Check out the entire package on Madison life from 9 to 5 — that’s 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. — for a timeline, plus the full list of stories, photos and videos.
Nine to 5. The very numbers either spark feelings of dreary routine or a convenient predictability. At least they do when they don’t make you think of the Dolly Parton song.
(Includes 9 p.m. stop at the Kohl Center and 5 a.m. visit to the university’s Dairy Cattle Center.)
The state’s record deficit is worse than earlier projections, and even top priorities – education, health care and aid to local governments – could face cuts, Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday.
Doyle painted a grim picture in his annual “state of the state” message, but he did not spell out how much worse the state’s two-year shortfall will grow beyond the $5.4 billion estimated in November.
President Barack Obama announced in his inaugural address that one of the priorities of his administration will be to “restore science to its rightful place.”
That was an essential statement after eight years of direct assaults on scientific and medical progress by a Bush/Cheney administration that was determined to deny realities for political purposes.
One of those realities is that women have a right to make choices about when and whether to have children — and they have a right to access a full range of reproductive health services.
….Over the past few years, Madison has become one of the Midwest’s leading centers for what the cosmetic industry likes to call the “enhancement” and “rejuvenation” of faces, bodies and, some insist, souls.
“The number of people doing good work here has increased exponentially,” said plastic surgeon John Siebert, recently recruited from New York by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to help staff a sleek new cosmetic surgery clinic called Transformations. “People used to hop on an airplane and travel. Now, it’s right in your backyard.”
The way the Purdue men’s basketball team has found a way to win games it looked destined to lose this season is a credit to its resiliency and grit. That’s what can define a champion.
So what does it say about the University of Wisconsin after the Badgers’ 64-63 loss to No. 16 Purdue Tuesday night in a Big Ten Conference game at the Kohl Center marked their fifth straight loss and the third time during that streak that they failed to hold a second-half lead?
“We still have life here,” said optimistic junior guard Trevon Hughes as the Badgers continued the program’s longest losing streak since the 1997-98 season.
While they are considering the proposed practice of late-term abortions at the Madison Surgery Center, I want to remind the UW Hospital’s president and board of the bottom line of ethics in the medical world: “Do no harm.”
Abortionist Caryn Dutton and her colleagues apparently find no harm with the practice of late-term abortions as an effort to fulfill a “public health responsibility.” Whose health is the concern of this effort?
Dear Editor:
I would like to applaud the decision of the University of Wisconsin Hospital, the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation and Meriter Hospital to utilize the Madison Surgery Center for second trimester elective abortions. These are legal procedures, and with the retirement of Dr. Dennis Christiansen there was an apparent gap in the provision of women’s reproductive health care needs in Dane County and the surrounding area. That these physicians and institutions have stepped up to the plate and offered to provide such care is worthy of accolade.
The Acacia Fraternity house, a stately three-story Tudor revival built in 1927 at 222 Langdon St., is badly in need of expensive repairs.
To pay for the redevelopment, the fraternity has formed a joint venture with the Alexander Company that calls for a new five-story apartment with 18 units to be built in a gravel parking lot fronting Lake Lawn Place.
But plans by the developer to renovate the historic frat house on the UW-Madison campus, and squeeze an upscale apartment building behind it, remain up in the air.
The science is unequivocal about how to reduce the algae levels in the Yahara lakes: Stop spreading vast amounts of manure, Richard Lathrop, a research limnologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, told an audience Tuesday night in a lecture hall in the UW-Madison Mechanical Engineering Building.
“How do we tackle this King Kong gorilla? This isn’t the 800-pound gorilla you hear about. This is a huge one,” he said.
Lathrop, who is also a part of the UW-Madison Center for Limnology, kicked off the spring 2009 Community Environmental Forum with the lecture, “Controlling Eutrophication in the Yahara Lakes: Challenges and Opportunities.” About 100 people, equal parts students and community members, were in the audience.
This was the same tired, old tune Wisconsin has played for the past two weeks.
The Badgers led 16th-ranked Purdue by four points with a little more than 2 minutes left but allowed two back-breaking three-pointers down the stretch that helped the Boilermakers fight back and score a 64-63 victory in front of a packed house at the Kohl Center. The loss was Wisconsin’s fifth in a row.
The University of Wisconsin Foundation’s endowment fund increased 5.5% from 2007 to 2008, according to a new survey released Tuesday morning.
