Step onto any college campus in the country, and you’ll find a minority of students who volunteer on spring break. More than 100 students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison are taking up work in homeless shelters in Boston, community gardens in Memphis and other destinations this week. Dozens of students from UW-Milwaukee meanwhile are preparing to help Habitat for Humanity build homes for the poor in Pennsylvania, Colorado and Florida.
Lemon juice is a good contraceptive. Exercise may cause cancer. And ââ?¬â? this just in! ââ?¬â? duct tape cures warts.
Local television stations often add health reports to their usual coverage of crime, sports and weather, but the information they dispense is not all that useful, according to a new study. Sometimes it’s flat-out wrong.
The preliminary hearing for former University of Wisconsin running back Booker Stanley was postponed Thursday afternoon, the second time in less than three weeks the hearing has been delayed.
This time the Dane County District Attorney’s office requested a new hearing date, because the alleged victim in the case is out of the state until Sunday. Although a new date was not immediately set, the hearing should be held within the next two weeks.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison contacted more than 40 applicants on Thursday to inform them that their SAT scores were among thousands miscalculated last fall. But the university said that corrected scores provided by the College Board this week would not affect admissions standings.
Only eight of 42 applicants with inaccurate scores had been denied admission, said Tom Reason, UW-Madison’s associate director of admissions. He said that in almost every case the corrected score wasn’t high enough to change the university’s decision.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison on Wednesday named as its new provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs Patrick V. Farrell, who has served as executive associate dean of the university’s College of Engineering since 2001. (Last item in Regional Briefs).
Researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison concluded that there’s room for improvement by both TV stations and health experts who appear in medical/health-related news stories.
Story notes that former state Supreme Court Justice William Bablitch and University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor and constitutional scholar Gordon Baldwin have predicted that the court would uphold a $750,000 cap.
Can TV news be hazardous to your health?
While health and medical news is a popular topic on local television newscasts, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan found that the typical story was only 33 seconds long, lacked specifics and, in a few cases, contained egregious and sometimes potentially deadly errors, according to an exhaustive analysis of 1,799 TV health stories.
The study, which was led by Michigan’s James Pribble and Ken Goldstein, a UW political scientist, examined 2,795 news broadcasts during October 2002. Nearly 1,800 of those broadcasts featured health stories, accounting for 11% of the news portion of late evening newscasts analyzed. The report was published in the March issue of the American Journal of Managed Care.
….ON THE subject of high-profile murders, Tuesday’s New York Times contained an obituary of a longtime UW-Madison neurologist who testified on the last day of testimony in the 1964 trial of Jack Ruby for fatally shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald, of course, had been arrested and charged with murder in the death of President John F. Kennedy.
Dr. Francis M. Forster, who died last month in Cincinnati at 94, was living on North Prospect Avenue in Madison in March 1964 when the prosecution in the Ruby case called him during its rebuttal to Ruby’s defense case put on by famed attorney Melvin Belli.
Mustafa Gokcek isn’t about to deny the obvious.
Thanks mostly to the policies of the Bush administration, the great rift between the Muslim and Western worlds clearly has widened in the last year, acknowledges the 29-year-old Turkish native and UW-Madison grad student.
And there’s no better proof, he says, than the tens of thousands of angry protesters who greeted the president on his recent trip to India and Pakistan. But as worrisome as that may be, Gokcek says it also proves the increasing need for events like the second annual International Conference on Islam, “Dialogue vs. Conflict: Islam in the Age of Globalization,” which will take place March 24-25 at the University of Wisconsin’s Pyle Center.
Edward M. Johnson, who for 30 years championed the causes of Wisconsin cities and villages in the State Capitol, is dead at the age of 82.
Johnson was executive director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities in 1955-1984 and later lobbied for the University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty. He would have reached his 83rd birthday April 4.
He was found dead in his Madison apartment Monday. A memorial service is being planned for a later date.
“Ed gave lobbying a good name,” said Harvey Breuscher, former communications director for the University of Wisconsin System, who worked with Johnson on UW issues.
In the beginning, vitamin D research at the University of Wisconsin was all about building better bones, especially for children.
