Why, when a major league pitcher hurls one toward a batter, does a curve ball curve?
And why does a big rear end on a race horse make the horse faster?
If these are the kinds of questions you find yourself pondering, you should check out a new book from the people at the UW-Madison who bring you The Why Files, the Web page devoted to a frequently wacky look at science in our everyday lives.
What is Wisconsin’s energy future?
Biomass, wind, solar and the strategy to produce and maintain a sustainable homegrown energy plan will be the topics of the day on April 22 during the third annual Earth Day conference at Monona Terrace in Madison.
The conference is put together by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is co-sponsored by American Family Insurance, Madison Gas & Electric, Alliant Energy, the Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp., the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the British Consulate-General of Chicago.
Four University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni are being honored for their accomplishments in journalism and mass communication.
….The award recipients will be honored at the school’s annual awards dinner April 17 at the Pyle Center on campus.
It’s no secret that some on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus believe the UW Athletic Department oversteps its bounds from time to time.
But when put in a position Monday night to take a closer look at the Athletic Department, the UW Faculty Senate dropped the ball.
More accurately, too many Faculty Senators inexplicably headed for the exits before this game was over.
The University of Wisconsin fencing team took second place in men’s foil at the National Fencing Championship held at Chula Vista Resort at the Wisconsin Dells over the weekend.
The band â??OK Goâ? will be headlining UW-Madisonâ??s annual All-Campus Party concert on Friday, April 24 at the Overture Center.
Ticket vouchers to the show wonâ??t cost anything extra for UW-Madison students, but itâ??s not exactly free for them.
Associated Students of Madison is using $40,250 in student fees to help fund the concert. UW Credit Union is also chipping in, although the university declined to share that figure. A call to UW Credit Union was not returned.
The University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s push for more bicycle usage on campus has earned a silver award from the League of American Bicyclists in the leagueâ??s â??Bicycle Friendly Businessâ? program.
The program honors corporations, organizations and nonprofit groups that promote bicycling into their everyday culture and encourage their employees and constituencies to become active in cycling.
Advocacy groups have long claimed Wisconsin’s overly litigious climate costs state businesses money and keeps others from locating here in the first place. For the past few years, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby, has made reforming the state’s legal system one of its top priorities — proclaiming that excessive litigation “is costing businesses and individuals billions of dollars, and is affecting our international competitiveness.”
Not true, says a new study published by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Law School that aims to “examine some of the persistent myths” about civil litigation. In fact, it says, the number of civil cases in which individuals seek compensation for personal injury and property damage fell 17.4 percent in Wisconsin from 1996-2007.
Two state legislators have called for the creation of an academic detailing program in Wisconsin that would give doctors unbiased information about cost-effective prescription drugs.
The program would help counter one-sided presentations offered by drug company representatives in their visits to doctors, information that is designed to sell a company’s higher-cost, brand-name drug rather than a cheaper generic that might be just as effective, said Rep. Chuck Benedict (D-Beloit), a retired physician and chairman of the Assembly Committee on Public Health.
The legislators cited recent Journal Sentinel stories about drug company funding of doctor education courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in realizing there was a need for academic detailing here.
Even in the movie industry, where people have big heads, 35 pounds is a massive coconut.
That’s the load Bucky Badger shoulders – or, rather, the load shouldered by the people who portray the University of Wisconsin-Madison mascot.
But if Bucky’s head is big now, imagine how it will swell after “Being Bucky,” a documentary on the school and state symbol and those who play him, has its world premiere in a sold-out showing at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison Saturday.
State Rep. Steve Nass is asking the University of Wisconsin System to review the conduct of UW-Stevens Point Chancellor Linda Bunnell in the wake of a report that she failed to tell police immediately that she had caused a car crash on the UW-Madison campus.
Both candidates for the open seat in District 8 are University of Wisconsin juniors. Both have track records of involvement with important issues. Bryon Eagon has been elected to the ASM Student Council and has served on the Student Services Finance Committee. Mark Woulf has served on UW’s Alcohol and Other Drug Task Force, and he’s got some good ideas about how to promote public safety by having the police change policies on raiding bars and house parties.
We’re convinced that either Eagon or Woulf would serve ably on the council, and that each would give voice to the important concerns of students.
The remarkable run for Wisconsinâ??s womenâ??s hockey program continues.
UW coach Mark Johnson, who last month led the Badgers to their third NCAA title in four seasons, on Wednesday was named the American Hockey Coaches Association Womenâ??s Division I Coach of the Year.
