The Corporation for Enterprise Development’s conclusions are also a good argument for continued emphasis on university research – at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Medical College of Wisconsin – and for mining that research for start-up companies. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in Madison, long a licensing powerhouse, is paying more attention to spinning out start-ups. And that’s a good thing.
The second-ranked Badgers have won 19 of their first 20 games and are 5-0 in the Big Ten for the first time since 1962. Their home winning streak is at 17 games and with a victory over Michigan at 8 tonight at the Kohl Center, they will extend their winning streak to a national-best 16 games and set a school record for consecutive victories.
Reporters from around the country have come to town to write glowing articles about Bo Ryan’s swing offense and players Alando Tucker, Kammron Taylor and Brian Butch.
Life is golden in Badgerland.
The gripe that the city of Madison is somehow “anti-business” has been around since Vietnam War protesters were tossing bricks through storefront windows. So don’t expect a name change to suddenly transform the perception of those doing the complaining.
But the city is investing major time and resources into reorganizing its Department of Planning and Development into a slick, new “Department of Economic and Community Development.”
Quoted: Brian Ohm, a professor in the UW Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Seeing the Unabomber back in the news this week reminds of the time Tom Bates and I first broke open the case. It was two months before the FBI’s solving the Unabomber mystery in April 1996. I recall doing a number of radio and TV interviews about our amazing discovery. True, it turned out Bates and I had fingered the wrong man, but nobody’s perfect. It was interesting while it lasted.
Monday’s front page headline in the New York Times read: “Unabomber Wages Legal Battle To Halt the Sale of His Papers.”
Burying a portion of a controversial proposed power line along the Beltline more than doubles the cost of the project, American Transmission Co. said today.
ATC said its yearlong analysis of burying portions of its proposed Rockdale-West Middleton line determined that underground construction adds between $9 million and $15 million per mile to the cost compared with overhead lines.
Hoping to head off the kind of violence that plagued downtown last year, Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and police officials were set today to unveil a detailed safety plan that includes stepped-up patrols, strategically placed video cameras and officers who will work with neighborhood residents to identify problems.
The city has budgeted $100,000 to implement the plan, about $70,000 of which will go to pay overtime for patrols of two to six foot officers who will be on hand to quell trouble.
Opponents of stem cell patent and licensing practices by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation praised changes in procedures announced by WARF on Monday, but said that more review and change is needed.
WARF, which holds the basic patents on UW scientist’s James Thomson’s method of isolating and defining human embryonic stem cells, said it was changing policies to increase access and make it easier to move technology forward. But a legal challenge and much criticism preceded the changes.
The new policies will enable companies to sponsor research at an academic or nonprofit institution without a license, regardless of location and regardless of intellectual property rights passing from the research institution to the company.
UW Hospital and Clinics electricians supervisor Jeff Gertgen knows what it’s like to spend time in a hospital with a child. His 18-year-old daughter suffered seizures when she was younger, so he knows what families go through.
In his own style, Gertgen tried to think of ways to help fund the new American Family Children’s Hospital being built next to the University of Wisconsin Hospital. And when he and his colleague Terry Frink brainstormed the matter, they came up with a pretty penny for the Children’s Hospital.
Rockwell Automation’s chief executive flew halfway around the world this month to cut a ribbon at a technology lab at the University of Pune in India, where the Milwaukee-based company aims to train engineering students and hire them when they graduate.
Conspicuous by its absence in Rockwell’s global strategy, until now, has been the largest university in the company’s own hometown.
The industrial automation concern is preparing to announce this week a $1 million grant to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as a first step toward a technology research program tailored to bolster the region’s manufacturing industry, Rockwell and UWM officials said.
Good-government watchdogs are backing away from a proposed overhaul of state ethics laws.
The non-partisan League of Women Voters of Wisconsin announced this morning it was withdrawing its support and Common Cause in Wisconsin urged that the measure be taken off the “fast track and repaired.”
“It has become clear that the bill has serious flaws which make it unacceptable despite multiple redrafts,” the league wrote in a memo to the Assembly Committee on Judiciary and Ethics and the Senate Committee on Campaign Finance Reform and Ethics.