But “vitamin D therapy isn’t just for bones anymore,” pioneering UW-Madison scientist Hector DeLuca told a crowd of 250 at the Overture Center Tuesday night in a rare public lecture.
Now, he said, the vitamin D frontiers include developing treatments for psoriasis, dialysis patients, diabetes, osteoporosis, prevention of hip fractures, and even cancer.
Antonio Freeman and Jameson Davis, reserve defensive backs for the University of Wisconsin football team, have pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges stemming from a traffic stop last month.
The bar was set high for Alando Tucker this season yet the University of Wisconsin junior cleared it with ease.
The 6-foot-6 forward led the Big Ten in scoring at 20 points per game and was the primary reason the Badgers remained in contention for a conference title until the final week of the regular season. Twelve times he led the team in scoring during conference play and he averaged a team-high 6.2 rebounds per game.
Tuesday, he claimed his rightful spot among the league’s best players, earning consensus first-team recognition on the Big Ten all-conference team.
A growing number of college students are running their own businesses, educators say.
Faced with rising tuition and a fiercely competitive job market, students are eager to find ways to make their own money. Having been raised on the Internet, they’re well-equipped to build virtual storefronts. Cell phone and e-mail allow them to operate a business on the run.
The University of Wisconsin landed a trio of players on the All-Big Ten Conference men’s basketball team announced this morning, with Alando Tucker chosen as the lone underclassman on the first team by both the coaches and media.
Tucker, a 6-foot-6 junior forward, also was considered a candidate for Big Ten player of the year, but Ohio State senior forward Terence Dials was a consensus choice for the award.
Kammron Taylor, the Badgers’ 6-2 junior point guard, was an honorable mention selection on the media and coaches’ teams.
Joe Krabbenhoft, a 6-7, 215-pound forward for UW, was named to the all-freshman team as selected by the coaches.
MILWAUKEE – Producer and director Jerry Zucker would love to film a movie in his native Wisconsin, but it’s hard to persuade film production executives to do it when other states are offering tax incentives that help cut costs.
If a proposed law makes its way through the state Legislature, the Shorewood native won’t have to do as much to persuade them.
….A number of Hollywood heavyweights have written letters of support, including director David Koepp, who grew up in Pewaukee, and actors and Wisconsin natives Leslie Nielsen, Jane Kaczmarek and Brad Whitford.
Undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will soon be eligible for a new interdisciplinary certificate in Middle East studies.
The certificate program, also known as a minor, will allow students to take Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Persian language courses, as well as learn about the literature, history and culture of the region.
The program will offer a new introductory course on the Middle East and allow people to take classes in various areas, such as Arabic language and Hebrew literature, said Uli Schamiloglu, the associate director for the newly born Center for Middle East Studies.
The military has a right to recruit on college campuses and at law schools nationwide, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, despite the Pentagon’s policy of excluding openly gay men and women from its ranks.
“The region comes first.”
That was the message – and the secret to success – relayed to us by the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., a non-profit affiliate of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce that includes about 60 communities in seven counties.
An opinion column by Julia Taylor, president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, and Jennifer Alexander, president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce.
A proposal to provide $2.5 million in state seed money to promote collaborative bio-medical research between the Medical College of Wisconsin and four other colleges in the region is in trouble because of concerns about what the money might be used for. Namely, embryonic stem cell research.
Start thinking about sex, and imagine a couple from your parents’ generation indulging. What’s your reaction?
….John DeLamater’s research suggests that the level of an older adult’s sexual desires and activity will depend, in part, upon whether he or she has had lifelong negative attitudes about older generations. The UW sociology professor’s ongoing work is commissioned by AARP.
MILWAUKEE (AP) – The political battle over embryonic stem cells may keep the state from funding collaborative research between the Medical College of Wisconsin and four other colleges.
The Biomedical Technology Alliance, known as the BTA, has lobbied the state for $2.5 million that would be matched by private funds to promote shared research. But the Legislature is expected to wrap up most of its business Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that colleges that accept federal money must allow military recruiters on campus, despite university objections to the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays.
Justices rejected a free-speech challenge from law schools and their professors who claimed they should not be forced to associate with military recruiters or promote their campus appearances.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said that the campus visits are an effective military recruiting tool.
A man suspected in the attack and sexual assault of a woman Friday was arrested early Sunday.