Drug company funding of continuing medical education raises conflicts for the University of Wisconsin. The school should set strict guidelines.
Quoted: Bruce Jones, an agricultural economist with University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Several significant projects across the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus were given the green light Wednesday by the state’s Building Commission. Last month, The Capital Times reported that the Higher Education Subcommittee of the Building Commission recommended that $580.9 million in projects across campus move forward during the 2009-11 biennium. And the Building Commission on Wednesday accepted those recommendations, which comes as a mild surprise considering the state is facing a projected $5.7 billion shortfall over the next biennium. Meanwhile, jsonline reported that Marquette University’s request for $10 million in state funds for the first phase of a new engineering center was rejected…
The first holder of a chair in military history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is a major in the U.S. Army.
John Hall, a Wisconsin native who currently works at the Future Warfare Division of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command in Virginia, has been named the Ambrose-Hesseltine Professor in U.S. Military History.
“I’m thrilled by the opportunity,” Hall said in a news release from the UW news service. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that this is literally my dream job.”
You’ll have to forgive Michael Garrison, an avid hoops fan, for vouching for another favorite sport of his — even if his top choice isn’t nearly as well-known in this country.
“I’m completely biased,” Garrison said with a chuckle, “but fencing’s so much cooler than basketball. I mean, we have swords.”
Thanks in large part to Garrison, the sport is once again considered cool at the University of Wisconsin — and at other colleges around the country whose varsity programs who have been slashed in the last two decades.
So, what’s the deal with the chickens?
Our feathered friends are everywhere in the promotional materials for this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival — on the posters, on the T-shirts, in the TV ads. What’s the underlying rationale for featuring chickens so prominently in the marketing campaign for a film festival?
“I don’t know,” said film festival director Meg Hamel with a mock shrug. “I just like chickens.”
More than a decade after University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Stephen Ambrose set up a fund to hire a military history professor, the school is finally fulfilling the late historianâ??s vision.
When Derek Jose enrolled in the University of Wisconsin’s Stephen L. Hawk Center for Applied Security Analysis in September 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was racing to 14,000 and the program’s freshly minted grads were settling into investment jobs that paid an average of $84,000 plus bonuses.
Now, Jose is 28, newly married, burdened by $60,000 in student loans and on the cusp of graduating into an investment world shattered by a calamitous bear market.
For the third time in four years, Mark Johnson has been named the best Division I women’s college coach in the nation.
The American Hockey Coaches Association bestowed that honor on him Wednesday following a season in which Johnson’s Wisconsin Badgers went 34-2-5 and won both the WCHA and NCAA postseason tournaments.
The University of Wisconsin football program may have to forfeit its 2008 victory over Cal Poly because it installed illegal goal posts at Camp Randall Stadium, a source confirmed Wednesday.
The Badgers were able to escape with a 36-35 victory in the regular-season finale when Mustangs kicker Andrew Gardner missed three extra points, including one in overtime. Cal Poly is a member of the Football Championship Subdivision, formerly called Division I-AA.
World wind power leader Vestas is partnering with the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering to propel wind energy research and provide funding support to students working on new wind technology.
The partnership was announced Wednesday.
“Wind energy is a growing source of new power generation in the world, and the technology has even greater untapped potential,” said Thomas Jahns, professor of power electronics and electrical machines. “By teaming with an industry leader like Vestas, our research environment will thrive.”
Two armed men who allegedly robbed a convenience store early Wednesday morning were arrested by Madison and campus police, following a car chase and foot chase on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Antonio Johnson, 27, and an unidentified male were arrested and tentatively charged following the robbery that happened about 1:30 a.m. at the PDQ store at 2538 Fish Hatchery Road.
Itâ??s sort of like getting a bid in the NCAA basketball tournament, just a little lower-profile.
UW-Madisonâ??s equestrian team is heading to the national collegiate championship at the end of April after winning its region over the weekend.
Thereâ??s some not-so-happy news for cows on the UW-Madison campus.
A $3 million proposal to remodel the bovine living quarters likely won’t be getting state funding in the next two years, after state Department of Administration officials rejected the proposal for inclusion in the capital budget.
The project was necessary, officials in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences said, because the cattle center on the west side of campus was built in the 1950s and is now outdated. The stalls are too small for todayâ??s cows and not ventilated properly.
The bells will toll on Thursday for Brittany Zimmermann, the University of Wisconsin-Madison student murdered a year ago on April 2, 2008.
