The attorney representing the family of slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann will get to hear a 911 call made from Zimmermannâ??s cell phone the day she was murdered last year, a Dane County judge ruled Wednesday.
Writer Dave Eggers and the South Sudanese man whose story he told in his 2006 book “What Is the What” were at UW-Madison on Wednesday to talk about the pairâ??s work in Sudan and to urge the overflow crowd to get involved in efforts to bring peace to the country.
Up until just a few years ago, you knew what you were getting into when you walked into a so-called “environmental film.” Some dewy-eyed shots of trees and birds. Maybe a Joan Baez song on the soundtrack. And, above all, youâ??d be getting a stern lecture on how mankind is squandering its earthly resources and must mend the error of its ways.
It took police more than 12 years to find the person eventually convicted of killing a longtime owner of a downtown Kalamazoo bicycle shop in 1988. Now, attorneys working for the Wisconsin Innocence Project say they got the wrong man.
A scientist warns the fish are moving faster than the federal government when it comes to keeping the predatory Asian carp out of Lake Michigan waters. Last spring, a $9 million electronic barrier was installed in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to keep the Asian carp from swimming into Lake Michigan and wreaking havoc on the lakeâ??s eco-system. University of Wisconsin biologist Phil Moy, whoâ??s working on the barrier project, says the barrier is effective but needs some routine maintenance. “Thereâ??s no problem with the barrier. Itâ??s just scheduled to go for maintenance, just like changing the oil in your car.”
Quoted: “This really is not a practical issue at this point,” said Dr. Chris Olsen, a professor of public health and associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine. “Is that to say itâ??s not possible? No.”
Noted: The conundrum for Democrats is especially obvious here, the liberal bastion around the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Obama chose to mark the first anniversary of his election Wednesday with an appearance. On campus — described by one Wisconsin pol as an isthmus of liberalism surrounded by reality — young voters said they see a dwindling of enthusiasm. Will Bradley, a senior in Spanish and economics, said he likes much of what he says is Obamaâ??s pragmatic, methodical approach to passing his agenda. But, Bradley said, “he does need to come through on what he promised.”
Noted: Obama is on his way to James C. Wright Middle School to discuss how states can compete for $4.35 billion in grants through what he calls the Race to the Top Fund. Wright Middle is a public charter school that partners with the University of Wisconsin at Madison on a teacher preparation program.
Quoted: “Right now, the size of the deficit, the growth of government and the perception of government meddling in the private sector are all things that resonate pretty broadly and especially in conservative areas,” says Charles Franklin, co-founder of Pollster.com and a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
President Barack Obamaâ??s visit to Madison came on the first year anniversary of his election into office, which gives analysts reason to reflect on what heâ??s done so far.Long time political journalist and Time Magazine writer Mark Halperin reflected on Obamaâ??s young presidency at a lecture sponsored by the UW Journalism Department.
Do Twitter skeptics really believe the popular microblogging service offers no educational value, or are they just afraid of it?For W. Gardner Campbell, director of the Academy of Teaching and Learning at Baylor University, there is no question that fear of straying from the status quo has inhibited the development of Twitter as a teaching tool.
â??I go to conferences like Open Education 2009, and I come back with T-shirts like this: â??Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute,â?? â? he said Wednesday at the annual Educause conference here. â??And all it adds up to is more punishment at the hands of well-meaning, sometimes, but ultimately self-preserving institutional structures.â?
Dr. Glen E. Dirreen, age 75, passed away peacefully on Oct. 27, 2009. Glen worked as the director of General Chemistry Laboratories at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1972-1984. Indefinite appointment was granted in 1983. He became the coordinator of the General Chemistry Program and associate director of the Institute for Chemical Education 1984-1994.
Wisconsin Public Radio’s Jim Fleming has soothed us with the classics, read to us and informed us. Now, after nearly 40 years, the Madison native is retiring.
A Madison company says it has developed a better way to keep in touch with friends and family in other countries. JumperTel Communications says its “plug and play” phone system is inexpensive and easy to use. JumperTel says. Of the seven company founders, all but one are UW-Madison graduates, and executives for the company’s investor, Optimo Investments, an investment firm in Abu Dhabi, are UW grads.
