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An Advocate’s Perspective on Patient-Centered Care

Cancer.Net

Attorney Meg Gaines found a calling to be a patient advocate after her own cancer experience. Gaines’ self-advocacy helped her through her extended and difficult diagnosis and treatment process in the 1990s. After her successful treatment, she wanted to empower other people with cancer to advocate for their care. Her first opportunity came unexpectedly, when her oncologist asked her to help cheer up a patient who was feeling down. “I jumped on the bus and really was there in about 25 minutes,” Gaines told me in a recent interview. “[I] sat for most of the afternoon with her—talking about life, and death, and mortality and what it’s like, and family, and fear, and cancer.”

America needs independent judges

The Hill

Rather than enhancing the neutrality of administrative law judges, the executive order diminishes them by making their hiring subject to political considerations. It means that administrative law judges will be more akin to Roger Goodell than a Supreme Court justice, no longer bound by precedent and legal reasoning, but rather incentivized to decide cases to advance political, not legal, objectives. This calls for Congress to protect the continued independence of administrative law judges.

-Steph Tai is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin who represents amici in federal court and Supreme Court cases.

A Day Before Laos Dam Failed, Builders Saw Trouble

New York Times

Quoted: Both South Korean companies mentioned heavy rains in their descriptions of the disaster. But Ian Baird, a geography professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who specializes in Laos and has studied the hydropower project, said he believed the problem was either faulty construction, or a decision to store too much water in the dam’s reservoir at a time when heavy rain should have been expected. “When at the end of July do we not get rain in this part of the world?” he asked.

The weirdest things we learned this week: Curing syphilis with malaria, ejecting bears from planes, and discovering new beer yeasts

Popular Science

In 2009, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, launched a five-continent search for the yeast mama. This portion of the genetics is what gives lager style beer its primary characteristic: the ability to ferment cold. The first hit came from Argentina, a 99.5 percent match from a growth on a beech tree. They named it Saccharomyces eubayanus.

Is it OK to exploit poor Indians in the name of photojournalism?

Quartz

Quartz: “Journalists have obligations to relay information within real contexts. To put fake food—and what appears to be Western food and alcohol at that—in front of these subjects and staging them to cover their faces feels exploitative,” said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Paid internship program allows local high school students to explore careers

NBC15

The Madison Metropolitan School District partnered with UW-Madison to give kids in high school a chance to explore a future career in health care and veterinary medicine.The LEAP Forward internship program is part of the district’s Personalized Pathways initiative, designed to let kids try out their interests through a summer internship at one of seven campus sites, including the School of Veterinary Medicine and University Health Services.

Women’s reproductive history may predict Alzheimer’s risk

The Washington Post

Research at the conference also included updates to the associations between hormone therapy and Alzheimer’s risk. Previous studies had suggested that women who start taking hormones in their late 60s and 70s have a higher rate of cognitive decline, a paper out of the University of Wisconsin school of medicine and public health found that risk to be elevated specifically for women with diabetes.

Wisconsin researchers study genetic screening for Amish

AP

“We want to be able to offer very rapid, low-cost confirmatory testing of genetic disorders,” said Dr. Christine Seroogy, a pediatric immunologist and associate professor at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “Additionally, it could be cost-saving, in that we are diagnosing the disorders early, which saves the families lots of diagnostic testing.”

UW Madison addresses acceptance and affordability concerns over ice cream

Inside Higher Education

The University of Wisconsin at Madison is the largest and best known of Wisconsin’s 13 public universities, but over the past decade it has earned a reputation among some Wisconsinites for being expensive, liberal and hard to get into. The Wisconsin Alumni Association, equipped with a refurbished dairy van and gallons of ice cream, is trying to change that.

Confronting Implicit Bias in the New York Police Department

New York Times

Noted: But Patricia G. Devine, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin who runs a research laboratory on prejudice, said she was troubled by the spread of such training in the absence of probing, objective research. She said more study of officers’ unintentional biases is necessary to evaluate how training can impact their behaviors. Additional data is needed, she said, to determine if officers retain what they are taught and if civilians are benefiting from fairer policing.

Astronomers trace cosmic ray neutrino back to remote blazar

Astronomy Now

The initial detection by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, and subsequent observations of high energy radiation from the same source by space telescopes and ground-based observatories, indicate such black holes act as the particle accelerators responsible for at least some of those cosmic rays.“The evidence for the observation of the first known source of high-energy neutrinos and cosmic rays is compelling,” said Francis Halzen, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of physics and the lead scientist for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

What’s a Blazar? A Galactic Bakery for Cosmic Rays

Wired

Scientists have finally located a source of the most energetic rays. Starting with a single signal—a flash of light in a detector at the South Pole—and combining it with telescope data from a collaboration of over a thousand people, astrophysicists have traced the origin of some of Earth’s cosmic rays to a blazar, a type of galaxy, 4 billion light years away. “We’ve learned that these active galaxies are responsible for accelerating particles and cosmic rays,” says physicist Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Preparing your teen for college dorm life? Don’t over-pack

AP

Quoted: “Sometimes we don’t know what to do with emotions,” so parents channel them into packing and shopping to feel productive, said Beth Miller, a coordinator for residence life at University of Wisconsin-Madison who has been involved in campus life for the past 17 years. “But sometimes parents are purchasing things based on emotion and not necessarily based on need.”

Emotional support from families makes a difference for low-income students

Inside Higher Ed

Roksa and her co-author, Peter Kinsley, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin Madison, surveyed 728 students in their first year at a two- or four-year institution and who had applied for financial aid in Wisconsin. Roksa asked each student about the financial and emotional support they received from their families and how engaged they were on campus and collected information about their academic success to determine how the three measures were related. The results were recently published in Research in Higher Education. The abstract is available here.

