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The Years We’ve Lost to Covid

The New York Times

There’s good reason to use it, Dr. Murray and others said. “We’ve had clear difficulties figuring out what works best, when, and in what contexts,” said Adeline Lo, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who was an author on the international study. “This at least puts another fact on the table that may be helpful.”

After a Century of Dispossession, Black Farmers Are Fighting to Get Back to the Land

Mother Jones

And yet, despite violent backlash from Southern planters, Black growers managed to gain a toehold. The key was collective action, University of Wisconsin sociologist Monica White explains in her book Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement, 1880–2010. Launched in 1886 to organize landless Black farmers and to pool money to buy land and tools, the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union boasted 1.2 million members at its peak. At the Tuskegee Institute, the Alabama land-grant college founded by Booker T. Washington and other formerly enslaved people, agricultural scientist George Washington Carver pushed crop diversification, composting, and other proto-­organic methods to help sharecroppers “make enough profit to purchase their land, feed their families, and achieve economic autonomy,” White writes. Carver toured Alabama in an “agricultural wagon,” delivering lectures and demonstrations of his techniques.

After Derek Chauvin verdict, will police prosecutions change?

The Washington Post

“It’s one case out of thousands of cases involving police use of force, so we shouldn’t read too much into it,” said Keith A. Findley, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin. “But it’s nonetheless very important, because it is one in which, with the whole world watching, the justice system stepped up and acted to hold the police officer responsible for an unlawful use of deadly force.

COVID vaccines and kids: five questions as trials begin

Nature

Children rarely develop severe forms of COVID-19, and deaths from the disease are rarer still. On rare occasions — one estimate1 puts it at around one case in 1,000, although it could be even lower — kids who’ve experienced even mild infections can later develop a sometimes deadly condition called multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). “I’m tired of seeing sick kids. I want to see them protected,” says James Conway, a paediatric infectious-disease specialist and vaccine researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Herd immunity in US likely impossible, but vaccines can control COVID

USA Today

More people may yet decide to get vaccinated as it becomes clear how much protection it provides, said Ajay Sethi, a professor of population health studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“I try to be an optimist,” he said. “I don’t want to write off rural areas saying they’re forever going to be the communities refusing vaccination. Over time, that will change.”

Opinion | What American Workers Really Want Instead of a Union at Amazon

POLITICO

Research has borne this out. In a landmark 1994 survey, Harvard professor Richard Freeman and University of Wisconsin professor Joel Rogers asked more than 2,400 nonmanagement workers whether they would prefer representation by an organization that “management cooperated with in discussing issues, but had no power to make decisions” or by one “that had more power, but management opposed.” Workers preferred cooperation to an adversarial stance by 63 percent to 22 percent, a result that held even among active union members.

Best vaccine: How Pfizer became the “status” choice.

Slate

As the vaccines have rolled out, many experts have strenuously rejected the idea that there’s any “best” vaccine. “The best vaccine is the one that goes in your arm,” said Mary Hayney, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy who researches vaccination. “I truly believe that there is not a big difference among the vaccines, or a discernable difference. Whatever one is offered to you, take it.” (Again, Hayney spoke to Slate before the latest J&J news.)

Plant a Love of Nature in Your Kids

The New York Times

“Miss Carson” was Rachel Carson, who would later make history with her book “Silent Spring,” about the dangers of the pesticide DDT. Stanley Temple would become Dr. Temple, a well-known bird conservationist and a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I’ve always wondered: Should there even be billionaires?

Marketplace

But visualizing or trying to understand “how many” a billion dollars is doesn’t really help us understand any better how much money a billionaire has. Jordan Ellenberg, professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else,” said thinking about “how much” a billion dollars is is more useful. Basically, how rich is a billionaire?

The Vaccinated Parent’s Guide to Life With Unvaccinated Kids

New York Times

If this new and perplexing reality has added to your stress, you’re not alone. “It has really produced a ton of new anxiety, this process of reopening, re-engaging with social interactions after a year trying to avoid them,” said Malia Jones, a community health scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The vaccines seem to have provided a promising path out of the pandemic, she said, “but also, oh my God, we have to renegotiate every single one of these situations.”

