Dear Editor: I have been writing to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, requesting information on a rhesus macaque being held there in the Primate Research Center. After my second request, I received a response from the associate director. I was basically told “no,” and received no answers to my questions.
To test how different preparation and cooking methods affected thiosulfinates, plant geneticist Philipp Simon, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a group of researchers at Cuyo University in Argentina gathered four pounds of garlic and crushed half with a garlic press. They let all the garlic sit at room temperature for 10 minutes and then cooked batches of each sample in a 400-degree oven, in a microwave, or in boiling water for up to 20 minutes. Next, they tested whether each batch of garlic could alter how well blood platelets clumped. Garlic cooked whole had no anti-clumping ability, but crushed, lightly cooked garlic had a significant effect in reducing platelet clumping.
The reason: Thiosulfinates don’t form until the clove is crushed or cut.
Ex-Marine and University of Wisconsin-Madison junior Jake Warner gets a monthly check for $1,185, enough to cover his living expenses ($510 for rent $250 necessities) plus four 30-packs of Miller High Life. But, he says, â??you canâ??t survive off just the GI Bill.â? After financial aid, his tuition bill ends up around $2,000 a semester. He tutors a seventh grader to make up the difference.
Mentions that researchers in Richard Davidson’s lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have demonstrated that support from a loved one during a stressful task not only feels good, but also calms the brain circuits that produce stress hormones.
Even states without California’s mega-bucks are hoping to become stem-cell havens. Last month Wisconsin’s governor announced that a combination of state and private funds would be dedicated to build a $375 million “Wisconsin Institute for Discovery,” to be housed at the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus, where pioneering biologist James Thomson first isolated human embryonic stem cells in 1998.
Matt Tegenkamp couldn’t believe his luck. This couldn’t be happening.
Having battled a hamstring problem that hampered his training in the final weeks leading up to the Olympic track and field trials, the former University of Wisconsin runner from Madison found himself in a fierce battle with four other contenders late Monday night to make the team in the 5,000 meters.
Twelve provosts from the Big Ten universities and the Midwest region say they will work together on efforts to make the Midwest’s economy more competitive and are calling on governors to join them in this effort. The provosts from the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), a consortium of the Big Ten universities plus the University of Chicago, signed a resolution to that end on Friday.
People in the U.S. eat more ice cream than any other country in the world. The average American consumes about 24 quarts of ice cream a year. But, if you buy a lot of ice cream, you know that freezer burn or ice crystals can ruin the flavor and creaminess of your favorite treat
Whichever flavor you like best, ice cream is a favorite for kids of all ages. But when it comes to ice cream, ice isn’t such a good thing, especially when it forms on the inside of the container. “Ice crystals when they grow they change the texture of ice cream, it gives you some gritty sensation in your mouth, and that is not very desirable,” Srinivasan Damodaran, food scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told Ivanhoe.
A Stillwater Area High School graduate accused of murdering a Wisconsin man is being transported from Stillwater to Madison, Wis.
Adam Charles Peterson, 20, was released today from the Washington County Jail. He was arrested at his mother’s home in Grant last week and later charged in Dane County, Wis., with first-degree murder.
He is accused of stabbing Joel Marino to death on Jan. 28. Marino was found in an alley near his Madison home.
Peterson attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison last fall, but withdrew from the university in November. His father said he believes his son suffers from mental illness.
Quoted: Shanan Peters, an assistant geology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Francis Halzen has an unusual job. This scientist studies itsy bitsy, teeny tiny objects zipping through the universe. Theyâ??re called neutrinos.
His job should be easy because neutrinos are all around us, all the time. They pass from the depths of outer space to the depths of your sock drawer â?? and then just keep going. And donâ??t even think about trying to count these super-tiny particles. The neutrinos flying around our universe outnumber all of the people, animals, plants, satellites, planets, stars, galaxies, black holes and asteroids combined.
Theyâ??re also fast, traveling at almost the speed of light. In the time it took you to read the previous paragraph, more than a trillion neutrinos zoomed through you.
They always travel in straight lines. Some fly from your eyes to your ears, others from your feet to your head. They fly from the left, from the right and from everywhere in between. Although you canâ??t see them, theyâ??re also flying through everything you can see.
So you would think Halzenâ??s job at the University of Wisconsin-Madison should be a snap. All he has to do is catch a few of the gazillions passing through his university every day.