The survey was conducted by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and Commonfund Inc., a Connecticut nonprofit. The survey covered 435 schools and was the first real snapshot of the financial health of endowments in the midst of a recession.
Quoted: Al Fish, a University of Wisconsin-Madison vice chancellor and deputy director of the state recovery office.
Name a fire, any big Madison fire, and chances are Tom Colby was there to investigate it.
Colby, a Madison police detective who mostly focused on financial crimes, fire, arson and explosions, retired this month after 36 years on the job, almost 26 as a detective.
Plaques with team photos from her days as a coach hang on a wall in Dawn Crim’s office on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
But today her office is not nearly as plush as the modern digs she had at the state-of-the-art Kohl Center a decade ago when she was the top assistant under then-UW women’s basketball coach Jane Albright. Instead, she works out of the basement of aging Bascom Hall, with her office sitting directly below that of Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin.
Crim, a native of Philadelphia and former University of Virginia basketball standout, was named the new special assistant to the chancellor for community relations in December.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health has a relatively strict conflict-of-interest policy, but that hasn’t prevented money from pharmaceutical and medical device companies from pouring into the school, which raises questions about motives.
MADISON (WKOW) — Madison fire officials tell 27 News a couple hundred people were evacuated from UW’s Helen C. White Library after an overheated computer created a smoky smell.
When clothes become more than a functional outer layer, high fashion can cross into high art. Three art exhibits opening and ending this month capitalize on our collective fascination with fabrics, style and status.
With about 500 items from more than a dozen different Asian cultures, “Writing with Thread: Traditional Textiles of Southwest Chinese Minorities” communicates values through piles of silver necklaces, elaborate headdresses, delicate embroidery and ancestral images. Chinese miniskirts are among the items on display at the exhibit, which opens at the Chazen on Friday, Jan. 30.
….In a different way, American crazy quilts reveal cultural values. “A Fairyland of Fabrics: The Victorian Crazy Quilt,” a new show at the Design Gallery in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology, describes how “maid, wife and widow” (to quote an 1890 “Good Housekeeping” poem) were caught up in “crazy quilt mania.”
The $5.3 million remodeling of the fourth floor of the GEF 3 state office building was unanimously approved Monday by the state Building Commission but not without a few questions raised about the price tag.
….The commission also approved spending $2.35 million for consultation on upgrading the Charter Street and Capitol heating plants. The coal-fired plants produce steam heat for state buildings and were operated in violation of the Clean Air Act until a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club forced the state to enter into a consent decree that mandated the plants lower their emissions.
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Mark Johnson will lead the women’s national hockey team at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
Johnson was selected Tuesday to continue his role as head coach of the women’s program that he’s led since replacing Ben Smith.
Children who spent their first years in institutions before being adopted by loving and affluent families still suffered long-term damage to their immune systems as a result of early emotional stress, according to a University of Wisconsin study posted Monday with the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Even the health of children adopted before the age of 3 who then spent more than a decade with their new families were no better than the health of children who had spent their entire childhoods in abusive families.
Quoted: Co-authors Seth Pollak, director of the Child Emotion Laboratory in the UW-Madison Waisman Center and a professor of psychology and pediatrics, and psychology professor Christopher Coe.
University of Wisconsin officials say they are launching important initiatives designed to deal with conflict of interest policies at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly and UW-Madison Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin made those comments in a letter sent Monday to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
“A task force was established for this purpose, with the goal of identifying, managing and eliminating conflicts of interest in clinical care,” the letter stated.
Palestinian journalist Amira Hanania was in Madison Monday night, fresh from spending four weeks reporting on the war in Gaza.
“I think I am the only Palestinian journalist who has ever been ice fishing,” she said to laughter after she was introduced to a crowd of about 500 for her Distinguished Lecture Series talk in the Wisconsin Union Theater.
Hanania, 27, was the lead journalist for the Ma’an News Agency, the only independent news network in the Palestinian territories.
Researchers from Wisconsin and Australia have found that climate change could expand the range of disease-spreading insects in coming decades, endangering human health.
Scientists from the UW-Madison and three Australian universities identified key biological and environmental factors affecting a type of mosquito that spreads dengue fever.
In the study, to be published online Jan. 28 in the British Ecological Society’s journal Functional Ecology, they reported that climate changes in Australia during the next 40 years and the insect’s ability to adapt to new conditions may allow the mosquitoes to expand into several populated regions of the continent.
