Dear Editor: I was absolutely outraged by the announcement of the Women’s Endocrine Clinic closing its doors at the end of June. I find this to be a loss to the medical community of Madison and Dane County along with a disservice to couples trying to start or add to their family.
What many scientists are calling “the next big thing” is really very small. Nanotechnology uses extremely tiny particles to make lots of things better and stronger. It involves the manufacture and manipulation of materials on an extremely tiny scale – particles so small that they can’t be seen with the unaided eye.
The unit of measure, a nanometer, is one-billionth of a meter – comparable in size to 10 hydrogen atoms, or roughly one-50,000th the width of a human hair. (Nano is from the Greek nanos, which meant little old man or dwarf.)
But these tiny structures – be they carbon nanofibers, liquid crystals or something else – pack a large potential, for good or bad.
University of Wisconsin women’s hockey coach Mark Johnson didn’t want the moment to pass without proper respect and introspection. So he took the time to reflect on what was happening before sending his team out to play Minnesota for the national championship Sunday at Mariucci Arena.
“I went out before warmups,” he said, “and sat on the bench by myself.”Alone with his thoughts. “I started looking up in one corner of the rink,” Johnson said, “knowing that the night before I had sent my kids up there. I told them, ‘Go find Grandpa.'”
….There was a close-up camera shot of )Mike) Eaves standing behind the UW bench and he was wearing a whimsical look on his face as the overtime marathon with Cornell progressed Sunday during the NCAA Midwest Regional final at the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon. His demeanor seemed out of place given the circumstances of the moment. After all, the tension on the ice was mounting with each scoreless shift.
….According to numbers compiled by the U.S. Department of Education, 16 men’s basketball programs which qualified for this year’s NCAA tournament turned a profit of at least $4 million during the 2004-05 school year….Yet of those 16 programs which raked in the mega-bucks, only Texas ($6.86 million) and Duke ($5 million) advanced past the first week of this year’s NCAA tournament – and the Longhorns are the only one of those cash cows to move on to the Elite Eight.
For what it’s worth, the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team turned a profit of $8.11 million – $11.95 million in revenue minus $3.84 million in expenses – a year ago.
….Now that those in the red-sweater crowd have had a week to shake off the ugly way in which the Badgers’ 2005-06 season crashed and burned, should the Badger Nation still have complete confidence in the direction Ryan has his program pointed?
Dear Editor: As a longtime fan and ticket holder for UW men’s basketball, I would like to thank the 2006 team and coaches for a great and entertaining season.I go back to the 1970s as a season ticket holder and I want the coaches and members of this year’s team to know that we fans appreciated their effort and the success they had this season.
Mark Bugher is an active and valued contributor to the economic development debate in Madison, but he needs to respect the fact that not everyone is going to agree with him. Bugher…now serves as director of University Research Park and as chairman of the Madison Economic Development Commission.
It was in that latter role that he presided this week over a lengthy commission meeting that heard testimony regarding a proposed city ordinance that would require larger Madison employers to provide paid sick leave to workers. Bugher’s skepticism about the ordinance mirrors that of many in the business community, and he certainly has a right to his opinion. But as the chair of a city commission, he also has a responsibility to treat citizens and expert witnesses appropriately.
They don’t call it Goaltender U. for nothing. And now, one hockey program at the University of Wisconsin is trying to live up to a pretty high standard for this season set by the other.
In four games this weekend involving the Wisconsin men’s and women’s hockey teams, Badger goaltenders didn’t allow a single goal. Through their efforts, Brian Elliott and Jessie Vetter contributed to a landmark moment in each program’s history.
University Hospital’s decision to close its infertility clinic on June 30 has produced a furor among the clinic’s current and former patients.
The hospital has received about 100 phone calls and e-mails in response to its announcement last week. Many opposed and some supported the decision, but most were worried about what to do since their care would be interrupted.
AT THE DAILYPAGE.COM/DAILY
It sounded like monkeys. During the first 13 minutes of last night’s Isthmus-sponsored debate on the use of animals in research, a strange chirping noise emanated from the sound system, adding uncomfortably to the already full classroom at the UW-Madison’s Chamberlin Hall.
The insistent sound played out as I introduced the participants; while my fellow moderator, UW Prof. Deborah Blum, explained the ground rules; and while Dr. Eric Sandgren, chair of the UW’s All-Campus Animal Care and Use Committees, made his opening remarks. At one point, Deborah leaned over to whisper in my ear, “Where are those monkey noises coming from?”
