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Category: UW Experts in the News

Madison artists say they were harassed by driver while painting a BLM mural downtown

Posted on
NBC-15

Quoted: “That kind of intimidation, does the first amendment protect that? The answer is almost certainly, yes it is protected,” Howard Schweber, UW-Madison law school faculty member said. He said, based on reading the police report, what the man said did not raise to the level of a threat. “It’s extraordinarily rude, but the First Amendment protects a lot of ways of speaking that are not very nice,” Schweber said.

The new language of vote suppression

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Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder

Quoted: Such practices have been justified by the third key component of the vote suppression narrative: the claim of widespread voter fraud. This claim, too, is fallacious, as many voting experts will attest. As Kenneth R. Mayer, a voting expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison declared, “The continued insistence that there are material levels of intentional voter fraud is itself a form of fraud.”

Wisconsin’s controversial new crime victim bill of rights could fall short without more funding from state

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Michele LaVigne, a recently retired University of Wisconsin-Madison clinical law professor and director of the Public Defender Project, said implementing the new rules — which require prosecutors to include crime victims in more steps of a prosecution — could slow an already sluggish process.

“All court systems have shut down basically and there is a backlog from hell building up,” LaVigne said, referring to the four months courts have been largely closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

To fight climate change, Democrats want to close the ‘digital divide’

Posted on
Grist

Quoted:

The call for hardening our internet infrastructure is especially salient to Paul Barford, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2018, Barford and two colleagues published a study highlighting the vulnerability of America’s fiber cables to sea level rise, and he’s currently investigating how wildfires threaten mobile networks. In both cases, he says, it’s clear that the telecommunications infrastructure deployed today was designed with historical extreme conditions in mind — and that has to change.

“We’re living in a world of climate change,” he said. “And if the intention is to make this new infrastructure that will serve the population for many years to come, then it is simply not feasible to deploy it without considering the potential effects of climate change, which include, of course, rising seas, severe weather, floods, and wildfires.”

Voter registrations show glimmer of hope for Donald Trump in Wisconsin

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Wisconsin State Journal

“Trump is in trouble in Wisconsin and nationally, that’s what the polls are showing,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden. “But the fact that the registration is more balanced than that should give Republicans hope and should encourage the Democrats to keep working to get their voters on the registration rolls.”

COVID-19 posing difficult choices for Wisconsin’s immigrant workers

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Wisconsin State Journal

Shiva Bidar, UW Health chief diversity officer and a Madison City Council member, confirmed that Wisconsin residents can come to their health facilities and receive care, no questions asked. “We’ll make sure they go where they need care and nobody’s asking them to pay up front for anything,” Bidar said. “We will figure out on the back end what we need to do to make sure that their bills are covered.”

Latest Badger Shield design draws global attention

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Wisconsin State Journal

“It’s for cases where people want to be able to see faces,” said Lennon Rodgers, director of the Grainger Engineering Design Innovation Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It could be a teacher talking to their students, seeing smiles, things like this that are important, some people say, for developmental reasons.”

The spotlight is on Lancaster’s Amish community again after Linda Stolzfoos’ disappearance; experts explain just how rare events like this are

Posted on
PennLive

Although their presence in Lancaster County draws thousands of tourists each year, the Amish hold themselves apart from their non-Amish, or “English” neighbors. Crime within the Amish community is exceedingly rare, said Mark Louden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studies Amish language, healthcare and legal issues.

The latest on smoking cessation: 8 things physicians should know

Posted on
American Medical Association

“There’ve been more than 20 studies, which have looked at smoking status and COVID-19 complications,” said AMA member Michael Fiore, MD, MPH, MBA, Hilldale Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin and director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. “Whether you measure the outcomes as death or using a severity index, like going to the ICU or being intubated, in more than 80% of those studies, smoking resulted in a statistically significant increase of adverse outcomes.”

How to use eye makeup safely during coronavirus

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The Washington Post

In addition to possibly contracting the virus from contaminated fingers or brushes, a makeup user also risks exposure to the coronavirus from the products themselves, especially if those products are shared with others or are used outside of the home, said Sarah M. Nehls, an ophthalmologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “The makeup could be potentially contaminated,” she said. “[The coronavirus] has been found on the ocular surface. This is why conjunctivitis [pinkeye] can be an initial symptom of infection.”

Covid-19 upends Baby’s First Years study

Posted on
The Washington Post

The groundwork for Baby’s First Years started in 2013 with prize money from the Jacobs Foundation to Greg Duncan, a professor of education at the University of California at Irvine. Its funding snowballed, thanks to philanthropic institutions, including the Bill and Melinda Gates and Ford foundations, and a grant from the National Institutes of Health. It recruited as lead investigators Katherine Magnuson, professor of social work at University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Kimberly Noble, a neuroscientist at Columbia University.