MILWAUKEE (AP) — The Milwaukee Art Museum has a new chief curator. Museum Director Dan Keegan announced Monday that Brady Roberts will start March 2.
He was previously the curator at the EVO Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M.
Mark Johnson appears in line to be named coach of the U.S. Olympic women’s hockey team. USA Hockey won’t make an official announcement until Tuesday afternoon.
However, in a press release Monday, the organization noted that a reception honoring the coach who will lead the Americans into the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver will be held Tuesday evening at Heritage Hall inside Camp Randall Stadium.
WHITEWATER, Wis. (AP) — The scientific journal Nature says a former University of Wisconsin-Whitewater biology professor has put forward some of the decade’s best ideas on evolution.
The journal recognized Jeffrey McKinnon for his work on the mating habits of three-spine sticklebacks, which are silvery fish about 2 inches long.
The Wisconsin men’s basketball team earned a dubious distinction Saturday while providing its coach with a glimmer of hope for a better future.
The Badgers’ equaled the longest losing streak of Bo Ryan’s eight years as coach with their 64-57 loss to No. 25 Illinois in front of a sellout crowd of 16,618 at Assembly Hall.
It’s the most shocking development of the Big Ten Conference season so far.
Forget the rise of Penn State and Northwestern, the collapse of Indiana or the dominance of Michigan State. What’s raising eyebrows across the country is that the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team, the pillar of Big Ten excellence this decade, has lost four straight games and is mired in the second division of the conference standings.
In search for an explanation, some of the so-called experts have focused on whether the Badgers’ talent is strong enough to compete in a conference with a bevy of vastly improved, more athletic teams.
There were no records broken nor many snowballs assembled in what was supposed to be a massive snowball fight on a sun-splashed Saturday afternoon at Bascom Hill on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
An estimated 700 students — most underdressed despite bone-chilling temperatures hovering in the single digits — hurled snow chunks at each other for nearly 30 minutes. The cold temps made it difficult to form actual snowballs, but that didn’t stop the students from engaging in battle.
The conclusions were clear: Women who took hormone therapy drugs were at increased risk for breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and blood clots.
The findings were so strong that researchers stopped a clinical trial in 2002, five years early, because it would have been unethical to continue giving the drugs to women.
But that same year, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health began a medical education program for doctors that promoted hormone therapy, touted its benefits and downplayed its risks.
Milwaukee Electric maintains partnerships with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
Young Wisconsin companies raised $75 million of venture capital last year – less than a year earlier, but in line with national trends.
Nationally, venture capitalists invested $28.3 billion in 3,808 deals in 2008.
That represented an 8% decline in dollars and a 4% decline in the number of deals, according to the MoneyTree Report, released today by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.
Ten years after University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher James Thomson first isolated and cultured human embryonic stem cells, a California company has received clearance from regulators to begin the first clinical trials for a therapy based on them.
Gov. Jim Doyle on Friday signed an executive order creating an Office of Recovery and Reinvestment to advise him and other state officials on how to spend what is expected to be as much $3.5 billion from the federal economic stimulus package.
Doyle said Gary J. Wolter, president of Madison Gas and Electric Co., will be lent to state government to work as the agency’s director. Wolter’s deputy will be University of Wisconsin-Madison Vice Chancellor Alan Fish, who has worked on campus building projects, long-range planning and transportation systems, Doyle said.
A new policy brief from the higher education research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says Gov. Jim Doyle’s Wisconsin Covenant program needs to commit public funds to pay for four years of financial aid for low-income students to make a significant improvement in the enrollment of underrepresented students.
Gov. Jim Doyle has created a new office to oversee the massive distribution of federal economic stimulus money that is expected to flow to the state.
The Office of Recovery and Reinvestment will also look for ways to send the funds quickly to schools, local governments, and companies by speeding through the regulatory process while still keeping environmental and quality standards, Doyle said.
….Gary Wolter, president and chief executive officer of Madison Gas & Electric will be in charge of the new office while maintaining his job with the utility. Al Fish, UW-Madison’s associate vice chancellor for facilities, planning and management, will also join it.
A substance in red wine not only could make for a healthier heart but might also be used to treat a certain cancer affecting babies and children, according to a professor studying the substance at the cancer center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Arthur Polans, professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, has been studying the substance resveratrol for five years in his laboratory at the Paul P. Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Seven new directors have been elected to the board of directors for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business association, with headquarters in Madison.