How highly does University of Wisconsin English and women’s studies professor Susan Friedman regard the British writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)?
So highly that when Friedman was awarded a special chair professorship from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, she broke with the precedent of naming her chair after a UW-related person. Friedman, who came of age academically during the feminist revival of the 1960s and 1970s, asked instead to become the UW Virginia Woolf Professor of English.
The University of Wisconsin’s animal research program is not transparent enough, and people would turn against it ifÃ? they saw animals in their cages and during testing, an animal rights activist says.
Rick Bogle of the Primate Freedom Project faced off against Eric Sandgren, the chairman of the All-Campus Animal Care and Use Committee, during a tense one-and-a-half hour debate Thursday night at UW-Madison’s Chamberlin Hall.
Can a man be punished for sexual harassment if the alleged victim never filed a charge?
Paul Barrows and his allies are asking the public to consider that question and to reconsider the investigative report they say smeared his reputation.
Shari’ Welton will not return to the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team.
Welton, a 5-foot-11 guard from Calumet City, Ill., who just completed her sophomore season, said she requested a release from her scholarship on Wednesday and intends to transfer to another Division I program.
Mark Johnson knows better than anyone associated with the University of Wisconsin women’s hockey program the unbridled joy of winning a championship.
Johnson led UW to the NCAA Division I men’s title as a freshman in 1976-’77 and helped the U.S. to the gold medal at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents took a stand Thursday against pending legislation that would limit the revenue that state and local governments can collect. (Third item)
Pain and suffering awards to victims of medical malpractice will be capped at $750,000 under a new limit Gov. Jim Doyle signed late Wednesday.
WASHINGTON – Two research teams, one from Wisconsin and Japan, and the other from the Netherlands, have independently discovered explanations for the chief features of the H5N1 bird flu virus – its difficulty infecting humans, and the deadly effects when it does.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will host a conference later this month on improving race relations on campus. Lani Guinier, a noted Harvard University law professor, will be the keynote speaker.
The conference, “Creating Institutional Change,” will be held March 31-April 2 at Grainger Hall, 975 University Ave., and the Concourse Hotel, 1 W. Dayton St. It is sponsored by the UW’s Diversity Education Program.
On an overwhelmingly white campus, many students of color at the University of Wisconsin-Madison saw Paul Barrows as the indispensable man. Barrows, who is black, was a mentor to many students who needed direction or just felt overwhelmed.
….The vice chancellor for student affairs’ high-profile removal, as well as the dismantling of his office, has left people of color without their primary advocate in administration, said several students who lead diversity efforts on campus.
IN SEATTLE last weekend, a group of people who spent time in prison for crimes they did not commit took the first step toward forming an Exonerees Council that will help new exonerees adjust to life after unjust imprisonment. One of the leaders of the group is a former Madison man named Anthony Hicks.
The meeting took place as part of the 2006 National Innocence Network Conference at the University of Washington School of Law. Keith Findley of the Madison-based Wisconsin Innocence Project was a panelist on a couple of seminars at the conference.
THEY CELEBRATED Earth Day out in Denver Monday. The mayor was on board, having announced two years ago that Earth Day in Denver is March 20. Last week, a camera crew from Los Angeles was in Denver to interview the founder of Earth Day, John McConnell. The video was to be shown Monday at a meeting of California environmentalists.
All this would seem to be at odds with what Madison and Wisconsin residents have long believed, that Earth Day is next month, April 22, and that it was founded by one of the state’s favorite sons, the late U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, in 1970.
(Tom Sinclair of the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, is quoted.)
What is it that makes the Tandem Press prints — now on show at the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art through April 9 — so appealing and yet so safe? That’s the question I found myself asking as I toured this exhibition, which is an eye-pleaser, to be sure.
You will find a lot of art you like. But, I suspect, you will find relatively little to really love and absolutely nothing to really hate. In short, the art seems not so much middle-brow as mainstream.
Over the past six years, University of Wisconsin piano virtuoso and artist-in-residence Christopher Taylor has developed a very loyal, and very large, local following.
Small wonder that Ralph Russo, who directs the Wisconsin Union Theater, recalls how when he goes to national booking conferences, other presenters can’t believe that Madison has the good fortune to have Taylor here at home on the UW faculty and to hear him for next to nothing compared to what big cities get. And it’s not just hype.
