Category: UW Experts in the News

The more the virus is allowed to mosey about, the more chances it will have to mutate and adapt. “Variants are always the wild card,” says Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Already, America is watching BA.2—the speedier sister to the viral morph that clobbered the country this winter (now retconned as BA.1)—overtake its sibling and spark outbreaks, especially across the northeast.

Monica Turner was cataloging that recovery. On a sweltering July day, Turner, a professor of ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, shuffled along a line of tape she’d stretched 50 meters across the ground. She and a graduate student were counting every lodgepole pine seedling within a meter on either side. We were far enough from paved roads that there was no telling which forest inhabitants might be lurking—elk, deer, moose, wolves. The air was so hot I wondered fleetingly if the bear spray canister on Turner’s hip might explode.

“There’s a lot of other cues that kids can use to parse apart how other people are feeling, like vocal expressions, body expressions, context,” says study author Ashley Ruba, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Jeannina Smith, a doctor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, cares for organ-transplant recipients, who are on immunosuppressive drugs and are therefore particularly vulnerable to disease; she told me that she lost more patients in the Omicron surge than at any previous point in the pandemic. “They did everything right—they got vaccinated and boosted and were so careful,” Smith said, and their loved ones must now mourn them “while society is saying that COVID is over.”

“Bongbong Marcos is as if Marcos Sr. rose from the dead,” said historian Alfred McCoy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who documented the Marcos dictatorship. “He is a surrogate for his father.”

“Life makes our planet an incredibly exotic place compared to the rest of the known universe,” says astrobiologist Betül Kaçar, whose research uses statistics and mathematical models to simulate ancient environments and gather insights into the origins of existence.

Erika Marín-Spiotta, a University of Wisconsin geography professor who holds “bystander training” workshops — which teach people ways to intervene when they see harassment or bullying — stressed the importance of disclosing incidents of misconduct to the broader community.

It “is important so that the community is aware that these behaviors are happening, they are unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” she said.

“The good part of the story is that we can do this,” said Andrea Dutton, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We know what to do – we just have to decide to do it.”

Ted Gerber, director of University of Wisconsin’s Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia, told USA TODAY that ostracizing historical figures doesn’t really help or hinder the situation in Ukraine either way.

In its latest report, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we need to cut emissions immediately and use technology to suck CO2 from the atmosphere. One of the authors, Gregory Nemet, tells Lewis Goodall that there’s reason to be optimistic.

“Paper was a very precious material in the pre-Industrial era, when it had to be made by hand,” said Beverly Gordon, professor emeritus of design studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We can’t kick this can down the road any longer,” said Andrea Dutton, a geoscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Such countries “can export a model that shows we can reduce emissions and still have high levels of well-being,” said Greg Nemet, a professor of energy and public policy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs. ”We can export policies that have played a role in achieving that.”

Such countries “can export a model that shows we can reduce emissions and still have high levels of well-being,” said Greg Nemet, a professor of energy and public policy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs. ”We can export policies that have played a role in achieving that.”

“We’re talking about offsetting about 10% of our emissions,” said Gregory Nemet, a public policy researcher who studies energy and climate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a lead author of the report. “The rest of the work, that’s 80 or 90% of the emissions reductions, has to be done elsewhere.”

That type of response is common these days among Russians, said Anton Shirikov, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who studies Russian state propaganda. The Kremlin’s misinformation “might not work in the sense that people believe everything, but people who are on the side of the government think that some of it must be true,” he said. Or they think, “We, the Russian army, cannot be that bad, so the other side must be bad.”

Serrano and Arce said dog owners should make sure their dog is up to date on its vaccines. There isn’t a vaccine dedicated to preventing illness from CIRDC as it is “not a vaccine-preventable condition” according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.