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Category: Research

Study of 20,000 COVID-19 patients shows treatment with survivor plasma is safe

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: The study shows a decent representation of minorities,” said William Hartman, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at UW Health. “That’s an important point given that the minority communities have been hit so, so hard by COVID-19.”

Hartman is leading survivor plasma trials at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was not involved with this study.

Author Jordan Nutting is a AAAS Mass Media Fellow writing about science at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this summer. She’s working on a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In-person election, protests, bars opening. None appear to have spiked COVID cases. Experts hope public precautions keep spread in check

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “This is just a sliver of the nearly 6 million people in Wisconsin,” said Patrick Remington, an epidemiologist and a professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “These were highly visible and they could be high risk, but in reality, these were isolated events.”

“It is really hard to isolate one thing when so many things are going,” said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We cannot deny such an impact because of people on the street in public, standing close and shouting out and not wearing masks. That is ideal to spread the virus,” said Song Gao, assistant professor at the UW-Madison Geospatial Data Science Lab.

Oguzhan Alagoz, a professor of industrial engineering and infectious disease modeling expert at the UW-Madison, said his work shows social distancing adherence plays a major factor in the spread of coronavirus.

“Me and my family are also tired of being careful,” Alagoz said. “But unfortunately we cannot get super comfortable. … People should still be careful. Wearing masks, I think, is important, especially indoors.”

Cities Grew Safer. Police Budgets Kept Growing.

The New York Times

“Even though New York doesn’t show up at the high end of spending as a share of the budget — because we spend so much on everything — it’s a very high number in anyone’s book in absolute terms,” said Howard Chernick, a professor emeritus of economics at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, who developed the data set used here with Adam Langley at the Lincoln Institute and Andrew Reschovsky at the University of Wisconsin.

UW Health study looks into ‘COVID toes’ in children

WKOW-TV 27

A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is studying how the skin condition referred to as “COVID toes” is a connected to the virus; whether it is symptom of a COVID-19 infection or an immune response to the virus.

Most Of Your Books Were Written By White People

5280.com

Data collected in 2018 by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, a University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Education program, showed that approximately six percent of children’s books worldwide were written by African or African American authors; Latinx authors claimed roughly five percent of the lot.

The Milky Way’s giant gas bubbles have been spotted in visible light

Science News

For the first time, scientists have observed visible light from the Fermi bubbles, enormous blobs of gas that sandwich the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. The newly spotted glow was emitted by hydrogen gas that was electrically charged, or ionized, within the bubbles. Astronomer Dhanesh Krishnarao of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and colleagues described the finding June 3 in a news conference at the American Astronomical Society virtual meeting and in a paper posted at arXiv.org on May 29.

Borsuk: On the education front, one way to move from anger to action would be to make sure all youngsters are proficient in reading

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: I read this past week an article in the New York University Review of Law and Social Change by McKenna Kohlenberg, a Milwaukee area native who is in the home stretch of getting both her law degree and a master’s degree in educational leadership and policy analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It uses Madison as a case study in what Kohlenberg calls the “illiteracy-to-incarceration pipeline.” She cites research that 70% of adults who are incarcerated and 85% of juveniles who have been involved with the juvenile justice system are functionally illiterate.

“Literacy strongly correlates with myriad social and economic outcomes, and children who are not proficient by the fourth grade are much more likely than their proficient peers to face a series of accumulating negative consequences,” Kohlenberg writes.

Maps show ZIP codes with highest percentage of people at risk of severe complications from COVID-19

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “We found substantial variation across communities in the proportion of people who had these risk factors for severe complications,” said Maureen Smith, a physician and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. “That finding suggests that matching community with the right resources needs to take into account that communities are different.”

The information compiled by UW researchers can help identify potential hot spots, said Jessica Bonham-Werling, director of the Neighborhood Health Partnership Program, which prepared the reports, at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. That in turn can help public health and other officials make decisions on where to allocate resources, from testing and contact tracing to community services, such as delivering groceries.

Matthieu Ricard: ‘Eternity is awfully long, especially near the end’

Financial Times

Ricard advocates cultivating mental resilience and happiness — or what Aristotle called eudaemonia, the condition of human flourishing — by mind training through meditation. He took part in a study led by Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that showed how meditation can, over time, alter networks in the brain and improve emotional and physical wellbeing.

