Peter Goff, an assistant professor in educational leadership and policy analysis at UW-Madison, said with the introduction of the equal interval grading scale, the district should clearly define to students and parents what it means to earn each letter grade.
UW-Madison political science professor David Canon said vice presidential picks usually have fairly minimal impacts within their home state. “Are there any voters who will not vote for Joe Biden because Harris is the VP instead of Baldwin? Yeah, maybe there are a few, but I can’t imagine that will be enough to change the result in Wisconsin,” Canon said.
Written by Robert N. Golden, MD, is dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Joseph E. Kerschner, MD is dean of the Medical College of Wisconsin School of Medicine.
Quoted: But, Trump is still tailing Biden among Wisconsin’s voters. According to surveys from both the Marquette Law School and the UW-Madison Elections Research Center, Biden is holding a steady, five to six percent lead over Trump in the state.
“In 2016, Trump was the outsider and he was trying to take down Washington,” Burden said. “He was running against an establishment figure in Hilary Clinton and he pledged to go to Washington and ‘drain the swamp.’ Now, he’s governing and is serving as president in the swamp and has to still convince voters that he’s shaking things up, but still governing effectively.”
Quoted: But raw numbers don’t always tell the whole story, said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For example, a rise in cases can also be due to a rise in testing.
“If you think about something too simplistically, you can fall into the trap of believing something that is partially or maybe not even true at all,” Sethi said.
In a shaded parking lot on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, so-called spit concierges guide volunteers though giving a saliva sample. On the other side of the parking lot is a pared-down biology lab where scientists test the spit-filled plastic vials for the virus that causes COVID-19.
They’ll have the results within one or two hours.
Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director for infection control at UW Health, echoed the WHO guidance, saying dental care “is considered high risk” and “routine dental care should still be approached cautiously given that rates of COVID transmission remain high.”
Quoted: Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told PolitiFact Wisconsin voting policies in Wisconsin over the past decade — when Republicans have generally controlled state government — have had “a disproportionate impact on communities of color, as well as other vulnerable voting groups.”
But Mayer added he does “not see evidence that the (election officials) had the goal of disenfranchising Black voters” when reducing the number of Milwaukee polling places from 180 to five.
Quoted: “If a storm is moving northwards at 10 miles per hour, and the wind’s rotational speed is 90 miles per hour, then to the east, the wind speed will be 100 miles per hour, and to the west, it will be 80 miles per hour,” said Steve Ackerman, director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Colleges and universities across Wisconsin have developed a patchwork of plans to prepare for what at its core is an unknown: How to reopen campuses safely during a pandemic.
Quoted: Testing students every week or two will provide a gauge of whether the virus is taking hold on campuses. Many physicians stress this so-called surveillance testing is the only way to identify students and staff who are infected but don’t have symptoms.
“I don’t see how one can not do it,” said Nasia Safdar, an infectious disease physician at UW Health.
Quoted: Parents are making choices within an unequal system, says Erica Turner, who studies race and inequity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Education Studies.
“You can’t undo that individually,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything.”
Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that while it’s not unusual for a political party or party activists to try to keep a candidate off a ballot, the reverse is “bizarre and unusual.”
“We’ve never really seen [that] before,” Burden says.
“If this was happening in just one state, that there were a couple of Republican insiders who were aiding the Kanye West campaign, that would seem a little odd and kind of unexpected,” he says. “But because we’re seeing it now in multiple states, people who are either slated as electors, delegates or Republican attorneys working on behalf of Kanye West’s effort to get on the ballot, it looks like something systematic and organized across large parts of the country.”
The Wisconsin Farm-Related Fatality Report, which was inactive between 2006 and 2020, is now being updated again to offer insight on the state’s ag-related deaths.
The report said Wisconsin farm fatalities reached 41 in 2017 and 34 in 2018, a rise from the last report, which claimed 25 deaths in 2006. Researchers Bryan Weichelt and John Shutske recently resurrected the annual report, which was not updated for 14 years.
Shutske, an extension specialist and professor in several ag health and safety programs at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s important to remember that these aren’t just statistics – every number represents a real person, someone’s parent or child. He said he hopes farmers have a self-interest in preserving farm safety and preventing accidents. Growing up as a child on a farm himself, Shutske said he knew people who wore farm injuries, like a missing limb, as a badge of honor.
Quoted: “It’s definitely a trial run for November in terms of recruiting poll workers, finding new locations, and distributing personal protective equipment,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, who directs the Elections Research Center. “August is really good practice for that.”
Noted: The School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offered its first business-focused, business-led FIG last fall, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities granted in partnership with UW’s College of Letters and Science. The lead course, “The Sociology and History of American Marketing and Consumer Society,” was taught by Thomas O’Guinn, former chair of Wisconsin’s Department of Marketing, and the Thomas J. Falk Distinguished Chair in Business.