Lake Monona glistened in the bright sunlight outside the big windows of the Grand Terrace of the Monona Terrace Convention Center. Inside, oblivious to the picturesque setting, a team of international judges was scrutinizing, smelling and tasting 1,792 samples of the world’s best cheeses. It’s the 2006 Biennial World Championship Cheese Contest sponsored by the Madison-based Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association.
(Photo shows Center for Dairy Research’s Mark Johnson judging)
Just five years ago, public colleges and universities enjoyed their highest per-student levels of state and local government support in at least 25 years. By 2005, thanks to stagnant budgets and exploding demand, that figure had plummeted to a 25-year low.
The University of Wisconsin Hospital will close Madison’s only infertility clinic on June 30, a decision that will bring tough choices and inconvenience to hundreds of women, a clinic doctor says.
Madison will remain a Mecca for triathletes through at least 2011.
City officials and representatives with Ironman North America today were scheduled to announce a five-year extension on the contract that has brought the grueling Ironman Wisconsin to Madison for four years. The original contract runs out after this year’s event on Sunday, Sept. 10.
Today’s national report on public funding underscores that Wisconsin is sorely in need of more state support for higher education, area higher education advocates said
Wisconsin flexed its biotech muscles once again last week, this time in an area of medicine that is at the top of everybody’s to-do list: researching the viruses that cause influenza.
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The establishment of a $9 million research institute on the far west side of Madison will make the city the center in the United States for genetic research, not just on influenza viruses but, more important, on the deadly strain of bird flu that many scientists fear could spark a global epidemic.
Nothing is guaranteed, not even a victory over 16th-seeded Bemidji State.
Yet the University of Wisconsin’s path to the sixth NCAA men’s hockey title in program history could not have been designed more conveniently than it was Sunday for Mike Eaves’ team.
As expected, the Badgers (26-10-3) were awarded the No. 1 overall seeding in the 16-team field. The clincher was the Badgers’ 4-0 victory over top-ranked Minnesota in the third-place game of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association playoffs Saturday in St. Paul, Minn.
Next season for the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team really started during the final minutes of its season-ending loss to Arizona on Friday.
A recent study by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau reported that had the proposed Taxpayer Protection Amendment been in effect for the past 20 years, the state would have collected $1.9 billion less in taxes in 2003-’04, a 14% cut. Taxpayers certainly could have used that money, and the state economy might have benefited substantially as a result. That’s good news, and the bureau’s analysis provides information necessary to furthering the debate on the amendment.
But the fiscal bureau analysis can only look at the “heads” side of the coin: Taxpayers would have had more money in their pockets. And, yes, that is a good thing. On the “tails” side, though, is this: State government would have had $1.9 billion less to provide the services that citizens demand. Maybe that’s a good thing; maybe state government does spend too much on too many programs. Certainly, that’s something citizens need to examine.
Floating between the knees of the constellation Orion lies a cloud known as the Orion Nebula, where scientists have discovered two brown dwarfs circling one another in a waltz that has continued for a million years.
The discovery of these celestial dancers by a University of Wisconsin-Madison astronomer and his former student has given scientists critical information about these nebulous bodies, which are neither star nor planet but somewhere in between.
The establishment of a $9 million research institute will make Madison a national hub for genetic research studies on influenza viruses, information needed to fight the deadly strain of bird flu that’s circulating globally, Gov. Jim Doyle announced Wednesday.
Stanley Kutler, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor and Richard Nixon presidential scholar, was fined $50 and ordered to pay $149 in court costs Wednesday for a phone threat to “blow up” his Madison health care provider over an unpaid claim to treat a sunburn he got in Hawaii.
Columnist criticizes says tax-limitation opponent and UW-Madison economist Andrew Reschovsky’s stand against the so-called Taxpayer Protection Amendment.
Mequon attorney Rick Esenberg says the proposed amendemtn will provide needed spending controls.
Wisconsin emerged today as a leader in key research and testing in preparation for a possible influenza pandemic.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced during an Influenza Preparedness Summit at the Concourse Hotel that the University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to launch a new Institute for Influenza Viral Research. He also noted that the State Laboratory of Hygiene has been chosen by the Centers for Disease Control to do testing for antiviral drug resistance as a pilot program for other states.
….The new institute will house the research program of UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a professor of pathobiological science who is recognized as an international leader in the study of influenza.
