In Wisconsin, the availability of larger pools of private equity money and experienced executives have combined with the wealth of life sciences research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create a breeding ground for drug development companies.
Quoted: Appleton ophthalmologist Michael Vrabec, who is also an assistant clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Two exhibition games into her pro career, Jolene Anderson already is making an impact.
The all-time leading scorer in University of Wisconsin women’s basketball history had eight points and eight rebounds in 16 minutes Sunday as the host Connecticut Sun pasted the Phoenix Mercury 94-66 in a preseason game in Uncasville, Conn.
The thousands of “Jeopardy!” fans who filled the Kohl Center in April to watch the taping of the 2008 collegiate championships will finally get to see the two weeks of episodes beginning Monday afternoon.
Fifteen collegians, including UW-Madison senior Suchita Shah, competed in the collegiate tournament, which was taped before about 5,000 fans at each of three taping sessions in the “Jeopardy!” studio set up at one end of the sports arena.
The Student Labor Action Coalition is once again pressuring UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley to end the university’s exclusive contract with adidas for athletic apparel.
The long-running dispute stems from treatment of former workers at the Hermosa factory in El Salvador, which closed in 2005 while owing 260 workers about $825,000 in back pay and severance funds. Sixty-three workers who were union members protested and were blacklisted and labeled as troublemakers, the students say.
There are also allegations that the owner of the Hermosa factory, which had made clothing for adidas, embezzled some employee funds.
“With four months left in his tenure as chancellor, Wiley has one last chance to redeem himself by taking decisive action in support of workers by cutting the UW’s exclusive contract with adidas. If he doesn’t act, students will forever remember him as the Sweatshop Chancellor who sold out UW-Madison to corporate interests,” said coalition member Phoebe Taurick.
Ald. Mike Verveer wants to find an organizing group for the Mifflin Street Block Party that would turn it into a celebration instead of a beer party.
And he says he has encountered some interest from representatives of the mayor’s office and the Madison Police Department.
“I had that conversation in the last several days, and during and after the party, with Joel Plant from the mayor’s office and Capt. Mary Schauf, commander of the central police district,” Verveer said Sunday, the day after the party resulted in more than 400 arrests.
“It is apparent that this year, unlike past years, city officials besides myself are interested in providing some semblance of organization or sponsorship for this inevitable annual event.”
State law says the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents must set chancellors’ pay within about 10% of the median salary of their peers.
The range aims to make salaries competitive while safeguarding against exorbitant pay increases. The structure limits fringe benefits such as deferred compensation or bonuses.
But some public universities are starting to pay chancellors using foundation money from donors.
Has the University of Wisconsin System become a farm team for university leadership?
That’s what outgoing UW-Green Bay Chancellor Bruce Shepard calls it.
He was No.2 at Eastern Oregon University when UW-Green Bay recruited him in 2001. It wasn’t long before search firms started contacting him about open presidencies. He resisted.
UW researcher and stem cell pioneer James Thomson has been named one of the 100 people in Time magazine’s “World’s Most Influential People” in this week’s issue.
Thomson falls in the Scientists and Thinkers category, and appears on the page with Shinya Yamanaka of Japan’s Kyoto University, who also is a leading-edge scientist on stem cell technology.
Thomson and Yamanaka each discovered it was “possible to give adult human cells many of the characteristics of embryonic stem cells, avoiding entirely the issue of whether embryos would be destroyed in the process,” according to the magazine report.
By RYAN J. FOLEY
Associated Press Writer
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — One of the nation’s most enduring and well-known college beer bashes will go on but against a darker backdrop this year.
Thousands of college students will gather Saturday for the annual Mifflin Street Block Party, where students party hop between houses stocked with kegs and beer bongs start flowing about 8 a.m.
But the spring celebration comes just one month after the slaying of University of Wisconsin-Madison junior Brittany Zimmermann in her apartment a few blocks away. The murder, and two others nearby that also remain unsolved, has police and university officials warning students to keep strangers out of their homes.
For the second time, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission has deemed American Transmission Co.’s application to build the Rockdale-west Middleton power line incomplete.
