The issues are typical of the snags new reactor designs run into on the road to approval, says Michael Corradini, a nuclear engineer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “I don’t think these things are show-stoppers.”
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.”
“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.
The estimates, to be published in the National Tax Journal by Mr. Chernick, David Copeland at Georgia State University and Andrew Reschovsky at the University of Wisconsin, are based on the mix of local revenue sources, the importance of state aid and the composition of jobs and wages in each city. The researchers predict average revenue shortfalls in the 2021 fiscal year of about 5.5 percent in a less severe scenario, or 9 percent in a more severe one.
Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the mostly virtual convention could still succeed in energizing Democratic voters — a major goal of the quadrennial event.
“The production quality will actually be better than it would be with a live event,” Burden said. “There are going to be some really slick videos put together from around the country and assembled together to maximize, I think, the enjoyability of viewing.”
“If a requested ballot doesn’t arrive in the voter’s mailbox, or the voter ‘spoils’ the ballot by making a mistake, then voting in person on Election Day is a fail-safe,” said Barry C. Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Many of those opposed to the state’s actions point to recent research suggesting non-lethal methods, such as guardian dog teams and protected livestock enclosures, which tend to be more successful at preventing future attacks than simply killing predators, says University of Wisconsin-Madison biologist, Adrian Treves. Such killings can actually lead to more livestock losses because it disrupts the pack’s social networks, leading surviving wolves to turn easier prey such as domestic animals, says Treves, who founded Carnivore Coexistence Lab, which conducts research worldwide on conflict between predators and livestock.
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: “Coughing, sneezing, laughing, eating, and drinking — there are ways that those droplets spread so keeping that physical distancing is really important and if people aren’t able to physical distance, (they should) still wear a face covering,” said Dr. Matt Anderson with UW Health.
Quoted: “There’s a lot of reasons why in person is probably better than virtual. But this year, we have to balance that with the health and safety risks of trying to do in person school during a pandemic,” said Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer at UW Health.
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: “Experiencing symptoms of hypervigilance, stress or distress are signals to discontinue your journaling exercise,” University of Wisconsin psychologist Shilagh A. Mirgain told UW Health.
Quoted: “The genie is out of the bottle,” says Professor Thongchai Winichakul, a historian at the University of Wisconsin and another survivor of the 1976 massacre.
“Society won’t stop, change won’t stop. The only thing we can do is to take care that the change takes place with as little bloodshed as possible. Thais have been gossiping about the monarchy in private for years, then teaching their children to praise it lavishly in public, to be hypocrites. All these young protesters have done is bring that gossip out into the open.”
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.”
A CBS News and YouGov poll released Sunday morning found Biden leading Trump 48% to 42% among likely voters, and the Election Research Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looking at registered voters, found Biden ahead with 49% to Trump’s 43%. The Marquette University Law School Poll, released on Tuesday, finds Biden at 50%, in a close race with Trump at 46% among likely voters.
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.”
Interviewed: Last week, La Crosse County announced a case where someone was reinfected with COVID-19. Is that actually possible? Here to talk about that is Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer for UW Health.
Quoted: “We know these are difficult times for parents as they weigh the benefits of in person education for their children against the sometimes difficult to interpret risk they may be exposing their children and themselves to during this historic pandemic. As health officials we want to offer guidance to families grappling with these issues,” said Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer at UW Health.
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: When asked directly about whether it’s irresponsible for businesses to put a timetable into place right now, Dr. Jeffrey Pothof, Chief Quality Officer at UW Health, said, “I don’t think it’s irresponsible. One of the helpful things with deadlines or setting dates is that it helps frame up the work that you have ahead of you.”
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 virus, and people’s reaction to it, are at the root of the problem — not the Safer At Home order from Gov. Tony Evers that ran from March 25 until the state Supreme Court threw it out on May 13, says Steven Deller, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
“We were lucky in April here, I don’t know if we would be that lucky again,” said Malia Jones, an associate scientist in health geography for the applied population laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In early April, there was “very little disease circulating,” in the state, Jones said, noting that voting by mail “is clearly the safer option.”
Katherine Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spent eight years interviewing rural Wisconsinites for her book “The Politics of Resentment,” published months before Trump’s election. “I heard so many complaints about teachers,” she told me. “ ‘How is it that they can get off of work? People who really work hard don’t have time to go out and protest.’ ”
Steve Deller, agricultural and applied economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he agrees that the high number of Chapter 12 filings will likely continue this year.
Because the messages are individualized, the often-false or inflammatory content is seen only by a few people, which can keep racially charged or untrue messages from being exposed and refuted, notes Young Mie Kim, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who specializes in studying social media.
“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: UW Health psychologist Dr. Shilagh Mirgain shared tips on how to stay physically and mentally healthy, while dealing with different kinds of social pressures.
Quoted: “There is increased concern not because of all the data that’s being collected by TikTok, but also because of who has access to the data, where it’s being stored and what the implications of that might mean,” Nicholas Davis, UW System Director of Information Security said.
Quoted: “I think the tricky thing with COVID-19 is you can’t assume that if you get it that you’ll do fine,” said Dr. Jeff Pothof with UW Health.
Quoted: “We’re seeing people with addiction being impacted by COVID stress a little bit more than the rest of the population,” said Dr. Michael Miller, an addiction medicine specialist at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
