Quoted: “It could be that Zika is causing [microcephaly] with another factor, which is definitely possible. There could be other environmental factors, there could be co-infections that cause the unfortunate microcephaly, and at this point there is just not enough evidence to say it is causing it,” said Kristin Bernard, a mosquito-borne virus researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Overall, infectious disease researchers are pushing toward a more interdisciplinary approach to predict outbreaks. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at UW-Madison, is doing research to connect the dots between climate change and global health, offering a glimpse into the ways differing scientific fields can combine to build a proactive approach to mosquito-borne disease. His research has revealed a link between dramatic climactic shifts and the occurrence of viral outbreaks.
Quoted: “The arrival of Zika virus in Brazil is not good news,” wrote Thomas M. Yuill, an emeritus professor of veterinary science and wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: This column, prompted by a friend’s excruciatingly painful problem that seemed to emerge from nowhere and by a new review of studies on the topic published in JAMA by Dr. Wald, a gastroenterologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Quoted: James Hurley, a UW-Madison professor and expert on groundwater contamination, said Janesville’s approach is adequate.
David T. Anderson, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin who isn’t involved in the project, said the project in Greifswald looks promising so far.
“The impressive results obtained in the startup of the machine were remarkable,” he said in an email. “This is usually a difficult and arduous process. The speed with which W7-X became operational is a testament to the care and quality of the fabrication of the device and makes a very positive statement about the stellarator concept itself. W7-X is a truly remarkable achievement and the worldwide fusion community looks forward to many exciting results.”
Quoted: “What they’re recommending is that if you traveled to a place where Zika virus is, which is an ever-changing thing, that you avoid donating blood, if you’ve traveled there within 28 days,” said Dr. Daniel Shirley, a clinical professor of infectious disease at UW Health.
Shirley said that right now there is not a test to screen for the Zika virus in donated blood.
“Each test that they run on transfusion blood is a big process to institute that across the board, and so it would take some standardization and some testing before that ever happened,” Shirley said.
In adults, the symptoms of the Zika virus are relatively mild—rashes, fever, joint pain, malaise. Most who are infected may not even know it. But as this seemingly routine disease spreads across the Americas, so do cases of a much more severe problem: infants born with microcephaly. UW-Madison’s Kristen Bernard talks about a potential reason why.
Kristin Bernard, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who specialises in dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases, said that tropical diseases are often under-researched because they do not affect developed countries. “Now because [Zika is] potentially causing a pandemic, and it’s definitely widespread in the Americas, the WHO is concerned,the CDC and the NIH is concerned,” she said.
Noted: UW-Madison Prof. Majid Sarmadi helped with research and is featured in photo.
(Video) UW-Health registered dietitian Julie Andrews talks to Eden Checkol about a date night cooking class offered at the American Center.
(Video) Christie (Christine) Whelan is a professor of consumer science at UW-Madison. She talks about the Barbie’s makeover on Live at Four.
Dr. James Conway, a pediatric disease specialist with University of Wisconsin Health, told the Assembly health committee there are national guidelines for Lyme disease, and that this bill may be a solution looking for a problem.
Quoted: But if you’re really intent on sidestepping illness, meditation may be the best way to stay cold free, says Dr. Bruce Barrett, a professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Wisconsin. In his research, he’s found that mindfulness meditation can lower risk for common respiratory infections by up to 60% by combating immune system-crippling stress.
Quoted: Al McCoy, the JRW Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says what we’re witnessing is the first time in modern history the Chinese have systematically fought to capture this key ’heartland’ region, and thus unify the Eurasian landmass.
Quoted: “This is definitely a market that’s in a lot of flux right now,” says Jon Eckhardt, a professor in the UW-Madison School of Business and a co-founder of gener8tor startup accelerator.
Quoted: The zip code that a child is born into oftentimes determines their life chances,” said Nick Hillman, an author of the study and assistant professor of education leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Place matters because it reinforces existing inequalities.”
Quoted: Dr. Thomas O’Guinn of the University of Wisconsin has written several books on advertising and brand promotion. He has consulted with a wide range of corporations on advertising campaigns. He worked on public service announcements for the American Cancer Society, so he knows that advertising is not always about puppies and horses.
Noted: Field Day Lab is continuing to develop some of the ideas that were born in the workshop into free, open-sourced video games. The game designers said they aim to further engage students with an interactive learning environment.
“By engaging science teachers right from the start, we want to build games that will actually be used in classrooms,” said David Gagnon, the director of Field Day Lab, in the release. “Too many games languish because they do not fit what teachers want. With the teachers’ help, we want to build them right—right out of the gate.”