Police stopped Steven Lopez-Ruiz, 24, on State Street at about 3 a.m. after an officer noted he matched the description of a man who attacked the 19-year-old woman. The suspect was in jail today on tentative charges of second-degree sexual assault, robbery and violating his parole.
“With men, my lady, you always twist and turn, but in the end you’ll give in,” sings the fair Susanna (soprano Kerianne Carlton) to the Countess Almaviva (soprano Seong Shin Ra) in the University Opera’s production of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” or “The Marriage of Figaro.”
But as with all good opera, the men also do their share of giving in, much to the delight of the capacity crowd filling the Rennebohm Auditorium in Music Hall on the University of Wisconsin campus for Friday’s soldout performance. The University Opera’s three-hour production mixes humor with stellar performances that, despite an odd stage set, succeeds with a great deal of style and wit.
….When it was announced this week that 99 college sports teams could lose scholarships for failing to meet the NCAA’s new academic standards, most around town greeted the news with a collective yawn. After all, none of the teams at the University of Wisconsin were being penalized.
But a closer look at the NCAA’s stats shows that the UW’s two most high-profile squads – the Badger football and men’s basketball teams – have numbers dangerously close to the cut line.
A 19-year-old woman was the victim of a sexual assault in the early morning hours Friday, Madison police said. The woman also suffered a bruised eye, said police spokesman Michael Hanson.
The assault took place at 2:54 a.m. Friday in the area around the intersection of West Johnson Street and Frances Street, Hanson said. The woman was walking home from a bar and the man attacked her from behind, choking and punching her in the face as she was entering her residence, police said.
One victim of library retooling at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been journal subscriptions.
The libraries have canceled 510 research journal subscriptions, at a savings of $374,865, since September, said Ed Van Gemert, associate director.
There was a time not too long ago when bringing food or drink into the library would have gotten a visitor thrown out.
Today, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College Library, there is actually a cafe on the main floor. Want to carry a coffee and muffin to a study room? No problem.
….The cafe is one of several changes UW-Madison library officials have taken in recent years to keep the libraries relevant, enticing and cost-effective.
Students used to spend spring break in New Orleans to relax. This year, trips to the Crescent City tend to be of the service-and-learning variety.
There’s still plenty of hurricane and flood cleanup left to do there. Delegations from Madison Area Technical College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Edgewood College and private organizations will be pitching in there later this month, hammers in hand.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison employee who has handled donations, grants and credit card transactions was convicted last year on charges that she embezzled more than $30,000 from a previous employer, court records show. (Last item in briefs package).
Letter writer says: The case of felons on the payroll “is another example of people not taking responsibility for their jobs or positions. It sounds more like the placements were political – based on who you know and not what you know.”
The preliminary hearing for former University of Wisconsin running back Booker Stanley has been rescheduled for Thursday, according to court records.
Stanley, a former standout at Whitefish Bay High School, last appeared in Dane County Circuit Court on Feb. 21. His attorney already had informed the Dane Country District Attorney’s office that Stanley had decided to waive his right to a preliminary hearing.
However, Stanley changed his mind and requested a hearing, which is his legal right.
A proposed University of Wisconsin policy would give resident assistants the same rights other students have to hold meetings in their dorm rooms or elsewhere on campus. Interestingly, you won’t find the word “religion” or “Bible” or the like in the proposal, but it was a church-state flap that prompted the proposal.
This proposal deserves the regents’ support.
The politically charged battle over embryonic stem cells is threatening to derail state funding for collaborative research between the Medical College of Wisconsin and four other southeastern Wisconsin colleges.
The Biomedical Technology Alliance, known as the BTA, has been lobbying the state for $2.5 million in seed money that would be matched by private funds to promote shared research.
Mentions that until Friday, Steven Avery was pictured on the Innocence Project’s Web site as one of four major wrongful convictions uncovered by the group – even though he had been charged with the murder of Halbach in November. Keith Findley, co-director of the project at University of Wisconsin-Madison law school, said, “We have taken those photos down.”
Mentions the Fluno Center for Executive Education and
the Family Business Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business.
The Aldo Leopold Foundation will break ground this summer on a $4.5 million building in Sauk County that will pay homage to the famed conservationist while helping to broaden the outreach work of the foundation.
