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.
“The players can’t leave the facility to go to restaurants. It’s very clear what they can and cannot do because they’re in a facility and many things are just not accessible to the players,” said Laura Albert, professor of industrial and systems engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This drastically reduces the risk.”
“The lottery is a form of entertainment for many,” said UW-Madison Engineering Professor Laura Albert, who has studied sports analytics.
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.
Quoted: According to University of Wisconsin-Madison Political Science Professor Barry Burden it will take at least a few days until anything is official.”It’s possible for people to challenge the signature, the individual signatures not being legitimate or being signed more than once, or maybe one of the circulators not being eligible to circulate the petitions, that’s a pretty standard part of the process,” Burden said.
But during the early months of the pandemic, the disagreements — what one critical-care doctor called, on his well-read blog, the profession’s “intellectual food fight” — provided another layer of painful stress to some doctors already near their limits. “It became like Republicans and Democrats,” said Pierre Kory, a critical-care doctor who faced that tension himself at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics. “The two sides can’t talk to each other.”
Joseph Salmons, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, chalks these similarities up to a number of factors.
Quoted: “People have no way of knowing if they get it if they will have these long term effects, whether they have scarring in their lungs or inflammation of the heart so this disease you don’t want to get because we don’t know enough about it,” said Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer at UW Health.
The pattern has suggested that the company, controlled by the heirs of founder Julian Sinclair Smith, has harnessed its station group as a political vehicle. “Their purpose seems to be to [promote] Donald Trump and far-right opinion,” said Lewis Friedland, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin.
As with many of Trump’s comments, it’s difficult to tell whether or not he actually believes he has the power to delay the election, or if he’s simply kicking the beehive. Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin Madison spoke with Monday Buzz host Brian Standing on August 3, 2020.
Researcher Young Mie Kim was scrolling through Instagram in September when she came across a strangely familiar pattern of partisan posts across dozens of social media accounts.
Kim, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in political communication on social media, noticed a number of the seemingly unrelated accounts using tactics favored by the Russia-linked Internet Research Agency, a group that U.S. national security agencies say carried out a multiyear misinformation effort aimed at disrupting the 2016 election — in part by stoking existing partisan hatred.
Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the list is not surprising given the geographic size of the counties and the number of farmers located there.
“We’re being much more vigilant about sanitization and as a result, there’s a lot more of these supplies for people or kids to get into inadvertently. We’ve had some very bad advice from out national leadership. There are people who are doing things that may have been said in jest that they don’t realize, because of who it’s coming from,” says Ed Elder, director of the Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The calculus, though, is more complex than a binary choice of learning vs. health, or equity vs. safety, says Gloria Ladson-Billings, an emerita professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
And “getting back to normal” is the wrong goal.“Normal is the place where the problem was for a number of kids,” says Ladson-Billings, who is president of the National Academy of Education. The pandemic has uncovered longstanding “social and economic inequities. A specific group of kids were not doing well in school as it was. I think going back to that is not a remedy.”
“We believe that there’s going to be a connection between the communities of color that are around prisons, and the prisons themselves,” says John Eason, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who spoke to Science Friday over the phone earlier in the week. In an ongoing study with the Dane County Criminal Justice Council, “we’re going to be able to parse that out to see the role of corrections officers.” He suspects they may find officers are “basically incubators — or vectors between communities and the prisons that they work in.”
Steve Deller, a professor in the department of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said loss of benefits could be “another body blow” to the state’s economy.
“The board is stacked with people who are known to oppose use of tissue from induced abortions, regardless of the scientific necessity and regardless of the fact that using such tissue does not in any way affect whether an abortion will take place,” says R. Alta Charo, a lawyer and bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Charo concedes that the board includes “real scientists who understand the research importance of this tissue.” But because it does not need to reach unanimity in order to reject a proposal, their presence “will not stand in the way of a majority dismissing it out of hand.”
Yes, said R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“One of the most important things to keep in mind when discussing public health is the fact that this is fundamentally a community issue, not merely an individual health concern,” she said. “We are all in this together. What I do affects everyone around me, and what they do affects me.”
But this is not the first time in recent years that the dollar’s dominance has been questioned. In 2008, an academic study by Mr Frankel and Menzie Chinn, a professor at University of Wisconsin – Madison, predicted that by 2022 the euro would surpass the dollar as the world’s leading reserve currency.
Existing literature in the field of applied psychology suggests women tend to be more successful than men at managing crises, said Dr. Alexander Stajkovic of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He and Dr. Kayla Sergent of Edgewood College decided to look at how states led by men and women stacked up in terms of coronavirus response, which has largely been managed by governors.
This is the root of the moral panic over cats: the struggle to move beyond treating other beings with domination and control, toward fostering a relationship rooted in compassion and justice.
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.
Quoted: “In general, majorities of Democrats and Republicans believe that people should wear masks when they’re in enclosed tight spaces,” Wagner said.
