MADISON (WKOW) – Some UW Hospital patients may have been exposed to a rare but deadly brain disorder.
UW Hospital officials have told 53 patients they have an extremely low risk of contracting a rare deadly brain disorder after being operated on with contaminated surgical instruments.
The instruments were used on a woman who had surgery on June 11th and died Tuesday from a brain disorder, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
The hospital got the diagnosis of the fatal disease just this past Monday.
MADISON â?? The University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a national search for a new admissions director as part of an administrative reorganization.
Admissions and Visitor and Information Programs director Steve Admunson will lose oversight of admissions but remain in charge of other programs, such as campus tours and the Parent Program.
Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday is being celebrated all over these days, including an appearance on Saturday at Camp Randall Memorial Park.
MADISON â?? Members of a social conservative group are asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to invalidate the state’s new domestic partnership law.
Can scientists create life?
That’s the Holy Grail of biochemistry and the centerpiece of a four-day symposium July 30 to Aug. 2 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Synthetic Genes to Synthetic Life: On the Exploration and Synthesis of Biological Systems.”
More than 50 researchers, including 1968 Nobel Prize winner biochemist Har Gobind Khorana, who cracked the genetic code while at UW-Madison, will be talking about the advances in science that make it possible to re-engineer cells and create life from scratch.
NATICK, Mass. — A white police sergeant who arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home says he followed procedure and is disappointed by the national debate triggered by the incident, which has drawn criticism from the president on down to local sports radio hosts.
Think these are economically challenging times in Wisconsin? They are, of course. But have you been paying attention to what’s happening on the Left Coast?
The California State University system raised student fees by 20 percent as part of a budget plan that would also shrink enrollment and furlough nearly all employees for two days each month, the Associated Press is reporting.
The fact that it apparently took UW Hospital and Clinics three years to figure out one of its senior pharmacists was stealing what ended up to total more than 27,000 powerful narcotic pills has a lot of people scratching their heads.
“How could one of the most respected cancer centers in the country not have realized what was going on sooner?” asks Leonard Cizewski, a Madison registered nurse whose late brother received chemotherapy treatment treatments from the pharmacist years ago for complications of AIDS. Cizewski compared him to a drunken driver. “If he makes a mistake,” he says, “somebody could end up dead.”
In our current national economic climate, it is critical we use every tool at our disposal, every advantage we have. Our actions today lay the foundation for the economic climate of our region in years to come.
Our region is unique — and fortunate — that visionary leadership from around the region came together proactively during stronger economic times a few years ago to discuss our future. What is our shared regional vision? What are our assets — man-made and natural? How can we collaborate to reach a strong, shared and sustainable future?
Now is the time that we need to come together as a region. We can no longer afford to think of competition on a small scale — city against city or county versus county. Our competition is now national and international, for resources like workers, capital and innovation.
The city of Madison Fire Department announced Wednesday that Dr. Christian Zuver has been named its new medical director.
Zuver will take over the position from Dr. Joseph Cline, who has served as interim director since the death of the Dr. Darren Bean, who was killed in a UW Med Flight helicopter crash on May 2008.
The announcement comes after a nationwide search for a new director, conducted by UW Hospitals and the Fire Department.
….Cameras are the portal to that openness for many citizens, a valuable tool to building trust and respect. A lot of people you know were instrumental in creating Wisconsin?s system of access to the courts, Dave Zweifel of the Capital Times, former UW professor Jim Hoyt, former WMTV station manager Don Schmitt, former Milwaukee editorial director Ed Hinshaw and former Supreme Court justice Nate Heffernan to name a few. We owe them all gratitude for keeping Wisconsin a leader in open government and justice for 30 years.
When a Monona Grove High School football standout graduated and went on to the University of Wisconsin to play tackle for the Badgers, a proud Monona sports bar framed his high school jersey and planned to hang it on one of its walls along with the jerseys of other outstanding athletes.