The former Republican chair of the Assembly committee overseeing higher education blasted state Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson’s election campaign Thursday for posting a solicitation for campaign workers on the University of Wisconsin-Madison Web site.
“It appears that the chief justice’s campaign is using her influence and office to solicit campaign workers through the UW-Madison Law School,” said Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, in a press release. “The description of these internships is clearly unseemly, unethical and possibly illegal.”
And in short order, the liberal group One Wisconsin Now said Nass ought to look at his own Internet posting at UW-Whitewater for an internship in his own office and another internship opportunity sent to UW-Madison students last summer by the Republican Party of Wisconsin. Nass’ name is listed on the site among a host of politicians from both political parties who offer internships, according to the UW-Whitewater Web site.
Despite significant strains on the state budget, higher education leaders in Wisconsin say it’s critical that college remains affordable and accessible to students as the nation grinds its way through the recession.
Rolf Wegenke, president of the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said it’s critical to keep investing money in our students.
Federal regulators have approved the first experiment testing human embryonic stem cells on people, officials announced Friday.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized the Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., to test stem cells derived from human embryos on eight to 10 patients with severe spinal cord injuries. The study is aimed primarily at determining the safety of the cells in human subjects, but researchers also will examine the patients for any signs the therapy restored sensation or movement
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — More than two dozen Wisconsin lawmakers are asking the University of Wisconsin Hospital to drop a plan to provide late-term abortions at a private clinic.
Twenty-eight Republican senators and representatives and one independent signed a letter to Hospital CEO Donna Katen-Bahensky on Thursday. The letter calls second-trimester abortion a “barbaric” procedure and asks Katen-Bahensky to use her power to stop it.
University of Wisconsin-Madison orthopedic surgeon and researcher Dr. Thomas Zdeblick has received millions of dollars in royalty payments from a medical device company for a variety of spinal implants he helped invent, according to an investigation recently made public by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
But a review by The Capital Times finds that the university has no legal right to share in Zdeblick’s windfall. University policy only requires its researchers to patent inventions through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation if their discoveries are funded with federal money.
Pop superstars Elton John and Billy Joel will perform a joint concert in the Kohl Center at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 7. Tickets, ranging from $55 to $180, go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 31.
Part of the “Face 2 Face” tour, the show features solo sets by each performer then a combined set by the two legends.
Mariah Dunham lost a cherished family member a couple weeks ago when her aunt, Debbie Simonds, died after a yearlong battle with brain cancer. At the same time, she was reminded that she has a big extended family with the Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team.
It has been an emotional period for Dunham, a junior forward from Watertown, as she has tried to juggle family and basketball. In the end, she has learned that they are one and the same.
A six-inch natural gas pipe leaking at University and Babcock Avenues on the UW-Madison campus has been fixed, and vehicle and pedestrian traffic is returning back to normal.
The leak caused the evacuation of several buildings on campus, including biochemistry and horticulture buildings, and Metro buses were diverted from the area as traffic was closed on University.
The U.S. Department of Justice has given a $300,000 grant to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a project to help address the causes of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking.
The grant was announced Thursday.
The UW-Madison project, “Community Problems, Community Solutions: Building Capacity to End Violence Against Women at UW-Madison,” is one of 21 projects receiving a grant from the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women.
Madison landlord Dave Wood had to look no further than his own eight rental buildings Downtown for great examples of why the new safety campaign for student housing that he was planning was needed.
In the space of just a few days over the last two weeks, as Wood posted new laminated posters he designed with safety tips approved by the Madison police and fire departments, Wood spied the following:
At 2020 Kendall Avenue, at the front of the building, the main entry door stood wide open, Wood said. Inside the building, on a landing outside one apartment, the unit’s smoke detector was sitting among some shoes on the steps, after someone detached it from the unit’s ceiling.
Every year for the past decade, the biggest customer at the Columbus Antique Mall has been Famous Dave’s barbecue. The franchise regularly bought up bric-a-brac to decorate the restaurants’ walls.
Until last year, that is, when the biggest spender was Universal Studios.
(Jeopardy’s 2008 College Championship and scenes from “Madison” were filmed on the UW-Madison campus and students worked on both productions.)
University of Wisconsin Associate Professor of History Ned Blackhawk has been named as one of 10 emerging scholars nationally by “Diverse” magazine.