Quoted: “I was disturbed, not shocked. We know this goes on,” Michele LaVigne, UW-Madison Distinguished Clinical Professor of Law Emeritus said. “I refuse to believe only African-American males are acting up.”
Yes, said R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.“
One of the most important things to keep in mind when discussing public health is the fact that this is fundamentally a community issue, not merely an individual health concern,” she said. “We are all in this together. What I do affects everyone around me, and what they do affects me.”
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.
William Hartman, a doctor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who is treating hospitalized Covid-19 patients with convalescent plasma, said FDA emergency-use authorization may prompt more hospitals to give the treatment earlier.
One committee member, Paul Hunter, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, offered this summary: “If I was looking at the data correctly, if you’re a middle-aged-to-older African American female medical assistant with diabetes and hypertension, it looks to me like you’re on top of the list to get the vaccine.”
Hart Posen, a professor who specializes in retail strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business, said Kwik Trip’s expansion in the Midwest can be attributed in part to its unique model. The company owns many parts of its own supply chain, like dairy facilities and bakeries. Posen said while this model has been part of the chain’s success, it also means that when the company expands, it’s likely to happen locally.
Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that larger operations are able to contain certain costs in ways that smaller operations can’t.
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.
In 2015, she and two friends — Khoa Tran and Kelly Montgomery — founded an online publishing company called JKX Comics. At the time, all three were pursuing PhDs in science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Each knew how tough it can be to explain research and to engage students in its details.
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.
“Data is (sic) suggesting that we may want to revisit the idea of projecting an image. Research shows that onlookers subconsciously register lack of authenticity. Just by looking at someone, we download large amounts of information others. We are programmed to observe each other’s states so we can more appropriately interact, empathize, or assert our boundaries, whatever the situation may require,” says Paula Niedenthal, Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We are wired to read each others’ expressions in a very nuanced way. This process is called “resonance” and it is so automatic and rapid that it often happens below our awareness.”
So this means some travelers will slip through the net. Skipping quarantine yet out in the community. Even if rapid (less accurate) tests miss some infected people, they can still have a significant impact on transmission says Dave O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dave O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said tests can miss lots of people with low levels of the virus and yet have a profound impact on transmission.
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.
“The main issue is transparency,” said Kathleen Culver, the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It would be a very simple move to disclose that to readers. That just builds trust with your readers.”
Molecules that fold are fundamental to life. ‘If you look at biology as a chemist, you can’t escape the conclusion that almost every complicated thing that biology does at the molecular level is carried out by a sequence-specific folded heteropolymer,’ says Sam Gellman from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the US.
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.”
Songbirds seem to enjoy singing. And while a great deal of research has investigated the development and production of birdsong, little is known about the motivation to sing.
New work out of Lauren Riters’ lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison teases out the relationship between singing, reward, and endogenous opioids in songbirds. The results suggest that studying songbirds can teach us about the shared neurobiological mechanisms underlying social reward in all vertebrates, humans included.
Noted: One approach focuses on improving teachers’ own mental health. Matthew Hirschberg and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that randomly assigning a group of aspiring teachers to a preservice course on mindfulness reduced those teachers’ implicit bias and fostered their provision of emotional, instructional, and organizational support to students. The 22-hour course emphasized kindness, compassion, and managing one’s emotions. Another mindfulness program, CARE for Teachers, saw similar results.
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: While getting rid of non-native plants is a pesky and time-consuming job for most humans, it’s no tough task for goats, according to UW-Madison grazing specialist Jacob Grace.
The CJC also received a report from Professor John Eason on an analysis he completed to determine the impact of jail population reduction on the incidence of COVID-19 in the jail as well as the projection of COVID-19 infection if the reduction had not occurred.
Professor Eason is currently an associate professor of sociology at UW-Madison. Eason previously served as assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, as well as assistant to associate professor of ociology at Texas A&M University. His primary research interests link race, health, punishment, and inequality to community processes.
His early research has shown that the jail infection rate would have been substantially higher had decreases in the jail population not occurred. Professor Eason will continue his research through May 2021.
“Working with the CJC to look at data and policy can bring the power of academia to the practical application of justice in Dane County” said Eason. “I am excited to work with CJC members bridging the gap between government and the UW.”
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.
Noted: Other staples of everyday life, especially the resumption of school, may differ widely in cities and towns across the country. Without data to measure the effect of different educational methods on the spread of the virus, the U.S. will soon embark on what amounts to “uncontrolled experiments,” said Tony Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW virologist and influenza expert Yoshihiro Kawaoka said that although he is confident COVID-19 will become endemic, he believes the lifestyle changes people have made should not become permanent.
“Once everyone gets vaccinated we should be able to go back to normal life,” he said, predicting that day might come “in three years, maybe four years.”
While getting rid of non-native plants is a pesky and time-consuming job for most humans, it’s no tough task for goats, according to UW-Madison grazing specialist Jacob Grace.
Chad Gibbs is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a George L. Mosse Graduate Exchange Fellow to the Hebrew University. His research focuses on Jewish resistance at the extermination camp Treblinka.
