Tag: featured

Ajay Sethi, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and director of its Master of Public Health program, studies the spread of infectious diseases such as HIV and measles. He also studies the spread of public health conspiracies, which can quickly unravel the progress achieved by researchers.

For diagnostic tests that are designed to detect current infections, the possibility of some false-negative tests could also allow infected travelers slipping through the cracks, Laura Albert, an industrial and systems engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told ABC News.

“This may sound small at first, but it is the largest drop since World War II, as emissions have generally increased year-over-year, even during recessions,” Ankur Desai, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told USA TODAY.

COVID-19 has put science in a tricky spot. The good news, as National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt explains, is that scientific expertise is back in high demand: “When the chips are down and everything is on the line and you can be the next person in the hospital bed, it’s the experts that you want to listen to.”

DIETRAM A. SCHEUFELE, NICOLE M. KRAUSE, ISABELLE FREILING, and DOMINIQUE BROSSARD

David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, said the most interesting feature of the Los Alamos research is that the same pattern was seen in multiple locations. But he said “significant caution is warranted” because the data was not collected randomly. The vast majority of SARS-CoV-2 genomes in online databases come from Europe and North America, meaning strains from these regions are overrepresented in research

University of Wisconsin virologist Thomas Friedrich, who has spent years studying the evolution and transmission of the Zika virus, said a virus that makes its way into a highly susceptible population — for example, Europe in January — will spread like wildfire, quickly becoming the dominant strain in the region

Andrew Stevens, professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said shortages could happen because the meat supply chain is complex and relies on refrigeration in transport and production facilities.

Quoted:  “It’s going to be tough for some companies,” said Matthew Hora, director of the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions at the University of Wisconsin. “Converting to working remotely requires quite a bit of forethought as to how to design meaningful tasks and how to supervise them in a productive way.”

“Our brains are prediction generators, and when there are delays or the facial expressions are frozen or out of sync, as happens on Zoom and Skype, we perceive it as a prediction error that needs to be fixed,” said Paula Niedenthal, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who specializes in affective response. “Whether subconscious or conscious, we’re having to do more work because aspects of our predictions are not being confirmed and that can get exhausting.”

Charting the animal origins of human diseases like COVID-19 can be difficult and often leads to unexpected discoveries, explained Dr. Tony Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. During a January 29, 2020 presentation at the Wednesday Nite @ the Lab lecture series on the UW-Madison campus, Goldberg recounted the growing body of research into pathogen transmission between animals and humans over the past three decades.

Christine Whelan, Ph.D., professor in the School of Human Ecology at University of Wisconsin – Madison, told TODAY she believes that the falling importance of religion in today’s society also plays a role, evidenced in part by more unmarried couples living together.

“The idea of first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby — it could be any order you choose at this point,” she said. “For the last couple decades, we’ve seen ’choose your own adventure’ when it comes to marriage patterns.”

Quoted: “This is kind of the smoking gun,” says geochemist Annie Bauer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not part of the new study. “This is the most important evidence we can get [of early plate motion].”

Quoted: “What groups will do is say to supporters, ’Our ability to win this election is threatened by some action or inaction that the government is taking.’ That’s a way to generate energy among core supporters, even if the law doesn’t successfully change,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Katherine J. Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, coined the term “rural consciousness” in her 2016 book “The Politics of Resentment,” which is built on conversations she had with rural Wisconsinites over years about how they saw their communities as both overlooked and dictated to by Madison and Milwaukee.

Quoted: Ankur Desai, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of atmospheric sciences, said while the emission declines may be dramatic, they won’t have an immediate impact on the climate or the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Barry Burden, a professor of political science and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek that while Trump flipped Michigan from blue to red during the 2016 election, the 2018 mid-term elections signaled a possible shift as Democrats swept the state’s Senate and gubernatorial races.

Just over half of workers in Arizona, which had a relatively high minimum benefit of $172 before the crisis, are estimated to make more on unemployment than if they were still working, according to Noah Williams, the director of Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said officials have limited time to make improvements for Wisconsin’s upcoming elections, including a special Congressional race next month and the statewide primary in August.

Quoted: While other YouTube child performers tend to adopt the site’s popular blogging style, speaking directly to viewers as they unbox toys or shop in a mall, “Like Nastya” videos usually involve short, episodic plots. The storylines are simple enough for a three-year-old to follow. Heavy doses of sound effects, jump cuts and slapstick humour are like sugar for young audiences, said Heather Kirkorian, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies cognitive development and media. “It’s like ‘The Three Stooges’,” she said. “That plays really well with preschoolers.”

Quoted: “I think one of the most important things for people to be cautious about is there’s now going to be a proliferation of scams,” said Michael Collins, director of the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Every president wants to defend their legacy,” says Allison Prasch, assistant professor of rhetoric, politics and culture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “But the way that Trump is portraying himself rhetorically demonstrates a self-obsession in ways that I think are unprecedented

Quoted: “Every day it’s shut down it becomes more costly to reopen and recover, there’s no doubt about that,” said Ian Coxhead, an applied economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Depending on how long before we can begin to reopen the economy, there will be more people and more businesses added to the rolls of those who are not going to come back to the labor force of the business world.”

Qutoed: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is among the academics who have produced studies that found no partisan advantage to mail voting, said the Times analysis of the Wisconsin data did not align with any previous studies from states such as Colorado and Utah, which transitioned to fully vote-by-mail systems in recent years.

Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said officials have limited time to make improvements for Wisconsin’s upcoming elections, including a special Congressional race next month and the statewide primary in August.

Quoted: David O’Connor, who studies viral disease at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: “If a substantial amount of transmission occurs before people feel sick, how do you stop that? By the time people feel sick and seek care, all the testing and isolation in the world would be too little, too late.”

Quoted: In recent years, scientists have identified about two dozen genetic changes that might have helped make our brains not only bigger but incomparably capable. “It’s not just one quantum leap,” says University of Wisconsin-Madison paleoanthropologist John Hawks. “A lot of adaptations are at play, from metabolic regulation to neuron formation to timing of development.”