When masks cover a significant part of the face, how well can people understand the facial expressions of the people wearing them? Children can still understand, to an extent, the expressions on masked faces, according to a new study published in PLOS One.
Quoted: Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the forecast is slightly higher than last quarter’s estimate, partly because of a price rally for corn and soybeans seen around harvest time.
“Cash revenues, from soybeans especially, are up compared to where they were in September. It’s rare to have prices go up at harvest when everyone is bringing crops in,” Mitchell said
Quoted: “It’s a more hopeful view of well-being,” study researcher Cortland Dahl of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, a cross-disciplinary research institute, told HuffPost. “It’s the idea that you can take active steps that improve well-being, very much so in the way that you might take steps to improve physical health.”
Quoted: “When norms are violated it’s very hard to walk back, this can be insidious,” says Christine Whelan, a professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin. “My fear is it encourages further violations and a counter-reaction from the other side.”
Quoted: Some native plants are tied to the survival of a specific species. Like milkweed and monarch butterflies. Experts at UW-Madison say people planting milkweed in midwest have helped monarch populations survive.
“Basically right now we have thousands of people that are working to preserve monarch habitat, and i really think that without these efforts monarchs would be a lot worse off,” said Karen Oberhauser, director of the UW-Madison Arboretum.
Quoted: It’s “really a reflection of the history of how the United States came together in the 1700s, when it was a collection of colonies and states that agreed to have a kind of weak central government to coordinate their activities,” said Barry Burden, the Director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Quoted: “It’s really important that we don’t just anthropomorphize cows based on our human experience, but we do know that they can experience negative emotions like pain and fear that we want to minimize,” said Jennifer Van Os, an animal welfare scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “On the flip side, they can have positive experiences like pleasure, reward and contentment that we want to try to promote.”
Before 2020 closes out, the Cap Times got one more chance to check in with Malia Jones. The University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist has spoken with us multiple times this year to share her insights on the pandemic. In the summer, we talked about schools as they considered how to begin the 2020-21 school year.
Quoted: “Pandemic cooking is a real thing,” said Mark Stephenson, head of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Restaurants have used a lot of butter, but we’re seeing greater sales even going through retail now than we did the sum of retail and restaurants before that.”
Quoted: Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin who consulted on guidelines for prioritizing the COVID-19 vaccine for the National Academies of Science, said showing confidence in the vaccine is good reason for elected officials to be vaccinated early in the process. This may be especially true for Republican leaders. A December poll from ABC News/Ipsos showed Republicans were four times as likely as Democrats to say they would never get the vaccine.
“The amount of vaccine hesitancy that has been created in the last 20 years, 25 years is profoundly disturbing and goes deep into our society. So it takes a long time to build up confidence for people, and people who are unsure,” Charo told ABC News.
Quoted: Paul Barford, a University of Wisconsin computer science professor and co-author of a study on the effects of climate change on the internet, sounded less worried about cables sinking anytime soon, because of the financial interests of the telecoms firms involved with cables. But he still says planning now is important. From the get-go, “simply assessing what the current state of this infrastructure is would be something that the government could potentially motivate and potentially help to facilitate,” Barford said. And considering how “unbelievably expensive” these cables are, with costs running into “tens and hundreds of millions of dollars,” it would be a boon if the federal government poured in “funding to help facilitate new deployments or to harden current infrastructure.”
Noted: In this week’s episode of “Pitchfork Economics,” Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein spoke with Fenaba Addo, an associate professor at University of Wisconsin Madison whose research focuses on racial disparities and student debt.
Addo points out that “approximately 45 million borrowers” owe more than $1.5 trillion in college loans. And while a few disingenuous pundits would like to claim that figure is largely made up of people spending above their means to attend overpriced elite institutions, the truth is that only six percent of student loan borrowers owe more than $100,000.
For epidemiologists like Malia Jones, a lot about 2020 was foreseeable. The experts who dedicate their careers to studying diseases knew the story of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic long before the rest of us did, and they knew another such catastrophe could be imminent.
UW Health’s Dr. Jeff Pothof is hoping this will be the last of our State Street Doctor series. In the first segment we did back in March, Pothof answered any questions people had about COVID-19. In our second segment in July, doctors were learning more about the virus, so we did another.
