Margaret Kerr, Assistant Professor, Human Development & Family Studies, talks about mental health for parents right now, how to relish moments of positivity and how to make the most of a challenging time.
In this segment of “The State of Race: Education” presented by WGBH and The Boston Globe, host Dan Lothian talks to Founder & Director, The NET Mentoring Group, Jamal Grant; Professor of Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Gloria Ladson-Billings and Boston Globe Education Reporter Bianca Vázquez Toness about how COVID has widened the opportunity gap in the classroom.
Noted: “You might be immune to the flu, but you are not going to be immune to all those rhinoviruses,” says James Gern, a rhinovirus researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “That’s one unique feature of rhinoviruses—you are always going to be susceptible to some.”
Noted: Schools can step in and provide support when parents themselves are traumatized. Familiar adults at school can also provide a buffering effect against trauma, said Travis Wright, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Another saliva LAMP test is being tested by David O’Connor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their technique bears many similarities to the Columbia test, including a color-based readout, but takes slightly longer and involves a couple of extra steps. Early trials of the test on volunteers in Wisconsin have gone well, Dr. O’Connor said, and one school district in Illinois is using the test to screen about 1,400 students and teachers on a weekly basis.
“If these legislators were practicing medicine, they would be sued for malpractice,” Patrick Remington, a former Centers for Disease Control epidemiologist and director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said after reviewing the lawmakers’ statements.
Other archived data could prove useful, too. Sousa-Silva is currently looking through old infrared telescope observations of Venus, hunting for additional overlooked evidence of phosphine. And Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who is a co-author of Mogul’s preprint paper, says old data from the Soviet Venera probes—while unlikely to have been sensitive enough to detect phosphine—may contain evidence for atomic phosphorus, which could hint at the presence of molecular phosphine, too. He notes, however, that the whereabouts of much of those data is unknown. Still, Limaye says, “somebody probably has some records.”
“Reading these papers gives me the sense that they’re going to have the controlled thermonuclear fusion plasma that we all dream about,” said Cary Forest, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin who is not involved in the project. “But if I were to estimate where they’re going to be, I’d give them a factor of two that I give to all my grad students when they say how long something is going to take.”
“There have been some reports about how viruses are able to manipulate hosts, but this one is so unique,” said Aurelie Rakotondrafara, a plant pathologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the study. “You can’t help but ask: How is this possible?
Tim Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty, said trying to reach the remaining people by mail might be a challenge because those with low incomes tend to move more often and might not have current addresses on file with the IRS.
Climate change is also tipping the scales toward larger fires. Monica Turner, a fire researcher and a professor of integrative biology at the University of Wisconsin Madison, said in an email that climate is a big driver of megafires, those burning through an area larger than 100,000 acres.
Schools can step in and provide support when parents themselves are traumatized. Familiar adults at school can also provide a buffering effect against trauma, said Travis Wright, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Mike Wagner, a journalism and mass communications professor at UW-Madison, joined the Wake Up Wisconsin team Wednesday morning to take a closer look at some of the night’s biggest moments.
Quoted: “When you’re being unlawfully interfered with by another person, you have a right under the law to defend yourself against that unlawful interference,” says Cecelia Klingele, associate professor of law at University of Wisconsin Law School. “But we also require that when you do so, you’re using force reasonably. So you’re making a reasonable judgement about whether or not you’re in danger, how much danger you’re in, and how much force you need to use in order to protect yourself.”
“Reading these papers gives me the sense that they’re going to have the controlled thermonuclear fusion plasma that we all dream about,” said Cary Forest, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin who is not involved in the project. “But if I were to estimate where they’re going to be, I’d give them a factor of two that I give to all my grad students when they say how long something is going to take.”
“It’s bad,” said Ajay Sethi, a public health professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it’s likely to get worse.
Interviewed: Joining us to talk about what we can learn from debates from years past is UW professor Mike Wagner.
Quoted: “We think that the racial disparities we see are something that we can really start chipping away at,” Dr. John Eason, an associate professor of sociology at UW-Madison, tells Madison365.
Interviewed: Jackson is a Vilas Distinguished Professor and Chair of the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.