Because his name was embroidered on the jersey, that, under the puzzling and autocratic rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, would have been a no-no. So the proprietor flipped the jersey so that only the number 71 on the front is visible. The guy who wore it presumably will remain anonymous until his college eligibility expires.
If you think this is silly, you’re not alone. But the bigger-than-life organization that controls big-time college sports, and rakes in tens of millions of dollars in the process, has never risen above silliness.
Bo Ryan had a pretty good idea of what to expect when he coached the United States menâ??s basketball team at the World University Games in Belgrade.
He expected the Serbian fans to express their dissatisfaction with Americans. They did. He expected the officiating to be inconsistent and frustrating. It was. He hoped the food would be OK. It wasnâ??t.
â??But other than that, it was OK,â? joked the University of Wisconsin menâ??s basketball coach after the U.S. team came home with bronze medals.
Civil War buffs will honor the bicentennial of Pres. Abraham Lincoln’s birth in music, costume and march on Saturday, at a place that started out as a training camp for Union soldiers.
The celebration is part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s events held this year to honor the nation’s 16th president, born Feb. 12, 1809.
A 21-year-old woman who says she was drugged and sexually assaulted multiple times at a Madison fraternity house last fall has sued the local chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity, its parent organization and the alumni organization that owns the house for negligence.
Madison police continue to investigate the incident, according to a spokesman, but no arrests have been made.
Mario Goins, who started six games at cornerback for Wisconsin last season but was held out of spring practice so he could focus on academics, has been released from his scholarship and has left the UW program.
A 19-year-old Madison woman doing her laundry was startled last week when she saw a man outside videotaping her.
The incident happened about 11 p.m. July 15 in the 100 block of West Gilman Street.
Dear Editor: The Wisconsin State Journal’s article on UW Hospital and OptumHealth, a Minnesota insurance company, perfectly frames the health care debate. Here we have UW Hospital, one of the best transplant hospitals in the country, and patients being denied health care there by OptumHealth.
Just when you think driving on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus couldn’t get any worse, it will.
The newest headache for motorists starts Thursday, when the westbound on-ramp from Highland Avenue onto Campus Drive/University Avenue is shut down for about three weeks.
(HealthDay News) — If college students knew their friends really weren’t drinking as much as it might seem, they might cut back on alcohol, a new study suggests.
Researchers from Oxford Brookes University in England reviewed 22 studies that included nearly 7,275 students, most in the United States. The researchers divided the students into two groups: those who participated in intervention programs designed to help them decrease their alcohol consumption and students who didn’t.
Interventions included education about the risks of drinking heavily, information about how much college students normally drink and education about their own drinking habits, including quantity consumed, caloric intake and money spent on alcohol.
Maggie Hippman and Dan Stevens headline the list of 41 University of Wisconsin athletes who received the inaugural Big Ten Distinguished Scholar Award.
Each carried a 4.0 grade-point average during the 2008-09 academic year.
Hippman, a cross country and track athlete who attended Madison Memorial, is a junior majoring in psychology. Stevens, a rower and former Sun Prairie athlete, is a senior majoring in medical microbiology and immunology.
Jason Chiang became sold on the importance of research exchange programs during his undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Although Chiang has traveled overseas several times to study over the past couple years, it was an experience a bit closer to home, an internship at Toronto Western Hospital in the summer of 2005, that first opened his eyes to the value of such an experience.
“I was only a sophomore and I was surrounded by these neurosurgeons who seemed to know everything,” said Chiang, who recently completed his first year as a student at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school.
A report released in May and co-authored by UW-Madison professors Sara Goldrick-Rab and Douglas Harris argued that community colleges are in need of significant government investment if the United States is to help more of its people get a formal education and better compete with others from around the globe for the best jobs.
