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Author: jnweaver

Looking back at the bitter memories

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

More than a decade later, Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez still vividly recalls the violent clash of emotion and color. Euphoria one moment; agony the next. One moment you’re wading through a sea of red and dreaming the impossible, a trip to the Rose Bowl. The next moment you’re face to face with the unthinkable, a crush of bodies in the north end of Camp Randall Stadium, many of those bodies blue after being trampled during the students’ rush from the stands.

Do you Facebook?

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Kate VanCleave was still months from the start of her freshman year at Marquette when a senior at the college called with some urgent advice.

“You’ve got to sign up,” VanCleave recalled her friend saying last spring. “Everyone is doing it.”

The friend wasn’t recommending a specific class or nudging VanCleave toward an extracurricular activity. He was cluing her into Facebook.com, an online networking directory that is transforming campus life.

Mars and Venus aren’t that far apart

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Mars and Venus might be closer together than psychologists thought. Popular culture represents men and women as being so different as to hail from separate planets, but a new analysis of research challenges that view. There are more ways in which men and women are similar than they are different, says a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who cautions that believing otherwise could lead to unnecessary conflicts at school, work and home.

Iowa State hires UW’s Pollard as athletic director

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Capital Times

Barry Alvarez is losing his right-hand man in the University of Wisconsin athletic department.

Jamie Pollard, a rising star in the sports management profession who has served the past two years as deputy athletic director at the UW, was named the new athletic director at Iowa State this morning.

‘Rib’ gives hope for 2-year-old with scoliosis

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Despite an uncomfortable pregnancy, Lynn Rueckert had no indications anything was amiss.

But when her baby appeared, she and her doctors immediately knew something was wrong. Kate Rueckert had severe scoliosis: Her spine was rotated 30 degrees to the right. Her thumbs were stubbornly folded across her palms. And her left middle finger pointed down toward her wrist.

Kate’s symptoms were caused by arthrogryposis, a term used to describe muscle and nerve disorders that cause restricted joint mobility at birth. And while Kate eventually was able to move her fingers – “I’d straighten them out during diaper changes,” Rueckert said – the girl’s spine didn’t improve.

That was until this month, when Kate Rueckert became the first patient in Wisconsin to receive a titanium rib called the VEPTR, short for Vertical Expandable Prosthetic Titanium Rib, a device that promises to straighten her spine, allowing the 2-year-old to eat, breathe and move with ease.

“This is the most exciting thing in scoliosis surgery,” said Kenneth Noonan, an associate professor of pediatrics and orthopedic surgery at the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

A case of raging hormones?

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Craig Atwood thinks he knows why most of us will get old and die. And it’s all about sex. The maverick University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher is convinced that’s the secret of why cancer cells might spread through our organs, why our hearts someday might fail and why our brains might be short-circuited by Alzheimer’s disease.

Survey: Smoky bars here make workers wheeze

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Capital Times

A study by the UW Comprehensive Cancer Center has found that nonsmoking bartenders in Madison who work in establishments where smoking is allowed are much more likely to experience five upper respiratory symptoms.

The study was undertaken in May and June, before the city’s smoking ban went into effect. A follow-up study is being conducted to find out possible effects of the ban.

“It was a random sample of bartenders,” said Dr. Patrick Remington, professor of public health at the University of Wisconsin Medical School and associate director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center. About 700 bartenders responded to the survey.

UWM must grow as a research power

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

n the basement of an octagon-shaped building that squats amid woods on Milwaukee’s northwest side, 16 wires send low-level electric currents through a small glass tank filled with water, across which a device called a trolley shuttles to and fro. Aboard is a simulated woman’s breast with a tumor. From this research project, which outgrew its lab at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, will emerge a surer way of detecting breast cancer – if all goes well. Success also would demonstrate the community payoff of academic research, which Chancellor Carlos Santiago wants to step up at UWM.

Madison campus offers a road map for UWM and Milwaukee

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Thomas Rockwell Mackie, radiology professor, long wrestled with an issue central to the treatment of cancer patients: Keeping the cure from killing them. TomoTherapy is a Madison company founded and led by Paul Reckwerdt (left) and Frederick A. Robertson that is helping the capital city benefit from reseach done on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. For years, he and collaborators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School struggled to come up with a method for better zeroing cell-zapping rays on malignant tumors and off healthy organs.