On paper, 2020 wasn’t very different for Barry Burden. He taught political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and conducted research for its Elections Research Center. After finishing up the fall semester, he’s preparing for a month of much-needed winter break.
Noted: Kelsey Vandersteen, a trauma I.C.U. nurse at UW Health University Hospital in Madison, Wis., will receive her first injection on Wednesday — probably months ahead of her young daughters and husband, who works from home for a software company.
Even after her second shot, she doesn’t intend to change her behavior, including wearing a mask. She says she hopes this will model good behavior for others. Besides, she said: “I prefer the mask. It protects me from other stuff as well. We’ve been completely healthy — not a sniffle since March.”
Quoted: Voting by mail may seem more convenient, but it also requires the voter to act much earlier than they would if they went to the polls, said Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. You have to make sure to request your ballot early, and in some states, make sure you have a valid ID to do so.
“One problem with having a hard and fast election day deadline is that it actually forces people who want to vote by mail to submit their ballot before the campaign is over, and so it deprives them of the right to watch the campaign to its conclusion,” said Burden.
Quoted: Still, there was a high bar to clear for Pfizer and Moderna to get their vaccines in front of the committee. Dr. James Conway, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Global Health Institute, said he was “reassured and a little taken aback” at the rigorous safety and effectiveness data the FDA required to issue an emergency approval for a COVID-19 vaccine, even at a time when President Donald Trump and others in Washington were pushing to speed the process up.
Quoted: One key benefit of therapy is the close relationship between the patient and the provider, which fosters a strong sense of belonging. “You’re meeting with somebody with whom you have a real relationship—this is a person who cares about you, seeks to understand you, is warm and accepting,” says Bruce Wampold, a professor emeritus of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “And for many people, this is particularly healing.”
Noted: Dr. Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said travel bans need to be carefully considered because they can cause fear and disruption. Such restrictions can buy time, he said, but may not always be effective. He noted, for example, that Trump’s oft-cited ban on travel from China occurred after the virus was already circulating in the U.S.
Quoted: According to Dominique Brossard, a science and risk communication expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, that is because, “Humans do not make decisions based on facts. Facts alone do not change our mind.”
UW-Madison School of Business professor Moses Altsech does a survey on behalf of First Business Bank with businesses across Wisconsin.
UW Professor of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine & Public Health James Conway leads UW Health’s immunization efforts as the programs’ medical director. After serving as a scientific advisor for both Moderna and Pfizer this summer, Conway now works on a Wisconsin Disaster Medical Advisory Committee about the state’s COVID-19 vaccine allocation and distribution and also works in Dane County’s distribution efforts.
Our brains, generally speaking, operate qualitatively, not quantitatively, explains Dominique Brossard, a professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who focuses on risk communication. In short, that means we tend to think in terms of emotion, not numbers.
Voting by mail may seem more convenient, but it also requires the voter to act much earlier than they would if they went to the polls, said Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. You have to make sure to request your ballot early, and in some states, make sure you have a valid ID to do so.
One key benefit of therapy is the close relationship between the patient and the provider, which fosters a strong sense of belonging. “You’re meeting with somebody with whom you have a real relationship—this is a person who cares about you, seeks to understand you, is warm and accepting,” says Bruce Wampold, a professor emeritus of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “And for many people, this is particularly healing.”
There is concern, though, that changes in behavior may not last long enough to prevent another big rise in coronavirus cases, said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and associate professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said Trump has clearly proven popular in the state, even though he lost this year. “There is a pretty big coalition of voters in Wisconsin who are attracted to Trump’s style and to his messages,” Burden said. “It looks like Johnson is kind of mimicking that style in pursuing these odd or peripheral stories, so maybe it’s possible to assemble that Trump coalition even after Trump’s out of office.”
Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at UW-Madison, said it’s unusual for employers to mandate a vaccine. She thinks they should rely on voluntary compliance. “There’s going to be enough people who have some reason why they can’t necessarily take the vaccine that an employer who issues a mandate on pain of being dismissed from employment is going to wind up having to essentially negotiate with many individual employees about their particular circumstances and have to dance around these very confusing rules,” said Charo. “In many ways it’s much easier for an employer to simply say ‘I’m going to encourage it, I’m going to strongly recommend it. I’m going to make it easy for you’.”
