Despite an increase in the number of arrests at last weekendâ??s Mifflin Street block party over last year, Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said event security management is improving, and realizing revenues from the event is possible in the future.
A UW study looks at the most common injury to young athletes, and itâ??s not a concussion. In a first-of-a-kind study, University of Wisconsin researchers will examine whether using ankle braces during football practice and games will help to reduce the incidence of ankle sprains â?? which can be debilitating.
A new report shows efforts to increase the graduation rate on UW campuses is paying off.
Noted: Jennifer Angus, who teaches textile design at the University of Wisconsin, became an amateur entomologist in the course of creating her â??Victorian Fancyâ? series of dollhouses and installations. She builds scenes of perfect domestic felicity, but all the patterns on the walls, floors and furniture are arrangements of beautiful insects, and all the characters in the dollhouses are insects, too â?? electric-green beetles from Thailand, locusts from French Guiana with spectacular wings of purple and blue, striped weevils, polka-dot weevils, leaf mimics, white cicadas and frog-legged beetles that look like their name. â??I wanted to create a pattern that suggests a domestic space,â? she said, â??but of course the one thing people donâ??t want in their house is insects.â?
A 20-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault during this weekendâ??s Mifflin Street block party.
Roy William Haller, age 77, of Washington Island and Madison, died on Wednesday, April 21, 2010, at his home on Washington Island. Roy was employed by the University of Wisconsin School of Agricultural and Life Sciences as a professor and then assistant dean of student affairs, providing support and guidance to students, until his retirement in 1989.
Quoted: “Itâ??s definitely real in that weâ??ve been seeing this [fungus in North America] since 1999 and itâ??s causing a lot more meningitis than you would expect in the general population, but this is still a rare disease,” said Christina Hull, an assistant professor of medical microbiology and immunology and of biomolecular chemistry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.
The University of Michigan menâ??s hockey team took to the ice and immediately began whooping it up. “They were yippinâ?? and yappinâ??,” says Mike Stevenson, the universityâ??s executive associate director of athletics. “You could just tell it was a different atmosphere, and they were having a hell of a lot of fun. “This, at a Michigan practice in Madison, Wis. â?? inside the University of Wisconsinâ??s home football venue, and as outside as any of these players had been in their competitive careers. So they took advantage, circling and chirping in full gear and subfreezing temperatures.
On Thursday, the University Licensing Oversight Committee will meet to decide whether or not Cornell should continue its current relationship with Nike, given the companyâ??s mistreatment of their workers in Honduras.
Quoted: “I think weâ??re seeing the race heat up in advance of the Republican state convention,” University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin said. “These two campaigns have not been very happy with each other all year, but there havenâ??t been key events in the last six months that they could kind of focus on for their competition.”
Starting today, thousands of census workers will scour the country, town by town and block by block, trying to identify which addresses have residents and how many they have. The workers goal: to combine these numbers into a precise reckoning of the American population. As always, they will fail.
If youâ??re planning to attend the Mifflin Street Block Party Saturday, expect a beer garden, food carts, two music stages, portable toilets, and a mass of humanity. The party started in 1969 as a peace festival but has largely transformed into an end-of-the-year celebration for UW-Madison students.
The Madison Trust for Historic Preservation welcomes Whitney Gould, a Madison native and former urban landscape writer and architecture critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as the featured speaker at the annual awards presentation. Being honored are the Barbara Hochberg Center for Jewish Student Life, 611 Langdon St.; and the Washburn Observatory on Observatory Drive on the UW-Madison campus, built in 1878
The University of Wisconsin has approved a one-year contract extension for menâ??s basketball coach Bo Ryan. The athletic board on Friday extended Ryanâ??s rolling five-year contract through May of 2015. Athletics department spokesman Justin Doherty said financial terms of the contract were not finalized.
The University of Wisconsin Athletic Board approved contract extensions on Friday for the head coaches of five winter sports, including womenâ??s basketball coach Lisa Stone, who had two additional years put on her contract. Stone had her contract extended through May of 2015, which is the same for menâ??s basketball coach Bo Ryan and menâ??s hockey coach Mike Eaves.