A young Minnesota man was undoubtedly happy when his Gophers won a hard-fought 1-0 victory over the University of Wisconsin men’s hockey team on Jan. 13 at the Kohl Center. But a felony charge of battery to a police officer probably dampened his spirits quickly.
Ryan T. Hartwell, 19, of the Minneapolis suburb of Lakeville, was charged with both the felony count and a misdemeanor of obstructing an officer after a wild chase through the Kohl Center hallways in which his running style was said to be like a football player and it took several officers and fans to finally stop him.
University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema is on the cusp of receiving a larger raise than originally expected after a highly successful first season at the helm, and pay increases for at least some other assistants have already been approved.
Athletic director Barry Alvarez declined on Friday to discuss the terms of the revised contract for Bielema, who made $761,600 in total compensation this season as he guided the Badgers to a 12-1 record, a Capital One Bowl victory and the No. 5 ranking in the final Associated Press poll.
….From an upcoming Chazen Museum exhibit on Pompeii to the HBO series “Rome” to enrollment in Greek language classes at the UW, one thing is clear: The classics are hot these days.
(Several UW-Madison professors and a student are quoted in this article.)
State officials have shelved a controversial plan to lease broadcast frequencies potentially worth up to $100 million to private telecommunications companies.
The state Educational Communications Board (ECB) announced on Friday that it was canceling a request for bids to lease the 33 educational broadband service frequencies owned by the state.
ECB officials said that while the bidding process was completely legal, they wanted to restart the process with more public input and full consideration by the ECB’s board of directors.
What stinks like a dead animal, sucks the water, nutrients and minerals out of plants, is about 3 feet wide and weighs nearly 16 pounds? The answer is not a fetid, parasitic extraterrestrial, but a group of plants in Southeast Asia known as Rafflesia.
And for the first time, after nearly two centuries of debate and research, scientists have figured out just where these plants belong in the broad “tree” of life.
The research, conducted by botanists and geneticists at Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin, Southern Illinois University and the Smithsonian Institution, was published in Jan. 12 issue of the journal Science.
A look at the experiences of three UW-Milwaukee freshmen.
Young Wisconsin companies pulled in just a sliver of the reported $25.75 billion of venture investments made in U.S. companies in 2006.
Wisconsin companies raised $58.47 million of venture funding – about 5% more than in 2005 – in 12 deals last year, according to figures that will be released today by Ernst & Young LLP and Dow Jones VentureOne.
As expected, University of Wisconsin officials are working on a new contract for Bret Bielema, who in his first season was named Big Ten Conference football coach of the year and guided UW to a school-record 12 victories and a No. 7 ranking in the final Associated Press top 25 poll.
University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez guesses the Badgers will be ranked in the top 10 in the pre-season poll for 2007.
Alvarez said pre-season rankings are important for teams aiming to play in the Bowl Championship Series bowl games.
Columnist Michael Hunt says Alando Tucker is the best player ever in UW basketball history.
Quote: John Witte, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who led a mandated annual review of Milwaukee’s system.
State Rep. Steve Nass is complaining that a plan by the University of Wisconsin System to hold forums around the state explaining a proposed new admissions policy really amounts to several rallies supporting the proposal.
The system-wide policy – already in effect at the UW-Madison – would require a comprehensive, individualized review of student applicants including factors such as race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, experience and prior military service in addition to grades and test scores. Academics would still be the most important factor, officials have stressed.
….”It’s about having a pep rally in favor of race-based admissions,” Nass, R-Whitewater, alleged in a written statement.
Teams of faculty and staff at UW-Madison are participating in Lighten Up Wisconsin, a four-month challenge that supports teams in making “small, realistic and permanent changes” in lifestyles to encourage healthier living.
“We’re going to try exercising together during lunch,” said Ann Hebl, a team leader in the Office of Admissions, one of numerous departments that will participate. “Our teams are hoping to become healthier by changing our eating habits and increasing how often we exercise.”
A $1 million alumni donation to the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology will advance research on children of preschool age and offer much-needed infant care on campus.
Elliot Lehman and his wife, Frances, made the donation. Lehman was a leader in providing a family-friendly environment at his former company, Fel-Pro, which made automotive gaskets.
The money will be used for adding a teaching and research preschool laboratory to the School of Human Ecology, housed on Linden Drive in a historic building that is being renovated and enlarged.
