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UW In The News

  • Are High Water Levels a Result of Climate Change?

    Door County Pulse | July 6, 2020

    While many people are scrambling to combat flooding and damage to infrastructure, climate scientists are working to find out what has been causing the latest rise in lake levels. According to Jack Williams, a UW-Madison geography professor and climate-change expert, it’s the billion-dollar question.“We can’t yet definitively say,” Williams said. “What we know is that we are seeing increasing temperatures and variability of rainfall, which are both known to be caused by climate change.”

  • 21 Lessons From America’s Worst Moments

    TIME | July 6, 2020

    TIME asked 21 historians, including Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology Nan Estad, to weigh in with their picks for “worst moments” that hold a lesson—and what they think those experiences can teach us.

  • Laura Albert: Coronavirus reopening risks – Here’s a plan to make us safer

    Fox News | July 3, 2020

    “Opening the economy is not the problem,” writes Laura Albert, Industrial and Systems Engineering professor. “Opening the economy without a plan to control the risk is the problem.”

  • Cloud of confusion – Conflicting covid-19 messages add to struggle to contain virus

    Kaiser Health News | July 2, 2020

    Health scares always spawn scurrilous stories. But with covid-19, “there’s lots of opportunity for misinformation,” said Dhavan Shah, a professor of mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • Court reinstates Wisconsin voting restrictions in victory for Republicans

    The Guardian | July 1, 2020

    The decision could lead to severe efforts to change electoral rules for political gain, said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • Anger Management for an Angry Time

    Wall Street Journal | July 1, 2020

    If you decide to use your anger, choose something you can control. “Anger is a very energizing emotion—think of it as the opposite of procrastination,” says Evan Polman, an associate professor in the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Remember that anger can give you courage. Use it to ask for a raise, get involved in a cause you care about or get up the nerve to have that difficult conversation you’ve been putting off.

  • How Slavery Persisted in New England Until the 19th Century

    History.com | June 30, 2020

    “Most of the general public in the U.S. has no understanding of the very long history of slavery in the northern colonies and the northern states,” says Christy Clark-Pujara, a professor of history and Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island.

  • Why we should explore Venus before Mars

    Mashable | June 30, 2020

    Not so fast. The Pioneer probe sent to Venus in 1978 detected traces of methane in that CO2-filled atmosphere. Methane is a rare chemical to produce without life acting as some kind of intermediary. “People tried to explain it away and they couldn’t,” says Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a former chair of NASA’s Venus Exploration Analysis Group.

  • Know Your Madisonian: UW-Madison health director leads COVID-19 response behind the scenes

    Wisconsin State Journal | June 29, 2020

    Jake Baggott doesn’t remember precisely where he was or on what day he first heard the term “COVID-19,” but the coronavirus has since consumed most of his waking hours.

  • From 47 Primaries, 4 Warning Signs About the 2020 Vote

    New York Times | June 29, 2020

    “We were fortunate that the pandemic hit during the primaries rather than the general election,” said Barry C. Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It provided a sort of training ground for states to turn the corner on voting by mail.”

  • Biden’s low-key strategy vexes Trump, but in-person campaigning beckons

    AFP | June 26, 2020

    “I don’t see how that’s sustainable through the fall election,” professor Barry Burden, director of the Election Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told AFP.”

    There will come a point where Biden will need to be a physical presence on the campaign trail, if only to reassure voters he is a real person, in good health and ready to serve.”

  • Across the U.S., families are having tough talks about racism

    Los Angeles Times | June 25, 2020

    “Absent these kinds of conversations, the status quo wins,” said Patricia Devine, psychology professor and director of the Prejudice Lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And the status quo is being revealed to us to be unacceptable in terms of costing people their lives only because of the color of their skin. That can’t stand.

  • The chicken first crossed the road in Southeast Asia, ‘landmark’ gene study finds

    Science Magazine | June 25, 2020

    But Jonathan Kenoyer, an archaeologist and Indus expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, remains skeptical that the chicken arose in Southeast Asia. “They need to get ancient DNA” to back up their claims, he says, because genomes of modern birds may provide limited clues to early events in chicken evolution.

  • Coronavirus Is a Crisis. Might It Also Narrow Inequality?

    The New York Times | June 25, 2020

    Scholars are brimming with ideas to construct a more generous safety net on a permanent basis, bolstering everything from Medicaid to child care support. Timothy Smeeding, a professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, suggests that the federal government pick up the entire tab for Medicaid, which it now shares with the states.

  • UW-Madison Medical School Dean Predicts Ups And Downs With COVID Vaccines, Cures

    Wisconsin Public Radio | June 25, 2020

    UW-Madison announced on Wednesday it was one of 32 sites for a clinical trial testing an existing drug called ruxolitinib as a way to prevent a COVID-19 complication where a patient’s immune system kicks into deadly overdrive. Hospitals in Milwaukee and Madison are also investigating convalescent plasma from recovered patients to treat those with active infections.

  • UW joins drug trial aimed at preventing major COVID-19 killer: Haywire immune response

    Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | June 24, 2020

    The majority of people who die from COVID-19 are killed by a dangerous immune system overreaction called a cytokine storm, but researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and dozens of other sites around the world are now testing a potential weapon against it.