University officials will conduct a memorial ceremony for Zimmermann on Thursday, with the carillon tower bells ringing 21 times, one ring for each of her 21 years, at 12:20 p.m., the approximate time of her death.
Alfonso Studesville, a career counselor at Madison Area Technical College, chuckles quietly while recalling less stressful times.
“Just a couple years ago, I’d meet with someone and I’d have a big smile on my face and I’d say, ‘Come to MATC. We are very proud to say that we are placing 92 to 94 percent of the people who successfully complete one of our programs,’ ” recalls Studesville.
But now, he says, “times are tough. They’re really, really tough.” And when times get tough, community colleges like MATC get busy.
Quoted: Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE)
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/445036
There will be a lot of “Varsity” sung on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus starting Wednesday, as graduating seniors reflect on four (or more) years of undergrad studies during the first-ever Senior Week on campus.
Math majors aren’t running the event, since it actually is nine days long, but it is being sponsored by the Wisconsin Alumni Association and the UW Foundation.
Just about every plan to help revive the American economy includes talk of green jobs.
President Barack Obama has used the phrase frequently in the past months, vowing to create 5 million “green collar jobs” during his first term in office.
The goal would be accomplished by ensuring that 10 percent of the nation’s electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012; weatherizing one million homes annually; developing clean coal technology and prioritizing construction of the Alaska natural gas pipeline.
Quoted: Joel Rogers, director of the university’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy
UW Hospital nurse Ben Giessinger might have needed some medical attention to recover from his extreme irritation on being given what he says is a totally bogus ticket by an overzealous parking-enforcement agency.
But SOS was able to determine that once it all shakes out, thereâ??s a “very good chance” his ticket will be reduced to a warning.
Some years back, the University of Wisconsin awarded special status to six of its athletic programs.
Because they were given additional resources, those tier-one programs â?? football, volleyball, menâ??s and womenâ??s basketball and menâ??s and womenâ??s hockey â?? automatically became the face of UW athletics.
Therefore, it was fitting that the last of UWâ??s tier-one sports still standing in this academic year â?? the womenâ??s basketball team â?? squandered a 15-point lead in the second half and lost to St. Bonaventure in the WNIT last week. It was appropriate because, with one notable exception, athletic director Barry Alvarezâ??s highest-profile teams just couldnâ??t finish what they started this year.
Being Bucky Badger just suits some guys better than others.
It takes a lot of time. It takes an ability to wear a big clunky smelly thing on your head. It takes an ability to remain silent.
And it takes an ability to lose one’s self and be one’s self at the very same time.
That’s the world filmmakers John Fromstein and Scott Smith dived into with their documentary “Being Bucky,” which screens at 6:15 p.m. Saturday, April 4 as part of the Wisconsin Film Festival.
A new movie is renewing the city’s fascination with the brilliant, beautiful college student who led a second life as a prostitute and killer in the 1970s.
The movie — “Winter of Frozen Dreams” — is debuting Saturday at the Wisconsin Film Festival. It recounts the story of former University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemistry student Barbara Hoffman, who moonlighted at a massage parlor and was accused of fatally poisoning two of her clients for money.
Jaevery McFadden always wanted to give back to the organization that he fondly remembers having a positive impact on his childhood. He finally got that chance Friday afternoon at the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County — on his second attempt.
“I applied for a job last summer here, and they didn’t hire me,” McFadden said with a grin. “So I don’t know what happened. But it’s all good.”
McFadden was joined by UW safeties Shane Carter and Aubrey Pleasant and cornerback Devin Smith, as the quartet of Badger defensive players hung out and played football with about 30 children between the ages of 7 and 12 in the gymnasium of the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County in south Madison.
Having mastered the ability to roll back a cell’s clock to its embryonic origin, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison cleared a major technical hurdle this week, raising hopes that the technique could usher in a new kind of medicine that exploits the body’s own repair system.
Birth control may soon become more affordable for many local college women, thanks to an obscure provision in the giant federal spending bill signed earlier this month by President Barack Obama.
The measure unsnarls a congressional mix-up dating back to 2005, when legislation aimed at reducing the deficit and squeezing savings out of Medicaid drug costs also led to the elimination of steep discounts that drug companies had been offering college clinics and other “safety net” family planning clinics. When the policy took effect in 2007, the price of contraceptives on campuses across Wisconsin and the rest of the country shot up from less than $10 a month to $40 or $50, sparking a public outcry.