If you’re feeling the weight of quarantine fatigue, here’s something that may help you get through another virtual holiday. This could be our last one, according to Dr. Jeff Pothof, UW-Health’s Chief Quality Officer.
Malia Jones and “Dear Pandemic”: Jones is a researcher who works at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work centers on infectious disease and social epidemiology, demography and geography, and she is also a creator of the project “Dear Pandemic.”
UW-Madison political science professor Howard Schweber said rules limiting installations like the representatives’ Christmas tree in public spaces are constitutional if content-neutral, allow sufficient alternative avenues for expression and serve a legitimate purpose unrelated to suppressing expression.
Does that mean this particular storm has been fueled by climate change? Jonathan E. Martin, a professor in the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, cautioned against drawing quick conclusions.
The study is “a major contribution” to our understanding of migration in ancient Mesoamerica and violence following Teotihuacan’s collapse, says Sarah Clayton, an archaeologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the research.
College administrators have pointed to declining birth rates in Wisconsin and the Midwest overall as one driver in current and projected enrollment declines. UW-Madison Applied Population Laboratory researcher Sarah Kemp said while high school enrollment data from the 2019-2020 school year shows an average decline of 3 percent the number of 12th grade students was relatively unchanged compared with the previous school year.
“Imagine that the patient, who has some degree of cognitive impairment, says ’yes’ to the vaccine but the surrogate says ’no’ and tells the nursing home, ’How dare you try to do this?” said Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
“While all of these people that care about monarchs are doing a lot of positive things, there are a lot of negative things happening at the same time,” said Karen Oberhauser, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin who has studied monarchs since 1985. “We’re running as fast as we can to stay in the same place.”
“Finding a virus in a wild mink but not in other wildlife nearby likely indicates an isolated event, but we should take all such information seriously,” said Tony L. Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. He added, “Controlling viruses in people is ultimately the best way to keep them from spreading to animals.”
There’s also an element of uncertainty about what the monarch numbers collected by surveyors really mean. “The year-to-year fluctuation in monarch numbers makes it difficult to put an exact number on the degree to which monarch populations have declined,” says Karen Oberhauser, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has studied monarchs since 1985. Data from as far back as the 1950s show “it is very clear that monarch butterflies are a very high fluctuation species in terms of their population dynamics,” Agrawal agrees. Populations that crash can recover. Females lay hundreds of eggs, only two of which need to survive for the population to survive. And because four generations occur per year, even if most of the butterflies in Mexico die one year, “there is opportunity for the population to recover.”
“There’s no such thing right now as the national popular vote. It’s just a bunch of 50 state races that get added together,” explained Barry Burden, political science professor and founding director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Gutmann said he’s particularly excited about one study, led by Dominick Ciruzzi at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in which a team attached accelerometers to street trees to measure how much rainfall they intercept on their leaves. The study showed that rainfall bound up in trees reduced the amount of water that reached the ground below. When taken together, thousands of trees in an urban area could be a sustainable tool to mitigate flooding related to heavy rains.
“Research would confirm again and again, when people feel that what’s asked from them is not actually followed by those in power, there’s a sense of betrayal that will occur,” said Dominique Brossard, professor and chair of the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“But a lot is happening that’s taking away habitat at the same time,” said Karen Oberhauser, a restoration ecologist and arboretum director at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “It’s like we’re running fast but staying in the same place.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Barry Burden thinks it’s important that voters know – no matter whom they picked on the ballot – they didn’t get to vote for the president and vice president.
Noted: The new Harris Poll was commissioned by DailyPay, the Bipartisan Policy Center Funding Our Future campaign, and The Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin. The survey was conducted online from Nov. 17-19 and surveyed 2,075 U.S. adults ages 18 and older, among whom 593 are millennials between the ages 24-39.
