UW In The News

Russia is nearly isolated online. What does that mean for the internet’s future?

There are other problems for Russia, such as finding replacement switches, routers and other hardware. At least one bank began stockpiling equipment before sanctions hit. The typical life cycle for such parts is two to three years, said Paul Barford, a computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin.

Bacon buying guide: What uncured, center-cut and other package terms really mean

According to Jeffrey Sindelar, meat extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison: “The primary reason most bacon is not lower sodium is due to consumer preference. A majority of consumers expect bacon to have a certain amount of saltiness. So unless all bacon is lower in salt, some companies will lose market share if they reduce sodium (while others do not) since the majority still prefer ‘regular’ salt bacon. It’s all consumer driven.”

Mutations on infectious COVID variants, explained

But what makes the mutation “weird and unique” is that it appears to set the stage for other variants, says Kyle Wolf, a biophysicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. SARS-CoV-2 infects cells faster when it has more RBDs flipped up—but that also makes its spikes more likely to fall apart before they find their target. A virus with DOUG appears to be more stable: When its RBDs up, they wedge together, holding the spike proteins together until it finds a host, Wolf explains. The mutation could be required for other variants, which opened the spike even further, but needed a way to stabilize the package, says Sophie Gobeil, a structural biologist at Duke University.

‘We’re going to fight’: Trans people express outrage over anti-LGBTQ measures in Texas, Florida

Elliot Tebbe, a University of Wisconsin assistant professor with a Ph.D. in counseling psychology and a trans man, said he and other trans people feel “a sense of exhaustion (from feeling) constantly under attack by different legislators and all these different policy initiatives.”

OE parasite affecting hand-raised monarch butterflies

“It’s been shown that infected butterflies have lower flight ability and suffer from all of these fitness ramifications, but this is the first time it’s really been shown on a population level that a really important feature of monarch biology is affected by the rate of infection,” says Karen Oberhauser, director of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum.

Supermassive Black Hole is Blowing Bubbles at the Heart of the Milky Way

Ellen Zweibel, professor of astronomy and physics at the University of Wisconsin, explained why the findings could rule out the starburst model. She said the typical duration of a nuclear starburst, and therefore the length of time into which a starburst would inject the energy that forms the bubbles, is about 10 million years.

Biden says gas prices are going up: Will people pay more for Ukraine?

But Thomas O’Guinn, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Business who specializes in political branding, said…(behind paywall.)

For global brands, pulling out of Russia is a complicated decision

According to Enno Siemsen, a professor of operations management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, if the conflict is short and companies want to reopen their operations, “all the investments you’ve made over years are basically gone. If you want to reenter the Russian market, you’re starting more or less from scratch.”

For global brands, pulling out of Russia is a complicated decision

According to Enno Siemsen, a professor of operations management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, if the conflict is short and companies want to reopen their operations, “all the investments you’ve made over years are basically gone. If you want to reenter the Russian market, you’re starting more or less from scratch.”

How taxes can go towards presidential campaign funds

Federal income tax forms offer taxpayers the option to check a box to give to a fund for presidential campaigns. NBC News’ Joshua Johnson speaks with Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about how many candidates are avoiding the fund as it comes with strings attached.

Bicycle Infrastructure Saves Lives In More Ways Than One

“Because of our over-dependence on the private motorized vehicle, we are leading sedentary lifestyles,” said Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “According to several reports from the World Health Organization, because of that increase in sedentary lifestyles there are almost four million premature deaths every year.”

Climate Action Could Avert Nearly Half The World’s Premature Deaths

The pollutants driving the climate crisis are also making people sick, and as the crisis worsens people are getting sicker. That’s the bad news.Now the good: Mitigating the climate crisis, according to a global health expert, would eliminate nearly half of the world’s premature deaths.“When you think about what it means to get to a low-carbon economy, and what it could mean for our health, this is an amazing opportunity,” said Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Solving the global climate crisis is the greatest health opportunity of our times, and a low-carbon future could improve global health and achieve economic benefits.”

Amazon deforestation is fueled by meat demand. Shoppers can make choices that help.

The United States banned beef imports from Brazil because of unsanitary conditions found in some of the country’s meatpacking plants and animal health concerns in 2017, but the Trump administration reversed the measure in February 2020. Holly Gibbs, a land use scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, explained the move came after on-site inspections by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service found improvements in practices at six Brazilian beef production plants. Since then, she says, exports to the United States have been climbing to pre-ban levels. Calls for a ban were renewed recently in response to a reported outbreak of mad cow disease in Brazil.

Why America Became Numb to COVID Deaths

Richard Keller, a medical historian at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says that much of the current pandemic rhetoric—the premature talk of endemicity; the focus on comorbidities; the from-COVID-or-with-COVID debate—treats COVID deaths as dismissible and “so inevitable as to not merit precaution,” he has written. “Like gun violence, overdose, extreme heat death, heart disease, and smoking, [COVID] becomes increasingly associated with behavioral choice and individual responsibility, and therefore increasingly invisible.” We don’t honor deaths that we ascribe to individual failings, which could explain, Keller argues, why national moments of mourning have been scarce.

Studying sharks’ immune systems could lead to powerful human medicines

Aaron LeBeau regularly visits a local grocery store’s seafood department to stock up on tuna, salmon and octopus. But LeBeau isn’t shopping for himself: He has hungry sharks to feed at his laboratory.

Though they might look mean, “sharks are, to put it lightly, misunderstood,” says LeBeau. He’s a professor of pathology (the study of diseases) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Nurse sharks — the kind he studies — are “probably the most docile sharks in nature. Pretty much all they do is sleep and eat.”