NBC 15 anchor and University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate Carleen Wild has a new country band called Main Street Wisdom.
Football assistant coaches Charlie Partridge and Joe Rudolph are in their second year on Bielemaâ??s staff and both have made an impact as recruiters. On more than one occasion recently, head coach Bret Bielema has expressed his excitement about the young talent in the program, specifically the past two recruiting classes.
David Wilson, chancellor of UW-Extension and UW Colleges is one of three finalists for a job as president of Morgan State University in Baltimore. Wilson has been president of UW Colleges, the stateâ??s 13 two-year campuses, and UW-Extension since 2006.
Ten is the number of years of operation the Wisconsin Innocence Project celebrated in a ceremony at the University of Wisconsin Law School on Oct. 23. But there were so many other numbers to mark the occasion. Approximately 150 law students have devoted their time and talents to the Innocence Project since its launch in September 1998, said Keith Findley, the project co-founder and UW clinical professor.
With a red-and-white striped sweater, Adidas tennis shoes, and that big smile, Bucky Badger is one of the most recognized college mascots in the country. Bucky makes appearances at every University of Wisconsin athletic event, including football games, and also hundreds of other events around the state.
Quoted: “Borrowers have the choice of defaulting, and thatâ??s what weâ??re going to see,” said Morris A. Davis, a former economist for the Federal Reserve Board who is now an urban land economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “
The chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges and the UW-Extension is a finalist to become president of Morgan State University in Baltimore.
Billed as “one of the nationâ??s most influential political journalists,” former ABC News/now Time magazineâ??s Mark Halperin will discuss the Obama administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Wednesday, the same day that the president is speaking at Wright Middle School.
Kim Dutelle, Waukesha, sent a recipe for Russian dressing in response to a request from Joanne Johnson, Beloit. Johnson wanted a dressing that was similar to the one served at UW-Madison Memorial Union Cafeteria in the 1940s and â??50s.
College students in Madison want to have a say when it comes to who gets a liquor license in the city.They hoped to earn a permanent spot on the committee that makes those decisions, but instead, reached a compromise.Tuesday night, the Common Council passed a new ordinance 16 to 2, allowing the mayor to appoint a Madison resident on the alcohol committee.
When President Barack Obama leaves Air Force One at the Dane County airport and heads across the city Wednesday, he will be the first president to visit Madison while in office in 59 years. President Harry S. Truman was the last occupant of the Oval Office to visit the city on May 14, 1950, where he gave a “peace” address to a crowd at the UW-Madison Field House and a nationwide radio audience.
WYOU Community Television is giving 800 video tapes of “Nothing To Hide,” the late David Runyonâ??s long-running cable access television show, to UW-Madisonâ??s Memorial Library.
Recognized from UW-Madison: The Government Go-Tos: R. Alta Charo, Winslow Sargeant and Molly Jahn. The Dream Team: John Wiley and the scientists from the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. The Campus Champs: Dawn Crim and Vince Sweeney. The Watchdog:
Andy Hall. The Money Men: Alan Fish.
Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin on the president’s visit. “Obama in this area has a chance to win more friends than he makes enemies.”
President Barack Obama will be in Madison Wednesday to talk about “Race to the Top” federal education dollars; Wisconsin lawmakers are scrambling to pass legislation to qualify Wisconsin for the funds even though federal officials have not disclosed specifics on how states can qualify for the money. Among the bills being considered is AB 536, which would direct the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, the Technical College System Board, the Department of Public Instruction and the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities to create a system linking student data from preschool through post-secondary education.
Trevon Hughes, a three-year contributor and the most familiar face among the Badgers, is the player who holds the key to the season that gets rolling with Wednesdayâ??s exhibition game against Bemidji State. If Hughes can become the complete, consistent floor leader that coach Bo Ryan craves at point guard, the Badgers will likely change the surprisingly low opinion analysts have of them nationally.
Pam Thompsonâ??s February 2006 breast cancer diagnosis had been the shock of her life. But after a year of treatment, she thought the worst was over. The 50-year-old Sun Prairie woman had no idea a fight remained, on a front she never expected.”I thought I had good insurance,” says Thompson, who now realizes the commonness of her mistake. “Everybody thinks they have good insurance until they try to use it.”