Fertility treatments allow for much older parents. Is this good for their offspring?

The Washington Post

But the possibility that the parent will die before the child has embarked on life or even reached adulthood is a significant negative. When a parent gives birth at age 50 or above, the probability of death by the time that child turns 20 is 22 percent for a male parent and 14 percent for a female parent, according to a 2015 study from Julianne Zweifel, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. That is more than double the probabilities for new parents at age 40.

Developing a vaccine to combat Johne’s disease

Canadian Cattlemen

As a result, the Johne’s Disease Information Center at the University of Wisconsin – Madison says, “over 50 per cent of dairy herds in most major dairy producing countries are now MAP-infected. The official estimate in the U.S. from a survey conducted in 2007 and published in 2013 is that 91 per cent of U.S. dairy herds are infected. This is up from USDA’s 1996 estimate that 21.6 per cent of U.S. dairy herds have paratuberculosis.”

Hurricanes pick up speed

Telegraph India

In almost every region of the world where hurricanes form, their maximum sustained winds are getting stronger. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and University of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, both in the US, analysed 40 years of hurricane satellite imagery to come to this conclusion. A warming planet may be fuelling the increase, speculates the paper that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Tom Still: Even with new scientific paths, broad vaccine availability still a year or more away

Wisconsin State Journal

Quoted: Dr. Jon Temte, an associate dean in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and a former chairman of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and Dr. James Conway, also at UW-Madison, is a leader over time in the American Academy of Pediatrics for immunization and infectious disease strategies.

Chemistry, concrete and ceramic cement

Cosmos Magazine

Materials science engineers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison say it has been assumed that these grain boundaries are very stable, but their new study suggests that might not always be the case.

There is space for carbon storage underground

Eco Business

“Nearly all IPCC pathways to limit warming to 2°C require tens of gigatonnes of CO2 stored per year by mid-century. However, until now we didn’t know if these targets were achievable, given historic data, or how these targets related to subsurface storage requirements,” said Christopher Zahasky, who did the study at Imperial College but who has now moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Compassion In The Time Of COVID-19

Forbes

You can also get the training used by one of the leading research studies on compassion from the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Lastly, the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion is another great resource, offering workshops and free online sessions.

How media consumption patterns fuel conspiratorial thinking

Brookings.edu

Our new research, conducted with colleagues in the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shows that how we approach our mediated world matters as well. We found that the way people do and don’t search for news online greatly affects their propensity to believe that a group of secret, malevolent actors are controlling the world. In short, people who avoid following the news because they think they will hear about the important stuff eventually are among the most likely people to think conspiratorially.

Hurricanes are growing stronger as climate warms, new NOAA study shows

Fox News

“The main hurdle we have for finding trends is that the data are collected using the best technology at the time,” James Kossin, a NOAA scientist and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, said in a statement. “Every year the data are a bit different than last year, each new satellite has new tools and captures data in different ways, so in the end we have a patchwork quilt of all the satellite data that have been woven together.”

Do you see how I see?

Cosmos Magazine

Hongrui Jiang from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, US, is impressed, but notes in a commentary in the same journal that there is still work to be done, notably to reduce the size of the liquid-metal wires and establish the operational lifetime of the artificial retina.

Parallel Universe Discovered? No, NASA Hasn’t Found a Universe Where Time Runs Backwards

NDTV

Another neutrino observatory in Antarctica called IceCube that is run by the University of Wisconsin–Madison conducted an investigation on the ANITA findings and it published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal. The researchers said in January that “other explanations for the anomalous signals – possibly involving exotic physics – need to be considered” because the standard model of physics cannot explain these events.

A New Bionic Eye Could Give Robots and the Blind 20/20 Vision

Singularity Hub

“The structural mimicry of Gu and colleagues’ artificial eye is certainly impressive, but what makes it truly stand out from previously reported devices is that many of its sensory capabilities compare favorably with those of its natural counterpart,” writes Hongrui Jiang, an engineer at the University of Wisconsin Madison, in a perspective in Nature.