“Over the last two centuries, the United States created an advantage over other countries by helping our citizens attain formal education, generating an able workforce and technological advancement,” states the report, which was also co-written by Christopher Mazzeo of the Consortium on Chicago School Research and Gregory Kienzl of the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
Quoted: Assistant professor of education policy studies and sociology Sara Goldrick-Rab and Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education
A new study of University of Wisconsin-Madison start-ups shows more than 250 companies have been launched by the school’s faculty, staff and students since 1950.
The number of Wisconsin women who smoke during pregnancy has fallen considerably since 1997, following a national downward trend, according to a new report.
According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison study, between 1990 and 2007, the rate of maternal smoking in Wisconsin decreased from 22.9% to 14.9%, respectively, while in the United States, it fell from 18.4% to 10%.
Mitra Sharafi and Jean-Luc Thiffeault’s apartment has a view of the state Capitol, and they enjoy spending Saturday mornings at its famed farmers market.
So, when the municipal judge officiating their wedding suggested they consider marrying in the Capitol, it made sense to have their simple, intimate ceremony there. Sharafi and Thiffeault, University of Wisconsin-Madison professors, were married Wednesday on a Capitol walkway. They are among dozens of couples who wed in the state’s gleaming marble landmark every year.
In the last year, about 175 weddings have taken place in the building, based on permits provided by the state Capitol Police, Senate and Assembly sergeants at arms, and the state Supreme Court.
Someone stole 64 red and white Terrace-style chairs from UW-Madisonâ??s Grainger Hall Thursday night, according to the UW-Madison Police Department.
A memorial service is set for Friday evening (July 17) for the 46-year-old New Glarus man killed by a falling tree while driving in the village of Oregon on July 10.
The memorial for Roch Kendrick will be in Wilhelm Tell Shooting Park in New Glarus, at the north end of Second Street, from 4-7 p.m. Friday.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin Hospital’s Med Flight helicopter program reached a milestone Wednesday by completing its 25,000th flight.
Most of us have looked up at the stars in wonder. We’ve created glow-in-the-dark galaxies with plastic stars on our bedroom ceilings and traced the constellations with our fingertips. We know that Galileo Galilei was more than just a scientist with a catchy, alliterative name. He was the “father of science,” perhaps, the “father of modern physics,” and also the “father of modern observational astronomy.”
2009, celebrated as the International Year of Astronomy, pays tribute to Galileo’s discoveries, his astronomical observations, and, of course, his telescope. The UW-Madison Astronomy Department brings the party to Wisconsin with a series of events entitled “Galileo under Wisconsin Stars (GuWS). “
A University of Wisconsin pharmacist fired for drug abuse pilfered more than 27,000 tablets of powerful narcotics from the cancer clinic he worked for, according to a case file released by the state regulatory agency that disciplined him last month.
Nearly 25,000 of the pills Joseph A. Theisen, 56, diverted for his own use over three years were methadone, a synthetic opiate used as a pain medication and as a treatment to get addicts off heroin, according to documents in the file.
Theisen told a supervisor he didn’t recall taking the methadone, but added, “Chances are quite good that I’m responsible for that.”
Four employees of a consulting firm billed more than $200,000 apiece in five months for work on a University of Wisconsin System information technology project, according to a review by The Associated Press.
Another 10 employees of Chicago-based Huron Consulting Group charged at least $100,000 during that time for services on the project to install a new payroll system, which is behind schedule and over its planning budget.
Tae kwon do master Dr. Sang Kee Paik passed away at the age of 80 on Sunday after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind a legacy of humanitarianism and exceptional training of martial arts.
Paik was born into Japanese-occupied Korea on Aug. 21, 1929. He started his martial arts training in 1945, and received his first black belt in 1947.
Paik and his two children joined his wife in America in 1969 when the University of Wisconsin-Madison sponsored him to come and work. He worked as a lab scientist in the UW primate research lab, eventually becoming Unit Chief.
Three UW-Madison buildings and an apartment building were evacuated this afternoon because of a gas leak, caused by a piece of construction equipment that struck a gas pipe, according to the Madison Fire Department.