Novelist Philip Roth is still going strong, with last year’s “Everyman” and 2005’s “The Plot Against America” hitting many best-of lists. The Classic Book and Movie Club is offering an opportunity to revisit one of his classics, “Goodbye, Columbus,” both on the page and on the screen.
At 1:30 p.m. Sunday, there will be a free showing of the 1969 adaptation of the film, starring Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw, at the Wisconsin Historical Society headquarters, 816 State St. After the film, UW English professor Thomas Schaub will talk about the book and the film.
When Shawn Cassiman got divorced, she knew it was time to go to college to be better able to support herself and her children.
A high school dropout with an equivalency diploma, she enrolled at UW-Superior at age 40. Commuting from Ashland, she worked at a pizza joint as well as work-study jobs between classes, before gaining her bachelor’s degree in 2002.
Now Cassiman has a master’s degree and is working toward a Ph.D. in social welfare at the UW-Madison. She says she was “lucky” to get scholarships and to find the mentors she needed to gain her degrees. But the University of Wisconsin System is launching a new Adult Student Initiative aimed at taking much of the luck out of the equation for older “nontraditional” students such as Cassiman.
Some of the world’s greatest fashion designers have great stories to tell.
Ralph Lauren got his start selling gloves and in the late 1960s turned a $50,000 loan to make ties into the empire Polo is today.
Hip-hop designer Daymond John started FUBU out of the basement of his house in Queens, N.Y., after he came up with the idea of making tie-top hats to earn money.
Maybe one day people will shake their head in amazement at the thought of Jason Chappell starting a fashion line during his spare time as a college basketball player.
Now that the rush of applications and essays for seniors has ended, the focus on college preparation is now on juniors, and that means attention from college admissions offices.
….Here are the facts: Colleges send viewbooks or paper applications to students because they want multitudes of students to apply, not because they intend to admit them. Colleges want many applicants because when they later deny most of them, their selectivity rate drops.
Name: Janet Parker.
Job: Community gardens organizer with Community Action Coalition for South Central Wisconsin Inc.
(Parker has a master’s from UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.)
As the U.S. occupation of Iraq nears four years and President Bush promotes a so-called surge of troops to quell the Iraqi resistance and civil war, others want a surge toward peace that doesn’t involve more troops.
One of those others is Paul Pryse, a University of Wisconsin-Madison junior journalism major. Pryse, 20, is a member of the UW-Madison branch of the Campus Antiwar Network and is an elected member of CAN’s national coordinating committee.
He says he got involved in CAN “because I suspected from the beginning that this was a war based on lies, and I turned out to be right.”
University of Wisconsin star cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu entered a plea of not guilty to charges of residential burglary and criminal trespass in a court appearance Wednesday in Sycamore, Ill.
Ikegwuonu, a first-team All-Big Ten Conference performer this past season as a sophomore for the Badgers, was making his initial court appearance after being arrested Nov. 25 in DeKalb, Ill., along with his twin brother Bill, a reserve defensive back at Northern Illinois.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Democrat-controlled House voted overwhelmingly to cut interest rates on need-based student loans Wednesday, steadily whittling its list of early legislative priorities.
The strong bipartisan vote in the House came as a dispute between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate derailed ethics and lobbying reform that the new Democratic majority had made its first legislative initiative.
The House legislation, passed 356-71, would slice rates on the subsidized loans from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent in stages over five years at a cost to taxpayers of $6 billion. About 5.5 million students get the loans each year.
Appearing in court Wednesday in Sycamore, Ill., Wisconsin sophomore cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu entered a plea of not guilty to charges of residential burglary and criminal trespass.
Since the Spanish flu swept across the globe in 1918, killing millions of healthy, young adults, researchers have wondered what it was about this particular strain of flu that made it so lethal.
They might finally have an answer.
According to an international team of researchers, including Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it might have been – paradoxically – their health that contributed to their death.
Quoted: Karen Goebel, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of consumer science
Former Overture Center director Michael Goldberg has been named the first executive director of the Coronado Performing Arts Center in Rockford, Ill.
The year was 1992. Officials the University of Wisconsin’s Elvehjem Museum of Art, now called the Chazen Museum of Art, had been asked by curators in Japan if they could borrow some of the UW museum’s 2,000 woodblock prints by the Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) for a show of his art work in his native Japan.