Mentions a key study by University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Sara McLanahan and Julia Adams, conducted some 20 years ago, found that parenthood was perceived as significantly more stressful in the 1970s than in the 1950s; the researchers attribute part of that change to major shifts in employment patterns.
The number of job openings in Wisconsin requiring so-called STEM â?? Science, Technology, Engineering, Math â?? expertise will increase by 18.3% through 2014, compared with an 11.5% increase for all occupations, according to the Center on Education and Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
A new study suggests the epic ebbing and flowing of sea and sediment for eons upon eons account for world’s periodic mass extinctions over the past 500 million years.
“Impacts, for the most part, aren’t associated with most extinctions,” said Shanan Peters, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of geology and geophysics and leader of the study. “There have also been studies of volcanism, and some eruptions correspond to extinction, but many do not.”
A Minnesota man charged in a fatal stabbing in Madison, Wis., could not have committed two other unsolved murders in that city, his father said.
University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have built super-proteins with stronger backbones, an act of chemical chiropractic that could pave the way for more resilient drugs.
Wisconsin is far better positioned in the knowledge economy than it was four years ago, with larger pools of risk capital and better coordination of the stateâ??s best research.
That’s one way to read a new report from the well-respected Milken Institute. The state finished five spots higher at No. 22 in Milken’s State Technology and Science Index (www.jsonline.com/765102).
Every week thousands of academic articles heralding discoveries in medicine and science are vetted and validated before being published in no-nonsense journals with names such as “Acta Crystallographica,” “Methods in Enzymology,” or “Macromolecules”.
Like works of art, these building blocks of human knowledge vary in quality and importance. Some are trivial, or just plain wrong.
But a few will usher in major change in our lives or a seismic shift in perspective, whether the possibility of growing a new heart or liver from a tiny patch of skin, or a unified theory of the cosmos. Among those quoted: Shanan Peters, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Most of the stateâ??s economic indicators get dragged down by the performance in the city of Milwaukee. Hence, all strategies need to align our investments in development toward more jobs in the biggest and most stressed city in the state.
Thatâ??s not the only place we need more job creation, but Milwaukee ought to be priority No. 1. Is the powerful University of Wisconsin-Madison doing enough in that regard? Most observers would say no.
Is the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukeeâ??s mission of becoming a top research institution going in the right direction? Most would say yes. Eventually, that research and the resulting technology transfer should spell more start-ups and jobs.
Growing up, Adam Charles Peterson was introverted and shy often relying on his twin brother Eric to make friends and socialize when the pair attended Stillwater High, his father said.
Going off to college only seemed to compound Adam Peterson’s social awkwardness. Peterson, 20, once a good student, dropped out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall of 2007. Peterson’s parents feared he was depressed and desperately unhappy. The situation turned so dire that Peterson was hospitalized for a week after a psychotic outburst and then moved back home to his mother’ s house in Grant to attend “psychological and psychiatric counseling,” his father, Melvin Peterson, said.
A former University of Wisconsin-Madison student was charged Friday with first-degree intentional homicide in the Jan. 28 stabbing of Joel Marino, 31.
Quoted: Howard Schweber, a professor of law and political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
MADISON, Wis. — A 20-year-old Minnesota man was formally charged on Friday with first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the fatal stabbing of Madison resident Joel Marino last January.
Adam Charles Peterson, who’s currently a resident of Grant, Minn., was arrested on Thursday in Minnesota, according to Madison police.
During a Friday morning news conference, Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said that Peterson is a former Madison resident who had multiple addresses in the area. He said that Peterson was a University of Wisconsin-Madison student, but wasn’t an active student at the time of killing.
The Wisconsin foundation that holds several key embryonic stem cell patents said Thursday that it has received certificates signaling the end of a long-fought challenge to the patents.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, known as WARF, received the so-called re-examination certificates from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week, WARF spokeswoman Janet Kelly said. The certificates confirm the patent officeâ??s ruling in March to strike down a challenge to the patents that started in October 2006.
People on the chancellor search committee at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside knew the man they recommended as a finalist got a no-confidence vote at the college where he was dean, but they didnâ??t tell the Board of Regents or the UW System president about it â?? raising more tough questions about the university systemâ??s vetting process
It’s time to confess — I am a musical theater fanatic. I was raised on the classics: “Sound of Music,” “South Pacific” and “Camelot.” I grew up with “Rent” and, later, “The Last Five Years” and “Avenue Q.”