About 100 journalists, former journalists, future journalists, academics and researchers gathered Friday on the UW-Madison campus to ask some hard questions about the news industry. The second annual conference was organized by the School of Journalism and Mass Communicationâ??s Center for Journalism Ethics at UW-Madison. The core values that were explored at the UW conference on journalism ethics – accuracy, fairness, timeliness, transparency – will still be at the heart of what journalists do, no matter how the technology evolves.
Yo, check this out. A workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this summer instructs teachers and others how to use hip hop in the classroom. The Hip-Hop Educator and Community Leader Training Institute planned for July 7 through July 11 is in its fifth year.
Noted: Security officers in such institutions face two crucial problems. One is funding, which ranked first in the survey. The chemistry department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for instance, has one IT person overseeing 1,300 computers used by 500 staff and several thousand students. In such a climate, says departmental chairman Robert Hamers, “itâ??s just very limiting in terms of what you can actually expect one person to do”. Last year, Hamersâ?? department suffered a breach. In the absence of a firewall (now installed), foreign hackers infiltrated 40 computers, installing software that turned those systems into file-sharing servers for copyrighted music, movies and television programmes.
Quoted: â??Itâ??s not just about a test score,â? said keynote speaker Allan R. Odden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. â??It includes much more than that, multiple measures of student performance â?¦ what we need to gauge is what teachers do to produce student growth.â?
Time for that dreaded sex talk with your teenager? A new study suggests the writingâ??s on their Facebook wall.
Researchers report that teens who include sexual references on their Facebook profiles may very well be planning to have sex. “Parents and physicians are often seeking clues for when itâ??s time to have â??the talkâ?? about sex with a teenager,” Dr. Megan A. Moreno of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of a study on kidsâ?? posting on social networking sites, said in a news release from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Quoted: “Thereâ??s really no evidence that this kind of intervention would have the kinds of impacts that the developer claims on students who are just more typically at risk at poor performance,” said Geoffrey Borman, professor of education the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Clearly, something significant happened for the UW-Madison to revoke the animal-use privileges of researcher Michele Basso last year. But what, exactly? The Wisconsin State Journalâ??s March 19 article, which revealed the suspension, refers vaguely to Bassoâ??s alleged “lack of respect for veterinarians, incomplete record-keeping and instances where monkeys developed brain injuries.” It even quotes Basso plausibly describing the charges against her as vague.
Yo, check this out. A workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this summer instructs teachers and others how to use hip hop in the classroom.
Tomorrow is Mifflin. It will be my third time going. The first was impressive. After doing some shots in Chadbourne, I packed a backpack full of Keystone Light and wandered around a series of backyards with my friends, desperately looking for a place to urinate that would escape the view of one of the many lurking Sheriff deputies.
Thousands of college students gathered downtown Saturday for the annual Mifflin Street block party, one of the nationâ??s most enduring and controversial college beer bashes.
 If youâ??re not in the mood to party, you probably want to avoid the downtown campus area on Saturday. Thatâ??s because the 42nd annual Mifflin Street Block Party will take place all day Saturday.
Saturday marked the 42nd annual Mifflin Street Block party in downtown Madison. The 42nd annual event drew thousands on Saturday. Madison police say the party started early, mainly because of nice weather, leaving revelers heavily intoxicated throughout the day, filling detox centers. Police say arrests actually went up from last year. As of 8 PM there were more than 200. That compares to 164 in 2009, and 440 in 2008.
The Board of Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a decision on April 28, 2010 in the inter partes re-examination of U.S. Patent No. 7,029,913, granted to University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and internationally-recognized stem cell researcher Dr. James Thomson. In the decision, the BPAI rejected the claims of the patent, reversing an earlier determination by a USPTO examiner.
Daniel D. Weltzin, age 60, passed away on Thursday, April 29, 2010. Dan worked for 20 years at UW Health as a courier and enjoyed his job.
A bill that would restore some college tuition benefits to Wisconsin veterans died in the Legislature last week, but some legislators want to revive it. Members of the Assembly Committee on Veterans and Military Affairs on Thursday sent a letter to Gov. Jim Doyle urging him to call the Legislature into a special session to act on the bill, which would allow some veterans to take more semesters of college tuition-free.
