Cell phone mobility data shows Wisconsin residents started traveling more during the first week of May. And that movement continued to increase after the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the state’s ’Safer at Home’ order on May 13, according to Oguzhan Alagoz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering professor who specializes in modeling the spread of infectious diseases.
Around 40 percent of all workers could earn more while unemployed than by returning to their previous job, according to a recent study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“This has become a rural versus urban issue,” said Kathy Cramer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist.Cramer recently wrote a book called The Politics of Resentment, focusing on her state’s urban-rural divide. Cramer said there’s general mistrust toward government regulations in rural America. And now coronavirus restrictions are being written that look to some like they were crafted only with city folks in mind.
One should never underestimate how small steps and “failing forward” can lead to major institutional change within the European Union. But it’s also wise not to overstate the significance of last week’s proposal. Perhaps the Merkel/Macron proposal will prove to be a watershed moment in European integration. But if the “Frugal Four” position is one pole of the bargaining among the 27 E.U. members and the Merkel/Macron proposal is the other, then Thomas Jefferson and James Madison have already won the political debate, and the eventual Compromise of 2020 will look absolutely nothing like that of 1790.
Mark Copelovitch is professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin — Madison. He is the author (with David A. Singer) of “Banks on the Brink: Global Capital, Securities Markets, and the Political Roots of Financial Crises”
“The main hurdle we have for finding trends is that the data are collected using the best technology at the time,” James Kossin, a NOAA scientist and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, said in a statement. “Every year the data are a bit different than last year, each new satellite has new tools and captures data in different ways, so in the end we have a patchwork quilt of all the satellite data that have been woven together.”
Prom, short for “promenade,” has its roots in debut balls and coming-of-age parties. By the post-World War II era, the dances were a fixture of teenage culture and considered a rite of passage, says William Reese, a professor of education and history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“You pick up a lot of subtle clues about how to behave in that profession, how to communicate like an engineer, how to work in teams like a nurse,” said Matthew Hora, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin who has studied internships. “Students are going to be missing that.”
Tribal law expert Richard Monette, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the Supreme Court’s line of cases have supported the concept of tribal sovereignty, but this issue could quickly unravel should Trump decide to get involved in favor of Noem and compel federal law enforcement to descend on the checkpoints.
The outlook for the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season also comes as researchers at NOAA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison identified a link between the growing intensity of tropical storms and human-driven climate change, mapping out the growing strength of hurricanes and typhoons over the past four decades.
To find out more about how wildlife is reacting to the enormous change in human habits, WPR’s Melissa Ingells talked to David Drake, a professor and wildlife specialist in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Nasia Safdar, an infectious disease expert with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said factors such as improved weather and the end of at-home schooling in some districts probably contributed to a general trend of increased movement.
According to Paula Niedenthal, a psychologist who heads up the Niedenthal Emotions Lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has studied facial expression extensively, there are three types of smiles: those that express pleasure at a reward or surprise, like when you get to see your friends in person after a prolonged separation (soon, please); those that convey a desire to be friendly, or at least non-threatening, which she calls smiles of affiliation; and those that show dominance, like the one Dirty Harry gives when he asks a certain punk if he feels lucky.
“When people approach a visualization, they have expectations of how visual features will map onto concepts,” said Karen Schloss, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Schloss and her team are working to tackle these implementation issues and understand trade-offs between deeply ingrained, communal familiarity and the next generation of color tools.
The study, by a group of researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, builds on previous research that found a trend, though not a statistically robust one, toward stronger tropical cyclones.
Still, the early data offer clues as to how coronavirus vaccines might generate a strong immune response. Scientists say that animal data will be crucial for understanding how coronavirus vaccines work, so that the most promising candidates can be quickly identified and later improved. “We might have vaccines in the clinic that are useful in people within 12 or 18 months,” says Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But we’re going to need to improve on them to develop second- and third-generation vaccines.”
Climate change is making tropical cyclones more intense with stronger maximum sustained winds, according to a new study led by scientists at NOAA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), who analysed nearly 40 years of enhanced infrared satellite imagery.
“Not every kid can be online and have a confidential conversation about how things are going at home with parents in earshot,” said Seth Pollak, director of the Child Emotion Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The study, by a group of researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, builds on previous research that found a trend, though not a statistically robust one, toward stronger tropical cyclones
“There are a lot of other things to do to change the workplace” to make it safer, said Alta Charo, a bioethics expert at the University of Wisconsin Law School who has served on several national and state ethics advisory panels.
Students and visitors enjoy the sunset on the campus of University of Wisconsin–Madison, along Lake Mendota, in July 2018. #
Dr. Ajay K. Sethi, an infectious disease epidemiologist and associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, cautioned that there is no evidence Gold and his co-investigators “used a scientific approach to test their hypothesis that ‘different exposure to vaccines between younger and older people may account for this different morbidity rate [in COVID-19].’”
But Dr. Jim Conway, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said readers “need to be cautious when people are trying to draw associations that don’t have a lot of biological plausibility.”
Richard J. Davidson, professor of psychology and neuroscientist at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has demonstrated that “when individuals engage in generous and altruistic behavior, they actually activate circuits in the brain that are key to fostering well-being.”
For years, people with irritable bowel syndrome symptoms were told the issues were related to stress, it was in their heads or they needed to exercise more, said Melissa Phillips, a clinical nutritionist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Health System’s Digestive Health Center.