Quoted: James Stein, co-director of preventive cardiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Another week, another study putting a price on tax limits. The verdict: $1.9 billion of more power to you.
The latest numbers come from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the gold standard of Wisconsin government data. The bureau reported this week that had the Taxpayer Protection Amendment been at work for the past 20 years, the state would have collected $1.9 billion less in taxes in 2003-’04 – a 14% cut. Had the amendment been in place for 10 years, the state’s take would have been 3.6% less in 2003-’04.
There was a more dramatic assessment last month when Andrew Reschovsky, an economist and public policy analyst at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that state revenue would have been a third less in 2003 had the amendment’s revenue limits been running since the mid-1980s.
Madison will soon be home to a $9 million research institute dedicated to influenza viruses such as the one that causes avian flu, which public health officials fear could spark a global pandemic that would kill millions.
Gov. Jim Doyle plans to officially announce today that the Institute for Influenza Viral Research will be built in the University Research Park, on the far west side of Madison.
He is expected to make the announcement during a summit in Madison on pandemic flu preparedness. The meeting will include presentations by Alex Azar II, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a world-renowned flu researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is expected to play a pivotal role in the new institute. He was in Japan on Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Just as American Family Mutual Insurance is gearing up to start selling auto and homeowners policies in Washington – including the high-income/high-growth Seattle area – the company gets hammered by a nearly $3 million punitive damages award.
The case, which was settled out of court last week, included damaging testimony that American Family employees in the Colorado office routinely joked about the company’s get-tough policy regarding paying claims.
Those revelations were enough to tilt a jury in Boulder, Colo., last November in favor of Dominic Peressini, who earned a Ph.D in education from UW-Madison in 1996 and had been a tenured professor at the University of Colorado.
Temperatures rise and snow disappears as we approach the Ides of March. In no time at all, graduation will be here for thousands of young people in our state from the UW System and our technical schools.
They are filled with hope for a bright future they richly deserve. They have studied hard, worked several jobs, borrowed lots of money, leaned on families for support, sweated through countless exams, remained alert through hundreds of lectures, worried about majors and minors, and crossed their fingers while they waited for their grades. After all that, they deserve to have a state welcoming them into the mainstream of activity.
So how are we preparing their welcoming party? Well, we have a few problems. While they should be able to look to us for inspiration and leadership, frankly, we need their ideas and leadership. We made lots of promises to their generation, but unfortunately we have had our gaze diverted.
State officials have reached agreement on a contract with negotiators for the Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, representing about 20,000 front-line workers in four bargaining units. The agreement, to be voted on by union members by the end of March, covers the period from July 1, 2005, through June 30, 2007.
It provides a 2 percent raise as of July 1, 2005 and another 2 percent as of July 1, 2006. An additional 1 percent would be added in April 2007 as well as a 1 percent “general wage adjustment” for all members and a 0.25 percent increase to mitigate the cost of health insurance.
Quoted: Matthew Wolff, a cardiologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin Medical School.
An analysis by the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau released Monday says taxpayers could have saved up to $1.9 billion in state taxes over 20 years if revenue limits had been in place.
The bureau report shows savings of about 4% annually, in both state and local taxes, if the so-called Taxpayer Protection Amendment were already law. The analysis was based on a new version of the measure under consideration by the Legislature.
The savings in state taxes came to about 4% in hypothetical snapshots taken by the bureau looking back 10, 15 and 20 years ago.
….The art of the obit is celebrated in a book, just published, “The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries,” by Marilyn Johnson, herself a former obituary writer.
The book is a delight, and my only quibble is that Johnson gives relatively short shrift to the man who, in my view, was the best obituary writer of them all….I recommend her book, but once you’ve finished it, see if you can’t track down a slim volume published a few years ago under the unusual title “52 McGs.”
It collects the best obituaries of New York Times obit writer Robert McG. Thomas, and as I say, it doesn’t get any better than that. (Obituaries mentioned include those of former UW president Fred Harvey Harrington and UW Law School professor Frank Remington.)
Three men forced another man bound with duct tape into the trunk of a car at gunpoint Thursday and drove off. Then the cameras stopped rolling.
The “kidnapping” turned out to be a film project, undertaken by several men in their early 20s. A stunned witness, unaware the event was staged, called police to the scene of the apparent abduction.
….Almost exactly a year ago five men, one of whom had a fake gun, found themselves staring at real firearms when police interrupted their UW film class project on the top level of a downtown parking ramp. They were each cited for disorderly conduct and fined $412.
