic consequences of climate change.”
“They counted every rocket in the Soviet Union,” said Volker Radeloff, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison whose lab has used the images in its studies. “These images kept the Cold War cold.”
Over time, Corona cameras and film improved in quality. With an archive of almost one million images, the program detected Soviet missile sites, warships, naval bases and other military targets. “They counted every rocket in the Soviet Union,” said Volker Radeloff, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin — Madison whose lab has used the images in its studies. “These images kept the Cold War cold.”
“This is really a small revolution,” said study lead Fanny Moffette, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“In the last 10 to 15 years, there has been an explosion of research linking well-being in its many forms to numerous indicators of health. When that work [began], we didn’t know that purpose in life would emerge as such an important predictor of numerous health outcomes,” says Carol Ryff, psychologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and director of the MIDUS (Midlife in the United States) national study of Americans. Research has shown that people who have high levels of purpose in life spend fewer nights in hospitals, have lower odds of developing diabetes, and over two times lower risk of dying from heart conditions than do others.
Children can still read the emotional expressions of people wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers say.
“We now have this situation where adults and kids have to interact all the time with people whose faces are partly covered, and a lot of adults are wondering if that’s going to be a problem for children’s emotional development,” said study co-author Ashley Ruba, a postdoctoral researcher in the Child Emotion Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When masks cover a significant part of the face, how well can people understand the facial expressions of the people wearing them? Children can still understand, to an extent, the expressions on masked faces, according to a new study published in PLOS One.
Quoted: Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the forecast is slightly higher than last quarter’s estimate, partly because of a price rally for corn and soybeans seen around harvest time.
“Cash revenues, from soybeans especially, are up compared to where they were in September. It’s rare to have prices go up at harvest when everyone is bringing crops in,” Mitchell said
Quoted: “It’s a more hopeful view of well-being,” study researcher Cortland Dahl of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, a cross-disciplinary research institute, told HuffPost. “It’s the idea that you can take active steps that improve well-being, very much so in the way that you might take steps to improve physical health.”
Quoted: Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin who consulted on guidelines for prioritizing the COVID-19 vaccine for the National Academies of Science, said showing confidence in the vaccine is good reason for elected officials to be vaccinated early in the process. This may be especially true for Republican leaders. A December poll from ABC News/Ipsos showed Republicans were four times as likely as Democrats to say they would never get the vaccine.
“The amount of vaccine hesitancy that has been created in the last 20 years, 25 years is profoundly disturbing and goes deep into our society. So it takes a long time to build up confidence for people, and people who are unsure,” Charo told ABC News.
Quoted: Paul Barford, a University of Wisconsin computer science professor and co-author of a study on the effects of climate change on the internet, sounded less worried about cables sinking anytime soon, because of the financial interests of the telecoms firms involved with cables. But he still says planning now is important. From the get-go, “simply assessing what the current state of this infrastructure is would be something that the government could potentially motivate and potentially help to facilitate,” Barford said. And considering how “unbelievably expensive” these cables are, with costs running into “tens and hundreds of millions of dollars,” it would be a boon if the federal government poured in “funding to help facilitate new deployments or to harden current infrastructure.”
A contactless thermometer is helping some UW-Madison students track COVID-19 symptoms, and the thermometer was designed and created on the university’s campus.
Quoted: According to Dominique Brossard, a science and risk communication expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, that is because, “Humans do not make decisions based on facts. Facts alone do not change our mind.”
Bennett worries that Black kids aren’t afforded the same opportunities to imagine their way into mischief that white kids are. Surveying the children’s-entertainment landscape, he sees stories in which Black characters either don’t exist or exist merely to satisfy some goal of representation. Black authors are rarer still: According to data collected by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, less than 5 percent of children’s books published in 2019 were written by Black authors.