First, the University of Wisconsin womenâ??s basketball team lost its identity. Then it lost the game.
The Badgers, who redefined their program with their defense this season, watched their defense get shredded by a savvy St. Bonaventure team in the second half as the Bonnies overcame a 14-point halftime deficit to pull out a 56-51 WNIT victory Thursday before a crowd of 1,655 at the Kohl Center.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers report they have found a way to further purify adult stem cells, taking scientists a step closer to the day when such stem cells could potentially be used to treat people with chronic ailments.
A team of scientists working in the laboratory of Jamie Thomson found a way to reprogram skin cells to an embryonic-like state without leaving behind genetic remnants, which can interfere with basic research by leading to mutations. The UW-Madison researchers are believed to be the first to accomplish this feat, which was reported in Thursday’s online edition of the journal Science.
The first research since the mid-1990s comparing the academic progress of students in Milwaukee’s precedent-setting private school voucher program with students in Milwaukee Public Schools shows no major differences in success between the two groups. John Witte, a UW-Madison professor is one of the key participants.
Madison was ranked third behind Provo, Utah, and Boulder, Colo., among 124 midsized metropolitan areas for the best quality of life, according to a new study by Bizjournals, a publisher of metropolitan business newspapers.
The ranking noted the presence in Madison of a major university and the state Capitol, giving the city a stable and upscale employment base. The study also said 44 percent of Madison workers hold management or professional jobs, higher than the 33 percent for a typical midsized metropolitan area.
Chancellor Biddy Martin unveiled a bold plan that would raise the tuition bills of most UW-Madison students in an effort to preserve the quality of the institution, while also making more need-based financial aid available to those who are being priced out of the state’s flagship university.
“Her honeymoon is over now,” said Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, a think tank on campus. “She’s putting out a bold proposal. But this is a very good service, and I truly mean that, to put this out on the table for the public, the students, the faculty and staff to look at.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to keep its search for a new provost an internal one, Chancellor Biddy Martin announced Wednesday.
The provost is the university’s chief academic officer and generally is viewed as the No. 2 official on campus.
In December, Martin announced that Patrick Farrell would stop serving as UW-Madison’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the end of the 2008 fall semester. It is not unusual for new chancellors to appoint their own core leadership team. Martin became UW-Madison’s chancellor on Sept. 1.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin is proposing a four-year plan to increase undergraduate tuition to maintain the school’s quality.
Martin wants students from Wisconsin to pay a supplemental tuition charge of $250 starting next school year. The charge would grow by $250 per year through 2013.
Out-of-state students would pay a $750 supplemental charge next fall, and it would increase by that amount through 2013.
Those charges would be on top of any statewide tuition increase.
Despite the economic crisis and a projected $5.7 billion state budget shortfall over the next biennium, it’s looking like the building boom on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus will continue for at least the next couple years.
The Higher Education Subcommittee of the state’s Building Commission recommended last week that $580.9 million in building projects across campus move forward during the 2009-11 biennium. This action by the subcommittee is just a first step — but an important one — as the state works toward its budget.
Two Madison biotechnology companies are working together on a new type of influenza vaccine, and a new way to give the immunization.
FluGen, which is developing vaccines to fight flu and other infectious diseases, says it has obtained exclusive rights to technology developed by Ratio. Terms are not being disclosed.
Ratioâ??s disposable device is about the size of a poker chip and is equipped with a set of tiny needles. When a button is pressed on the device, a pump sends the vaccine through the needles and into the skin. It doesnâ??t go through the skin and into the muscle, though, as a traditional vaccine syringe does.
The method makes the vaccination painless and more effective, the two companies say.
Go ahead with plan for in-state tuition, says the La Crosse Tribune:
Again the Doyle administration has included a provision in Wisconsin’s biennial budget that would allow illegal immigrants who have graduated from a Wisconsin high school to pay in-state tuition rates at technical colleges and University of Wisconsin System schools.
The right thing to do is this: Support legislation that makes possible a college education and a path to documentation for illegal immigrant high school graduates. It doesn’t make sense to diminish the state’s store of human capital by forcing these students to stay in the shadows.
Machines monitoring an elderly man’s vital signs emit steady beeps while a surgeon uses one arm to grasp a dissector and deftly peel layers of tissue from the patient’s cancerous bladder. Another arm snips at the base of the fleshy organ with a steel claw while a third manipulates a tiny camera that sends gorgeous images of glistening innards onto video screens all around the darkened room.
