UW In The News

The Mysterious Cause of a Deadly Illness in Sanctuary Chimps Revealed

“It was not subtle—the chimpanzees would stagger and stumble, vomit, and have diarrhea, sometimes they’d go to bed healthy and be dead in the morning,” says Tony Goldberg, a disease ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to Ann Gibbons for Science.

McDonagh completing degree during breaks in Lightning schedule

Pandemic offers Lightning’s Ryan McDonagh opportunity to finish his degree

Lightning defenseman Ryan McDonagh has found a way to make the most out of the new normal brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. He’s finishing his college degree.

McDonagh, who is 18 credits short of getting his personal finance degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is now taking online classes to put himself on a path to graduate.

House Exiles Marjorie Taylor Greene From Panels, as Republicans Rally Around Her

Removal from committees is usually reserved for lawmakers who are facing indictments or criminal investigations or who have otherwise broken with their party in a particularly egregious way, according to Eleanor Neff Powell, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Rescue dog breeds take DNA tests for the Puppy Bowl on Super Bowl weekend

But as some experts put it, defining doggie ancestry can be tricky. “To a large degree, the accuracy of breed composition tests very likely depends on the degree to which a dog is ‘mixed,’” Lauren Baker and Susannah Sample, both of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in an email to PopSci. “From a veterinarian’s standpoint, we find these ‘breed identification’ tests are fun for many owners. But having not been evaluated by the scientific community, they shouldn’t be used to alter medical decisions.”

Chimps first, then humans? Scientists worry about new fatal bacterium.

“There are very few pathogens that infect chimpanzees without infecting humans and very few pathogens that infect humans without infecting chimpanzees,” said Tony Goldberg, one of the authors of the paper and a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of epidemiology.

Chimpanzee-Killing Disease Linked by Researchers to New Species of Bacterium

Led by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the disease was reported on February 3rd in the journal Nature Communication.The study suggests that the disease is caused by a newly discovered bacterium that comes as the world struggles with the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As world reels from coronavirus, UW researchers report on chimpanzee-killing disease, raising concerns about jump to humans

A new and always fatal disease that has been killing chimpanzees at a sanctuary in Sierra Leone for years has been reported for the first time by an international team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Parting The Clouds

A professor of psychiatry and human ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Raison believes depression isn’t a single thing but a cloud of related mental and physical states unique to each person; there is no one symptom that every depressed person experiences. “It’s all kind of hunt-and-peck,” he says. “We have an array of treatment options that we just start throwing at people because we don’t know why, biologically, they’re depressed.” Meanwhile depression is growing to epidemic proportions in the United States, with few truly novel treatments approved over the last three decades.

A mysterious disease is killing chimps in West Africa. Scientists may now know the culprit

Disease ecologist Tony Goldberg was stunned in 2016 when he learned that a mysterious infection was swiftly killing chimpanzees at a lush sanctuary in Sierra Leone’s rainforest. “It was not subtle—the chimpanzees would stagger and stumble, vomit, and have diarrhea,” recalls Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Sometimes they’d go to bed healthy and be dead in the morning.”

Lethal Chimp Disease Is Linked to Newly Identified Bacteria

In 2016, Dr. Goldberg, an epidemiologist and veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and head of the Kibale EcoHealth Project, was approached by the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance to try to solve the mystery. He and his colleagues at Wisconsin joined forces with other veterinarians and biologists in Africa and elsewhere to undertake a comprehensive analysis of blood and tissue from the dead chimps that had been frozen at a nearby hospital.

Pathogen Discovered That Kills Endangered Chimps; Is It a Threat to Humans?

But cases kept coming. In 2016, the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, an umbrella organization for the continent’s primate sanctuaries, reached out to epidemiologist Tony Goldberg, Owens’ advisor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Goldberg was immediately intrigued. “This is an unknown infectious disease that poses a serious risk to the health and survival of an endangered species, which happens to be our nearest relative,” he says.

UW nursing, pharmacy students join effort to bring vaccines to rural areas

The Webb Telescope, NASA’s Golden Surfer, Is Almost Ready, Again

Feature billing goes to researchers like Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute, a pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial civilizations; Natalie Batalha of the University of California, Santa Cruz, a leader of the Kepler mission who is now planning Webb observations; Margaret (Maggie) Turnbull, an expert on habitable planets at the University of Wisconsin, and a former candidate for governor of that state, whom Mr. Kahn interviewed as she tended her backyard beehives; and Amy Lo, a Northrop engineer who works on racecars when she is not working on making all the Webb pieces fit together.

In early going, Biden floods the zone with decrees

“A lot of what he has done has been unwinding what Trump had done,” said Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist and expert on presidential powers and executive actions. “Virtually all presidents push the envelope and do things that expand the scope of executive authority.”