“This data shows the resilience of younger generations in the face of the second major economic shock of their financial lives,” added J. Michael Collins of the Center for Financial Security, referring to this year’s pandemic and the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
Quoted: “Research would confirm again and again, when people feel that what’s asked from them is not actually followed by those in power, there’s a sense of betrayal that will occur,” said Dominique Brossard, professor and chair of the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Much-anticipated COVID-19 vaccines are being distributed across Wisconsin starting in mid-December. Though widespread availability of the vaccine is still months away, we know you may have questions.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has assembled a panel of experts from the University of Wisconsin to help answer questions from readers.
Kenneth Mayer, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin Madison, said Cicchetti’s approach is “ludicrous.”“The analysis assumes that votes are all independently and randomly distributed,” he said in an email. “This is going to be used in undergraduate statistics classes as a canonical example of how not to do statistics.”
Panelists included Dr. Darrick Hamilton, professor of economics and urban policy at The New School; Dr. Fenaba Addo, professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dr. Tom Shapiro, professor of law and social policy at Brandeis University; Hilary Shelton, senior vice president for advocacy and policy at the NAACP; and Ashley Harrington, director of federal advocacy at CRL.
Research from the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the University of Wisconsin Madison has shown that killing gray wolves actually leads to three times more livestock attacks, a finding supported by behavioral studies elsewhere. “The wolf pack is a family,” says Adrian Treves, who runs the lab. They cooperate to defend territory and raise pups. When one is killed, the destabilizing effect ripples through the pack. Reproductive age goes down, and naive juvenile attacks on livestock go up, according to Colleen St. Clair, a biologist at the University of Alberta.
Bob Jeanne, a wasp expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the authors are “correct in calling this the first example of tool use by a honeybee… I think they’re applying a reasonable definition.”
“We haven’t harnessed that enough, the great creativity of our students,” said Dominique Brossard, chair of the department of life sciences communication at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who examined student behavior for the National Academies. “This is the age where individuals want to be socially active, want to act for good, are aware of the needs of community.”
The new fusion road map identifies technological gaps and nearer-term facilities to fill them (see partial list, below). “By identifying [a power plant] as a goal, that can trigger more research in those areas that support that mission,” says Stephanie Diem, a fusion physicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. For example, in a fusion power plant a barrage of energetic neutrons would degrade materials, so the report calls for developing a particle-accelerator–based neutron source to test new ones.
University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Steve Deller said the shortage continues to be a problem in Wisconsin. Deller pointed to a mismatch between the industries and positions that have seen large job losses during the pandemic, and those that are in need of workers.
“This is a short-lived nuclide that only exists in the early solar system,” says Noriko Kita, an expert in meteorite aging from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That advanced vintage makes chondrules the second-oldest recognizable objects in our solar system, after calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs), specks of white in meteorites that are thought to have formed one to three million years earlier by condensing out of the gas that surrounded our young sun.
The average age of onset of Huntington’s disease is 39 years old, said Jane Paulsen, a research faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Neurology Department who is leading a study to determine if the disease can be prevented or delayed. Paulsen said she has seen cases of Huntington’s in people as young as 2 and as old as 82.
As President-elect Joe Biden continues his transition to the White House, House Democratic progressives and centrists are fighting over how to frame the party’s agenda for the public. For instance, progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said “I can’t be silent” and will continue speaking about policy goals ranging from defunding police departments to passing the Green New Deal. But centrist Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) argues that if party members keep using such language, Democrats will get “torn apart in 2022.”
-Jianing Li, Mike Wagner, Lew Friedland, Dhavan Shah
“Baltimore never really wrestled with the demons of segregation,” said Lawrence Brown, a visiting sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
“I am always a bit suspicious of silver bullets in public health,” Michael Fiore, one of the country’s leading experts on tobacco use and smoking cessation, told me. “Things are rarely silver bullets. But reducing the nicotine in cigarettes to near-zero is as close to a silver bullet as you get.”
Four years later, those divisions are as solid as ever, and a pandemic has shown us how deadly they can turn. Cramer, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, watched the virus hit the state’s cities first. Amid a tornado of misinformation and political polarization, many people in more rural—and more conservative—corners of the state became skeptical about whether the pandemic response they were hearing about was designed for them.