UW Health: How to talk to children about COVID-19

Posted on
NBC-15

Quoted: “Teens may react to changes in a variety of ways. It is important for parents to support their child’s emotions without judgement,” said Dr. Amy Stockhausen, a UW Health pediatrician, adolescent medicine expert and associate professor of pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

Six months of coronavirus: the mysteries scientists are still struggling to solve.

Posted on
The Yucatan Times

With governments and industry injecting billions into the development, testing, and manufacturing of vaccines, scientists say, a vaccine may be available in record time, but it simply may not be fully effective. “We could have vaccines in the clinic that are useful in people within 12 or 18 months,” Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Nature in May. “But we’re going to need to improve them.

Masks now required for Wisconsin prison staff and all state workers as Capitol stays closed to the public

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Dr. Nasia Safdar, director of infection prevention and control for UW Health, said masks cannot single-handedly prevent coronavirus spread but are an effective intervention.

“If someone was wearing a mask, it would likely reduce the number of people they would infect,” she said.

The CoronaVirusFacts Alliance expands again: Meet our team of selected researchers

Posted on
Poynter

The team of researchers was selected in a two-round process. In the first part, the IFCN staff analyzed each proposal to make sure all the requirements were fulfilled. Then a committee composed of three professors — Lucas Graves, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Steen Steensen, professor at OsloMet; and Bente Kalsnes, associate professor at Kristiania University College — evaluated the approved proposals and selected the top submissions. The winners came out of this group.

Native Americans Crossed the Pacific Long Before Europeans

Posted on
The Scientist Magazine

“It always made sense that this kind of contact might have happened, but demonstrating that it did happen is a different kind of thing,” says John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who did not participate in the study. With the addition of this genomic analysis, “we’re getting to the point where we can find evidence of some kinds of events that were invisible from an archaeological standpoint, and that’s exciting because it means that we now open another window into understanding human interactions and human contacts,” he adds.

Republican, Democratic state conventions display differing attitudes toward COVID-19

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Wisconsin State Journal

“I think it still presents a substantial risk,” said Dr. James Conway, a pediatric infectious disease expert at UW-Madison. “Even though we’re a state that has relatively low rates certainly compared to the South and Southwest, the bringing together of people to a lot of different areas is really where you run the risk of introduction and then re-introduction of virus into particular communities.”

Facing a world clamoring for help with COVID-19, scientists are changing how they work

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Pilar Ossorio, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, worries there is so much pressure to produce positive results that conditions are ripe for cutting corners. She notes, for example, that in an emergency where people are suffering, there can be resistance to having control groups that don’t get an experimental treatment in a study.

“But it doesn’t work scientifically,” Ossorio said. “It doesn’t produce good enough data that you can actually have any confidence that the test intervention is safe or effective.”

“We have this real brick and mortar view of how clinical research had to happen, and I think COVID has really challenged that,” said Betsy Nugent, the director of clinical trials development for the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and UW Health.

Song Gao, an assistant professor of geographic information science at UW-Madison, was among the first to study and map how people’s mobility changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March, Buttenheim and Malia Jones, an epidemiologist at UW-Madison, launched “Dear Pandemic,” a social media group that communicates the latest COVID-19 research.

“The world is just going to be different,” Jones said, “Getting to the point where there’s hopefully a vaccine that’s effective is going to take enough time that I think science will change.”

Farmers’ milk prices rising, easing dairy farm losses, but for how long?

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “The sharp drop in May was the result of the COVID-19 virus shutting down schools, universities, restaurants and food-service which caused a big drop in the sales of milk, cheese and butter,” Bob Cropp, a University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension professor emeritus, wrote in a recent column.

Which mask is best? UW engineering professor studies how droplets escape from face coverings

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

University of Wisconsin-Madison engineer Scott Sanders usually spends his time figuring out how gases and particles behave in combustion engines.

But Sanders has turned his expertise to determining how a different type of particle, one that has sickened millions around the world, moves from human mouths covered with masks.

Coronavirus forces scientists to change while searching for vaccine

Posted on
USA Today

Pilar Ossorio, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, worries there is so much pressure to produce positive results that conditions are ripe for cutting corners. She noted that in an emergency when people are suffering, there can be resistance to having control groups that don’t get an experimental treatment in a study.