Five reasons why researchers should learn to love the command line

Christina Koch, a research computing facilitator at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, works at a computing centre that provides remote access to some 14,000 nodes and terabytes of memory. Suppose, Koch says, that a bioinformatician has a computational workflow for analysing gene-expression data sets. Each data set takes a day to process on their computer, and the researcher has 60 such data sets. “That’s two months of non-stop running,” she says. But, by sending the job to a computer cluster using the ‘secure shell’ command, ‘ssh’, which opens an encrypted portal to the remote system, the researcher can parallelize the computations across 60 computers. “Instead of two months, it takes one day.”

In early going, Biden floods the zone with decrees

“A lot of what he has done has been unwinding what Trump had done,” said Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist and expert on presidential powers and executive actions. “Virtually all presidents push the envelope and do things that expand the scope of executive authority.”

American Hegemony Is Ending With a Whimper, Not a Bang

Today, in the era of a 78-year-old president, a veritable Rip Van Biden, Americans and the rest of the world are, it seems, waking up in a new age. It could well be a daunting one.Invest your way with Schwab.From automated investing to financial consultants, get tools and resources that match your needs.

-Alfred McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power and Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.

How Laura Albert Helped Make Election Day in Wisconsin Safer Amid the Pandemic

When public servants face a challenge, AAAS Member and newly elected 2020 AAAS Fellow Dr. Laura Albert finds solutions. Whether helping police tackle the opioid crisis, or assisting election officials in protecting voters during a deadly pandemic — which was one of her most recent feats — the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor uses mathematical models and analytics to recommend safe, economical and often innovative remedies.

Effects of gerrymandering felt in Wisconsin as governor, GOP clash over Covid restrictions

“It told mapmakers you can do whatever you want,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “All of the guardrails are off.”

Chemists are reimagining recycling to keep plastics out of landfills

Food packaging films that contain several layers of different plastic are particularly tricky to take apart. Every year, 100 million tons of these multilayer films are produced worldwide. When thrown away, those plastics go to landfills, says chemical engineer George Huber of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Dear Pandemic project explains Covid-19 in a way we can all understand

Unfortunately, other social media outlets—where 55 percent of Americans often or sometimes get their news, according to a Pew Research study—were bereft of such information. So Ritter, Buttenheim and Malia Jones, a former Penn epidemiologist now at University of Wisconsin-Madison, started a Facebook page called Dear Pandemic, a source for easy-to-understand, science-backed Covid information written by a volunteer team of 12 women scientists from around the country and England, including five in Philly. (The team is supported by a project coordinator and a team of experts, translators, student employees, and interns.)

Mutant Coronaviruses Threaten To Undermine Vaccines

“Essentially, the huge number of cumulative infections worldwide provides a large number of opportunities for viruses to acquire beneficial mutations and then spread preferentially,” said Thomas Friedrich, a vaccine expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “This is kind of like playing an evolutionary slot machine. One individual slot may be unlikely to hit the jackpot — but if you are able to play millions of slots in parallel, hitting the jackpot on a few becomes much more likely.”

Why The Second Trimester Ultrasound Is So Important For Fathers

“Fathers say it means a lot to them to see their baby on the screen and have an unmediated experience with the baby,” explains Tova Walsh, PhD, MSW, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who studies the transition to fatherhood.

The Vaccine Rollout Will Take Time. Here’s What The U.S. Can Do Now To Save Lives

Dr. Patrick Remington, a professor emeritus in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, previously worked as an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He says a career spent studying public health policy has taught him that laws are typically only effective for the people already inclined to follow a given health recommendation, like wearing seat belts in cars or not smoking indoors.

Joe Biden’s First 100 Days: Inside His Agenda

Not all of Biden’s economic agenda hinges on Congress. He has asked the requisite agencies to extend the federal moratorium on evictions and foreclosures through March 31, and the pause on federal student loan payments through Sept. 30. But there’s ultimately a limit to what the Executive Branch can do on its own. “There’s no set of buttons and levers the President can push and pull to generate the optimum mix of economic growth, unemployment and inflation,” says Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor who studies Executive Orders.

Why do books have prices printed on them?

Jonathan Senchyne, an associate professor of book history and print culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he thinks a price might have been listed because this type of book would have been put on display at a holiday fair.

Wisconsin’s Unemployment Rate Rises Slightly In December To 5.5 Percent

Laura Dresser, a labor economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said at that hiring pace, it’ll be a long time before Wisconsin makes up the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in April.

The Agenda for Biden’s First 100 Days Takes Shape

Biden was able to make so many changes so quickly because of the precedent set by his predecessor, Donald Trump, says University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Kenneth Mayer, author of the book “With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power.”

“Every president looks for ways to use the powers of the office to accomplish their goals, and Trump was unusually aggressive about it, finding things that really broke the norms,” such as declaring a national emergency on the border to redirect money to build a wall Congress refused to fund, he said.

Can universities manufacture a post-industrial future for the Midwest?

Rebecca Blank, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that Madison’s thriving industries, such as biotechnology, software and gaming, are “areas that are basically all very much rooted in both the students who graduate from here and the faculty and the research work that we do here”.