PSC Division Administrator Robert Norcross mainly sought additional cost and environmental impact information on ATC’s proposed Beltline route for the 345-kilovolt line, in a letter sent Wednesday to the company.
The PSC determined in November that the application ATC submitted in October was incomplete. The PSC gave ATC more than 100 questions to answer, said ATC spokesperson Sarah Justus.
Tissue Regeneration Systems Inc., a medical device company developing bioactive implants for bone and soft tissue regeneration, on Thursday announced the close of a $2 million round of financing led by Madison-based Venture Investors and joined by the founders of TRS.
The company is a spin-out of the universities of Michigan and Wisconsin, where TRS’ core proprietary technologies were developed over the past decade, and from which TRS has an exclusive option to commercialize.
A rat hole. Obsolete. Unfit. Ugly.
As the wrecking ball looms for the unpopular Mosse Humanities Building on the UW-Madison campus, it’s important to note those less-than-flattering terms weren’t used for that structure. Instead, those were descriptions bandied about for buildings on campus that are now beloved.
That’s the message Arnold Alanen tried to convey Thursday night at the annual awards banquet for the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation. Where the Mosse Humanities Building, 455 N. Park St., sits now is part of a long-term plan for an east campus overhaul. Between that and complaints about the building’s unsuitability, its future looks grim.
The UW-Madison professor of landscape architecture wasn’t so much making a plea to save the building as to give reasons people should respect it just a little bit more.
A majority of Wisconsinites give the state’s natural environment high marks, but want more done to protect our air and water as well as requiring power companies to produce more electricity through renewable sources.
The spring 2008 Badger Poll, conducted by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, centered on environmental issues and clean energy. The results were released Thursday.
Wisconsin Environment Director Dan Kohler said in a statement that Wisconsinites cherish what we have here and want it protected. Wisconsin Environment is an environmental advocacy organization.
UW-Madison students, staff and faculty will be able to get emergency warnings as text messages on their cell phones beginning this fall.
The WiscAlerts-Text system will allow enrolled users of the service to get critical safety information from the UW-Madison Police Department through text messaging on the user’s cell phone.
“The safety and security of the campus community is our top priority,” said Lt. Michael Newton of the UW-Madison Police Department. “WiscAlerts-Text will be a quick way to reach people who might be in class, on the bus or away from a computer. This is one more way we will be able to communicate in an emergency.”
Spring Gallery Night, Madison’s semi-annual celebration of the visual arts organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, returns this Friday, May 2, from 5 to 9 p.m., with a record-breaking 58 venues participating.
Art and craft lovers can enjoy an evening filled with grand openings, benefits, free dance lessons, discounts on purchases and new works of art on display across the city. The evening offers a unique opportunity to meet artists and view their latest works.
In what is becoming a high-stakes back-and-forth between Madison police and the Dane County 911 Center, Madison’s police chief said this afternoon (Thursday) that a 911 dispatcher should have sent police to respond to a call from the cell phone of a student later found slain in her campus-area apartment.
“It would be accurate to state that there is evidence contained in the call, which should have resulted in a Madison police office being dispatched,” Police Chief Noble Wray said. “That would have been consistent with both Madison Police Department policy, and national 911 standards.”
The University of Wisconsin is the home of many of America’s bright minds and great thinkers, but it also the home of one of this country’s true musical treasures.
Kathi Bennett insists, with sincerity and passion, that she has not joining the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball staff with the intent of one day taking over the program.
Gov. Jim Doyle said Thursday that the Legislature’s failure to pass a budget-repair bill poses cash-flow problems that threaten to delay aid payments to local governments and school districts by days or a few weeks.
A poll released Thursday shows Wisconsin residents are more worried about declining water levels than about potential troubles stemming from global warming.
A 2008 Badger Poll by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center shows that declining water levels on lakes, rivers, streams and in the groundwater are the biggest environmental concern. Residents of Milwaukee County and northeastern Wisconsin expressed the most worry about water, the poll indicates.