The meteor that lit up the sky in southwestern Wisconsin on April 14 has spawned its share of wacko science stories: everything from aliens to zombies. But about an hour away from where it landed, the science behind the meteorite is no less wild.In Weeks Hall on the UW-Madison campus, in-depth studies of the meteorite got under way Thursday. The science that will unfold over the next six months is expected to be out-of-this world: Researchers could end up finding out details on the material from which our solar system was birthed, or how to blow apart a threatening asteroid.
UW-Madison researchers are asking anyone who finds a meteorite they believe is from the April 14 event to register their find. Professor John Valley said the information will be used to create a database and a map that shows the scatter field, or location of the meteorites in southwestern Wisconsin.
The UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine is considering ending its exotic animal program because of a budget cut of more than $800,000, according to school officials. Some students say they are concerned that if the program is eliminated, they wonâ??t get clinical training on so-called “special species” like birds, reptiles or rodents. It would also mean that local pet owners could no longer bring such animals to the UW-Madison Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital.
Peter O. Johnson was a relative newcomer to the horse racing industry when he arrived at the sportâ??s mecca on May 6, 2006, and watched Barbaro race to a victory in the Kentucky Derby. As Johnson left Churchill Downs that day, the longtime Madison resident made a vow to sons Peter Jr. and Erik that he wouldnâ??t return until he had a horse in the race. Johnson grew up in Monroe and graduated from the University of Wisconsin. He dated the woman who is now his wife in college, but Peter and Ellen went their separate ways after UW until reuniting some 30 years later following divorces from their respective spouses.
Delphine Theresa “Del” Parker (nee Komassa), age 78, passed away on Sunday, April 25, 2010, with family by her side. Del worked as membership secretary at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Union for three years and then spent the remainder of her work years at the UW Hospital and Clinics in the Department of Human Oncology, Radiation Oncology Division as administrative assistant to the division director, where she retired in January of 1997, after 29 years of service.
Public university leaders from around the Midwest are meeting at UW-Madison today to discuss how to strengthen their research capacity with federal funds in the face of dwindling state support. The meeting is one of five this month hosted across the country by APLU, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. Among the speakers at the Fluno Center will be John Morgridge, chairman emeritus of Cisco Systems, E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, and Biddy Martin, UW-Madisonâ??s chancellor.
The small orange, black and white can touts world domination.For now, Madison entrepreneurs Dave Kruse and Paul Pucci would be happy just adding a few more convenience stores to sell the energy drink theyâ??ve created and dubbed Flatt Cola. The UW-Madison business school graduates are also trying to attract more investors to their fledgling company so they can increase the marketing campaign that includes â??Everyday World Domination,â? and purchase more cans for another batch of the high-octane drink.
The changing face of journalism and the speed with which news travels are creating ethical dilemmas for news outlets, according to Stephen Ward, a UW-Madison professor who heads the Center for Journalism Ethics. Ward will convene a conference Friday of journalists and academics to debate how ethical standards can be upheld as small, specialized newsrooms spring up and news increasingly is broken as it happens by untrained citizen journalists.
Chaunte Ott spoke quietly to the five members of the State Claims Board Wednesday as he asked for compensation for the 13 years he spent in prison for a crime a court found he didnâ??t commit. “I had absolutely nothing to do with the murder of this child,” Ott said in seeking $25,000, the maximum allowed under state law for a wrongful conviction. “This is absolutely against my nature. Iâ??ve never been a violent person.” The Milwaukee County district attorneyâ??s office declined to refile charges against Ott, 36, in June after DNA from a serial murder suspect was found on the body of 15-year-old Jessica Payne. The Wisconsin Innocence Project also had presented evidence that the two men who implicated themselves and Ott in the 1994 murder on Milwaukeeâ??s North Side had fabricated their testimony under intense police pressure.
Hunter, biologist and author Shane Mahoney of Newfoundland, Canada, delivered the 2010 Leopold Lecture April 20 at the University of Wisconsin.