Dr. Vivek Murthy, a surgeon general under former President Barack Obama, spoke with Richard Davidson, the founder and director of UW-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, in an online fireside chat as part of this year’s IceBreaker event, which the chamber held through a video conference due to the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lennon Rodgers, director of the UW-Madison College of Engineering’s Grainger Engineering Design Innovation Lab, said that two weeks after UW Health asked him in early March if he could make 1,000 face shields, companies from around the country were contacting the university to use its design. “You think elastic is easy to get, or foam; it is, if you want to make 1,000 or even 10,000 (face shields),” he said. “But when you’re talking millions, it’s truckloads upon truckloads of material.”
But it’s an important role for journalists to advocate for public release of as much information as possible, said Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin.
“I have no problem with a reporter telling an author that it’s in the public interest to see that the tapes are released,” Culver said.
But this could be the year that freshwater mussels get the attention that Jordan Richard, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the University of Wisconsin, believes they’re owed.
After years of searching for a potential explanation for the mysterious and massive die-offs that have suddenly killed thousands of mussels in streams from Washington to Virginia, Mr. Richard and his colleagues have finally identified a potential “mussel-bola” culprit.
Malia Jones, of the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies how the places we spend time affect our health and how diseases spread in those places. She said while it’s difficult to pinpoint one culprit for the state’s spike in coronavirus cases, there is evidence that students returning to colleges and universities have contributed quite a bit.
“If you had to find a part of the country that is an example of white flight, Milwaukee would be a poster child,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Javornik said Wisconsin is a pioneer of the latest wave of educational video games, particularly because of research done by James Paul Gee, a former University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who wrote “What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy.”
Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said farmers were already expected to receive $37.2 billion in direct government payments this year, according to projections from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But Ryan Owens, a political science professor and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership, isn’t so sure.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Journalism Professor Mike Wagner discusses what the future will look like.
“There’s a lot of suspicion among hard-core Trump supporters, and hard-core Trump opponents, about people trying to manipulate the voting system,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s just very tempting for people to believe that something nefarious has happened when the results don’t seem to be going in the way they expected.”
“This is something more that we can’t explain about Venus,” Sanjay Limaye, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Space.com. “Venus has got more questions [about it] than Mars, which is why we are suggesting that Venus should be considered an astrobiology target.”
Tiffany Green, an assistant professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has pointed out that physical distancing is difficult to achieve in some essential occupations and while using public transport.
Black young adults hold 10.4 percent less wealth, on average, than their white counterparts due to student debt, according to research by Fenaba Addo at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Black and Latinx borrowers also have higher rates of default than white borrowers, and two in five Native American or Alaska Native borrowers have defaulted on a federal student loan.
Milwaukee is an “essential part” of the coalition any Democrat needs to win a statewide election, said Barry Burden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who runs the Elections Research Center. A small change in turnout in the city is more consequential for Democrats than it is for Republicans.
David Canon, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talked about the 2020 presidential campaign in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
Ryan J. Owens, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the other author of the study, said its basic conclusion was that “knowing your former boss gives you a leg up.”
“When you clerk for a justice for a year, you come to know how that justice thinks very intimately,” he said. “You know the ins and outs of the justice’s thought processes.”
“People think a lot about how sleep is important for consolidating memory, but what they don’t think about is that sleep resets your brain for learning, meaning in order to take in information during the day, you need to have a rested brain,” said Dr. Stephanie Jones, the assistant director at the Institute for Sleep and Consciousness at UW-Madison.
The feature on Madison.com “10 things we’ve learned about COVID-19 in less than a year” is an excellent summary of what we’ve learned “about” COVID-19. But what have we learned “from” COVID-19 about ourselves and our systems?
Howard Schweber, a political science professor who also teaches law at UW-Madison, described how he saw the late justice interpreting the law. “Not only on issues involving women’s rights, [but] her dissenting opinions in the voting rights decision that stripped protections from minority voters in numerous jurisdictions. Her dissenting opinions in particular, rang with passion.”
Noted: The group will be co-chaired by inaugural members Dr. Tiffany Green, assistant professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Alia Stevenson, Chief Programs Officer with the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness.
“The Black Maternal & Child Health Alliance is comprised of Black women serving in important roles in health care, our community, and as decision-makers and knowledge experts. Our highest priority is to ensure that the health and wellbeing of Black mothers remains front and center,” says Co-Chairs Green and Stevenson in a statement. “As the Alliance moves forward, we are pleased to join the Dane County Health Council as we work together to advance the health of Black mothers, babies and their families in this county.”