Most recently, “Spring Awakening” and — dare I say it? — “Legally Blonde: The Musical” have been in rotation on my mp3 player.
So when University Theatre’s “Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)” proclaims in the first number its intention to spoof Broadway’s most beloved composers, I know I am the perfect audience. I will get every joke, catch every reference.
….The problem? Hearing parodies of Rogers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Kander and Ebb leaves me unfulfilled. I want to hear the real stuff.
Cable subscribers’ increasing embrace of digital services helped lead to a carriage deal between Comcast and the Big Ten Network, and could do the same for Charter Communications and Time Warner, Wisconsin’s two dominant cable providers.
BTN from its beginning insisted on being carried on a basic level of cable service — such as Charter’s Expanded Basic — in the Big Ten Conference states in order to reach a maximum number of subscribers. BTN has since made a partial concession on that point in its deal with Comcast that was driven by the company’s growth in digital subscribers.
In its markets in Big Ten Conference states, Comcast will carry BTN on its expanded basic level from its launch Aug. 15 through the end of the 2008-09 college basketball season. But after that, it will be allowed to move BTN to a “broadly distributed digital level of service in most of its systems in the Big Ten states,” the companies said in their news release announcing the deal.
In other recent polls, Obama led 50% to 37% in a June 8-10 survey by Wispolitics.com and the University of Wisconsin-Madison political science department; and he led 52% to 43% in a June 13-16 poll by Survey USA in the state.
A state appeals court Thursday restored the wrongful death lawsuit against a state employee brought after an ABC cameraman died from a fall at Camp Randall stadium while preparing for a Nov. 22, 2003 telecast of a Badger-Iowa football game.
The District 4 Court of Appeals opinion reverses a ruling by Dane County Circuit Judge John Albert, who dismissed the suit brought by the estate of Richard Umansky against Barry Fox, director of facilities at the stadium.
Albert had concluded that state employee immunity prevented Fox from being sued, but the Appeals Court found that Fox could be negligent because Umansky fell from a platform from which a railing had been removed. As a result, the suit can now be heard in Dane County Circuit Court.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued Re-examination Certificates for the two most important base embryonic stem cell patents held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).
This ruling is not appealable, which means that the claims of these patents stand confirmed and enforceable.
This action officially concludes a re-examination process for these patents that began in October of 2006, and was decided in WARF’s favor in March of this year. This final process was little more than a formality.
While one lone airport traffic controller waved Oconomowoc native Maj. Jodi Maroney into Dane County Regional Airport Wednesday, the 30 friends and family may have stood out more as they fluttered their American flags in anticipation. Maroney flew in from Edwards Air Force Base in California, and is stopping over in Madison before making her squadron’s final flight Thursday.
For the first time in 28 years, Kevin Cosgrove won’t be coaching the game that he loves: college football. But the potential for any separation anxiety may be eased by 1) his view that this is more of a respite than a setback, 2) his conviction that he will be coaching again next season, collegiately or professionally and 3) his commitment to relocating back to Madison, where he will volunteer his time to help mentor his son with the Edgewood High School football program.
Cosgrove, the former University of Wisconsin assistant, admitted that family considerations took precedence on the heels of four turbulent seasons at Nebraska; none more tumultuous than the final weeks of 2007, during which head coach Bill Callahan was ousted and Cosgrove was fired as defensive coordinator.
State employee names should be open, says the Appleton Post-Crescent.
Just like anything else in the public domain, state employees’ records should be open and accessible.
This is what the Wisconsin Supreme Court may be deciding following a protracted fight on the part of the Wisconsin State Employees Union to keep its workers names a secret.
From Concerts on the Square to Opera in the Park, free summertime arts opportunities abound in Madison. Now, for the second year, dance is on tap.
More than 220 high school, college and professional dancers, teachers and choreographers from around the world have come to Madison this month for the UW-Madison Dance Program’s Summer Dance Institute. The event, which started June 16, is concluding this week with a series of free public concerts beginning Thursday, June 26, in historic Lathrop Hall.
Mentions that ssing air monitors, a 2005 study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher James J. Schauer showed that 64% of reactive mercury in Milwaukee came from regional sources – Milwaukee, Chicago and Gary, Ind.
MADISON, Wis. — Madison’s annual Rhythm and Booms fires off this Saturday at Warner Park.