Firefighters were called to the Chemistry Building, at the corner of North Mills and West Johnson streets, at around 12:35 p.m.
MADISON (WKOW) – The University of Wisconsin-Madison released a statement following the murder of a staff member Tuesday night.
Shereen Beaulieu was found dead in her apartment in McFarland. Police say she was killed by her estranged husband, who later shot and killed himself.
Shereen Beaulieu was a grants specialist at UW.
MADISON, Wis. — Four employees of a consulting firm billed more than $200,000 apiece in five months for work on a University of Wisconsin System information technology project.
Another 10 employees of Chicago-based Huron Consulting Group charged $100,000 or more for services on the project to install a new payroll system.
Quoted: Daniel Hausman, a philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose research interests include the allocation of health care resources.
The Dane County coroner has ruled the deaths of a separated couple in McFarland and in Madison Tuesday evening a murder-suicide.
Preliminary autopsy findings indicate 51-year-old Shereen C. Beaulieu died from a gunshot wound, and her husband, 61-year-old Robert J. Beaulieu, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
….UW-Madison records list the woman as an employee with the university’s graduate school program.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court says state agencies cannot withhold the names of union workers under the open records law.
The court ruled 6-1 that union contracts prohibiting agencies from releasing information that identifies workers don’t trump the state’s open records law.
A diver who died Saturday in 135 feet of water while exploring a shipwreck had become entangled in ropes tethered to buoys, but whether that contributed to his death is not known, investigators said Monday.
Deep K. Varma, 41, of Verona died Saturday morning of fresh-water drowning, Ozaukee Sheriff’s Lt. Rod Galbraith said, citing the results of a Milwaukee County medical examiner’s autopsy that was performed Monday.
Varma was one of 12 members of a University of Wisconsin-Madison diving club on a chartered expedition to explore the sunken wreckage of The Northerner, a schooner built in 1851 that foundered in a storm off Port Washington in November 1868. The wreck is about five miles southeast of Port Washington.
A state Assembly committee was scheduled to tour a Wal-Mart distribution center Tuesday with the company’s lobbyists but altered its plans Monday after questions emerged about whether the tour complied with the state’s open meetings law. Mentions that the group was also scheduled to meet in a UW-Madison engineering lab, in an event open to the public.
An international team of scientists led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist has produced a highly detailed portrait of the new swine flu virus that has killed 211 people in the U.S., suggesting it is more virulent than previously thought and contradicting assertions that the virus appears similar to seasonal flu.
A long-awaited study of aging in rhesus monkeys suggests, with some reservations, that people could in principle fend off the usual diseases of old age and considerably extend their life span by following a special diet.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Google have expanded their agreement to make more of the university’s huge collection of books available to the public, researchers and libraries and other universities.
The expanded project came about when Google reached a settlement with a broad class of authors and publishers in 2008 to put their works online.
In the new agreement, portions of UW-Madison’s in-copyright and out-of-print books will be able to be previewed for free, as well as the full texts to be accessible online for a price.
MENOMONIE, Wis. — A healthy University of Wisconsin System is essential to rebuilding the state’s economy. Yet glaring discrepancies in compensation for the faculty and academic staff who power UW institutions in the state pose a serious threat to our future viability.
The secret to a long, disease-free life may be as simple as pushing yourself away from the dinner table before eating too muchâ?¦at least if you’re a monkey.
Working with rhesus monkeys for 20 years, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that severely restricting calories led to significantly fewer deaths from natural causes as well as less diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and brain shrinkage.
The University of Wisconsin’s touchstone is a plaque on Bascom Hall that reads: “Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state university of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”
….Now, 115 years later, the state Legislature has removed barriers to organizing faculty and staff (including research assistants) on the UW campus. Members of the current Board of Regents are griping that allowing members of the great state university’s staff to unionize poses a threat to its sound operations and fiscal future.