Noted: El Nino, a natural warming of parts of the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide, usually puts northeastern Brazil into a drought, as it did last year. Aedes aegypti does well in less-developed regions in droughts, because it lives in areas where poorer people store water in outdoor containers, said Jonathan Patz, director of the global health institute at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: While most Americans probably won’t see the inside of a Gulfstream, the campaign plane is a reality of early state primaries, said Ken Mayer, a presidential political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Lead also complicates water conservation. When customers use less water, that remaining in the system sits in the pipes longer, offering lead more opportunity to leach into it. “Systems can’t just go blindly into water demand reduction or conservation plans,” said Gregory Harrington, a UW-Madison professor of civil and environmental engineering. Lead’s relatively small part in the water system infrastructure highlights some of the long-term decisions ahead for water utilities — including Madison’s, which has about 900 miles of pipe, much of which is at least 50 years old. “I think the biggest decision they’re going to have to make is how to fund infrastructure over time,” Harrington said.
Quoted: Inclusion starts with ensuring that minority students are “not on campus in token amounts,” said Linda S. Greene, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has served in various administrative roles that included diversity work.
Quoted: “We thought the effect might be dampened with the groups actual media exposure prior to watching the program. Typically Muslims and Arabs are shown on television as more violent and aggressive and are shown in more stereotypical ways like as terrorists,” said Sohad Murrar, the study author. Murrar is a graduate student studying social and personality psychology in at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It was particularly exciting to see this positive shift it was quite a robust effect, and we think if people’s prejudice was dampened in this case, this could be applied to other target groups.”
Quoted: There is such a thing as good and bad debt—and the bad kind might be making us fear all of it, even when we shouldn’t. In a paper published in the most recent edition of the medical journal Pediatrics, Lawrence Berger, the director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, and Jason Houle, a sociology professor at Dartmouth College, suggest that when it comes to the youngest members of a household, not only does the nature of the debt matter a great deal, but certain types of debt are associated with better-adjusted kids.
Dr. Matthew Leota is a University of Wisconsin Madison Research Scientist who studies mosquito borne illnesses. He says they encountered the Zika virus while researching something else in Columbia. “I’ve been primarily working on a virus called Dengue virus and another virus called Chikungunya virus, which are transmitted by a mosquito called Aedes Aegypti, and so Aedes Aegypti is also the mosquito that is currently spreading Zika virus around the Americas, and so it was somewhat coincidentally that we came upon Zika virus working in Columbia.”
Noted: Charles Bentley, an expert on Antarctica at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Guardian that sea ice floats. “If someone says sea ice in the same sentence as related to sea level change, a red flag goes up.”
Quoted: Revel Sims, a gentrification scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is familiar with the Westlake area, says that commercial development of vacant properties can indeed lead to displacement, and that low-income people of color are the most vulnerable.
Noted: Comment from UW-Madison telecommunications expert Barry Orton. “At that rate, it will only take another 13.5 years to get to the $23 million level of federal broadband funding he rejected in 2011.”
Noted: Story includes quote from Gregory Harrington, a UW-Madison professor who specializes in water supply engineering.
Quoted: Robert Birmingham, a former state archeologist, a senior lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, and the author of two books on effigy mounds says the issue is “really about respect for indigenous people, pure and simple.” While Birmingham admits that human remains have not been found in some mounds, he says those are exceptions to the rule.
Quoted: “It’s no different than, ’Why do we teach science in school?’ ” said Diana Hess, who has researched civic education and students’ discussion of controversial political issues, and is dean of the school of education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Noted: A 45% fuel design has already been “validated” by bodies such as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the panel notes, so it could be used in relatively short order. And committee members stress that the step would be only a stop-gap measure to improve nuclear security in the short run. “This is not instead of, but complementary to the ultimate goal of using low enrichment uranium in all reactors,” said Paul Wilson, a committee member and nuclear engineer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, at the press briefing.
Researchers are working on a number of new weapons for combatting insect-borne disease. One potential is a common bacterium, wolbachia. Mosquitoes infected with it in laboratory studies are unable to transmit dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever. Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes are being introduced in Medellin, Colombia, part of a project aimed at eliminating dengue. Matthew Aliota, a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, will be studying the method’s prospect for controlling Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases.
Quoted: Matthew Aliota, a University of Wisconsin expert on the spread of mosquito-borne viruses, said scientists believe the cycles of Zika transmission are different in Uganda. While the Aedes aegypti aegypti in Latin America and the Caribbean prefers feeding on human blood, in Uganda the other type of the mosquito is spreading the virus. And that one prefers feeding on animals.
“Most of the transmission is in the animal cycle, with occasional spillover in humans,” said Aliota, who recently studied the eruption of Zika cases in Colombia.
Quoted: “I think a lot of people now perceive politics as even more acrimonious and sort of distasteful than they might have before social media,” UW Journalism Professor Chris Wells told 27 News.
Professor Wells researches the growing impact of social media on politics. He said people who comment or post a lot about politics share many of the same traits.
“Some research has traced their personality type to people who are really low in conflict avoidance. So they don’t mind getting in a fight. In fact, they even get a little bit of an adrenaline rush from it,” said Professor Wells.
