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Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Is Devastating Birds, and Humans May Be Next

The Daily Beast

“We’ve been thinking a lot lately about this strain because of its potential to be a zoonotic disease” spread from animals to people, Adel Talaat, a microbiology researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told The Daily Beast. Talaat has been working on vaccine development for avian influenza that one day could be given to poultry.

Bioacoustics is revolutionizing conservation

The Atlantic

One of the biologists researching this issue was Zach Peery, from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Peery had been tracking the spotted owl’s decline since 2001, and he knew that a team in the state of Washington had been experimenting with ARUs to help identify northern spotted and barred owls there.

A prolific fundraiser, Rebecca Blank reshaped UW-Madison research, finances

Wisconsin State Journal

Rebecca Blank’s influence can be seen in some unexpected places.

It’s embedded in a nationwide breast cancer database that examined how long patients could delay surgical treatments at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s noticeable in research endeavors she helped make possible. It’s found, subtly, in portraits hanging at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

A Supreme Court justice’s paragraph could mean weaker protections for voters of color

NPR

But the judge cited Gorsuch’s one-paragraph opinion and decided the case had to be thrown out. That’s because, the judge said, the Voting Rights Act does not explicitly say private groups can bring Section 2 lawsuits. Dan Tokaji, dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School, says that literal interpretation of the law doesn’t make sense.

What is red light therapy? Benefits, uses and more

NBC News

“In terms of red light therapy for facial rejuvenation, we don’t really have many human studies to look at,” said Dr. Apple Bodemer, a board-certified dermatologist and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “most experts say that they don’t know yet if red light therapy is effective for all its claimed uses. Most say that the studies so far show some potential,” but ultimately, more studies are needed to prove its efficacy.

Democracy has a customer-service problem

The Atlantic

Think income inequality, an extortionate health-care system, and rural decay. Think, too, about the senses many people have that the sources of power—both public and private—are far away and unresponsive, and that when something goes wrong, they’re on their own. Katherine Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has argued that this anger breeds a “politics of resentment.”

Voting Rights Act’s private right of action is in danger

NPR

“I think it’s an open question only in the sense that no court has ever felt compelled to expressly say that people whose voting rights have been violated can sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because everyone — and I do mean everyone — understood that that’s what Congress meant,” says Dan Tokaji, dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School, who has written about private individuals suing for violations of federal election laws.

Camel antibodies could help pioneer future medicine

Knowable Magazine

Every four months, pathologist Aaron LeBeau scoops into a net one of the five nurse sharks he keeps in his University of Wisconsin lab. Then he carefully administers a shot to the animal, much like a pediatrician giving a kid a vaccine. The shot will immunize the shark against a human cancer, perhaps, or an infectious disease, such as Covid-19. A couple of weeks later, after the animal’s immune system has had time to react, LeBeau collects a small vial of shark blood.

Slamming the Door on Scholarship

Chronicle of Higher Ed

“It’s a significant rupture,” said Theodore P. Gerber, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and director of its Wisconsin Russia Project. “It seems like there’s not going to be a happy ending any time soon.”

Sexual attacks against teen girls increased in 2021, CDC report found

NBC News

“We really don’t have that robust evidence-based, supportive, trauma-informed education at scale in the United States. And at this particular time in history, it is especially needed given what we’re seeing,” said LB Klein, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Such a curriculum would be included in what’s known as comprehensive sex education.

How to let go of a grudge

Vox

Grudges exist on a spectrum, says Robert Enright, a professor in the department of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin Madison and a founding board member of the International Forgiveness Institute. Some grievances don’t impact your daily life, but you remember them nonetheless. These surface-level grudges are easier to relinquish, Enright says. Others take root in the soul and can grow into hatred.

Mother Nature Has the Best Climate-Fixing Technology

Bloomberg

Gregory Nemet, a co-author of the “State of Carbon Dioxide Removal” report and a public policy professor at University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me that pretty much all successful CO2 removal to date has come from natural climate solutions like protecting forests, planting trees and better managing soils. So I asked him, “Why not invest heavily in that?” To my mind, supporting and expanding the extraordinary potential of natural ecosystems to perform carbon removal is what investors and policymakers should be focusing on — not fantastical machines.