Leopold is considered one of the fathers of modern wildlife management and was the first chairman of the game management department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A UW-Madison graduate has started a company that aims to help would-be college graduates market themselves for a job.
Bob Klein’s First Job, which is based in the Chicago area, is holding a workshop on Sunday from noon-5 p.m. at the Pyle Center on campus. The cost is $75 for UW Ad Club members, $95 for other students.
Madison film fans have quite a busy weekend ahead of them.
On Sunday, of course, they get to pop some popcorn, make their predictions and watch Jon Stewart host the Oscars, honoring some of the most-talked-about films of 2005.
But beginning at noon Saturday, they can start buying tickets for the eighth annual Wisconsin Film Festival and start mapping out which films they’ll see, films that could end up being some of the most-talked-about of 2006.
Gov. Jim Doyle plans to lead a delegation of more than 150 Wisconsin industry leaders to Chicago for BIO 2006, the world’s largest biotechnology conference, on April 9-12.
Doyle will join leading Wisconsin stem cell researchers Dr. James Thomson and Dr. Gabriela Cezar, as well as Wisconsin life science executives, economic developers, state government officials, lawyers, venture capitalists, researchers, technology licensing representatives and higher education professionals to promote Wisconsin’s life science resources.
The Democratic candidate for state treasurer has withdrawn from the race to continue his college studies. Robert Fyrst, 37, a three-term supervisor on the Dane County Board, announced his withdrawal today.
“Right now is not the time for me to serve as the Wisconsin state treasurer,” Fyrst said in a prepared statement. “I am not saying goodbye to politics.”
Fyrst will graduate from UW-Madison with degrees in sociology and political science this year, and has decided to apply to graduate school to continue his education.
Medical malpractice victims in Wisconsin would be limited to $750,000 in damages for pain and suffering under legislation the Assembly has passed after the governor vetoed an earlier proposal that would have set the cap much lower.
The Assembly’s 74-22 vote Thursday adds pressure on Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle to sign the bill this time because it passed with a veto-proof margin, with 16 Democrats voting in favor.
Supporters said the caps were urgently needed to ward off a potential medical liability crisis that would force doctors out of the state and drive up health care costs.
Prospects of a clean energy future will bring college students from throughout the Midwest to the University of Wisconsin-Madison over the weekend.
The students will partake in the first-ever Midwest Student Clean Energy Conference, starting Friday and ending Sunday afternoon, to learn about energy issues and the threats of global warming due to the rampant consumption of fossil fuels. As of Wednesday, 230 people had registered for the free event, which is at the Humanities Building on the UW-Madison campus.
The conference is related to the Campus Climate Challenge, a competition among 500 colleges in the United States and Canada to slow the effects of global warming by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by 2050.
Letter writer says: I am the parent of a University of Wisconsin-Platteville student, and if I had been polled, I would be one of the 30% who believe that UW-Platteville is spending money wisely (“Survey scalds UW System,” Feb. 24). UW-Platteville has in fact been hurt by recent cost-cutting brought on by problems at some of the larger campuses.
…the opera fun starts Friday when University Opera opens its three-performance run of its production of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” which will be sung in Italian with English surtitles.
(Several other UW-Madison music events are also mentioned.)
….The City Council Tuesday night is expected to approve the Wingra Creek Market Study, a comprehensive plan for a 64-acre triangular-shaped area on the city’s south side.
Over two years in the making, the plan aims at maintaining Park Street as a commercial and business area with Fish Hatchery Road remaining more of a residential corridor. It also calls for increasing housing densities on the south side to make light rail or other public transit a viable option. Park Street from the Beltline to the University of Wisconsin campus has been identified as a possible route for the city’s first trolley line.
UW-Madison senior Jamie Schneider will never again forget a friend’s birthday.
And with one click of the mouse, she can look up the cute guy in her communication arts class to see if he is “single,” “in a relationship” or if “it’s complicated.” She can reconnect with friends from high school, or even her childhood best friend who moved away.
She can do all this and more thanks to Facebook, an online social-networking phenomenon allowing college students everywhere to make new friends and keep the old ones.
