Tag: featured

Yoshihiro Kawaoka put into words a question that worries many scientists watching this situation, the worry that underscored Fouchier’s insistence that this outbreak must be stopped as quickly as possible. “We do not know whether the bovine H5N1 virus will become established in cattle,” wrote Kawaoka, a flu virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “If it does, will it evolve to adapt more towards ‘mammalian-like’ influenza viruses? … Will it pose a risk to human health?”

Article co-authored by Melissa Skala, professor of Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In the fall of 2020, Jessica Calarco encapsulated what so many families were experiencing during the pandemic in a memorable phrase: “Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. At the time, Calarco, now an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (her promotion to full professor takes effect later this summer), was studying how parents were navigating the pandemic, a project that included two national surveys and hundreds of hours of interviews

Calarco, who’s previously published A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum (2020) and Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School (2018), began researching what became Holding it Together prior to the pandemic, while an associate professor of sociology at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. The pandemic changed the scope of her work somewhat (go figure), and she’s also switched institutions, to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She agreed to chat about her process and findings, and their implications for student success.

Providing exceptional school meals for millions of US children won’t come without a collective struggle, and our analysis of school food politics around the world reminds us to raise the bar in what we’re fighting for.

-Jennifer Gaddis is an associate professor in civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Are there enough paid internships?No. Only two out of three internships offer compensation for students at four-year colleges. The situation is worse for students at two-year institutions, where 50% of internships are unpaid.

1. Matthew T. Hora

   Associate Professor of Adult and Higher Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison

   Hee Song Project Assistant at the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“It’s still pretty cool if you saw one, but it’s not — get ready — something out of the blue,” said Dan Young, director of the University of Wisconsin’s insect research collection.

Podcast includes segment with Daniel Hummel, a fellow in the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, said it was a bad call. And, she added, if she were at the Post she would have argued for the paper to be more forthcoming. While Martha-Ann Alito has the right to her own opinions, a flag like that shouldn’t be on display outside the home of a U.S. Supreme Court justice, Culver said. “It’s a flag that flies in the face of the neutrality that the Supreme Court is supposed to be observing,” she said.

Christian support for Israel emerged in earnest during the ’60s and ’70s, Daniel Hummel, a research fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and expert on U.S.-Israel relations and American evangelicalism, says. He is also the director for The Lumen Center, in Madison, Wis., which focuses on the study of Christianity and culture.

“There’s enormous economies of scale by going big as China did,” Gregory Nemet, a professor of public policy at the University of Wisconsin who has studied the global solar industry. When the investments resulted in overcapacity, suppressing the profitability of China’s companies, Beijing was willing to ride out the losses.

One challenge facing medical research lies in the sheer number of different PFAS chemicals that have now entered the environment, each of which can have slightly different health effects, said Steph Tai, associate dean at the University of Wisconsin’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and an expert in the use of science in environmental protection and litigation.

“Don’t drink raw milk — that’s the message,” said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who led the study.

University of Wisconsin–Madison food science professor John Lucey told The Hill that the avian flu outbreak among cattle is a “serious concern” for public health because of the raw milk risk.

As Medicare prepared to begin paying for the care of elderly patients in July 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson used the offer of massive federal spending as a tool to finally end the most glaring racial discrimination in hospitals nationwide. It remains “one the most prominent and powerful cases of linking federal funding to other policy goals,” said University of Wisconsin professor Tom Oliver, an expert on health care policy changes.

Marie-Louise Mares, a professor of communication arts at University of Wisconsin-Madison, feels similarly.

Column by Bryna Godar and Harry Isaiah Black, staff attorneys with the State Democracy Research Initiative, University of Wisconsin Law School.

Sara Lazenby, an institutional policy analyst for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that might be why students and their parents were much more focused on professional outcomes than they used to be. “In the past few years,” she said, “I’ve seen a higher level of interest in this first-destination data” — stats on what jobs graduates are getting out of college.

In an email, Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of “Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net,” said: I asked 2,000 parents from across the U.S., “Do you think children are better off if their mother is home and doesn’t hold a job, or are children just as well off if their mother works for pay?” Fifty-two percent of dads and 47 percent of moms said it’s better for kids if their moms aren’t working for pay.

Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said focusing on health care plays to Biden’s strengths.

Perot was “well received” in the 1992 debates, Tamas told ABC News. But he may have turned off a portion of the electorate who saw him as “not highly scripted or well prepared” on key issues, according to Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin.