Blackhawk, on the UW History staff since 1999, is an expert on the history of Native American people and the complex and often tragic conflicts between natives and European settlers in the American West.
APPLETON — Add another honor to Mark Johnson’s resume.
The Wisconsin Badgers women’s hockey coach and Olympic legend was given the Red Smith Award at the organization’s annual banquet Tuesday at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel. The award has been given since 1965 to a Wisconsin sports figure who has shown excellence.
The “For Sale” signs haven’t yet gone up, but General Electric could soon be seeking a buyer for an $11 million building in the Old Sauk Trails Business Park in Middleton.
….An outgrowth of UW-Madison research, Lunar Corp. joined GE’s ranks in 2000 when it was purchased for $142 million by GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of General Electric Co.
….Despite the twin pillars of state government and the University of Wisconsin, Madison certainly hasn’t been immune to the unprecedented economic slowdown.
You knew it was coming. In the midst of a second long, frigid and snowy winter, the skeptics of global warming are feeling a bit vindicated.
Quoted: Professor Jon Martin, chair of the Department of Atmospheric Oceanography; John Magnuson, professor emeritus of zoology; and climatologist Stephen Vavrus. UW-Madison student Rebecca Hershman is also quoted.
University of Wisconsin officials are working on a budget for the 2009-’10 academic year that will keep overall operating expenses and ticket prices for all sports at their current levels.
That was the message delivered Tuesday to UW’s Finance, Facilities and Operations Committee by John Jentz, associate athletic director in charge of finance.
Thomas Zdeblick, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, raised eyebrows three years ago when it was learned that he had been receiving $400,000 yearly from the medical device company Medtronic.
But a document obtained Friday indicates the actual yearly payments averaged about 10 times that figure.
Zdeblick, a professor and chairman of the department of orthopedics at UW, received more than $19â??million in payments from Medtronic from 2003 through 2007, according to a letter that Sen. Charles Grassley R-Iowa sent Monday to UW System President Kevin Reilly.
The medical industry has 20 billion reasons to expect cooperation from doctors in marketing its products. That’s how many dollars the industry spends each year in payments and gifts, according to Senate estimates.
The practice should be banned outright, but for now, we’ll settle for full disclosure, which a Senate bill introduced in 2007 by Sens. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, would require.
Turns out that two pains can make a right. Hot peppers are a key to reducing the misery associated with shingles, or herpes zoster, a viral infection that frequently causes a painful rash, according to results from a promising new clinical trial.
The study found that a high dose of capsaicin, the chemical in hot peppers that makes eyes water and mouths sting, applied through a skin patch can be surprisingly effective in relieving postherpetic neuralgia, the debilitating nerve pain that is frequently a complication of shingles.
Semester after semester, students on campuses across the country voice concerns about out-of-control textbook costs.
Yet year after year, little seems to be done to address the issue.
Over the past two academic years alone, UW-Madison students have seen the average amount paid for textbooks and supplies jump $100 — from $890 during 2006-07 to an estimated $990 this year, according to a UW System review unveiled at a Board of Regents meeting in December.
….Instead of waiting for the powers-that-be to take significant action to address the issue, UW-Madison students are continuing to take steps themselves to lessen the burden of soaring costs.
SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo will pay new CEO Carol Bartz at least $19 million in cash and stock during her first year on the job and top it off with an incentive package likely to yield a huge windfall if she can turn around the long-struggling Internet company.
The details of the UW-Madison graduate’s compensation emerged Thursday in a regulatory filing made two days after Yahoo hired the tough-minded technology veteran to replace co-founder Jerry Yang as its chief executive.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal safety investigators said Thursday that flying at night in poor weather conditions contributed to three medical helicopter crashes that killed 12 people.
….The board released the probable cause of the four crashes and information on five others. All total, 35 people were killed in nine EMS helicopter crashes since December 2007.
Three years ago, the board recommended all EMS helicopters be equipped with Terrain Awareness Warning Systems. The technology, which is used aboard commercial jetliners, warns pilots who can’t see where they’re heading when the aircraft is on course to fly into the ground.
Since then, more than three dozen people have been killed in EMS helicopter accidents and installation of the equipment still is not required by the Federal Aviation Administration. Other safety recommendations included more formal procedures for evaluating the risks of making an emergency medical flight, particularly at night and in poor weather, and for obtaining up-to-date weather information. Those recommendations have not been fully implemented either.