In turn, Elvehjem officials asked the Japanese what it would take to raise their already world-class collection of Hiroshige prints to an even higher level.
So began a kind of artistic detective story that reached its climax this fall.
In 2006, Gov. Jim Doyle helped authorize $50 million in state funding for the University of Wisconsin’s planned Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. This funding by our state taxpayers was in part to further jump-start Wisconsin’s still fledgling stem cell research and development initiative.
During this same period Doyle also funded a $5 million plan to recruit and retain stem cell companies. Some $3 million has gone into Dr. James Thomson’s two companies Cellular Dynamics Inc. and Stem Cell Products Inc.
Steps were also taken to waive the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s royalty fees for companies that conduct stem cell research in Wisconsin.
All of this funding, mind you, without establishing any terms whatsoever for obtaining any returns on the taxpayers’ investment…..
A major showdown is looming over stem cell research in the state Legislature.
Sen. Mark Miller, D-Madison, is circulating a bill that would affirm in state statute that stem cell research is legal in Wisconsin.
“There has been legislation introduced to restrict the ability of Wisconsin researchers to conduct stem cell research, and it seems to me it’s time to make a very clear statement that we support stem cell research in Wisconsin,” Miller said this morning.
Marcus and Carl Landry might approach the Wisconsin-Purdue basketball game tonight as they’ve approached all the others this season, but their family is under no such obligation. To them, this isn’t any ordinary game.
Forget professorial pontificating. Peter Sands prefers another approach to teaching.
The English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee used to gather his students in a classroom twice a week. He would stand in the front lecturing for an hour and a half. Also quotes Clif Conrad, a professor of higher education at UW-Madison.
PESHTIGO, Wis. – This part of America – Wisconsin’s North Woods – is known for huge logging trucks cramming narrow highways, thick blankets of evergreens that stretch for miles and markers lining the roads’ bends, advertising opportunities to harvest your own maple syrup or to buy fresh-cut wood and deer corn.
But although this area of the state stretching from Michigan to the Twin Cities has been a place of recreation for generations of Midwesterners, it has also become known in recent years for something more troubling: incidents of prejudice toward racial minorities, some of them recent immigrants. Some here now wonder whether a recent slaying will turn out to be another example.
QUOTED: James Danky, faculty associate in Journalism and Mass Communication and Afro-American Studies.
Here is how you know the new independent film currently shooting in Madison is going to be good.
The hero, who attended UW-Madison and has gone on to become famous – though disillusioned – as a journalist, comes back to Madison looking for some of the idealism and hope that once fueled him, and what’s the first thing he does?
He goes to the Plaza. How many UW-Madison alumni have found their way back to the Plaza over the years? The answer is certainly in the thousands.
(Some of the “Madison” scenes will be filmed on campus.)
….Have fans of the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team become so spoiled that they can hardly enjoy a victory over the fifth-ranked team in the nation?
While such a question may sound ludicrous on the surface, if the reaction of most filing out of the Kohl Center Tuesday night is an indication, the answer is yes.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A faint sound made Peter and Albert Kottke stop and look around as they hiked out of the Gila Wilderness at the end of backpacking trip.A figure moved on the other side of the Gila River. As it drew closer, the University of Wisconsin-Madison junior and his older brother saw a woman, hunched over and moving slowly.
The Kottkes crossed the river to find Carolyn Dorn, 52, who had been alone in the Gila National Forest for five weeks after becoming trapped on the wrong side of the rain- and snow-swollen river. The search for her had been called off two weeks ago.
(Peter Kottke is a junior majoring in geological engineering at UW-Madison.)
Businesses created more jobs and paid employees more at the end of 2006. Menzie Chinn, UW-Madison professor of public affairs and economics is interviewed.
Quoted: Sharon Derry, a professor of educational psychology and learning sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has studied online instruction.
The University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team is the best in the country in the minds of Associated Press poll voters in 21 cities, from Boston to Los Angeles, Dallas to Philadelphia, and Olean, N.Y., to Las Cruces, N.M.
While defending NCAA champion Florida made its way to the No. 1 spot in the poll following a loss by formerly top-ranked North Carolina, the Badgers are close on their heels in the No. 2 spot. For the third time this season, UW achieved the highest ranking in school history when the poll was announced Monday.