“Whenever you have a regulation, someone will find a way around it,” said Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and a professor of large animal internal medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Column by Xueli Wang, professor of higher education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“It’s complicated, because biodegradability changes depending on where you’re at and what happens to your plastic,” said George W. Huber, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who works on solutions for plastic waste. “And there are companies who make claims about biodegradable plastic that aren’t backed up.”

Colleges are also moved by research tying internships to better salaries and job prospects after graduation, said Matthew Hora, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies internships. “The market has been flooded,” he told me.

According to Ryan Owens, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the decision “highlights the uncertainty going into the election and likely Democratic weakness. It’s unclear who will hold the White House in 2025.”

“Even if only 85% of Black voters instead of 90% vote for Biden, additional turnout helps Democrats,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Concern No. 1 is just whether he will get a smaller share of the Black vote than he did last time around.”

Scientific discovery doesn’t always require a high-tech laboratory or a hefty budget. Many people have a first-rate lab right in their own homes – their kitchen.

“Small, transient episodes of loneliness really motivate people to then seek out social connection,” said Anna Finley, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute on Aging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But in chronic episodes of loneliness, that seems to kind of backfire” because people become especially attuned to social threats or signals of exclusion, which can then make it scary or unpleasant for them to interact with others.

“Lawns seem to draw as much irrational hate as they do love these days,” said Paul Robbins, dean of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are.”

“The dairy industry has never had to deal with something like this before,” says Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and a former dairy veterinarian. “This is probably going to be the most important outbreak in my professional career.”

Cicadas are very loud indeed. Extension entomologist P.J. Liesch of the University of Wisconsin-Madison told CBS 58 in Milwaukee that a grove of trees with a bunch of singing and screeching cicadas could reach 70 to 80 decibels – a similar volume to a vacuum cleaner.

If you find them, remove them before they start flowering or seeding, said Susan Carpenter, native plant garden curator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. Native plants should be your first choice to replace invasives, but you can also opt for noninvasive ornamentals, Carpenter said.

Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, has studied how best to teach African American students. She told us an encouraging teacher can change a life.

“We still don’t fully understand some of the core aspects of their biology,” said PJ Liesch, an entomologist at the University of Wisconsin. Though there are theories about the insects counting the years through the compounds in tree sap, soil temperatures and their own underground communication, none manage to completely unravel the cicada’s mystery.

“If it had liquid water in the past, and if we can really confirm that, then yes – Venus would likely be the planet I would place my bet on,” University of Wisconsin-Madison planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye tells Inverse.

Column by Mohan Qin, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

If concerns around bird flu persist, milk’s relevance may continue to slide. Even the slightest bit of consumer apprehension could cause already-struggling dairy farms to shut down. “An additional contributing factor really doesn’t bode well,” Leonard Polzin, a dairy expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Division of Extension, told me. For the rest of us, there is now yet another reason to avoid milk—and even less left to the belief that milk is special.

I spoke to Tyler Lark, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose 2022 study questioned ethanol’s climate credentials and concluded that it can be more carbon-intensive than gasoline. He told me that the margins on ethanol’s benefits are thin enough that, depending on the model you chose to calculate its effects, the results can be radically different. His paper prompted rebuttals from the Renewable Fuel Association, an industry group, and the United States Department of Agriculture.

Column by Barry C. Burden, professor of Political Science, Director of the Elections Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“It’s very kind of New Age with spiritual components,” said Bruce E. Wampold, a counseling psychology professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has studied the effectiveness of psychotherapy in clinical trials. “It’s on the periphery of what I would say evidence-based treatments would be.”

Finding viral fragments in milk from the commercial supply chain is not ideal, but the genetic material poses little risk to consumers who drink milk, said David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Lots of farms aren’t raising their hands to be tested because they don’t want to be known as having an infected herd,” said Keith Poulsen, director of the veterinary diagnostic lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

But “the 2023 numbers seem to indicate that bump is over and we’re back to the trends we were in before,” said Nicholas Mark, a University of Wisconsin researcher who studies how social policy and other factors influence health and fertility.

Column co-authored by Tiffany Green, associate professor of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology, UW-Madison.

Adrian Treves, an environmental science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the origins of today’s rampant predator killing can be found in America’s early European settlers, who brought with them the mentality that wolves were “superpredators,” posing a dangerous threat to humans. “We’ve been fed this story that the eradication of wolves was necessary for livestock production,” he said.

Ancient matzo wasn’t as crackerlike as it is today. It was likely similar to a pita, said Jordan Rosenblum, a religious studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “There’s a 2,000-year history of putting stuff on matzo and eating it,” he said.