That duplication freed up copies of genes once used in roots, leaves, and sensory systems to detect and digest prey. For example, carnivorous plants repurposed copies of genes that help roots absorb nutrients, to absorb the nutrients in digested prey. “That root genes are being expressed in the leaves of carnivores is absolutely fascinating,” says Kenneth Cameron, a botanist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The research team, lead by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, professor of pathobiological sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, inoculated three cats with the virus, and then introduced three other uninfected cats to the group. In five days, the three previously uninfected cats had caught the virus.
Dr. Patrick Remington, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Preventive Medicine Residency Program, said it’s a natural reaction to start testing the waters and evaluating risk after a period of intense measures.
He and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine led the lab experiment and published results Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Federal grants paid for the work.
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.
Robin Mwai just graduated from University of Wisconsin, Madison, and is trying to figure out that balance.
In the study, led by researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo, three felines were inoculated with the virus. A day later, three other cats were housed with the infected felines in pairs, and all three also went on to test positive for Covid-19.
Late in 1990, when Paul Kagame was hiding on the Congolese side of the Virunga Mountains preparing to invade Rwanda, his army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, were not the only formidable inhabitants of that densely forested volcanic range. The Virunga are also home to mountain gorillas. Soldiers are notoriously trigger-happy when it comes to wildlife, but Mr Kagame ordered his men not to shoot the apes. “They will be valuable one day,” he said.
(Tony Goldberg, virologist, School of Veterinary Medicine)
Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine and Peter Halfmann of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with other researchers from both the United States and Japan, conducted the study, in which three domestic cats were inoculated with the virus and three additional uninfected cats were put in cages, one with each of the inoculated cats.
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.
From Rebecca M. Blank is chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and chair of the Council of Presidents of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, a research, policy, and advocacy organization. Peter McPherson is president of APLU and former president of Michigan State University.
When Soyeon Shim was young, she wanted to be a teacher.
“I’d come home and gather all the kids in the neighborhood and play like we were at school and I was the teacher,” she says.
For a girl growing up in South Korea, there weren’t many other options. “Teacher or nurse,” Shim says. “But in the back of my mind, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur.”
There is no test fairy. Keeping the curve flat, having gone through so much pain to flatten it, is going to require a level of infection reconnaissance we don’t yet know how to achieve. We’ll need improvements in manufacturing, we’ll need more people to do the tracing work a test can’t, and we’ll need to get more out of the materials we have.For the last of those goals, group testing is a promising way forward.
Jordan Ellenberg (@JSEllenberg) is a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin and the author of “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking.”
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.”
, , , and
“It looks like cow numbers are still going up and milk production is still going up, so there’s countervailing forces,” Jared Hutchins, a researcher in dairy economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said by phone.
Seven years ago, a respiratory virus swept through the 56 chimpanzees in the Kanyawara community at Kibale National Park in Uganda, where researchers have studied chimp behavior and society for 33 years. More than 40 apes were sickened; five died. “Chimpanzees looked like limp dolls on the forest floor,” coughing and sneezing and absolutely miserable, recalls disease ecologist Tony Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “It was just horrendous.”
Thousands of UW-Madison students in the Class of 2020 imagined the culmination of their college career to end at Camp Randall Stadium. They pictured the moment they’d throw their mortarboards high into the sky and sit in Abe Lincoln’s lap for the quintessential photo opp.
“It’s safe to say (the election) didn’t help,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control and prevention at UW Health, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s medical arm. “But whether it actively hurt people, it’s very likely but not possible to really prove it.”
For the team at USF, the process started by leveraging open-source design materials from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and making adjustments according to feedback from their local hospitals. Now, Celestin has shared all that he and his team have learned about producing face shields online including directions, 3-D printing details and instructional videos.
Bob Cropp, emeritus professor of agricultural and applied economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the trend has already continued into 2020 despite price improvements at the end of 2019.
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
UW Health in Madison is treating patients who are a lot sicker, said Dr. Joshua Ross, executive vice chair of the BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
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.
Report AdvertisementWe do not know what will happen on the Korean peninsula if Kim Jong-un should die suddenly, but we do know that the American response will be hampered by erratic executive leadership, intense political partisanship, a contracting economy, an antagonistic relationship with China, and a strained relationship with South Korea. For all these reasons, the United States is in its weakest position in decades to handle such a crisis.
David Fields is the author of Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism, and the Division of Korea and the editor of The Diary of Syngman Rhee, 1904–34, 1944, published by the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History. Fields is currently the associate director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Quoted: “If you’re asking me as a public health official whether this increases the risk of transmission, the answer is definitive — yes,” said Dr. Patrick Remington, director of the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Preventative Medicine Residency Program. “That is a scientific fact, no matter how much protective equipment people wear.”
ong Gao, a geography professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been aggregating cell phone data that shows how far Wisconsinites are traveling each day as a way to understand if residents are following the state’s “Safer At Home” order. Gao said residents’ mobility has been reduced significantly in the past month, especially in urban areas like Dane and Milwaukee counties.
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.”
“We were surprised to learn that the COVID-19 pandemic in China did not seem to impact people with asthma as severely as we would’ve expected it to,” lead investigator Dr. Daniel Jackson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health said in a statement.
“We definitely can see shortage of products in the grocery stores,” said Jeff Sindelar, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences with an expertise in meat processing. If the larger processing plants continue to shut down or operate with limited capacity, certain products may be unavailable and others could get really expensive, he added.
“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.