The event, which starts at noon, is expected to draw around 250,000 people. But, one big change this year will be that Madison Metro will no longer be providing the shuttle service between Warner Park and the MATC parking lot.
New federal regulations that went into effect in April prohibit federally-funded transit systems from providing shuttle services for community events.
“It’s a federal rule that’s trying to help out the private companies,” said Metro transit marketing specialist Mick Rusch. “We feel like we’re passing the torch. We understand the spirit of this legislation.”
The new federal rules also mean Metro buses will no longer be able to provide shuttle service at University of Wisconsin football games or WIAA sporting events. Metro buses moved 50,000 people a year on these community event shuttles, WISC-TV reported.
It’s confirmed: Rapper Kanye West will be in Madison on July 26 for the 2008 Industry Meltdown Midwest Music Summit. But he’s not performing. That’s what Greg Doby, the Summit’s organizer, has to keep telling people as he’s fielded calls from all over the country and Canada since confirming West’s visit last week.
Instead, West will be speaking at a 2 p.m. panel discussion about “The Message in the Music.” It’s part of the Summit’s broader goal to bring urban music leaders together to network and talk about the future of the industry in the Midwest.
First it was a proposed ban on plastic bags. Now, a member of the influential Madison Plan Commission wants to ban the restaurant drive-through — or at least restrict the ubiquitous symbol of America’s auto-centric lifestyle.
“Given the concern about all the carbon going into the atmosphere, I’m not sure we should be building more places for people to sit idling in their cars,” says Eric Sundquist, who was appointed to the citizen panel by Mayor Dave Cieslewicz this spring.
A former newspaper reporter in Atlanta now working as a researcher at the UW-Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy, Sundquist notes that several cities in Canada have recently moved to ban the drive-through coffee shop or stand-alone fast food restaurant.
Madison and Dane County elected officials are adding their voices to the chorus of those pushing the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the state to create cleaner power downtown and around campus.
Nine members of Madison’s City Council and six supervisors from the Dane County Board sent a letter to UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley and state Administration Secretary Michael Morgan last week after the university and state held a town hall meeting to get public input on a long-term feasibility study of potential power sources for the university and state Capitol.
From semester to semester, Josh Bousquette doesn’t know if he’ll get a bill for $12,000 or a monthly paycheck in the mail.
It all depends on whether the UW-Madison graduate student manages to find funding as a teaching assistant or research assistant. If he gets funding, his out-of-state tuition of about $25,000 a year is covered, and he’s got a job that pays for most of his living expenses.
….Increasingly, graduate students at UW-Madison are scrambling to get their hands on scarce and meager funding, especially those studying humanities. Even students lucky enough to come in with guaranteed teaching or research positions must work for some of the lowest salaries within the UW’s peer institutions.
Now all Brian Butch and Draelon Burns can do is wait and hope.
Butch, formerly of the University of Wisconsin, and Burns, who played at Milwaukee Custer and later at DePaul, were among the eight players who worked out for the Milwaukee Bucks Tuesday at the Cousins Center.
The science of the very small could pose some very big problems for state and local agencies, according to a new report by Wisconsin researchers.
Data gaps in our understanding of the burgeoning field of nanotechnology are forcing unprepared state and local governments to bear the brunt of regulating the new technology’s potentially hazardous risks, the authors conclude.
University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemist Doug Weibel has won the prestigious Searle Scholar Award, a prize recognizing academic excellence of young faculty in medicine, chemistry and the biological sciences.
The award nets Weibel $300,000 over the next three years in research funding, one of the top monetary prizes available in the biomedical sciences.
Terry Gillickâ??s niece Michaela McElwee wanted to return early from her vacation in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for Gillickâ??s funeral. Instead, Gillickâ??s wife asked her to find a nice pub and raise a pint to her â??Uncle Funny.â?
Gillick, a longtime spokesman for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, died of a heart attack Sunday. He was 59. He and his wife, Terry Perry, lived on Milwaukeeâ??s west side.
The man who was set to take the helm at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside resigned from the position Tuesday in the midst of a federal criminal probe involving the use of funds at his college, UW officials announced.
Robert Felner, who has served as dean of the University of Louisville’s College of Education and Human Development since 2003, was supposed to start his new job as chancellor at UW-Parkside July 1. But he called UW System officials Sunday to tell them of the federal investigation.