It’s tricky to predict how long the rest of the clinical trials and approval processes will take, but Dr. James Conway, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health who oversees vaccination programs there, said that it’s likely that vaccines will be available for 12- to 15-year-olds this summer, for 5- to 11-year-olds in late 2021, and for babies over 6 months old, toddlers and preschoolers in early 2022.

Butterflies provide ‘extraordinary’ help pollinating cotton fields

Science

“This paper will drive people to look at the importance of butterflies as pollinators,” says Karen Oberhauser, a butterfly biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the research. If the results hold up in other crops, butterflies might be added to a short list of commercially important pollinators including honey bees, bumble bees, hoverflies, and beetles.

The genetic mistakes that could shape our species

BBC Future

“In the whole global accounting of Crispr [gene editing] therapies, somatic cell genome editing is going to be a large fraction of that,” says Krishanu Saha, a bioengineer at University of Wisconsin-Madison who is currently part of a consortium investigating the technique’s safety. “I mean, that’s certainly the case now, if you look at where trials are, where investment is.”

Why covid arm and other post-vaccine rashes might actually be a ‘good thing’

The Washington Post

“It doesn’t happen in the summer,” says Beth Drolet, professor and chair of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, who is studying the covid toe phenomenon. “The toes can stay blue for weeks, but eventually go back to normal.”

As the vaccine rollout accelerates this spring and summer, “we would expect to see a decrease in post vaccination covid toes,” says Lisa Arkin, director of pediatric dermatology at Wisconsin. “Covid toes are easily treatable with rewarming. They resolve spontaneously. Sometimes, we use topical medicines to treat inflammation in the skin.  Most patients experience mild swelling and itch, which resolves within days to weeks.”

Meghan Markle won’t travel to Prince Philip’s funeral. Experts say flying while pregnant during the pandemic can be risky.

Business Insider

Dr. Makeba Williams, an OB-GYN at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, told Insider flying during pregnancy is generally safe before 36 weeks, though more precautions are needed during the pandemic, especially if you’re not vaccinated.

“It’s unfortunate we have to talk about [flying while pregnant] in the context of a death,” she said, “but it’s relevant to a lot of people.”

Key ingredient in coronavirus tests comes from Yellowstone’s lakes

National Geographic

When Brock went to Yellowstone to study hot springs, he never imagined his work would revolutionize the study of DNA. “I was free to do what is called basic research … Some people called it useless because it was not focused on practical ends,” Brock said in an acceptance speech for an honorary degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “What use could there be in looking for living bacteria in hot springs and boiling pools at Yellowstone National Park?”

How Wisconsin turned around its lagging vaccination program — and buoyed a Biden health pick

Washington Post

These factors make Wisconsin well-prepared for the next phase of its immunization campaign, as the challenge of insufficient supply gives way to issues of access and vaccine hesitancy, said Jonathan Temte, associate dean for public health and community engagement at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. That’s because a robust network of small and midsized providers allows tailored outreach to vulnerable or resistant groups.

Vapor condenser copies beetle trick to harvest water

Futurity

“Water sustainability is a global issue,” says Zongfu Yu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, another leading corresponding author. “You can’t set out to solve the water problem without addressing energy.”

Why Being ‘Anti-Media’ Is Now Part Of The GOP Identity

FiveThirtyEight

Take, for instance, a recent study of tweets mentioning “fake news.” Over the course of 15 months, study authors Jianing Li and Min-Hsin Su of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found an uptick in the number of tweets that used the words “we” or “our” and “they” or “their” in conjunction with the phrase “fake news.” Essentially, the researchers concluded that online discussions about “fake news” were a way for conservatives to create a sense of group belonging (“This is the worst kind of fake news possible.

The Way Bosses Conduct And Communicate Layoffs Is Inhumane. There’s Another Way.