“The first-year interest group is designed to immerse students in marketing, sociology, and history, and most importantly, how they interact. Marketing, and the consumer culture it helped produce, isn’t just about some bag of commercial techniques; marketing was made by, and in turn made, the character of contemporary society. You can’t adequately teach our history without some deeper recognition and understanding of marketing. This class does that, and does it within a supportive, cross-disciplinary learning environment,” according to O’Guinn, who also told me that one of his inspirations for teaching the course was the formative experience he had as a University of Texas freshman in an integrative nine-credit course, “The American Experience.” “That course meant a lot to me, and I wanted to offer something similar to my students,” he said.
Quoted: There are risks for both sides if one party embraces mail voting and the other doesn’t, said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. If there is a surge of coronavirus cases near the election, those who had planned to vote in person may find it difficult to cast a ballot — and may not have enough time to request a ballot by mail, he said. Clerks short of poll workers might have to close polling locations, meaning some voters would have to go to new precincts and wait in longer lines.
Quoted: “It’s inadequate,” says Tim Smeeding, who teaches economics and public policy at the University of Wisconsin La Follette School of Public Affairs and whose research topics include income and wealth inequality. “It’s too small, misdirected, legally questionable. It’s clearly not enough. So it’s more show than the actual dough.”
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: 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.
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.
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.”
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: 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.
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.
“The academic side is not separate from the social-emotional side,” said Gloria Ladson-Billings, a UW-Madison education researcher and emeritus professor. “There is a different kind of temperature taking, if you will, that kids will have to really be able to process this experience. What has it meant to be away from school, to be away from friends, to miss loved ones, to process the fact that some loved ones have passed on?”
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.
“The dam is holding but there are dark clouds on the horizon,” said Kurt Paulsen, a professor at UW-Madison who is surveying housing providers in the county to get insight into the extent of problems and the impact of rental assistance programs.
“When a kid is at school for seven hours there is a good chunk of time that is social or play,” said Jason Horowitz, a clinical assistant professor in the UW-Madison Department of Psychiatry. “We have to recognize there’s more to school than learning. We need to try to replace all the different aspects that help a kid grow.”
Beth Graue is a Sorenson Professor of Early Childhood Education at UW-Madison and the director of the Center for Research on Early Childhood Education at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. She’s also a former kindergarten teacher. Her research focuses on how school policies translate into opportunities for teachers, students and families.
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.
Malia Jones, a UW-Madison infectious disease epidemiologist who runs the Facebook page Dear Pandemic and is the mother of two elementary students, sent the letter to local officials last week. The letter, signed by 363 other people, asked for an immediate ban on nonessential, high-risk gatherings in public and private settings to further reduce the spread of the coronavirus. That could allow schools to reopen in person more quickly, the letter said.
Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infectious disease control at UW Health, said secondhand goods are, in general, safe to purchase and use during the pandemic. “The virus doesn’t survive very long outside the body,” Safdar said. “By the time thrift goods are sorted, sold and then taken home, enough time has passed where they should not pose a risk.”
If anyone in Wisconsin was poised to play a part in the coronavirus pandemic, it was Jonathan Temte. A physician and associate dean with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Temte is also an expert in vaccine and immunization policy who sat on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for eight years and is currently a member of the ACIP COVID-19 Vaccine Work Group, a panel that will help inform the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determine how a COVID-19 vaccine will be deployed.
Research on the effectiveness of wearing face masks is limited, but the idea is that wearing a mask helps reduce the transmission of the virus from the wearer to people in proximity through talking, coughing or sneezing. Dr. James Conway, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said cloth masks can achieve that quite well.
Christine Whelan, director of the Money, Relationships and Equality Initiative at UW-Madison, shares information about some free resources that could make the uncertain financial time a bit more manageable.
Earlier this month, Patrick Remington, a UW-Madison emeritus professor and former chief medical officer for Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention in the state Division of Health, said the legal question behind a statewide mask mandate would come down to the court’s interpretation of “reasonable and necessary.”
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.
Kathy Cramer, who leads the BadgersVote committee at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that group’s activities have shifted to virtual engagement and absentee voting education.
Ajay Sethi, faculty director of the master of public health program and associate professor of population health sciences says the public and patients need to be thoughtful and careful when absorbing information about the coronavirus.
Ajay Sethi, Faculty Director of the Master of Public Health program at the UW SMPH says there’s a lot of false messages being circulated around COVID-19.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist, who offered her thoughts early in the pandemic in a pair of Q&As with the Cap Times, is also a parent of two school-age children.
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.”
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: 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.
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.”
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.