  • Trump’s strike at Twitter risks collateral damage inside the executive branch

    POLITICO | June 24, 2020

    And this order in particular may have trouble standing up to scrutiny. Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert in executive orders, called the language “complete gobbledygook.”

  • The Garlic Will Tell You When It’s Time

    The New York Times | June 24, 2020

    Today, wild garlic is found only in parts of Central Asia, but it may once have grown wild from China to India, Egypt and Ukraine, according to Philipp W. Simon, a research leader at the Agriculture Department’s Agricultural Research Service and a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s department of horticulture. From those ancient beginnings, garlic has traveled the globe to become one of the world’s most important vegetable crops.

  • Black Americans Are At Higher Risk For Alzheimer’s: Here’s Why

    Oprah Mag | June 24, 2020

    Among other things, chronic stress contributes to inflammation and vascular disease, and can even directly damage the brain’s neurons. “This can lead to a slew of health issues, including atrophy in areas of the brain that are key for memory and cognition,” says Megan Zuelsdorff, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing investigating the mechanisms underlying cognitive health and dementia disparities.

  • Living in Poverty May Increase Alzheimer’s Risk

    The New York Times | June 23, 2020

    “Putting tissue samples into socioeconomic context will allow us to better understand the socioeconomic mechanisms that may drive disease,” said the senior author, Dr. Amy J.H. Kind, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin.

  • Fewer Than Half Of Wisconsin Grocery Shoppers Mask Up

    Wisconsin Public Radio | June 23, 2020

    “We think of masking as this seemingly simple intervention, but it’s rather complex,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

  • Is It Safe To Visit Family And Friends?

    Wisconsin Public Radio | June 23, 2020

    Malia Jones of the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studies how the places we spend time affect our health and how diseases spread in those places.

  • For Milwaukee Dads, Help Figuring Out Fatherhood

    U.S. News and World Report | June 19, 2020

    Quoted: It’s not unusual for men to struggle after the birth of a child, says Tova Walsh, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied fathers and parent-child relationships. There are financial pressures, expectations to try to meet and lifestyle adjustments to make.

    In the history of family services, fathers have been overlooked and neglected, Walsh says, with sometimes clinical consequences. “Paternal depression is underrecognized,” she says.

  • In-person election, protests, bars opening. None appear to have spiked COVID cases. Experts hope public precautions keep spread in check

    Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | June 19, 2020

    Quoted: “This is just a sliver of the nearly 6 million people in Wisconsin,” said Patrick Remington, an epidemiologist and a professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “These were highly visible and they could be high risk, but in reality, these were isolated events.”

    “It is really hard to isolate one thing when so many things are going,” said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    “We cannot deny such an impact because of people on the street in public, standing close and shouting out and not wearing masks. That is ideal to spread the virus,” said Song Gao, assistant professor at the UW-Madison Geospatial Data Science Lab.

    Oguzhan Alagoz, a professor of industrial engineering and infectious disease modeling expert at the UW-Madison, said his work shows social distancing adherence plays a major factor in the spread of coronavirus.

    “Me and my family are also tired of being careful,” Alagoz said. “But unfortunately we cannot get super comfortable. … People should still be careful. Wearing masks, I think, is important, especially indoors.”

  • Worried About Your Kids’ Social Skills Post-Lockdown?

    The New York Times | June 18, 2020

    In fact, having parents who worry excessively about what their kids are missing out on is likely more damaging than missing out on experiences, said Dr. Seth Pollack, Ph.D, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • What if all viruses disappeared?

    BBC Future | June 18, 2020

    “If all viruses suddenly disappeared, the world would be a wonderful place for about a day and a half, and then we’d all die – that’s the bottom line,” says Tony Goldberg, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “All the essential things they do in the world far outweigh the bad things.”

  • Opinion: Black men and boys are especially vulnerable to mental health challenges because of coronavirus and police violence

    Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | June 18, 2020

    Somewhere in America, a 14-year-old Black boy is playing video games in his room, and his parents are satisfied that they are keeping him safe from COVID-19. But then, in Minneapolis, George Floyd is killed by a police officer, and his parents are reminded that their son’s life could just as easily be snuffed out.

    Author Alvin Thomas is an assistant professor in the Human Development and Family Studies Department in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • UW-Madison’s plan to reopen campus in fall: masks, free testing, hybrid classes

    Wisconsin State Journal | June 18, 2020

    Come on back to campus this fall, UW-Madison told its 45,000 students Wednesday.

  • Dominion Energy and Vanguard Renewables are turning cow manure into power

    The Washington Post | June 17, 2020

    Rebecca Larson, an associate professor of biological systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin, has studied the climate effects of agriculture and the biological processes that take place when microorganisms break apart manure.

  • Dominion Energy and Vanguard Renewables are turning cow manure into power

    The Washington Post | June 17, 2020

    Rebecca Larson, an associate professor of biological systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin, has studied the climate effects of agriculture and the biological processes that take place when microorganisms break apart manure.

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