Manufacturing sector to lead state to modest growth in ’06

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin’s economy will continue to grow next year, although a bit more slowly than the rest of the nation, Donald A. Nichols said at a semi-annual conference Friday. In fact, the state, led by a strong manufacturing sector, will continue to close its per capita income gap with the U.S. in 2006, said Nichols, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and leading expert of the state economy.

Bringing water to Rwanda

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Muramba, Rwanda – As a steady flow of women and children carrying empty straw satchels and jerrycans made their way down the mountain road to the market below, a smaller, more determined stream worked its way up against the current. Carrying hoes, picks, shovels and machetes, these women – many with infants swaddled to their backs – were headed toward a potato field where Peter Bosscher, a civil engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was waiting.

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Anti-war activist fires up crowd

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Capital Times

“Hanoi” Jane Fonda may have helped British Member of Parliament George Galloway fill the Wisconsin Union Theater Sunday night, but it was Galloway who kept a crowd of about 1,000 in their seats – and on their feet.

The actress, who was scheduled to introduce Galloway, was a no-show. Instead, she sent word that she was recovering from hip surgery.

Dave Zweifel: Wiley justified in slamming legislators

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Capital Times

….Frankly, John Wiley deserves a pat on the back. It’s well past time that someone at the university stood up to these bullies.

The UW hasn’t had a great public relations year, to be sure. The lengthy Paul Barrows paid leave and the three professors who remained on the payroll after being convicted of felonies became perfect targets for exploitation. The Nasses and Suders never make an attempt to understand how that might happen before running their mouths and calling for the Legislature to punish the UW.

Stem cell experts do lunch to learn

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Capital Times

What do spinal cord injury patients want most?

Clive Svendsen, a University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher, posed the deceptively simple question to a standing-room-only lunchtime crowd on Friday. They were there for the Stem Cell Journal Club, a weekly event that allows researchers from throughout the field to munch on pizza while gaining a broader understanding of the science.

Party on, Wisconsin!

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

On a Wisconsin Badgers’ game day in Madison, thousands upon thousands of righteously red fans celebrate with copious amounts of drinkin’ and grillin’, dancin’ and hollerin’. There’s a reason Madison is known as one of the biggest party towns in America.

Adam Mertz: Expect the unexpected when Badgers hit the road

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Capital Times

There is traveling – and then there is traveling, Badger style.

No, not talking about the fans or the band here, the usual topics when a University of Wisconsin football road trip is the topic of discussion. The issue is the bizarro events that have occurred two of the last three seasons on the team’s first road trip of the season, when the UW inevitably travels through another dimension – a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind, to borrow a little from Rod Serling.

UW exec: Fire two professors

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Capital Times

University of Wisconsin-Madison Provost Peter Spear has recommended firing two professors convicted of serious crimes.

After internal investigations, Spear on Thursday announced that he had recommended the Board of Regents fire Steven Clark, a human oncology professor, and Lewis Cohen, a comparative literature professor.

Stem cell talk is Monday

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Capital Times

James Thomson, the pioneering stem cell scientist from UW-Madison, will give a lecture Monday at the Overture Center.

Thomson’s lecture, “The Latest on Stem Cells: The Promise and Challenge,” will begin at 7 p.m. at the center, 201 State St.

He was the first scientist to grow human embryonic stem cells, derived from fertilized human eggs, that can grow into any specialized cell.

Doyle orders disaster plan updated

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Capital Times

Wisconsin’s emergency preparedness plans will be reviewed and updated so that they could be effective in case of a large-scale disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, Gov. Jim Doyle pledged Thursday.

Doyle told Adj. Gen. Al Wilkening, who heads the National Guard and advises the governor on homeland security, to thoroughly review the state’s plans and report back in three weeks.

“Some of the specific areas I’d like this report to address are: whether we have adequate evacuation plans in place for major cities, how we would evacuate nursing homes, hospitals, schools and our most vulnerable citizens,” Doyle said during a State Capitol press conference.

John Oncken: Fast Plants speed up learning process

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Capital Times

Have you ever heard of “Fast Plants”? Probably not.

Neither had I until recently. How I missed hearing about this most fascinating subject I’ll never know. However, I do know that many teachers and schoolchildren have learned basic biological principles from studying plants that take only 40 days to grow from seed to maturity, i.e. “Fast Plants.”

My guess is that (Paul) Williams is one of the true innovators of the agricultural world. He searches for fast growing plants to aid disease research in vegetable crops, and then works it into both advanced research and education of young people.