Chancellor John Wiley is unhappy that he was given such a limited list of candidates from which to choose a new University of Wisconsin-Madison provost.
Wiley named Patrick Farrell, the executive associate dean of the College of Engineering, as provost on Wednesday. The provost runs academic matters at the university and is the campus’ second-highest ranking officer.
Farrell was one of three finalists forwarded to Wiley by the 16-member search committee that began its work in May of last year. Farrell was the only internal candidate.
MILWAUKEE (AP) – The Medical College of Wisconsin should halt its practice of using live dogs in laboratory exercises, a physician group says.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine urged the school’s administrators in a letter to phase out its use of live dogs in classrooms.
The Medical College uses dogs as part of the school’s Human Physiology course. The class is required for all first-year students although attendance at the lab is optional, said Jean-Francois Liard, the instructor.
….In a recent exercise to explore the circulatory system, 52 dogs were operated on while under anesthesia and then euthanized
The irony of the NCAA tournament assignment for the University of Wisconsin women’s hockey team is perhaps fitting.
After staking their claim as one of the giants of the game by winning their first Western Collegiate Hockey Association championship on Sunday, the third-ranked Badgers (33-4-1) drew as their first-round NCAA opponent a Mercyhurst team regarded as a potential giant-killer.
Adam Burish and the other four seniors on the University of Wisconsin men’s hockey team shared a last moment together on the Kohl Center ice Saturday night. There was some sentimentality in the group as they raised their sticks to the fans and glanced around, tears in some eyes, while standing in the center circle.
It quickly faded. When you’ve got one of the elite college hockey competitions ahead, there’s no time for nostalgia.
Bo Ryan got his wish when those who put together the NCAA tournament decided to send the Wisconsin men’s basketball team to Philadelphia for Friday’s first-round game against Arizona.
It means that Ryan, a native of Chester, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb, is going to take his team home so many of his old friends and family can watch the Badgers play their most important game of the season.
Bob Sieger knows he’s fighting an uphill battle in getting approval for a six-story condominium and sports bar development at the busy corner of Monroe and Regent streets.
But the Madison architect thinks the $15 million project fits perfectly across from Camp Randall Stadium and the UW Fieldhouse.
“I know some people think it’s too tall but I’m pretty excited about it,” Sieger said (last week).
Madison’s newspaper by and about the homeless is now “StreetPulse.” The renamed monthly even has a home: an office at Gilman Plaza, 520 University Ave.
Formerly “Homeless Cooperative,” the monthly newspaper is hawked in the State Street area by homeless people who get to pocket 75 cents from the $1 suggested donation per copy.
The newspaper was founded by students and homeless people active in the Madison Warming Center Campaign. Mel Motel, a founding editor and UW-Madison student, said that circulation has climbed from about 2,000 to 3,000 in the four months the newspaper has been published.
University of Wisconsin regents used their monthly meeting to rip a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit tax increases.
The Board of Regents heard from Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, and an aide to Rep. Jeff Wood, R-Chippewa Falls, on Friday. The authors of the Taxpayer Protection Amendment assured regents it would neither harm access to a higher education nor diminish the university’s role as an engine of the state’s economy.
Regents replied it would devastate the university’s ability to provide a quality education to the masses.
Rep. Scott Jensen, the former Assembly speaker convicted Saturday of illegal campaign activity, announced today that he will resign.
Jensen, a Waukesha Republican, said in a statement that he will resign as representative for the 98th Assembly District and intends to “wrap up my remaining constituent cases by March 21st.”
Quoted: Sean B. Carroll, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is expected to announce Monday that the preliminary but nonetheless critical planning process for a school of public health at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is up and running.
The University of Wisconsin scored three times on the power play, Meghan Horras stopped 28 shots and the Badgers beat Minnesota, 4-1, on Sunday in the WCHA Women’s Championship game in Minneapolis.
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The victory gives third-ranked UW (33-4-1) an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament quarterfinals.
For those who believe in omens, what happened Sunday could be a sign that the University of Wisconsin’s fortunes are about to change for the better.
The Badgers, who played three of their final four regular-season games on the road and faced Indiana at the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis, received a bid to play Arizona in the first round of the NCAA tournament 11:30 a.m. Friday at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia. Wisconsin is seeded ninth, and Arizona eighth.