(Video) UW Clinical Psychologist Dr. Julianna Zwiefel (clinical assistant professor, obstetrics and gynecology) visits Live at Four to talk about new recommendations for depression screening for women during and after pregnancy.
Quoted: UW-Madison professor of marketing Thomas O’Guinn said the goodwill write-down is not surprising.”Lands’ End, the name in the marketplace, just isn’t very competitive,” he said. “The name is worth about 20 percent less than we used to think it was.”
Quoted: “They’re pretty remarkable,” Will Jones, a labor historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said of the numbers.
UW Urban Canid Project leader and professor of forest and wildlife ecology David Drake provides strategies and tips for hazing coyotes.
Quoted: “I think a lot of people now perceive politics as even more acrimonious and sort of distasteful than they might have before social media,” said UW Journalism Professor Chris Wells, who researches the the growing impact of social media on politics.
Jonny Hunter: “To me, the most exciting thing in food is that plant breeders are starting to look at flavor instead of production agriculture. The work at Dawson Lab [Julie Dawson, assistant professor of horticulture] has the opportunity to transform how we use vegetables in our diet.”
What he’s doing: Head of the Underground Food Collective, Hunter is working with a University of Wisconsin–Madison horticulture program that teams up farmers, breeders, students and chefs to grow new and more flavorful vegetables.
Quoted: And, according to Andra Ghent, associate professor in the Department of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics at UW-Madison’s School of Business, baby boomers will be flooding the market in five to 10 years, creating even more demand.
Quoted: “Typically the way people have predominantly viewed snow was almost like a simplifying agent of the landscape,” says Jonathan Pauli from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A lot of what was known about winter only really considered what happened to the animals traversing its surface, even among ecologists, he adds.
Noted: The row with the GOP frontrunner arguably lends weight to the notion that Fox News is politically neutral but James Baughman, a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says this would not have factored in Mr Ailes’ decision. (Subscription required.)
Quoted: Michael Corradini, professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he hopes the bill will pass because he feels nuclear power is a better alternative to fossil fuels and ultimately help in the fight against climate change.
Noted: J. Michael Collins, co-author of the Finra report and professor of consumer finance for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Financial Security, said credit scores jumped to 629 from 612 in Georgia, while scores increased to 629 from 617 in Texas and to 640 from 632 in Idaho.
Quoted: Katy Culver, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches social media, said she has a hunch.”I would suspect it’s mainly issues of privacy law and data security,” she said.
Michael Wagner, also at UW-Madison, said he thinks Facebook hired Van Hollen to handle lawsuits.
Quoted: Joseph Glass, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in addiction and treatment, said expanding access to ADFs is not a panacea for the problem.
University of Wisconsin doctors said the bill will help break down barriers and could lead to more organ donors.
“We need to be cognizant of what subtle disincentives are out there and try to remove as many as possible and job security is really important,” said Dr. Dixon Kaufman, the Chief of the Division of Transplantation (and professor of transplant surgery).
Live at Four talks to UW-Madison’s Kristen Bernard and Matthew Aliota, both experts on Zika virus. Aliota is part of team that confirmed the Zika virus in Columbia and is working to find a way to stop it.
A new paper says that the first tests confirming transmission of the Zika virus in Colombia were carried out by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Colombia’s Universidad de Sucre.
Quoted: “Students living in poverty are not arriving to school in the morning on a level playing field,” said Seth Pollak, one of the study’s authors and a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison. “They are hungry, tired, stressed. No one is reading to them at home. The children we were studying didn’t even have crayons or Magic Markers at home.”
Quoted: “It’s a very nice study,” says neuroscientist Melanie Boly at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the work. “The conclusions that they draw are justified.”
Quoted: Barry Burden, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied third-party runs, notes how it is slightly easier for an independent candidate to get on the ballot in Wisconsin than it is in, for instance, North Carolina. But independent candidates often have to collect more signatures and pay higher fees than the presidential candidates from the two main parties.
Comment from Professor Emeritus Barry Orton: “The amount of money we’re talking about is insignificant to the amount of money needed to upgrade rural areas to real broadband … So, the increase is only slightly better than nothing.”
Noted: The next occupant of the Oval Office will have to do better. “Dictators at War and Peace,” a recent book by Jessica L.P. Weeks, has some good tips.
Quoted: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the amended photo ID requirement would place undue burdens on blacks and Hispanics and that because of racial disparities in areas such as education, income and access to transportation, they would have fewer resources to overcome obstacles in getting photo ID.
Noted: Politicians getting so far out ahead of public opinion is “pretty unusual,” said Barry Burden, a political-science professor and the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “When we see examples of true leadership it’s usually on topics that matter only to a segment of the population, or that have a technical element that makes [the issue] difficult for most of the public to understand.”
Quoted: “The rationale the governor and Legislature is giving is they’re streamlining the process, making positions easier to fill,” said Will Jones, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in labor history. “The question is, do you want to just fill them or put the most qualified people in those positions?”