The link between depression and misinformation explained

In general, there’s strong evidence that mindfulness-based interventions, including MBCT, are an effective treatment for depression. A meta-analysis of conducted by Dr. Simon Goldberg, an assistant professor in the department of counseling psychology and faculty at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, indicates that such programs are as effective as psycho- and behavioral therapies.

Two beers a day damages human brains as much as 10 years of aging

“There is some evidence that the effect of drinking on the brain is exponential,” said co-corresponding author Remi Daviet, now from the University of Wisconsin. “So, one additional drink in a day could have more of an impact than any of the previous drinks that day. That means that cutting back on that final drink of the night might have a big effect in terms of brain aging.”

James Thomson, renowned UW scientist who brought the world human embryonic stem cells, to retire in July

James Thomson, the University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist who first isolated and grew human embryonic stem cells, inspiring a generation of researchers, and igniting a furious ethical debate that he would later help resolve, will be retiring in July after more than 30 years with the school.

Return to pre-pandemic normalcy not yet on the horizon for many immunocompromised Americans

“I see the devastating effects of this viral infection every day as it leads to death and disability of my patients who were previously leading healthy, active lives,” Dr. Jeannina Smith, medical director of the transplant and immunocompromised host service at the University of Wisconsin, told ABC News. “Omicron was not mild for our patients.”

From Birds on Venus to Swimming Robots, NASA Unveils Mind-Blowing Projects

Elena D’Onghia and her University of Wisconsin, Madison, team’s project focuses on protecting astronauts from harmful cosmic rays and solar radiation. Just as Earth’s magnetic field does that for life on our planet, this project, CREW HaT, involves magnetic coils that can be carried by a crew producing an external magnetic field to divert harmful charged particles.

What Impact Do Video Games Have on Strategic Military Advantages?

“Anyone who is in a position where they would benefit from greater than normal cognitive control, top-down attention, peripheral visual processing would benefit from playing action games, which are primarily first- and third-person shooter games,” Dr. C Shawn Green, a professor of psychology at University of Wisconsin-Madison wrote in the article. “That’s obviously a huge set of individuals, from those involved in combat, to people like surgeons or pilots.”

Fact check: Japanese agency data confirm warming on Hachijojima

Elizabeth Maroon, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told USA TODAY this is because temperature patterns are informed by both natural variability and the influence of accumulating greenhouse gases.

State of the Union Preview

Allison Prasch, an assistant professor of rhetoric, politics and culture at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, previewed President Biden’s first State of the Union address, and talked about historic examples of presidents addressing the nation in the midst of threats to economic and political stability both at home and abroad.

Gravel Institute Deleted Tweets Reveal a Progressive Group’s Ukraine Meltdown

But most galling to Professor Yoshiko Herrera of the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia, was the video’s failure to explore Moscow’s interventions into Ukrainian affairs since independence. She described the video as “naive” and an example of the kind of “whataboutism” Putin promotes: pointing out questionable parties and pieces of legislation in other countries, and thereby reducing scrutiny on far worse abuses on the part of Russian authorities.

‘Will never give up’: Ukrainians in Wisconsin express shock, resolve at Russian invasion

Quoted: Putin’s regime has increasingly been willing to use violence to maintain his power, the result of which has played out over the last week, said Yoshiko Herrera, an expert in Russian-U.S. relations and a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“He is very threatened by the fact that Ukraine has had two successful revolutions kicking out Russia in 2004 and 2014,” she said. “It’s an example to his regime of the people rising up and getting rid of a dictator.”

Despite longstanding disagreements over the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, that debate is a bit of a distraction now, she said.

“Everything changed last week,” she said. “States have disagreements with other states, (but) it’s a complete different matter to invade your neighbor. It takes the discussion of historical grievances and it puts that aside and says, ‘We’re dealing with a state now that is willing to invade another country.'”

Joke’s on them: how Democrats gave up on rural America

The wealthy voted for Trump, and Trump rewarded them with tax cuts. But rural political conservatism relates to rural economic conditions in other, more complicated ways. During the Great Recession, Katherine Cramer, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, spent several years conducting ethnographic studies on rural, often white, Wisconsinites. She found a persistent sense that rural areas and the people who live there are mistreated, creating a recognizable “rural consciousness”. People felt not only that they had been abandoned by the government, but that cities and cultural elites hoarded power and prestige at the expense of rural areas.

Pilgrim’s Pride Ex-CEOs Face Felony Trial Over Alleged Price-Fixing In Chicken

“Cartels make a lot of money, even after you deduct what they have to pay out for damages,” says Peter Carstensen, a professor of law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “If the government can’t win a criminal conviction here, it will significantly decrease the probability of more criminal cases.”

Updating Dating Helps Tackle Deep-Time Quandaries

This long-term process set the stage for the evolution of eukaryotes—organisms that encase DNA within their cellular nuclei—which eventually began to breathe oxygen and grow into bigger organisms, said Annie Bauer, an assistant professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Whether this happened roughly simultaneously across the globe or in geographically isolated pockets at different times is still being studied. By comparing the timing of oxygenation from place to place, she said, scientists can determine whether these first whiffs arose together as a globally synchronous exhalation or as discrete puffs.

White House Isn’t Rushing to Copy Democratic Governors’ New ‘COVID-Normal’

“The White House and CDC are in a no-win position,” said David O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin. “Not only is there not a one-size-fits-all solution that they can recommend to the entire country, but there are a spectrum of reasonable options given a receding Omicron surge in late winter.”

GOP redistricting battles in Alabama and other states raise concerns about voter suppression

David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who focuses on redistricting, told CNN, “It’ll be harder for states to follow what we thought was settled law when it comes to creating minority-majority districts or even influence districts.”