State officials have announced a new initiative that would reward innovative ideas tailored to the needs of specific Wisconsin companies.
Under the Wisconsin Idea-Link program, the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Network – through funding from the state Department of Commerce – would provide competitive grants of up to $10,000 for evaluation and marketing costs for a maximum of 10 projects. Companies would provide additional prize money as incentive for entrepreneurs and others to develop solutions to specific challenges.
Debra Malewicki, WEN interim director, said Wisconsin Idea-Link is an attempt to draw large corporations into WEN activities.
Quoted: Willie Ney, director of the UW Multicultural Arts Initiative.
WASHINGTON – Wisconsin Democrats such as Russ Feingold and Tammy Baldwin are hopeful the change in political control of Congress will benefit the state, but back in Madison those in charge of running Wisconsin, the Dane County and the city say they are still in desperate need of federal money.
WALLY INGRAM (’84) has often been in the right place at the right time….Thursday morning (he) was in the right place again, the right place for this time in his life. Ingram was in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
“I’m getting an injection as we speak,” Ingram was saying by cellular phone. “And then I am going to get my very last radiation treatment.”
Also in this column: Badger football star Joe Thomas on his decision to finish his college career before turning pro.
Sophomore Stella Luong had two jobs during her freshman year at UW-Madison, but she already faces about $3,000 in debt.
“I can’t imagine how it would be not having that fear of piling it on,” she said. “It’s scary when you’re 18.”
….Luong came to a press conference at the Memorial Union on Thursday to support a bill to be considered next week in the House of Representatives – as part of the new Democratic majority’s goal for its first 100 hours – that would cut the interest rate in half for subsidized Stafford loans for undergraduate students.
Is the state about to auction off surplus educational digital broadband frequencies – which could be worth millions to telecommunications companies – at bargain-basement prices?
That’s how some critics see a move by the state Educational Communications Board to seek bids from private firms on more than 30 educational broadband frequencies the state now holds.
Former Dane County Executive and UW Regent Jonathan Barry and his business partner, telecommunications consultant Ralph Evans, have filed a formal protest to the bidding process and are seeking to halt the deal.
We can’t let the occasion of Otto Breitenbach’s death pass without joining the appropriately lengthy list of those mourning his loss. We were certainly not alone in observing on Tuesday night that Otto would have loved that basketball game. Or how reassuring it would have been to see him there.
1/10/07
A rare plant whose ancestors lived when dinosaurs did has taken up residence in the University of Wisconsin-Madison botany greenhouses.
The Wollemi pine was presumed extinct until a “bushwalker” named David Noble discovered it in an Australian national park in 1994. As part of a worldwide effort to conserve and propagate the tree species – one of the oldest and rarest on earth – UW greenhouse director Mo Fayyaz recently purchased a foot-tall Wollemi pine seedling, one of a limited number that just became available in the United States through National Geographic.
The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to end a ban on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. But the vote fell 37 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to overturn President Bushs promised veto.
Several weeks ago, I heard Jim Lehrer of the “NewsHour” speak. He talked about his career as a journalist and also his time as a proud Marine. He seemed especially nostalgic about serving our country. He spoke of the rich diversity found in the military and of the value of teamwork.
Then Lehrer made an interesting proposal: mandatory public service after high school.
….for college-bound students, could mandatory public service calm the frenzy of college admissions?
Dear Editor:
….The students are a valuable and core part of our community, but they are no longer the only valuable part of the spectrum as far as life downtown. Those “glistening condominiums” are filled with people who have made an investment in Madison – an emotional investment as well as an economic one that strengthens our tax base.
….Capping the number of liquor licenses is not, as Austin King suggested in the Times, a return to Prohibition. It’s a matter of common sense that hundreds of other cities have already implemented.
The state is looking for a cleaner and more efficient power source than its coal-burning power plant in downtown Madison.
The state Department of Administration announced Thursday that it was launching a study to review the performance of the Capitol Heat and Power facility at 624 E. Main and look at alternatives. The aging facility is owned by the state and provides heating and cooling for state, city and county offices around the Capitol Square.
The Sierra Club, which in recent years has urged the state, Madison Gas & Electric and the University of Wisconsin-Madison to cease burning coal at its power plants, commended the state on its move.