A true wildfire ‘fix’: End bad incentives that nudge people into harm’s way

The Hill

Noted: In research published in March, scientists with the Forest Service and University of Wisconsin-Madison reported that 43 million homes now lie within the so-called WUI. After decades of new housing additions, the WUI footprint has swelled to 190 million acres — an expanse 10 percent larger than the state of Texas. Based on those trends, the U.S. wildfire problem could have as much to do with people’s preferences to live near forests and nature as it does a changing climate.

What parents should know to prevent, and deal with, bug bites

The Washington Post syndicate

Column by Dipesh Navsaria, associate professor of pediatrics: For children, summer brings the delight of endless hours outdoors, enjoying nature in full flourish. But that natural world includes insect life, some of which bite humans — including our children. While most are harmless, there are several issues that can cause concern. Let’s explore briefly the world of insect bites — when to worry, and when not to.

An Astrophysics ‘Breakthrough’ Will Be Unveiled Thursday. Here’s How to Watch.

Space.com

An international team of astrophysicists will reveal a “breakthrough” discovery Thursday (July 12), and you can watch the announcement live.The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced in a statement that it will host a news conference Thursday at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) to unveil new “multimessenger astrophysics findings” led by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, an NSF-managed facility at the South Pole.

Political Scientist: Wisconsin GOP Candidates In Tricky Position For Midterms

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: With their control of the reins of government at both the state and national level, Republicans have found themselves in a somewhat unusual and tricky position for the midterms this fall, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist. Eleanor Neff Powell, associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and faculty affiliate of the Elections Research Center, said that the upcoming election will present challenges for GOP candidates.

Air conditioning could add to global warming woes

Tribune of India

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison forecast as many as a thousand additional deaths annually in the Eastern US alone due to elevated levels of air pollution driven by the increased use of fossil fuels to cool the buildings where humans live and work.

Protecting Eagles’ Nests Are Key To Conservation

Science Friday

After the endangered species list was created and targeted conservation efforts began, eagle populations recovered. Researchers have found that one of the keys to recovery is protecting the nest of breeding pairs of eagles. Their results were published earlier this year in the Journal of Applied Ecology. Ecologist Benjamin Zuckerberg, an author on that study, explains what it means for the future conservation of eagles and endangered raptors.

UW Researchers: Zika May Increase Risk Of Miscarriage

Wisconsin Public Radio

Dawn Dudley, senior scientist in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the lead author of the study called the high rate “alarming.” While Dudly believes the true rate of human miscarriage in Zika-infected pregnancies is somewhat lower than what they found in monkeys, she said it’s also likely higher than the 8 percent figure.

Why You’re So Picky About Dating

cosmopolitan.com

Quoted: Dr. Catalina Toma, Associate Professor of Communication Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that according to her 2016 study on choice overload, there IS a thing as too many options. Here’s how she knows: participants in her study were each given the same six matches to choose from, but some were also given an additional 18 matches. It turns out, having more matches isn’t necessarily a positive.

What’s happening in Wisconsin politics?

Minnesota Public Radio News

MPR News host Kerri Miller talked to Mark Sommerhauser, reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal, and Barry Burden, professor of political science and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison about how policy has been put into practice in Wisconsin, and what that will mean for midterms this fall.

New thinking about cribbing

Equus Magazine

Quoted: “There are many non-cribbing horses kept in stalls next to cribbing horses who don’t learn this behavior,” says Amelia S. Munsterman, DVM, PhD, DACVS, DACVECC, of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Is Facebook a publisher? In public it says no, but in court it says yes

The Guardian

Quoted: Kathleen Culver, a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor, said Facebook must consider its ethical obligations outside of its legal responsibilities.But, she added, it was difficult to define Facebook’s media role using traditional terms like publisher: “What we’re navigating is a space where the language we have to date does not match the technology that has now been developed.”

Focus on Just One Sport Risks Burnout for Teens

US News and World Report

Quoted: “Today’s students have so many responsibilities and when you add specializing in a sport — with participation in school and club teams, practices, tournaments and lots of travel — there just aren’t enough hours in the day to finish their schoolwork, spend time with friends, enjoy other activities and get a good night’s sleep,” said lead author Eric Post. He’s an athletic trainer and research assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

SCOTUS: Kennedy’s Retirement Leaves John Roberts in the Swing Seat

The Weekly Standard

Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his long-awaited retirement from the Supreme Court on Wednesday, leaving conservatives to gush with joy and liberals to wring their hands. The vacancy sets off what will be a very interesting summer.  -Ryan J. Owens, J.D., Ph.D., is a political science professor at UW-Madison, a faculty affiliate at the University of Wisconsin School of Law, and the Acting Director of the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.

New Survey Reveals Equal Pay the Biggest Challenge Facing Women in Commercial Real Estate

AP

Quoted: “No one wants to work somewhere where they are undervalued or treated unfairly, and the RETS Associates survey shines a light on the fact that the CRE industry still has significant work to do in the area of gender equality,” said Andra Ghent, associate professor of real estate & urban land economics and academic director of the James A. Graaskamp Center for Real Estate at Wisconsin School of Business.

UW-Madison Official: Local Communities Responsible For Own Alcohol Culture

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: “The city council in Menomonie has looked at the situation downtown and decided it doesn’t fit within their morals. It’s not the standard they wish to see for their community,” said Julia Sherman, director of the Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project, part of the University of Wisconsin Law School. “It’s also very important for us to realize that every community in Wisconsin has the ability and authority to create its own alcohol environment.”