The U.S. attorney’s office in western Kentucky said Monday that it was conducting a joint criminal investigation with the University of Louisville and federal law enforcement agencies. The U.S. attorney’s office did not name Felner. But his attorney, Scott C. Cox, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that Felner is at the center of the investigation sparked by university officials’ allegation that roughly $500,000 in federal grant money was mishandled
The Wisconsin men’s basketball team was named Big Ten Men’s Team of the Year by the Big Ten Network on Friday.
In the first-ever season-ending awards show, Wisconsin edged the Iowa wrestling team and the Michigan baseball team en route to adding this award to its display case.
If Jay Bilas is correct, the University of Wisconsinâ??s Brian Butch will not be among the 60 players chosen in the National Basketball Association draft Thursday night.
And to hear Bilas tell it, that could be a blessing for him.
A federal criminal investigation is under way at the school where newly appointed University of Wisconsin-Parkside Chancellor Robert Felner is dean â?? and UW officials are trying to figure out what the news means for the schoolâ??s future.
With its investment in biosciences and bioenergy research, and leadership in stem cell research, Wisconsin has continued to expand its knowledge economy, a new report by the Milken Institute shows.
The state ranked 22nd in the instituteâ??s State Technology and Science Index, moving up from 27th in 2004, the last time the report was done
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The man picked to lead the University of Wisconsin-Parkside faces an uncertain future amid a criminal investigation at the University of Louisville, where he was a dean.
Robert Felner is dean of the university’s College of Education and Human Development. He alerted UW System President Kevin Reilly on Sunday that his college was under investigation.
Private dollars invested in Wisconsin start-up companies operating in high-growth sectors — such as biotechnology — grew 43 percent in 2007 to a record high, according to a report released Wednesday.
That exceeds the 1.8 percent national growth estimate provided earlier this year by the Center for Venture Research, the Wisconsin Technology Network reported.
Farrah Fawcett just didn’t do it for Sean Flyr. He tried, he really tried. That icon of ’70s gorgeousness did nothing for the teenage Flyr as he stared at that famous poster hoping it would thrill him just a little.
It didn’t. And that’s when he knew.
Flyr, 43, of Madison, is one of 16 people telling just that kind of story on the Cinemax documentary “When I Knew,” which airs at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. The film features men and women who recall the moment in their lives — as kids, high schoolers or grown adults — when they realized they were gay. It is also airing on Cinemax on Demand throughout the month.
Even in an NHL entry draft deep in top-end defenseman, Jake Gardiner gave the Anaheim Ducks a good reason to take him.
Impressive speed made Gardiner, an incoming freshman for the University of Wisconsin, an intriguing first-round target on Friday, and the Ducks took a chance on him with the 17th overall pick.
Outgoing UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley has been named interim director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, the public half of the now-under-construction research center that will include private collaboration and interdisciplinary science.
….Wiley will also be a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and the LaFollette School of Public Affairs, according to a news release from the university. He also plans to continue research on policy-related matters, including the finance and economics of higher education.
Quoted: John Karl Scholz, a visiting scholar at Brookings and a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist.
People who stop breathing during sleep are more likely to lose their expected â?? and beneficial â?? drop in nighttime blood pressure, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin researchers.
Identical twin stars born of the same cosmic dust are not always exactly the same, astronomers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Vanderbilt University have found.
At some point during one of the 26 interviews Jake Gardiner had with representatives of NHL teams over two days at the league’s scouting combine earlier this month, things got a little heated.
“They were asking me tough questions, one team was, and I kept saying, ‘I don’t know,'” said Gardiner, an incoming University of Wisconsin recruit and a projected first-round NHL draft pick. “And the scout was like, ‘Well, you seem not to know about much. Are you dumb? Are you stupid or what’s going on here?'”
A pared-down plan for the redevelopment of the Villager Mall on Madison’s south side drew criticism Wednesday from members of the city’s Urban Design Commission, who panned it as a “low rent” compromise of planning principles.
As expected, the Big Ten Network and Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable company, finally have reached a carriage deal.
But while the deal announced by BTN and Comcast in a news release Thursday may provide a potential framework for deals between BTN and Charter Communications and Time Warner, Wisconsin’s two major cable providers, a UW-Madison professor of telecommunications who follows cable issues closely is pessimistic about deals being done in time for the 2008 college football season.
The University of Wisconsin’s first football game is Aug. 30 — ironically the one-year anniversary of the launch of BTN.