Stratatech gets another fed research grant

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Capital Times

Madison-based Stratatech Corp. announced that it has been awarded another federal grant, this one worth $154,000 from the National Institute of Aging to continue development of its genetically engineered human skin substitutes to speed the healing of chronic skin ulcers such as bed sores.

….Stratatech’s products are based on a patented, unique source of pathogen-free human skin cells identified at UW-Madison as being able to multiply indefinitely.

Galloway talk adds Katrina aid

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Capital Times

Organizers of Sunday’s appearance of British Member of Parliament George Galloway at the Wisconsin Union Theater will use the occasion to collect food, money and clothing for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Contributions will be delivered to Louisiana next Wednesday by UW students who will later be traveling to Washington, D.C., for the Sept. 24 rally against the war in Iraq, according to Chris Dols, a student organizer.

Doctor fees in Wisconsin tops in U.S.

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Capital Times

Eight of 10 metropolitan areas across the nation with the highest physician prices are in Wisconsin and Madison ranks fourth, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

….Ralph Andreano, an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said competition has little impact on health care costs because medical facilities have the same equipment and techniques.

“What usually is the case is that high cost means high quality. The state-of-the-art is costly. High-quality medicine is very costly and it’s difficult to contain it,” Andreano said.

Ex-legislator Heinzen dies; played a role in UW merger

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Capital Times

Former state Sen. Ray Heinzen of Marshfield, a longtime advocate of educational causes in Wisconsin, died earlier this week at the age of 87.

Heinzen served four terms in the state Assembly from 1961 to 1967, and was then elected to the state Senate in 1969. During his long tenure in the Capitol, the moderate Republican championed many causes in the education field and was the prime author of legislation sought by then Democratic Gov. Patrick J. Lucey that merged the University of Wisconsin campuses with 10 former state colleges under one administration and one board of regents.

Governing the UW: Lawmaker questions faculty’s involvement

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Capital Times

The state might want to consider stripping the University of Wisconsin faculty’s statutory right to share in the governance of the university, a top lawmaker said.

Faculty and academic staff have long had the right to participate in the policymaking process at the university. That right is more than just an administrative rule; it is enshrined in state law.

But Rep. Suzanne Jeskewitz, R-Menomonee Falls, said the faculty’s right to shape university policy could be an obstacle to making important changes to the university’s employment practices.

UWM chancellor sounds alarm

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Wednesday warned that state budget cuts, combined with a sense of denial by some over the urgency of the city’s economic challenges, threaten his efforts to upgrade UWM into a major research university.

World music at the Union

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Capital Times

Whether it’s the irresistible rhythms of Brazilian drums or the otherworldly vocals of African chants, the sounds of world music are nothing new to the Memorial Union.

The Wisconsin Union Theater has brought internationally known world musicians to Madison year-round through its World Stage Series. That commitment to bringing in global music has expanded into the Madison World Music Festival this Thursday through Saturday, featuring a dozen artists from places as far away as Mali, Brazil and Spain.

Wiley defends biting remarks

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Capital Times

University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley is defending biting remarks he made against the Republican-controlled Legislature in the latest edition of the UW alumni magazine, but legislators are pushing back.

In a column titled “Don’t Punish the Good,” Wiley said that during the recently completed budget cycle, lawmakers attempted “to take an injurious swipe at UW-Madison as a matter of petty politics.”

Close bars early on Halloween?

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Capital Times

The Halloween Party on State Street this year combines daylight-saving time, a request from city and university leaders that bars close before the clocks turn back and an angry Tavern League.

A letter Tuesday signed by Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley asks bar owners to voluntarily stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m. Oct. 30 so that the Saturday night crowd stops drinking a bit earlier that Sunday.

Badger charged

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Capital Times

Jammar Crane, a linebacker on the University of Wisconsin football team, was charged with misdemeanor fraud Monday for allegedly making $900 in purchases with a credit card he found.

Crane, a sophomore from Garland, Texas, faces up to nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine if convicted. He was released Monday on a signature bond.

Steve Bablitch is new DOA chief

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Capital Times

Steve Bablitch will succeed Marc Marotta as the new secretary of the state Department of Administration. Flanked by Bablitch and Marotta, Gov. Jim Doyle announced the changing of the guard at a news conference Monday.

Doyle called Bablitch, the former secretary of the Department of Corrections and CEO of the Cobalt Corp., “one of Wisconsin’s great success stories.”