As part of an ongoing lawsuit in Montana regarding whether completed mail-in ballots can be collected from voters and turned in to the elections office, Kenneth Mayer, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was called to testify about a study he had conducted on mail ballots cast in Montana between 2006 and 2016.
Manufacturing employment continued to grow, albeit more slowly, in line with national trends, said Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Alejandra Ros Pilarz, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s school of social work, has found similar changes in behavior when studying children who changed child care providers frequently at a young age.
Formats and preoccupations change, but comics never lose their power to communicate, criticize and entertain.
“Wisconsin Funnies: Fifty Years of Comics,” presented through Nov. 22 by the Museum of Wisconsin Art in two locations, surveys our state’s role in the great hurly-burly of funny words and pictures, especially from underground and alternative points of view.
Howard Schweber, UW-Madison Political Science Professor, believe’s Green Party votes could be overlooked in this election when comparing the influence the party played in Wisconsin during the 2016 election cycle.
Ankur Desai, a climate science professor at UW-Madison, said well-meaning fire prevention efforts over the last century have also contributed to the worsening of west coast wildfires.
That’s thanks in part to Fenaba Addo, an associate professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies debt and its role in racial wealth inequality. Addo’s research has shown, among other things, that the gap in student debt held by Black and white borrowers grows by 6.8% each year. As a result, Black young adults hold 10.4% less wealth on average than their white counterparts due to student debt.
Uncertainty can provoke a vicious cycle of anxiety, says Jack Nitschke, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Our brains help us get good at what we’re doing,” he says
“It’s not a fair election system when one side has such a severe election advantage, and it was done intentionally,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Prof. Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek that Mendelsohn’s prediction was unlikely.
“The backers of Jill Stein were young and disaffected from the political system,” said Barry C. Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Typically, minor-party voters are looking for somebody that’s different from what the major parties are offering.” (The Libertarian candidate in 2016, Gary Johnson, received more than 106,000 votes in Wisconsin.)
It is not unusual for communications people within the CDC to be involved in an MMWR report before publication, said Dr. Patrick Remington, a member of the journal’s editorial board and a former CDC staffer.
That involvement, however, was previously restricted to officials within the agency who let political leaders know what was coming so they could be prepared with a communications strategy, said Remington, now associate dean for public health at the School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The state’s capacity for testing is very good and continues to increase,” Dr. Ajay Sethi of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health said via email.
Quoted: “We are in pretty uncharted economic territory,” said Laura Dresser, associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: In the last presidential cycle, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim found that Russian-linked disinformation campaigns focused ads on the swing states of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in particular, targeting both sides of the political spectrum with inflammatory posts on race, gun rights and increasingly, feminism.
“Everyone is rooting for them to succeed beyond anyone’s expectation, but it’s prudent to think about what happens if they don’t,” says Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “We need to make sure we have back-up plans — and back-up plans to those back-up plans.”
Just days after moving ahead with a critical Phase 3 trial in the U.S., pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has hit pause, even as the nation tops 6 million coronavirus cases and 190,000 deaths. NBC’s Tom Costello reports for TODAY. (Dave O’Connor and Shelby O’Connor)
For as long as federal funding for school lunch programs has existed, the labor that makes those meals possible has been low-paid and underappreciated. “A lot of teachers were forming unions in the 1960s and ’70s, but there was a reluctance for cafeteria workers to do the same,” Jennifer Gaddis, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and author of The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools, told me. “There was this idea that you’re taking money away from free-lunch programs for kids. But historically, there’s never been a lot of national or state-level support within school nutrition, until recently.”
More than a century ago, when the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology was the Department of Home Economics, students learned in a Practice Cottage, a house in which they were required to live for a period of time to apply and test what they had learned in their classes. Learning through doing expanded and amplified what happened in the classroom and reframed the home as a place of innovation, change and possibility.
Quoted: “That will really look different depending on the community resources and assets,” Paula Tran Inzeo, MATCH Director with the UW Population Health Institute said. “Whether there’s a place for folks to go depending on the system or if they’ll be sending folks home, but you’ll want to separate people.”
