Submitted by Jessica Albers, Syttende Mai First Princess

WOODVILLE, WI – Hi Woodville! This weekend, Friday, July 12, 2024, and Sunday, the 14th, was lots of fun!

On Friday, the four of us (2024-25 Syttende Mai Queen Katelyn Gustafson, me, Second Princess Addisyn Wichelman and Third Princess Adeline Haugen) attended the River Falls Days Parade and Queen’s Tea. We saw some familiar faces, and some new ones when we met the new River Falls Ambassadors. River Falls had a huge turnout for their parade, so we were able to see a lot from the town of River Falls with our float Leif.

On Sunday, Princess Addisyn went to Turtle Lake on her own while Queen Katelyn was at a school event. Princess Addisyn attended the parade, which was a hot one, and the Queen’s Tea where they had a blow-up baseball game.

Also on Sunday, Princess Adeline and I attended Centuria’s Memory Days, where the fire station graciously hosted the Queens Tea. With the sea decorations hanging from the ceiling, the mermaids gracing the tables, the bubbles flowing, and the humidity we felt like we were under the sea! Their town was small but fun camaraderie with everyone knowing everyone else.

What an amazing year we are having representing Woodville!

NEW YORK, NY & SITKA, AK – Elizabeth Bagley, Ph.D., Managing Director, Project Drawdown is a former local who recently appeared on the CBS television network “Midday Show – Science” segment interviewed by Lindsey Reiser. The topic of the interview was “How to Talk to Kids About Climate Change.” The segment was aired on July 4, 2024.

The interview came about after CBS noted a piece Dr. Bagley had written for the Project Drawdown website and was invited to share it with the national CBS audience on the 4th. As it was noted in the lead in to the program segment, “recent studies show that kids are increasingly becoming concerned about the effects of climate change.”

Dr. Elizabeth Bagley, the Managing Director at Project Drawdown, joined CBS News with tips on how to talk to children about the future of the planet. You can see the interview online at: cbsnews.com/video/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-climate-change.

To read this and other premium articles in their entirety, pickup the July 11, 2024 issue of the Sun-Argus newspaper. Click to subscribe for convenient delivery by mail, or call (715) 778-4990. Single issues are also available at area newsstands and our office in Spring Valley, WI.

Submitted by the National Institute of Health

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A series of experiments with highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza (HPAI H5N1) viruses circulating in infected U.S. dairy cattle found that viruses derived from lactating dairy cattle induced severe disease in mice and ferrets when administered via intranasal inoculation. The virus from the H5N1-infected cows bound to both avian (bird) and human-type cellular receptors, but, importantly, did not transmit efficiently among ferrets exposed via respiratory droplets. The findings, published in Nature, suggest that bovine (cow) HPAI H5N1 viruses may differ from previous HPAI H5N1 viruses and that these viruses may possess features that could facilitate infection and transmission among mammals. However, they currently do not appear capable of efficient respiratory transmission between animals or people.

In March 2024, an outbreak of HPAI H5N1 was reported among U.S. dairy cattle which spread across herds and led to fatal infections among some cats on affected farms, spillover into poultry, and four reported infections among dairy workers. The HPAI H5N1 viruses isolated from affected cattle are closely related to H5N1 viruses that have circulated in North American wild birds since late 2021. Over time, those avian viruses have undergone genetic changes and have spread throughout the continent causing outbreaks in wild birds and mammals—sometimes with mortality rates and suspected transmission within species.

To better understand the characteristics of the bovine H5N1 viruses, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Japan’s Shizuoka and Tokyo Universities, and Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory conducted experiments to determine the ability of bovine HPAI H5N1 to replicate and cause disease in mice and ferrets, which are routinely used for influenza A virus studies. Ferrets are thought to be a good model for understanding potential influenza transmission patterns in people because they exhibit similar clinical symptoms, immune responses and develop respiratory tract infections like humans.

The researchers intranasally administered to mice doses of bovine HPAI H5N1 influenza of increasing strength (5 mice per dosage group), and then monitored the animals for body weight changes and survival for 15 days. All the mice that received the higher doses died of infection. Some of the mice that received lower doses survived, and those that received the lowest dose experienced no body weight loss and survived.

The researchers also compared the effects of the bovine HPAI H5N1 virus to a Vietnamese H5N1 strain that is typical of H5N1 avian influenza virus in humans and to an H1N1 influenza virus, both delivered intranasally to mice. The mice that received either the bovine HPAI H5N1 virus or the Vietnamese avian H5N1 virus experienced high virus levels in respiratory and non-respiratory organs, including in the mammary glands and muscle tissues, and sporadic detection in the eyes. The H1N1 virus was found only in the respiratory tissues of the animals. Ferrets intranasally infected with the bovine HPAI H5N1 virus experienced elevated temperatures and loss of body weight. As with the mice, the scientists discovered high virus levels in the ferrets’ upper and lower respiratory tracts and other organs. Unlike the mice, however, no virus was found in the ferrets’ blood or muscle tissues.

“Together, our pathogenicity studies in mice and ferrets revealed that HPAI H5N1 derived from lactating dairy cattle may induce severe disease after oral ingestion or respiratory infection, and infection by either the oral or respiratory route can lead to systemic spread of virus to non-respiratory tissues including the eye, mammary gland, teat and/or muscle,” the authors write.

To test whether bovine H5N1 viruses transmit among mammals via respiratory droplets, such as emitted by coughs and sneezes, the researchers infected groups of ferrets (four animals per group) with either bovine HPAI H5N1 virus or H1N1 influenza, which is known to transmit efficiently via respiratory droplets. One day later, uninfected ferrets were housed in cages next to the infected animals. Ferrets infected with either of the influenza viruses showed clinical signs of disease and high virus levels in nasal swabs collected over multiple days. However, only ferrets exposed to the H1N1-infected group showed signs of clinical disease, indicating that the cow influenza virus does not transmit efficiently via respiratory droplets in ferrets.

Typically, avian and human influenza A viruses do not attach to the same receptors on cell surfaces to initiate infection. The researchers found, however, that the bovine HPAI H5N1 viruses can bind to both, raising the possibility that the virus may have the ability to bind to cells in the upper respiratory tract of humans.

“Collectively, our study demonstrates that bovine H5N1 viruses may differ from previously circulating HPAI H5N1 viruses by possessing dual human/avian-type receptor-binding specificity with limited respiratory droplet transmission in ferrets,” the authors said.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, funded the work of the University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.

Submitted by Katelyn Gustafson, 2024-25 Syttende Mai Queen

WOODVILLE, WI – Hi Woodville! This past weekend, the 5th, 6th and 7^th of July 2024, was a fun one!

On Friday the 5th, we all (the Princesses and I) decided to get together and touch up some of our floats. We did some repainting and cleaning, and we had decorations for the 4th of July weekend!

Saturday the 6th, we went to Hudson for their Booster Days Parade. Booster Days is Hudson’s Annual Fourth of July Celebration that lasts four days, the 4^th through the 7^th. We went to the Queen’s Tea, at Pier Five Hundred, where we had an amazing breakfast. We went through their busy Booster Days Parade and then had some yummy Cold Stone Ice Cream afterwards.

Sunday, the 7th, we went to Balsam Lake’s Freedom Fest, (sponsored by the Balsam Lake Chamber of Commerce), where we dressed up our Leif Erickson Viking and the rest of the float. The Queen’s Tea was great; we had lunch and talked with some familiar Sparkle Sister Courts.

During the parade, the announcer told our driver to stop, so that he could give us the First-Place trophy for “Best Float.” We ended up being the “Most Patriotic” this weekend!