Police said Thursday that a 911 call from a college student’s cell phone the day she was murdered should have triggered the dispatch of a police officer, but police weren’t notified of the call.
The existence of the April 2 call from Brittany Sue Zimmermann’s phone prompted questions about how local officials handle emergency calls from cell phones, as well as about the call itself.
When Brown Shoe announced it was locating its new headquarters in St. Louis, not Madison — and closing its Famous Footwear offices here — one reason cited was some $43 million in economic development incentives from the state of Missouri.
Wisconsin officials had also attempted to lure Brown Shoe, offering up free land and other perks if it would build its new headquarters here. Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and Chamber of Commerce President Jennifer Alexander even flew to St. Louis to give the pitch.
But rather than spending limited resources fighting each other for new jobs, Midwestern states must work together if they hope to compete in the new world economy, development experts say.
Quoted: Dean of International Studies Gilles Bousquet
After seven trouble-free months, the owners of the Majestic Theatre are looking to get the restrictions against their liquor license lifted or relaxed.
As it stands, the theater has to close half an hour before bar time. That means weeknight closing time can be no later than 1:30 a.m., and weekend closing time can be no later than 2 a.m. Its capacity can be no more than 600 for ticketed events and 350 for non-ticketed events, and non-ticketed events are limited to the venue’s first floor only. Also, alcohol can be served no earlier than one hour prior to the beginning of an event.
“We’ve obviously proven ourselves to be who we said we were going to be at the outset,” said Scott Leslie, who owns the business with partner Matt Gerding. “We’re very proud of the operation that we run.”
The Badger State Summer Games are moving to the Fox Valley in 2009, a move that organizers hope will inject enthusiasm and new sponsorship dollars into the annual amateur sports festival.
The event has been held in Madison for the first 23 years of existence and gets one last run in the capital city this summer.
The Wisconsin Sports Development Corp., which coordinates the Games from its Madison offices, announced Wednesday a three-year commitment to Appleton and surrounding areas. The agreement was buoyed by a $180,000 grant from the Fox Cities Sports Authority through its charitable fund.
Confronted with a potential battle scene fraught with danger, Ashley Dockry and Bonnie Gleicher devised a startling strategy.
“Let’s use our sex appeal,” Dockry said to Gleicher. The duo sensually strutted their way toward the enemy position, exaggerating poses and movements like fashion models on a runway.
When shots rang out, the mood changed instantly. They dove for cover, quickly plotted an attack, then jumped out and ran forward, firing at the enemy. It was all over in perhaps two minutes.
But no blood was spilled, and there were no guns or enemy warriors. The “shots” were merely shouted “bang-bangs.” It was all part of Prof. Tony Simotes’ theater class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where students are learning to act as motion capture performers for video games.
The Dane County 911 dispatch center director said a UW-Madison student slain in her campus area apartment April 2 made a 911 phone call on her cell phone, but dispatchers failed to call her back.
Director Joe Norwick said today that when Brittany Zimmermann made the call, the dispatcher, who was unnamed, had no way of knowing the call wasn’t one of many non-emergency or misdialed phone calls that the center receives every day.
Norwick declined to say how long Zimmermann’s phone call lasted, or whether there was any communication from Zimmermann. He said the dispatcher, after a time, discontinued the call to answer another 911 call, which turned out to be a non-emergency call.
According to results of a Badger Poll on Tuesday, 91 percent of Wisconsinites think gas prices are extremely or quite problematic.
The poll also found growing concern about the economy and state residents’ ability to pay their bills.
Gov. Jim Doyle and leaders of the state Senate and Assembly plan to meet Thursday to discuss the state’s $527 million budget shortfall.
The meeting could signal a breakthrough in the monthlong stalemate to reach a deal. It comes just two days after Doyle returned from an overseas trade mission among reports that legislative leaders were close to reaching agreement but awaited Doyle’s approval.
Doyle and Decker, both Democrats, are set to be joined by Republican Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, said Decker’s spokeswoman Carrie Lynch.