Resident assistants at the University of Wisconsin would have the same rights as other students, but would be expected to use their influence wisely under a UW System proposal created in response to a controversy over Bible study sessions.
The plan will go before a panel of the Board of Regents a week from today and the full board next Friday for final approval.
Anti-sweatshop activists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say the administration is moving too slowly to improve working conditions for those who make UW logo clothing.
About 65 activists briefly occupied Chancellor John Wiley’s office Wednesday.
Rural Dane County residents might feel that the heavily developed Beltline is an ideal corridor for a proposed transmission line that would be the largest in the county. But others say the Beltline is no place for the 345-kilovolt line planned by the American Transmission Co.
“We are taking a very firm stand against a transmission line running along the Beltline in front of the Arboretum,” said Kevin McSweeny, executive director of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. “If it is in fact chosen as a route, we will insist that the line be buried such that our viewscape is not contaminated.”
Not only does bird flu pose a potential global health catastrophe, its threat to national security could dwarf Sept. 11, a public health expert told a Madison audience.
“I don’t say that lightly,” said Laurie Garrett, who lives next to the World Trade Center site in New York and witnessed the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Garrett, former a medical and science writer for Newsday, is the only journalist to have ever been awarded the three big P prizes – the Pulitzer, the Polk and the Peabody. She spoke as part of the UW-Madison’s Distinguished Lecture Series to an audience of about 200 at the Union Theater.
The UW System should not be singled out for legislative retribution for hiring felons in compliance with state law.
What we need to avoid is creating unnecessary hardships for people whom our judicial system has decided have paid their debt to society. There are few good jobs for people once they have served their time for the felony crimes that they have committed. Let’s not mistakenly make life harder for those who are trying to build a life after prison ââ?¬â? and make our state’s corrections policy look hypocritical compared to its past.
Dear Editor: Madison Gas & Electric recently announced that it will end coal burning by 2011 at its Blount Street plant in downtown Madison, significantly reducing air pollution from the plant.
Students can learn more about dirty coal and all of the issues surrounding energy production and global warming by taking part in the first annual Midwest Student Energy Conference in Madison this weekend.
….Registration is free and open to students in any university across the Midwest.
Wisconsin’s four major college athletic departments received passing grades under a new NCAA initiative that threatens to take scholarships away from teams that don’t perform up to academic standards.
The NCAA recognized 16 teams at the University of Wisconsin, Marquette, UW-Milwaukee and UW-Green Bay for high scores during the 2004-05 academic year.
However, scores for two high-profile teams, the UW’s football team and Marquette men’s basketball team, came in below NCAA requirements.
A total of 99 teams at 65 member schools didn’t make the grade under NCAA academic measures released on Wednesday.
No Wisconsin university in Division I lost a scholarship for poor academic performance.
Resident assistants in the University of Wisconsin System would be allowed to host Bible study in their dorms as long as they don’t coerce other students to participate, under a recommendation released Wednesday by system President Kevin Reilly.
A survey revealed recently that Wisconsinites hold their state university system in exceedingly low regard. Large majorities said University of Wisconsin campuses are top heavy, are spending public money the way Congress does and are too pricey for ordinary folks to send their kids to.
It’s clear that UW schools and the UW System have a serious image problem that must be dealt with aggressively. UW should do this not for touchy-feely PR benefit but because erosion of public trust will certainly result in further erosion of state legislative and public support. And this would function much like self-fulfilling prophecy, making the schools and system – beyond perception – truly inadequate for the public’s needs.
The best thing the university can do here is to provide the context missing from such surveys. And the key element missing from these perceptions is the reality that, though any institution can get more efficient, a top-rate university system and good K-12 schools are still the state’s best bets for bolstering its economy.
IF YOU watch the Oscars on Sunday and like Jon Stewart in his first year as host, you may want to find your way to the Wisconsin Union Theater the evening of April 10, when Ben Karlin, who has been riding shotgun for Stewart at “The Daily Show” since 1999, returns to Madison as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series at the Memorial Union.
Karlin worked for the Onion here in the 1990s and also freelanced pieces for Madison Magazine and the newspapers. His star has been in quick ascendance since he joined Stewart. Karlin is currently executive producer of “The Daily Show” and its new spinoff, “The Colbert Report.”