Emery Sylvester passed away peacefully five days after his 99th birthday. He worked for the University of Wisconsin physics department for 41 years.
The federal approval includes nine lines that had never before been eligible for federal funding and four long-used lines derived by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, known as H7, H9, H13 and H14. H9 is the most widely used.
“Its a big day for researchers in the United States,” said Erik Forsberg, executive director of the WiCell Research Institute in Madison, Wis., which applied for the approval. “The fact that these lines will now be listed on the registry and available for research will ease the mind of many scientists.”
A researcher said the barrage of digital distractions in todayâ??s social world is exploiting the brainâ??s inability to multitask, creating a more scatter-brained population.
“You really canâ??t multi-task. The brain canâ??t multi-task,” said Joanne Cantor, director of the University of Wisconsinâ??s Center for Communication Research.
The National Institutes of Health announced Tuesday that 13 additional lines of human embryonic stem cells are eligible for federal funding, including the most widely used line.
n 2008 there were 440 people arrested for 614 violations. Last year only 164 people were arrested for 228 violations. Thatâ??s a big change from 1996 when riots broke out at the party. City officials are hoping nothing like that happens this year and theyâ??re banking on a more is less strategy to ensure everyone has a safe fun time.
Governor Doyle making stops across the state this week to tout the Wisconsin Covenant program.
Quoted: Phil Pellitteri, a distinguished faculty associate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, said lake flies do not bite (because they have no mouths) or carry disease.
A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison students have developed a system to help give those in developing countries electricity in their homes. UW-Madison electrical engineering graduate student Dan Ludois was looking for a way to provide power to people in developing countries without any.
UW-Madison has ended its licensing agreement with Nike. University officials say the sportswear company hasnâ??t adequately addressed the plight of hundreds of workers displaced after the closing of two sub-contractor factories in Honduras. Labor rights activists are now urging other schools with big athletic programs to do the same.
Even if you think the role of college sports in higher education is out of whack, it says something about how much the landscape has changed that when the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced its new leader Tuesday night, it would have been a Butler-almost-winning-the-NCAA-tournament sort of shock if a college president had not been selected.
Dennis Lynn Koepke, age 52, died April 15, 2010, after living for five years with non-Hodgkinâ??s lymphoma. Dennis worked as an economist for the UW-Extension.
Itâ??s now an established scientific fact: Smut is GOOD for you. Corn smut, that is. For years, scientists have assumed that huitlacoche (WEET-LA-KO-CHEE) — a gnarly, gray-black corn fungus long-savored in Mexico — had nutritional values similar to those of the corn on which it grew. But test results just published in the journal Food Chemistry reveal that an infection that U.S. farmers and crop scientists have spent millions trying to eradicate, is packed with unique proteins, minerals and other nutritional goodies. Researchers at University of Wisconsin convinced a local organic farmer in 2007 to deliberately infect a field of corn with the fungus, and then harvest and sell it.
Leinenkugel will have to work quickly to build personal recognition rather than relying too much on his famous name, said Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Thompson spent a total of 37 years in the Physics Department before retiring as an emeritus professor early in 2000.
Good luck trying to get that one past Mark Osiecki. Three days ago, Osiecki accepted an offer to become the menâ??s hockey coach at Ohio State, one of the biggest, most well-to-do athletic departments in the NCAA.
Noted: In an influential 1997 paper, Sean B. Carroll of the University of Wisconsin, Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago and Cliff Tabin of Harvard Medical School coined a term for these borrowed modules: â??deep homology.â?
There was concern it wouldnâ??t go forward. A guy who used to write for me at the Herald, Steve Horn, was sending around a facebook petition trying to get people to protest Memorial Unionâ??s cancellation of the event.
With the annual Mifflin Street Block Party only days away, organizers are outlining new plans and Madison police say it will be cutting back on their patrolling of the popular campus event this weekend.
Murray Alexander Thompson, age 75, died at his home on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula in New Zealand on April 5, 2010. Murray spent a total of 37 years in the Physics Department before retiring as an emeritus professor early in 2000. From 1976 to 1989 he was the director of the Physical Sciences Laboratory.