Richard Ely would be disappointed, and so are we.
Cellular Dynamics International’s disclosure Wednesday that its researchers have generated stem cells from ordinary human blood samples holds enormous promise in the emerging field of personalized medicine.
A study last year estimated Wisconsin’s bear population at 33,657 – almost triple the number of bears thought to be living in the state.
The work was done by Timothy R. Van Deelen, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and graduate student David MacFarland. Previous DNR estimates had placed the population at 13,000.
Wisconsinites are not happy campers.
The latest University of Wisconsin-Madison Badger Poll says 73 percent of the nearly 600 adults surveyed are dissatisfied with the way things are going in America.
Wisconsinites are still dissatisfied with the way things are going in America, but are less dissatisfied than they were six months ago, right before the presidential election.
The latest Badger Poll, released Tuesday by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Survey Center, showed 73 percent of the 593 respondents were dissatisfied, compared to 81 percent in October 2008.
Dear Editor: Just wanted to say thanks to Mike Ivey for covering the furlough story and offering his views on the inequities and short-sighted aspects of the plan.
I too am one of those professors who is upset about the ramifications. Not for me per se, but for my staff who receive 100 percent of their salaries from non-state, federal sources via grants from the National Institutes of Health.
BELGRADE, Serbia â?? Led by a team-high 17 points from North Carolina forward Deon Thompson, the U.S. menâ??s basketball team clinched a spot in the quarterfinals of the World University Games with 108-77 victory over Greece on Monday night.
Six accomplished University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni have been named to the board of directors of the Wisconsin Alumni Association.
Arthur Kelman, who was a highly regarded professor and researcher with UW-Madison’s plant pathology department for nearly 25 years, died Monday (June 29)at the age of 90.
“He was a stellar scientist and scholar of the first rank,” said John Andrews, a UW-Madison professor of plant pathology. “But beyond that he was a great humanitarian. He understood people very well, was a great advocate for his profession and always saw the best in people. He was broadly influential and well known on this campus.”
BELGRADE, Serbia â?? For starters, Bo Ryan had to be happy with his U.S. team at the World University Games.
Iowa State forward Craig Brackins had 12 points and nine rebounds as the Americans opened Group H play with an 87-40 rout of Finland in the menâ??s basketball competition on Friday night.
One of Wisconsin’s greatest strengths is its robust university system, which includes 13 four-year campuses spread across the state, from Superior in the north to Milwaukee in the south; from the flagship institution in Madison to west-central Wisconsin’s own UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stout and UW-River Falls.
Unfortunately, the Board of Regents, the system’s governing body, lacks the same geographic scope. Large areas of the state have no direct representation when system policy is set.
Look out from Neighborhood House at its Mills Street neighbors and you’ll see the hard-used, bikes-on-the-porch kind of housing that says “college students.”
“We’re surrounded by student housing,” says Zanna Majerle, executive director of the community center that has served Madison’s storied Greenbush area for 93 years. “Our neighborhood has moved away.”
The evolution of the neighborhood poses funding challenges for the center, and its leaders are looking to its location near campus, just a half-mile from Camp Randall Stadium, for a solution.
Not many people seem to have noticed yet, but buried among the new measures signed into law last week as part of Gov. Jim Doyle’s budget is a trio of family planning initiatives that are expected to expand access to birth control and contraceptive education in Wisconsin.
Advocates who had fought for previous versions of the controversial measures over the past years, only to see them get beat back repeatedly by the Republican-controlled Legislature, are thrilled at the relative ease with which the measures passed this year — thanks to the new Democratic majority.
Turns out Austin King, the progressive activist who became Madison City Council president at age 24, was only getting started.
Now, at 28, after two years in New Orleans, heâ??s headed back to school, earning scholarships at New York Universityâ??s School of Law and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
In Madison, King often was at the center of action, fighting for social justice causes while a UW-Madison student.