How can I get my child to wear a mask? If I’m sick with COVID, how long do I need to quarantine? Experts answer your questions

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: “A mask that is not covering the nose will not stop a person infected with SARS-CoV-2 from contaminating the air in front of them when they exhale. Similarly, a mask covering only the mouth will fail to prevent an uninfected person from inhaling contaminated air. Since it does not take a lot of virus particles to cause infection, a partially worn mask may not be effective enough. This reminds me of when I see people wearing a bicycle helmet without buckling the strap or wearing it so loosely that it doesn’t cover the front of their head. The intention might be there, but there is a higher risk of head injury following an accident if the helmet is unable to do what it is designed to do.”

— Ajay Sethi, PhD, MHS, associate professor, Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Six months of coronavirus: the mysteries scientists are still racing to solve

Posted on
Nature

With government and industry pumping billions into vaccine development, testing and manufacturing, a vaccine could be available in record time, say scientists — it just might not be completely effective. “We might have vaccines in the clinic that are useful in people within 12 or 18 months,” Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told Nature in May. “But we’re going to need to improve on them.”

Report: Voter Participation Declining In Wisconsin, Civic Health Measures Mixed

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

The new “Civic Health in Wisconsin” study by the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison represents the first time civic engagement data has been tracked statewide, said Mary Beth Collins, the center’s director and one of the study’s principal authors. It looks at data on Wisconsinites’ connectedness to their communities using a range of measures, from volunteerism and voting to the amount of time spent with neighbors and friends.

Are High Water Levels a Result of Climate Change?

Posted on
Door County Pulse

While many people are scrambling to combat flooding and damage to infrastructure, climate scientists are working to find out what has been causing the latest rise in lake levels. According to Jack Williams, a UW-Madison geography professor and climate-change expert, it’s the billion-dollar question.“We can’t yet definitively say,” Williams said. “What we know is that we are seeing increasing temperatures and variability of rainfall, which are both known to be caused by climate change.”

Nearly 800 people have died from COVID-19 in Wisconsin. Here’s what we are learning so far.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Halfway through 2020, 786 people in Wisconsin died prematurely, unexpectedly, and separated from family,” said Ajay Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “COVID-19 will be a leading cause of death in Wisconsin for 2020. We have not had a new leading cause of death in Wisconsin or the U.S. since HIV/AIDS.”

Public health officials shut down indoor service for bars in Madison following surge of cases

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

At risk is University of Wisconsin-Madison’s plan to welcome students back to campus this fall. Jeff Pothof, University of Wisconsin Health chief quality and safety officer, said if local health officials don’t try to stop the spread of the virus in Dane County, in-person instruction could be called off. “If we’re unable to get on top of this current spike and it continues to accelerate, we may be in a position where it won’t make sense to be holding in-person classes,” he said. “It becomes a risk that most of us shouldn’t be taking with our children.”

Both the city and UW-Madison have similar orders in place to ensure people are distancing properly, which will be especially important come late August when the university’s 30,000 students return to campus. “We have been and will be working to ensure people are abiding by the campus order when they are on campus property,” Marc Lovicott of UW-Madison’s Police Department, said. “We have and will issue citations for blatant and/or multiple violations.”

Report: Wisconsin has student-to-teacher racial, ethnic gap

Posted on
Associated Press

“It is important for white children to see people of color as being knowledgeable and authoritative,” said Gloria Ladson-Billings, a teacher educator who most recently was on the faculty at UW-Madison. “The stuff we are seeing happening in our streets today is, I think, a direct result of young white people saying, ‘I was never really taught to value these people’s lives.’”

Anger Management for an Angry Time

Posted on
Wall Street Journal

If you decide to use your anger, choose something you can control. “Anger is a very energizing emotion—think of it as the opposite of procrastination,” says Evan Polman, an associate professor in the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Remember that anger can give you courage. Use it to ask for a raise, get involved in a cause you care about or get up the nerve to have that difficult conversation you’ve been putting off.

Why we should explore Venus before Mars

Posted on
Mashable

Not so fast. The Pioneer probe sent to Venus in 1978 detected traces of methane in that CO2-filled atmosphere. Methane is a rare chemical to produce without life acting as some kind of intermediary. “People tried to explain it away and they couldn’t,” says Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a former chair of NASA’s Venus Exploration Analysis Group.

Biden’s low-key strategy vexes Trump, but in-person campaigning beckons

Posted on
AFP

“I don’t see how that’s sustainable through the fall election,” professor Barry Burden, director of the Election Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told AFP.”

There will come a point where Biden will need to be a physical presence on the campaign trail, if only to reassure voters he is a real person, in good health and ready to serve.”