But that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate Halloween safely this year. University of Wisconsin-Madison Epidemiologist Malia Jones answers your questions — and offers some creative alternatives to enjoying the spooky season.
Quoted: Charles Cohen, a historian from University of Wisconsin- Madison, said Christopher Columbus represents more than landing in the Americas in 1492.
Quoted: Social scientist and professor in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin Dietram Scheufele said the first 2020 presidential debate differed from past debates.
Quoted: UW professor of chemistry Timothy Bertram said in an email to The Badger Herald there is a clear approach to help mitigate risks associated with the transmission of COVID-19.
More affluent families may have chosen private schools or homeschooling because they did not like the pre-packaged curricula that many public school systems are using for online learning, and they are unlikely to return to public schools any time soon, University of Wisconsin education professor Michael Apple said.
Thousands of mink have died at fur farms in Utah and Wisconsin after a series of coronavirus outbreaks.
Keith Poulson, Veterinary Diagnostic Lab featured.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an influx of students signed up to be poll workers with the Madison City Clerk offices and with Dane County, where Madison is located. The City Clerk’s Office said it has twice as many workers as in the past three presidential elections and are unable to accept additional applications.
As Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told NBC News earlier this week, “Wisconsin has become the poster child for how things can go wrong.”
Tessa Conroy, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, worries this imbalance may lead to women leaving the workforce altogether.
“I think that’s probably (Trump’s) biggest challenge,” said political scientist Katherine Cramer, who wrote an influential book about the shifting rural vote in Wisconsin called “The Politics of Resentment.” “Hillary Clinton was so unpopular with these voters … They just could not stand her,” said Cramer, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “(Joe) Biden is not as unpopular.”
According to Dr. Ajay K. Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin, the testing protocol at In My Elements was solid, though not entirely fail-safe. “Multiple rounds are better than a one-time test at the time of admission,” Sethi says. “The PCR test result indicates that virus was not detected on the day that testing was performed. If someone was exposed and infected the day before PCR testing, then the test may miss detection of the virus.”
“Wisconsin has become the poster child for how things can go wrong,” Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told NBC News on Oct. 7.
“I think any rejected ballot is a travesty. We don’t want any legitimate voter to have their ballot go uncounted because of an administrative mishap, a missing signature, a slow mail delivery,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who analyzed Wisconsin absentee data.
“We’re in dire straits,” Ajay K. Sethi, an associate professor in population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin, said earlier this week. “As far as number of cases per capita, we’re among the highest in the country right now, along with other areas of the Midwest including North Dakota and South Dakota.”
James Conway was joined by UW-Madison epidemiologist Malia Jones and Nasia Safdar, medical director for infection control at UW Hospital and Clinics to discuss what happens after the approval of a COVID-19 vaccine. Cap Times reporter Abigail Becker moderated the discussion.
Quoted: Professor David Canon, a political science expert from UW Madison, said it is possible President Trump is focusing on other states he needs to win in order to get to 270 electoral votes.
Meeting expectations for a new chief is a “tough ask,” said Keith Findley, a UW-Madison law professor who co-chaired a resident-led ad hoc committee that studied the MPD. The panel was formed after an officer shot and killed Black teenager Tony Robinson in 2015.
Noted: Some election scholars, however, cite the charged atmosphere. “We’ve got a perfect storm of open challenges from the president to the integrity of the election process, and the termination of the consent decree,” said Kenneth Mayer, an election law expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s not too hard to envision circumstances in which this really gets out of hand.”
Noted: “Our public education system is a massive hidden child care subsidy,” said Jon Shelton, a historian of the teaching work force at the University of Wisconsin.
Noted: Jo Carter, 50, a project manager at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who lives alone, said that, pre-pandemic, she would regularly get massages and pedicures to have consistent touch.
Dr. William Hartman, who is leading several Covid-19 clinical trials at University of Wisconsin Health in Madison, said it is unusual for patients to go home before they have finished their IV medications. But “the White House is a different situation, obviously,” Hartman said. “He can get that type of care there.”
But the stroke was not made public while Wilson remained in office. Neither was a urinary infection that “nearly killed him,” according to John Milton Cooper, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wrote “Woodrow Wilson: A Biography.
“I think, unfortunately, more people are going to have to die before our policymakers accept we need laws and policies that improve the health and safety of our state” — when lawmakers are personally tied to a person who has died or has been hospitalized, said Patrick Remington, former epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s preventive medicine residency program.
“It is vital at this point to preserve the capacity of the health care systems and, equally importantly, to protect the health care workforce,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at UW Health.
Ajay Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said that colleagues who went to cottages during the summer began reporting that they’d seen towns where no one appeared to be wearing a mask.
“We are perilously close” to the county’s peak of COVID-19 hospitalizations in April, said Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at UW Health. “It is vital at this point to preserve the capacity of the health care systems and, equally importantly, to protect the health care workforce.”
“When it’s not enforced, you’re seeing very low mask-wearing rates,” said Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer with UW Health, a health system that serves more than 600,000 patients each year. “When we do contact tracing, it’s not the people who have been wearing their mask and doing social distancing that we’re talking to.”
“It’s hard to know what’s going to be the next pandemic,” said Kristen Bernard, a UW virologist who studies animal-borne viruses, like the one that turned the world on its head this year. Bernard spoke with Kelly Tyrrell, an award-winning science writer and director of UW-Madison’s research communications, in a one-on-one session for the Cap Times Ideafest on preparing for the next pandemic.
Quoted: David Cannon, department chair of the UW-Madison political science department, explains.
Quoted: UW political science professor Donald Downs said he believed the various interruptions from Trump and the refusal to answer key questions from former Vice President Biden were key takeaways from the debate.
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.”