(Bablitch received his undergraduate and law degrees from UW-Madison.)

Dispute over donated tissue, organs resolved

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Capital Times

The “tissue issue” has been resolved at the Dane County Coroner’s Office.

Coroner John Stanley told the County Board’s Public Protection and Judiciary Committee Monday night that area hospitals will continue to honor their arrangements of providing tissue and organ donations to any of three tissue banks operating in Wisconsin, and not be limited to a new company, American Tissue Services Foundation.

Doyle friend to lead agency

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Gov. Jim Doyle on Monday named Stephen Bablitch, a close friend who once ran the state’s prison system, to lead the powerful Department of Administration.

Marotta to resign Doyle Cabinet post

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State Department of Administration Secretary Mark Marotta planned to resign Monday afternoon, a spokesman for Gov. Jim Doyle said.

Doyle’s office issued an announcement that the governor planned to appoint a new Cabinet-level secretary at an afternoon press conference

Marotta has served as the governor’s administration secretary since Doyle took office in 2002.

(9/12/05 Capital Times print edition)

Art show depicts persecution

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Capital Times

An international group of artists sympathetic to the practice of Falun Gong has created a 40-picture exhibit depicting the Chinese government’s brutal persecution of the rapidly growing grass-roots spiritual movement. The exhibit is on display in the Capitol rotunda.

UW-Madison assistant professor of geography Hong Jiang is quoted.

Dan Erdman: Galloway not the hero he is made out to be

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Capital Times

….His upcoming appearance at the Wisconsin Union Theater is sure to pack the house with local anti-war activists.

However, there are some inconvenient facts about Galloway that aren’t often reported in the American press. Whatever one’s opinion about the Bush administration’s wars, no one who claims to be a progressive ought to have anything to do with Galloway, a dishonest, authoritarian reactionary.

Fall tuition waiver eyed for those hit by Katrina (AP)

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Capital Times

WEST BEND – The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents said Friday it will waive fall tuition for students affected by Hurricane Katrina as long as legislative leaders approve.

Board President David Walsh said the waiver could be made official as early as next week for students who transferred to the University of Wisconsin after the storm closed their Gulf Coast schools.

In the meantime, the board agreed Friday not to bill the affected students for the fall term.

Regents lay down law on paid leave, other perks (AP)

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Capital Times

WEST BEND – No more backup jobs for now. Get the convicts off the payroll. And nobody will get paid for not working.

Reining in employment practices that have embarrassed Wisconsin’s public universities, University of Wisconsin System regents on Friday put limits on perks granted to administrators and ordered campuses to expedite the firing of employees guilty of criminal activity.

Regents support cutting backup jobs, paid leaves

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents set in motion a variety of reforms Friday to curb backup appointments and paid leaves given to university administrators and to speed up the removal of employees convicted of felonies.

Firm’s success lures investors

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Snubbed by venture capitalists on both coasts, fast-growing TomoTherapy — started by two University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers — now finds itself being wooed by Wall Street and health care centers around the world.

An artist’s ‘Starry Transit’

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Capital Times

….It’s a mind-expanding exhibit that is as visually, scientifically and philosophically far-reaching as any art show Madison has seen for many years.

(Martha) Glowacki, a Madison artist and co-curator of the Wisconsin Academy’s Watrous Gallery in the Overture Center, has created an installation that reaches back to the late 1800s, when humans began to understand and observe more about the solar system.

The exhibit also reaches right into the stars, with telescopic power. “Starry Transit” is situated in, and conceptually wedded to, Washburn Observatory, which sits majestically atop the highest point on the UW-Madison campus, overlooking Lake Mendota.

UW men’s hockey: After 9/11, Patrick appreciates living life to fullest

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Capital Times

There were many ways Kevin Patrick connected with his younger brother James through the years, but one of the constants was hockey.

….Because of those hockey bonds between brothers, Kevin is sure his rise up the college hockey coaching ladder would make his little brother happy.

James Patrick died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. A bond broker for Cantor Fitzgerald, he had an office on the 105th floor of Tower 1.

UW men’s basketball notes: In new role, Ryan eyes options to help victims

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Capital Times

Bo Ryan is enjoying his role as a new member of the National Association of Basketball Coaches’ Board of Directors because it puts him at the forefront of all the top issues affecting college basketball. Like how to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Ryan said the NABC Board has tried to get a third exhibition game added to college teams’ schedules this season so all profits from the games could be given to the storm victims. But the Wisconsin men’s basketball coach added that the NCAA nixed the idea.