During their recent congressional testimony, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker refused to be pinned down on the goals, mission or even the meaning of success for U.S. forces in Iraq. But when Crocker talked about the proposed “Status of Forces Agreement,” he was clear. He promised that Congress would be “fully informed,” but, he said, there would be no “treaty” submitted for the Senate’s advice and consent. Crocker went unchallenged.
The details of the proposed agreement are apparently still pending. But last November Gen. Douglas Lute, the White House “czar” for Iraq, discussed the administration’s intention to reach an agreement that would protect Iraq against internal and external threats, defend the Iraqi constitution, deter foreign aggression, and support efforts to combat all terrorist groups. Lute stated that Iraqi national leaders wanted a long-term relationship with Washington as “a reliable, enduring partner.”
(This column by UW-Madison emeritus professor of history Stanley Kutler first appeared in the Washington Independent.)
Badger women’s basketball head coach Lisa Stone named Kathi Bennett as an assistant women’s basketball coach in the Badger program. She will begin her appointment May 1.
Bennett, the daughter of former University of Wisconsin men’s coach Dick Bennett and the sister of former UW assistant coach Tony Bennett, now at Washington State, has many coaching ties to the state and to the Big Ten. She battled against Stone (who was then at UW-Eau Claire) as the head women’s coach at UW-Oshkosh from 1989-96 where she amassed a 155-32 career record. Her teams made six NCAA appearances including two Division III Final Four appearances that resulted in the 1996 national championship (31-0 record) and runner-up championship (28-3 record) finish in 1995.
Madison police believe Brittany Zimmermann called 911 before she was stabbed and beaten to death inside her Doty Street apartment, but the 911 Center failed to send help after erroneously concluding the call was a mistake.
The Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a bill aimed at bolstering student loans as access to credit is tightening.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago’s plan to build a new engineering campus and research park drew one step closer Wednesday when the school named Michael R. Lovell dean of the engineering school.
Fifteen of the countrys brightest college students will compete in the 2008 “Jeopardy” College Championship, which taped at the University of Wisconsins Kohl Center in Madison on April 11 and 12. The winner will take home a grand prize of $100,000.
STEVENS POINT — Randy Udall gave a presentation on energy consumption on the local University of Wisconsin campus here during Earth Week activities. It was billed as an upbeat look at the future, but the scenario he described was overwhelmingly depressing.
Were it not for the fact that about 150 college students showed up in an auditorium on a sunny spring day, the whole hour might have been too much darkness. Udall, a Coloradan and son of former U.S. Rep. Morris Udall, has given his life to the study of energy, which he believes is the real world currency.
Want to tell a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention how to vote?
University of Wisconsin student Awais Khaleel is, by virtue of his status as the current vice president of College Democrats of America, in the same league as former President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold and other prominent Democratic officials and party insiders. He’s an unpledged superdelegate to the convention that will decide whether Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.
Unlike most superdelegates, Khaleel remains genuinely uncommitted.
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — There will be no playoff for the BCS anytime soon.
Bowl Championship Series officials rejected a plan today to turn the controversial system for deciding a national champ into a four-team playoff, starting in the 2010 season.
The 100-hour Wiscontrepreneur Challenge winners received their prizes today after devoting last weekend to creating a new and useful product from cast-off materials.
Nearly 50 students participated in the challenge to create something of value from their selection of $10 worth of materials from SWAP (Surplus With A Purpose). This is the second year of the contest, run by the Office of Corporate Relations with a grant from the Kauffman Foundation and sponsored by Venture Investors. Three winners each won $300 for their creativity, entrepreneurship and ability to create under time pressure.
The most creative prize went to fine arts major Matthew Manske from Slinger, Wis., for his creation of the “i Pedal,” a device designed to help power hand-held devices, such as an iPod, by using the energy from a spinning bike wheel.
Bands and other music at the Mifflin Street Block Party aren’t any louder than popular Madison events like Concerts on the Square, Rhythm & Booms or even the noise coming from Camp Randall on game days.
At least that’s the argument being put forward by Tom Wangard, a UW-Madison junior and Mifflin Street resident who has petitioned the city for a noise ordinance amnesty for the annual party this Saturday.