HuffPost Life

After layoffs, morale tanks and turnover increases. As Charlie Trevor, a professor of management and human resources at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, previously told HuffPost, how layoffs are handled can tell “a survivor a great deal about the company’s priorities and about the type of treatment one might expect moving forward.”

Naming The Gunman Glorifies His Crimes, Not Naming Him Could Undermine The Truth : NPR Public Editor

NPR

The language that develops in the immediate aftermath of a shooting becomes the predominant narrative among citizens, said LiLi Johnson, an assistant professor of gender & women’s studies and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Even dictionary definitions of the term [massage parlor] associate it with sex work,” she said in an email. “Given the fact that Asian and Asian American women are already sexualized in United States culture, uncritical use of the term ’massage parlor’ can reinforce those associations.”

Genome Sequencing and Covid-19: How Scientists Are Tracking the Virus

The New York Times

As machines improved, the impact was felt mainly in university labs, which had relied on a process called Sanger sequencing, developed in the mid-1970s by the Nobel laureate Frederick Sanger. This laborious technique, which involved running DNA samples through baths of electrically charged gels, was what the scientists at Oxford had depended upon in the mid-1990s; it was also what Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, was using in the early 2000s, as he and his lab partner, Tom Friedrich, tracked virus mutations. “The H.I.V. genome has about 10,000 letters,” O’Connor told me, which makes it simpler than the human genome (at three billion letters) or the SARS-CoV-2 genome (at about 30,000). “In an H.I.V. genome, when we first started doing it, we would be able to look at a couple hundred letters at a time.” But O’Connor says his work changed with the advent of new sequencing machines. By around 2010, he and Friedrich could decode 500,000 letters in a day. A few years later, it was five million.

Businesses May Benefit From Sharing Covid Testing Resources, Study Suggests

The New York Times

The study has “really profound implications, especially if others can replicate it,” said David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the analysis but reviewed a draft of the paper. As the pandemic enters its second year, he said, “We want to start using more sophisticated modeling and probably economic theory to inform what an optimal testing program would look like.”

AstraZeneca used ‘outdated and potentially misleading data’ that overstated the effectiveness of its vaccine, independent panel says

The Washington Post

David L. DeMets, a University of Wisconsin at Madison biostatistics expert, said that while he has no specific information on what occurred in this case, his experience serving on data safety and monitoring committees for nearly half a century was that it would be “very uncommon” for those experts to challenge a company or scientists on the content of a news release.

House bill does little to protect our local elections

The Hill

The bill makes huge strides for American democracy. No one should claim that dark money and large-scale statewide voting barriers aren’t noxious. Indeed, experts estimate that voter identification requirements may disenfranchise millions of Americans, and such laws disproportionately harm poor voters and voters of color. But no one, except the federal government, has the capacity to ensure fair federal elections at the local level. And sadly, For the People Act fails to do so.

Steven Wright served in the Voting Rights Section of the U.S. Department of Justice for five years. He currently teaches Law and English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

These Moms Work as Doctors and Scientists. But They’ve Also Taken On Another Job: Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation Online

Time

One common myth claims that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, like the ones from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, may cause infertility. The Dear Pandemic group received so many queries on this topic that its co-founder Malia Jones, an associate scientist in health geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Applied Population Laboratory, posted a video explicitly calling out the theory as a “scare tactic”: “I just want to call it what it is: it’s a fabrication meant to play on our emotions,” she said.

Amazing Video Shows Northern Lights Dancing in Sky Above Wisconsin Lake

Newsweek

As such, the northern lights can be spotted in northern U.S. states such as Wisconsin and Alaska, but also Pennsylvania. They have also been known to appear in states including Illinois, Oregon, Maine, Washington and Montana. According to a blog post by professor Jerry Zhu of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, some northern states can see a few shows of aurora borealis each year.

Fox weather forecaster Dean turns into fierce Cuomo critic

AP

Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, said those situations aren’t comparable.

“It might be wise for us to take this out of the context of Fox News and ask whether the weather personality on our local station should be calling for the arrest of our mayor,” she said. “I think that would make people profoundly uncomfortable and justifiably so.”