If ChatGPT Can Replace What We Teach, We Should Teach Something Else

Newsweek

If AI that doesn’t really understand medicine (or much of anything else) can pass the test for being a doctor, then we need to change what we teach doctors—and everyone else. – David Williamson Shaffer is the Sears Bascom Professor of Learning Analytics and the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Data Philosopher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

It’s Time We Talked About Our Bambi Problem

Mother Jones

In the forests of Wisconsin and Michigan, research suggests, expanding whitetail populations are responsible for at least 40 percent of the change observed in forest structure. “It’s rare in ecology to find one factor that accounts for so much change,” says Donald Waller, a retired professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who has studied white-tailed deer for over 20 years.

Northeast U.S. Latest to Experience Polar Vortex Temperatures

The New York Times

“I wish I had a clear answer,” said Steve Vavrus, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin. With Jennifer Francis, now at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts, Dr. Vavrus wrote a seminal 2012 paper that presented the idea that Arctic warming was affecting the polar vortex. “Unfortunately the state of things is still ambiguous,” he said.

Why Bad Bunny’s Grammy nominated Un Verano Sin Ti is such a big deal

Vox

“There was a particular audience consuming this and it was divided along generational lines,” said Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a Caribbean historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is penning an article for the Bad Bunny Enigma, an academic journal analyzing the star. “It’s really interesting how Bad Bunny became this global superstar while in conversation with things that were happening in the archipelago. He was basically making music for people in the archipelago, referencing things that only Puerto Ricans would understand.”

The EPA is updating its most important tool for cracking down on carbon emissions

NPR

The EPA uses higher dollar amounts for deaths in higher-income countries and lower dollar amounts for deaths in lower-income countries. Or, as Paul Kelleher, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin, puts it…PAUL KELLEHER: The badness of a death from climate change in India is treated as not as bad as exactly the same death if it happened at exactly the same time in the United States.

Opinion | Why I’m not worried about my students using ChatGPT

The Washington Post

Lawrence Shapiro is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

ChatGPT has many of my university colleagues shaking in their Birkenstocks. This artificial-intelligence tool excels at producing grammatical and even insightful essays — just what we’re hoping to see from our undergraduates.

Race to vaccinate rare wild monkeys gives hope for survival

ABC News

“There are people who say we shouldn’t touch nature, that we shouldn’t alter anything. But really, there are no pristine natural habitats left,” said Tony Goldberg, a disease ecologist and veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who supports vaccinating wildlife when it’s safe and practical. “People are waking up to the magnitude of the problem and realizing they have to do something.”

100-year floods: The metric behind America’s infrastructure is out of date, and thanks to climate change we’re paying the price.

Slate

“It’s kind of a mess, even in the absence of climate change,” said Daniel Wright, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin. Wright helped Madison adopt climate-conscious design guidelines and works with the magically named U.S. Office of Water Prediction. “Almost all of [the models] assume that data varies from year to year, but underlying drivers are not changing over time. Those assumptions just don’t hold.”

Direct Air Capture Could Help Pull Carbon Dioxide From the Sky

Business Insider

“The next decade is crucial because the amount of deployment required in the second half of the century will only be feasible if we see substantial new deployment in the next 10 years,” Gregory Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a coauthor of the report, said during a press call.

There’s a path away from toxic polarization: shared problem-solving

The Hill

It is within our grasp to solve the problems facing our nation and world. To get there, we must reject the lure of polarization and dogmatic certainty and instead, seek interdependence and collaboration. The world depends on it. –Clif Conrad is a professor of Higher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author (with Todd Lundberg) of the book “Learning with Others.” Todd Lundberg is an associate director in the Center for Teaching, Learning & Mentoring at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Cancer blood test using DNA fragments brings hope for earlier detection, say researchers

Fox News

A University of Wisconsin­–Madison research team was able to detect cancer in the bloodstream in most of the samples tested, it said. Muhammed Murtaza, professor of surgery at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health based in Madison, Wisconsin, led the study, which was published recently in Science Translational Medicine, a medical journal from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, according to the study’s press release.

Weird winter weather: Thundersnow, frost quakes and more

The Washington Post

“Very intense winter storms can trigger the rare phenomenon of thundersnow,” says Michael Notaro, an atmospheric scientist and director of the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “Thundersnow events usually bring infrequent lightning flashes and quieter thunder as the heavy snowfall muffles the sound.”