“The Mifflin Street Block Party is a historical event here on campus,” he said. “We realize that we can’t be completely out of hand with noise, but it would be reasonable to have the hours of 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., the daytime hours, set aside for no noise violations at all.”
It was billed as a $100 million “urban village,” a project to energize the entire east side.
Union Corners promised to transform the site of a contaminated battery factory three miles from the Capitol into a mix of condominiums, offices and retail shops. There was talk of shady green public plazas, bubbling water features, even a light rail transit stop.
But today the 15-acre site is a tangle of empty lots, broken concrete and piles of gravel along one of the city’s busiest corridors. The only things standing are three mature oak trees where employees of Rayovac once enjoyed their lunch breaks before the aging brick factory on Winnebago Street was shuttered by new corporate owners five years ago.
Quoted: Colleen Dunlavy, economic historian at the UW-Madison.
Free-wheeling developer Curt Brink has always had big ideas for energizing downtown Madison, from the stylish “Brink Lounge” coffee shop/wine bar/jazz nightclub he opened two years ago in the former Buy & Sell Shop to his unrealized vision for the towering 27-story Archipelago Village on the 900 block of East Washington Avenue.
But Brink’s plan for the “Field Pass” — the $4 million sports bar and nightclub in the new University Square mixed use project — has apparently run into snags.
Despite owning a passion for teaching history, Stanley Schultz learned a long time ago that it’s no easy task to keep the undivided attention of the average student. So any opportunity to bring a subject matter to life in a classroom or lecture hall has long been embraced by the emeritus professor of history at UW-Madison.
….A new education project announced Tuesday in downtown Madison could help bring history to life for roughly 50,000 state students in grades 5 through 12.
Called “Life During Wartime,” the $940,000 project is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Not only will the project feature an unprecedented partnership among public school teachers and historians from the UW-Madison and Madison Area Technical College faculty, but those associated with the Wisconsin Veterans Museum will use its vast array of resources to help bring history to life in area schools, including those in the Madison Metropolitan School District.
Eric Apfelbach is happy to talk about the promise of using plant sugars to produce synthetic gasoline. But anyone wanting to take a tour of Virent Energy Systems, his Madison-based company, must first sign a confidentiality agreement pledging not to reveal any trade secrets.
The request is not necessarily unusual in the world of biotechnology, but rather reflects the fierce competition among companies working to find an alternative to carbon-based coal and oil that also avoids the downsides of corn-based ethanol.
….The search for a new biofuel is in its third iteration, says Timothy Donohue, a professor of bacteriology and the lead scientist at the UW-Madison-based Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.
Intense.
Lots of words describe the UW Dance Program’s spring concert — long, complex, diverse — but intense might be the best word for Thursday night’s performance at Lathrop Hall.
The two-hour concert entitled “Spring: A New Season, a Renewed Reason to Dance,” was marked by eight pieces, seven of them premieres. It surpassed expectations in the quality of its entire package, including choreography, dancing, music and lighting and other stage effects.
UW-Madison stem cell scientist James Thomson has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
The announcement of Thomson’s election was made Tuesday by the university.
Thomson is among 72 new fellows going into the 145-year-old academy this year, considered one of the most prestigious honors in American science.
Oscar-winning producer Walter Mirisch will not be attending events in his honor scheduled for this weekend at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Mirisch, a 1942 UW-Madison graduate, canceled because of illness. A reception planned for Friday afternoon has been canceled, but a free screening of Mirisch’s Oscar-winning film “In the Heat of the Night” will be shown as planned at 7:30 p.m. at UW Cinematheque.
Madison’s profile in the high-tech world just received its second boost of good news in less than a week.
The Capital Times confirmed that Internet giant Google has set up an engineering office downtown to focus on hardware and software systems design.
“I think Google coming to Madison, a big part of that is because we have a strong (computer sciences and electrical computer engineering) program and we have good students here,” said Parmesh Ramanathan, chair of the electrical and computer engineering department at UW-Madison. “I think this is a real positive for both the university and for Madison.”