Are food and energy prices included in inflation rates?

Marketplace

So how is inflation even measured? Well, “there’s as many measures of inflation as there are economists studying it,” said Steven Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But the inflation rates we hear about most often do include health care, energy and food. Economists will sometimes look at a number called “core” inflation that takes out food and energy prices because they can fluctuate quite a bit.

Another main measure is the personal consumption expenditures price index, or the PCE. This measure, run by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, updates how items are weighted in its formula to better reflect consumer behavior, said Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Because of this, the PCE is in some sense more representative of the costs consumers face, Chinn said.

2 million Americans have been repaying their federal student-loans for 20 years

MarketWatch

“You’re working with a small number of people in the first place who were in it,” said Nicholas Hillman, an associate professor in the school of education at The University of Wisconsin-Madison. “A lot can happen in your life in 25 years; to whittle it down to 32 at the end, 32 people who must have stuck with that bureaucratic mess over this period of time, in some ways that’s not at all surprising because it’s a gauntlet.”

Other States Seek to Emulate Wisconsin’s Wolf Massacre

Sierra Club

Dr. Adrian Treves, a professor of environmental studies at UW-Madison and founder of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab, says the hunt was problematic for many reasons, but a few stand out. First, it throws off last year’s wolf count, which would have been used to create a new wolf management plan. “The data is now unreliable because a wolf that might have been counted could very well be dead by now,” says Treves.

EXPLAINER: Ex-cop trial to include ‘spark of life’ on Floyd

AP News

“I’ve never encountered this before,” said John Gross, an associate law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has worked as a public defender in New York City and taught criminal defense strategies at Syracuse University and the University of Alabama. “It’s pretty obvious how much potential prejudice that could have on the jury. It’s a little surprising to me this is potentially fair game in Minnesota. If it isn’t evidence of guilt, why is it there?”

COVID Relief Bill Could Cut US Poverty in Half, For Now

Voice of America

“It’s a huge change,” said Sarah Halpern-Meekin, a professor in the LaFollette School of Public Affairs and the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She said the nearest historical comparison in terms of impact on society would be the Social Security Act of 1935, which set up a system of guaranteed income for most retirees in America.

U.S. Lawmakers Suggest 25 Movies About Latinos to the Film Registry – The New York Times

New York Times

The list speaks to many parts of the Latino experience, including people who are native to the United States and its territories and those who migrated to the country because of its politics and interventions in Latin America, Theresa Delgadillo, a Chicana and Latina studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview.

Oprah’s deft royal interview shows why she’s still the queen

AP

“The thing that struck me first and I think will stay with me the longest is that she began the interview” with ethics-related disclosures, said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “That was such a fantastic way to be transparent about what we were going to see in that interview last night, and how we as viewers can judge its credibility.”

Pulling racist Dr. Seuss books makes kids? literature better and more inclusive, writes Meena Harris

The Washington Post

But the problem isn’t just the presence of stereotypes in children’s literature. There’s also an absence of inclusion. According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s school of education, about half of new children’s books in 2018 centered White characters while about 1 in 4 focused on people of color.

UW-Madison professor Tracey Holloway wants to educate moms on climate change through work with Science Moms

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

As a scientist, Tracey Holloway has spent a lot of time thinking about how climate change is going to affect the world.

As a mother of two young boys, she spends a lot of time thinking about what the world will be like when her youngest son — now only 10 months — turns 30.

“It always seemed like 2050 was so far into the future, but now my baby’s going to be 30 in 2050, and that’s not that far away,” she said.

Holloway, a professor at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been studying air quality and pollution for nearly 20 years. Now, she’s teaming up with other women scientists to help make understanding climate change accessible, forming a group called Science Moms.

Is it possible to have safe and equitable elections?

The Hill

Holding elections in the coming years will not be simple but it is within our grasp to have a safe and uneventful elections. Using proven scientific methods is the path to improvement.

Dr. Laura A. Albert is a professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Barry C. Burden is a professor of Political Science and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.