Visualizing Science: How Color Determines What We See

Eos

“When people approach a visualization, they have expectations of how visual features will map onto concepts,” said Karen Schloss, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Schloss and her team are working to tackle these implementation issues and understand trade-offs between deeply ingrained, communal familiarity and the next generation of color tools.

Tropical Storms Are Getting More Intense Due to the Climate Crisis

Ecowatch

The devastation caused by hurricanes in the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, North Carolina and Houston over the last few years is a direct effect of the climate crisis, which is making tropical storms stronger and wetter, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as CNN reported.

Hurricanes really are getting stronger, just like climate models predicted

Live Science

“The main hurdle we have for finding trends is that the data are collected using the best technology at the time,” James Kossin, a NOAA scientist and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, said in a statement. “Every year the data are a bit different than last year, each new satellite has new tools and captures data in different ways, so in the end we have a patchwork quilt of all the satellite data that have been woven together.”

Hurricanes are getting stronger and climate change may be to blame

SlashGear

Hurricanes are getting stronger, according to a new study, and climate change may be the cause. The findings come from scientists with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information. Around four decades of hurricane satellite images went into the research, according to the University, building upon previous research that found similar storm intensification.

Climate Change Is Making Hurricanes Stronger, Researchers Find

The Weather Channel

Climate change is making tropical cyclones more intense with stronger maximum sustained winds, according to a new study led by scientists at NOAA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), who analyzed nearly 40 years of enhanced infrared satellite imagery.

Hurricanes are getting stronger, and it’s all our fault

BGR

If it seems to you that the massive storms rolling in from the ocean every year are causing more and more damage than the years before, you’re not alone. Scientists are noticing the trend, too, and a new study published by researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) lays out the evidence in stark detail.

Climate Change Is Making Cyclones Stronger, Researchers Find

The Weather Channel

Climate change is making tropical cyclones more intense with stronger maximum sustained winds, according to a new study led by scientists at NOAA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), who analysed nearly 40 years of enhanced infrared satellite imagery.

Global warming is making hurricanes stronger

EarthSky

Scientists study all the ways hurricanes are likely to change in this century as Earth gets warmer. They also want to know – and this is a hard question to answer – if hurricanes are already being affected by the Earth warming that’s happened thus far. This week, scientists at the University of Wisconsin weighed in with a new analysis of nearly 40 years of satellite imagery of hurricanes. Their results say that – over the past four decades – hurricanes have become more intense and destructive.

We may be seeing more of this

Cosmos Magazine

In almost every part of the world where tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons) form, their maximum sustained winds are getting stronger, according to a study of nearly 40 years of satellite images by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM).

Scientists say hurricanes are indeed getting stronger

CNET

Hurricanes are getting windier. That’s the sobering conclusion of a study led by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist James Kossin at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The paper appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal on Monday.

Hurricanes are getting stronger, just as climate scientists predicted

Treehugger

“The trend is there and it is real,” says James P. Kossin, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and lead author of the study. “There’s this remarkable building of this body of evidence that we’re making these storms more deleterious.

”The research was a collaboration between the NOAA National Center for Environmental Information and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies. The team looked at global hurricane data from 1979 to 2017, and used analytical techniques to create a uniform data set with which to identify trends.

Biden keys in on Keystone

POLITICO

NOAA STUDY RAISES CLIMATE QUESTIONS: The intensity of hurricanes and typhoons have increased over the past four decades, according to a new study from the NOAA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, indicating a link between the power of the tropical storms and human-driven climate change. The peer-reviewed study, Pro’s Zack Colman reports, is the first to show tropical cyclones have grown stronger as planetary temperatures have increased.

To Prevent Pandemics, Bridging the Human and Animal Health Divide

Undark

Sandra Newbury, director of the Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, worked with the shelters to contain the virus. Thanks to the private donor, they were able to offer free testing and medical care for the adopted cats, eventually isolating hundreds that had been infected. “We were really aggressive in our efforts to not let it spread,” Newbury said. She believes identifying such a large number of infected animals and quarantining them allowed the authorities to eradicate the virus. According to Newbury, no positive tests have been reported since March 2017.