….The eerily precise and silent surgeon hovering over the Madison patient last month in a UW Hospital operating room was a robot named da Vinci, after Leonardo da Vinci, the 15th century Italian genius who made sketches and then a wooden model of the world’s first human robot. Modern-day da Vincis have revolutionized the surgical world in the past few years, achieving a level of precision and visibility that once would have been unimaginable.
….The eerily precise and silent surgeon hovering over the Madison patient last month in a UW Hospital operating room was a robot named da Vinci, after Leonardo da Vinci, the 15th century Italian genius who made sketches and then a wooden model of the world’s first human robot.
Richard Florida, author of “The Rise of the Creative Class,” has always had nice things to say about Madison. In his 2002 book, he ranked Madison No. 1 among small cities with metro populations of 250,000 to 500,000.
Florida has long argued that communities which offer a stimulating working environment for creative people will thrive in the 21st century. This includes towns that embrace the arts, pop music, gay people and ethnic food.
Quoted: UW-Madison professor of real estate Steve Malpezzi, who says it’s way too early to proclaim the housing is crisis over.
Is conducting the University of Wisconsin Marching Band on your list of things to do?
You can bid on a chance to do so, plus dozens of other Badger- and UW-related products and services, during the online Big Badger Auction that starts Wednesday and continues through April 8.
Although Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent William Andrekopoulos is talking up the idea of converting almost the entire public school system to a year-round schedule, a new study of MPS schools finds mixed evidence, at best, that it increases academic success.
The study, conducted by Bradley R. Carl, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher, finds little difference in the annual improvement between students on year-round schedules and those on the traditional September to June calendar.
Former “Malcolm in the Middle” star Jane Kaczmarek is getting in the middle of the battle over Wisconsin’s film incentives.
She and her “West Wing” actor husband Bradley Whitford, both of whom are Wisconsin natives, sent Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative leaders a letter recently asking them to work on improving the state’s current incentive program rather than scrap it.
“Monk” star Tony Shalhoub, a Green Bay native, also sent Doyle a similar letter on Thursday. Shalhoub spent three weeks in February shooting the independent film “Feed the Fish” in Door County and said that wouldn’t have been done here without the incentives.
(Jane Kaczmarek is an alumna of UW-Madison)
Not guilty pleas were entered Monday morning for University of Wisconsin basketball player Trevon Hughes, appearing in court on two traffic matters the day after the Badgers bowed out of the NCAA tournament with a second round loss to Xavier.
Hughes, 21, the Badgers’ starting point guard, was charged with his second offense of operating a motor vehicle without a driver’s license and failure to stop at a stop sign, with both infractions coming Feb. 24 at the intersection of Observatory Drive and Babcock Drive on the University of Wisconsin campus.
….For a relatively small city, Madison has a wealth of opportunities for adults to learn international dance, from drop-in classes at Dance Fabulous to six-week sessions hosted by Continuing Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The international dance forms have been extremely popular,” said Maureen Janson, a teacher and choreographer who coordinates dance offerings at Continuing Studies. “A lot of our students go because they want an alternative to the gym.
Midway through the second half Sunday, things were looking pretty grim for the University of Wisconsin womenâ??s basketball team.
The Badgers were struggling to score and after dominating most of the first half, they found themselves trailing Kentucky, 30-23, in a Womenâ??s National Invitational Tournament second-round game at the Kohl Center.
Want to help the Wisconsin Badgers women’s hockey team celebrate another NCAA championship?
Fans are invited to attend a welcome home celebration for the Badgers on Monday at 6 p.m. at the Nicholas Johnson Pavilion, which can be accessed via Gate B at the Kohl Center.
BOSTON — Sundayâ??s NCAA women’s hockey championship game could have been called a lot of things.
Hard-fought? Certainly. Suspenseful? Briefly. Close? Not even.
Senior forward and team captain Erika Lawler tallied three assists and senior goaltender Jessie Vetter notched another shutout as the Badgers routed Mercyhurst 5-0, nabbing their third national title in four years.
â??Weâ??re all just really excited right now,” Lawler said. “It was definitely the ideal way to go out.â?
In 1962, English professor Frederic Cassidy presented a paper at a scholarly conference called, “The American Dialect Society Dictionary: How soon?”
About 50 years, it turns out.
The Dictionary of American Regional English founded by Cassidy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is nearing completion of its final volume of text covering S to Z. A new federal grant will help the volume get published next year and allow the dictionary that linguists consider a national treasure to prepare to go online.