Under a blanket of secrecy, six colleges have begun testing an experimental service from major recording labels that lets students legally download all the music they want and put it on any device. But some innovative features have been stripped from the service since it was proposed, leaving it similar to existing services that have not made much of a dent in illicit file-sharing.
Quoted: For a long time now, scientists have instead suggested that bipedalism â?? an upright posture on two legs â?? was the key adaptation that set us on the line to becoming human, “but I think that is actually much less clear now with Ardi,” said paleoanthropologist John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Giving up cigarettes is no easy task, but smokers motivated to quit can make it easier by using a nicotine patch combined with a nicotine lozenge, gum or nasal spray, according to a new study.Smoking cessation aides are known to be helpful, but thereâ??s very little data on which products are most effective. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison have filled in that gap with a head-to-head comparison of five different strategies.
After voicing their opinions without restraint Monday, the Faculty Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution to slow down implementation of Provost Paul DeLuca Jr.â??s proposal to restructure the University of Wisconsin graduate school.
The Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison has voted overwhelmingly to urge the administration there to slow down a proposed reorganization of the institutionâ??s Graduate School that would change how the campus handles research.The proposed reorganization would establish a separate office, overseen by a new vice chancellor, to manage the research being performed by various graduate programs.
UW-Madisonâ??s Faculty Senate almost unanimously approved a resolution Monday opposing any action to restructure the graduate school until a thorough, shared governance process is completed.
A study from UW-Madison suggests it takes a combination of products to help someone quit smoking.There are patches, lozenges and gum to help kick the habit, but the UW study says its takes pairing the patch and lozenges to get the best result.
University of Wisconsin farm researchers are teaming up with a regional food bank to fight hunger in the state.At the UW experimental garden in Madison, the motto is â??Where Good Ideas Grow.â? Judy Reith-Rozelle supervises the garden, where a variety of fruits and vegetables are grown for research. Reith-Rozelle says giving the crops away to the needy may be their best idea yet, as they always have extra produce and donating it means itâ??s not left in the field to rot. (Fourth item.)
Rising unemployment and the recession had many students and their families wondering last spring if they could afford higher education. Now it looks like most made the jump: enrollment at UW schools held steady for two-year-colleges, and went up five percent for two-year-colleges.Administrators for Wisconsinâ??s private colleges are also pleased with the latest fall figures. (Third item.)
Noted: At UW-Madisonâ??s School of Nursing alone, 68-percent of the faculty will be eligible for retirement in the next five years. Katharyn May, dean of UW-Madisonâ??s School of Nursing, says if the legislation passes, individual schools would no longer have to administer the loan and play the unwelcome role of “lender.” (Second item.)
The University of Wisconsin research employee who was charged with possession of child pornography in May was back in court on Monday.
At the invitation from UW-Madison Real Estate Program, the Hammes Co. will join in a public discussion this week of its revised plans for a $93 million redevelopment of the Edgewater Hotel.
UW-Madison alumnus Jeff Skubal makes fight scenes on stage look realistic in his career as a fight choreographer.
UW-Madison physician Suresh Chandra, founder of the Combat Blindness Foundation, has been leading trips to the developing world for 25 years with the goal of eradicating preventable blindness.
The UW-Madison Faculty Senate has renewed its efforts to officially change the name of Campus Drive to Karl Link Drive. At its meeting Monday, faculty approved a motion presented by math professor Anatole Beck to continue pursuing the name change.
In what would continue a building boom around UW-Madison, a developer is proposing to demolish two houses for a $6 million, eight-story apartment building in the Langdon Street National Register District. Developer Patrick Corcoran is seeking to demolish two two-story, wood-frame houses at 617 and 619 Mendota Court for a 40,000-square-foot building that would have 33 rental units and a total of 103 bedrooms.
As a young girl, Leela Hazzah spent long summers in her parentsâ?? native Egypt, lying awake at night on a rooftop hoping to hear lions in the desert. Her father had slept on the same roof as a child to stay cool and listen to lions roar. “Every summer I would come and wait; I want to say years of waiting,” says Leela, a childâ??s excitement and frustration alive in her voice. Her father didnâ??t have the heart to tell her she would never hear them: The lions there had long since been hunted to extinction.