Band leery of stadium changes

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Capital Times

Band members let out a collective hiss when UW Varsity Band director Mike Leckrone first told them during a rehearsal that they would be moving from the field to the stands in the newly renovated Camp Randall Stadium.

Leckrone said he got the same reaction years ago when the band originally moved in the other direction: from the stands to the north end zone.

Regents look at ‘mistakes’

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Capital Times

WEST BEND – University of Wisconsin System regents said Thursday that they will put new limits on how universities grant backup positions and paid leaves to administrators, as they began reviewing personnel policies that have come under scrutiny.

Representatives of the 17-member board also indicated they would try to speed up the firing of employees convicted of felonies as part of an effort to restore public confidence in the 13 four-year universities they govern.

In all, regents said, negative coverage of the system’s missteps in recent weeks had added up to erode public support for university funding and distract the schools from their teaching and research missions.

UW-Madison professor honored as technology innovator

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Capital Times

Helen Blackwell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor, is being honored by a national magazine as a top innovator for her work with bacteria and infections.

Technology Review Magazine, a publication of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recognized Blackwell as one of its top 35 innovators under 35 years of age.

Teaching assistants blast lawmaker’s bill

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Capital Times

University of Wisconsin teaching assistants are reacting with horror to a bill proposed by state Sen. Tom Reynolds that would eliminate the collective bargaining rights of student assistants employed by the UW System.

Current law expressly guarantees the right of self-organization and collective bargaining to program, project and teaching assistants employed by the UW System. There are separate bargaining units for UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, as well as a separate unit that represents the other campuses.

Think about regional growth, expert advises county

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Capital Times

Dane County has to look beyond its borders as it plans for the next half-century of growth and service to Wisconsin, according to one of the state’s leading economists.

Terry Ludeman, chief of the Office of Economic Advisors in the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, said the Madison area is one of about 100 dynamic metropolitan communities in America and needs to think beyond county lines as the 21st century progresses.

….Madison has the right kind of stuff, he said, including a good quality of life, a major university, a highly educated population and an infrastructure to make the community grow, not just via highways but by moving knowledge around through an advanced communications system like the Internet.

Patrick Barrett: Galloway talk fits UW credo, and taxpayers won’t foot bill

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Capital Times

In recent days, state Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, has gained a lot of media attention by attacking the University of Wisconsin-Madison for allowing George Galloway, an anti-war member of the British Parliament, to speak on campus on Sept. 18.

He has based his objection on the fact that the Havens Center, which is based in the sociology department, is a co-sponsor of the event, leading him to claim that taxpayer money is being used to “shove” Mr. Galloway’s “pro-terrorist” views “down our throats.” I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight.

(Patrick Barrett is administrative director of the A.E. Havens Center, which promotes critical social thought throughout the social sciences and is part of the sociology department at UW-Madison.)

Bill protects guide dogs

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Capital Times

State legislators are considering a bill that would modify state regulations regarding service dogs used by handicapped people so the rules conform to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The bill, proposed by Sen. Mark Miller, D-Monona, would extend the public accommodations law to cover any type of service animal, not just guide dogs. It also would eliminate requirements that a guide dog accompanying a person with a disability must wear a harness or leash and that the person with the animal must present credentials issued by a guide dog training school.

Gas prices drive UWM students to buses

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Student bus pass usage has jumped sharply at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in the latest indication that sky-high gas prices could be pushing some commuters away from driving, transit and UWM officials said Wednesday.

Friday night arts boom

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Capital Times

If you had to pick a single night that marks the opening of the new arts season, it would no doubt be Friday, when a perfect storm of cultural events will strike Madison.

The rich schedule is certainly impressive, offering a great deal for art lovers to do, see and hear.

But it may also have a hidden dark side as a harbinger of Madison’s booming arts scene, rife with mounting competition for consumers’ scarce time and precious entertainment dollars.

UW football: West-side stadium issues addressed

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Capital Times

The University of Wisconsin on Tuesday announced plans that it hopes will improve the flow of fan traffic on the west side of Camp Randall Stadium.

Structural and operational issues in that area led to gridlock before and during halftime of the Badgers’ 2005 season-opener against Bowling Green on Saturday. The UW hopes operational changes will make things smoother for fans who attend this Saturday’s game against Temple.