Vander Blue, a talented sophomore guard who led Madison Memorial to the WIAA state tournament last March, has verbally committed to play basketball for the University of Wisconsin.
“I’ve been discussing it the last couple of weeks with my family. We took a visit up there and we really are excited about the whole thing,” said Blue in a phone conversation Monday night. “There’s a lot of good news about Wisconsin and, looking at the background and what’s coming in the future, by the time I get there it’s going to be a real good fit for me.”
A plea settlement involving Jack Ikegwuonu fell through at the last minute on Friday when it was rejected by his brother, leaving the former University of Wisconsin cornerback facing a potential July 14 trial in Illinois.
“It was supposed to happen Friday and it did not,” said Stephanie Klein, the assistant state’s attorney in DeKalb., Ill., who is prosecuting the case.
Ikegwuonu — who was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the fourth round of the NFL draft on Sunday — has been charged with residential burglary, a felony, and criminal trespass, a misdemeanor, related to an incident in November 2006.
Thousands of state employees will be voting on a new contract the next two weeks after a tentative agreement was reached between the Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, and the state of Wisconsin on a new contract for five units of the union representing 23,000 state employees.
Terms of the new deal were not released, pending ratification by union members, with the ballots expected to be counted May 12.
The UW-Madison dean of students is urging Mifflin Street block party revelers to play nice and be aware of individual safety in the wake of Brittany Zimmermann’s murder April 2 a block away.
Madison police will be out in force for the block party on Saturday, with more than 100 officers on duty, and three security cameras will observe the goings-on instead of one camera, but Dean of Students Lori Berquam said today it’s important for students to watch out for each other.
With just over six months until Election Day, none of the three remaining candidates for president has a majority of support in Wisconsin, a poll released Monday showed.
And so, yet again, the race in Wisconsin appears too close to call.
The University of Wisconsin Survey Center’s Badger Poll shows that among likely voters Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona has a lead over Democratic New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 47 percent to 41 percent.
Quoted: Shawn F. Peters, a University of Wisconsin-Madison teacher and author of “When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law.”
Mentions the latest installment of the Badger Poll, released Monday, showed that McCain gets a split decision among Wisconsin voters in matchups with the remaining Democratic presidential candidates. But both matchups suggest a tight race.
In a head-to-head matchup with Clinton, McCain was favored by 47% of those polled, compared with 44% for Clinton, according to the Badger Poll. Obama topped McCain by 48% to 41%.
Former University of Wisconsin defensive back Jack Ikegwuonu appears to have accepted the fact a knee injury suffered in January will prevent him from playing until the 2009 NFL season.
He sounded relieved Sunday after being drafted earlier than expected, in the fourth round and No. 131 overall, by the Philadelphia Eagles.
“Having this opportunity is a blessing in itself,” Ikegwuonu, who bypassed his senior season at UW, told reporters. “I am just happy to be in the NFL. It is a dream of mine.”
Yet while his new teammates will be participating in training camp this summer, Ikegwuonu could be in an Illinois courtroom facing charges of residential burglary (a felony) and criminal trespass (a misdemeanor) stemming from an incident in November 2006.
The University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team is scheduled to open the 2008 Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands against Iona, according to the tournament Web site.
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Chancellor Richard Wells is one of three finalists for the top job at the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, he announced Monday. [Final item in Regional News Briefs].
There is a saying among urban beekeepers: Keep your fences high, your head down and your neighbor’s honey pot full.
It’s a nod, of course, to the undeserved bad rap of honeybees, those mostly docile pollinators of flowers and fruit trees and vegetables, which are lumped more often than not with their ornery cousins, the hornet and wasp.
The University of Wisconsin Extension is aiming to change that negative perception and bring urban beekeeping out in the open with a new program planned for the Milwaukee County Grounds.
Weighing in at a maximum of about 20 pounds, with black circles rimming its eyes and fur encircling its face, the northern muriqui of the thick forests of southeastern Brazil is one of the world’s most endangered species.
And since 1982, Karen Strier, a University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist, has been working with colleagues in Brazil to preserve this, the largest of primates found in the New World.