Gregg Mitman thought Tales from Planet Earth would be a one-shot deal. The UW-Madison history of science professor and interim director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies was a principal organizer of the 2007 environmental film festival. “Opening night, there was a line two blocks long waiting to get into the Orpheum,” he remembers. He had anticipated 500 people might show up that first night. Instead, more than twice that number turned out. By the end of the festival, total attendance was estimated at 3,500.
Thomas Edward Cleary, age 75, of Madison, died unexpectedly at home on Monday evening, Oct. 19, 2009. In 1968, Tom became the personnel director at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Union in Madison, until his retirement in 1997.
Ivan Orosz, age 72, of Cottage Grove, on Friday, October 30. In 1966 Ivan moved to Madison to work as a research engineer at Forest Products Laboratory. He later worked for the UW Physical Sciences Lab, on loan to the nuclear accelerator at Fermi Laboratory.
Maggie Sasso, 26, has expertise in woodworking art, in which she is a graduate student at UW-Madison. She also excels in “found stuff.” Those skills have been on rolling exhibit through an experimental art project, the Mobile Museum of Material Culture, a hand-crafted wooden trailer attached to a tandem bicycle created by Sasso and fellow artist Kara Ginther
Chad Sorenson knows a thing or two about starting a business. He has helped create two of them. The first, Fluent Systems, developed a wireless, remote system for farmers to monitor how much anhydrous ammonia is in the fertilizer tank riding behind their tractor. The invention won Sorenson top honors – $10,000 – in the UW-Madisonâ??s Schoofs Prize for Creativity in 2000. Then he won an even bigger derby. Fluent Systems was sold in 2003 to Raven Industries, a publicly traded, South Dakota company, for $1.5 million, just 18 months after Sorenson earned his masterâ??s degree in business administration at UW-Madison. Now Sorenson is passing on his knowledge to a new crop of potential entrepreneurs. He is teaching a seminar at the UW-Madison College of Engineering on innovation and entrepreneurship, as part of the schoolâ??s Innovation Days.
The creatures of the night — the warty witches, the busty barmaids, the gruesome undead, the Michael Jacksons — came out in hordes. An almost full moon gleamed on the crisp October-into-November night. Yes, the ghouls were out on State Street, but throughout the night they were relatively well-behaved.This is the fourth year of the city-sponsored Freakfest, the gated event that began in 2006 in an effort to tame Madisonâ??s wild and unwieldy Halloween party. Since then, city officials and police have called the event a success. About 44,000 tickets were sold this year, police said, up from 38,000 last year.
Quoted: Paleontologist Joe Skulan, an assistant faculty associate in the department of geology and geophysics at UW-Madison.
Middleton High School will perform “Live Broadcast,” a 1940s-style live radio drama written by former Middleton students Charles Stone and Timothy Wendorff, who are now students at UW-Madison.
Federal stimulus money created or saved more than 10,000 jobs in Wisconsin, President Barack Obamaâ??s administration reported Friday. The report showed that in total $2.4 billion had been awarded and $733 million had been received in Wisconsin. The state reported spending about $680 million in stimulus money through the end of September. The UW System spent about $5.2 million.
University of Wisconsin Police arrested 15 people and ejected 36 from the UW Badgers football game at Camp Randall against Purdue on Saturday. Fifteen people were arrested, 12 of whom were UW-Madison students, the department said.
Future doctors and nurses are learning about acupuncture and herbs along with anatomy and physiology at a growing number of medical schools. Itâ??s another example of how alternative medicine has become mainstream. The federal government has spent more than $22 million to help medical and nursing schools start teaching about alternative medicine. Jimmy Wu, a newly graduated doctor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was raised in a family originally from Taiwan, said traditional healing practices are “very much ingrained” in how he thinks about sickness and health. Wu spent a summer in Beijing with a university faculty member observing traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, and hopes to include these in a family medicine practice someday. With so many people using alternative care, “it is important that it be treated more than just an afterthought” by medical schools, Wu said.
University of Wisconsin freshman defensive end David Gilbert celebrated his 18th birthday Saturday, but that doesnâ??t mean the nickname given to him by the older players on the team is going to change. Gilbert, called “Young David” by the teammates who tease him about his age, was little more than two months removed from his 17th birthday when he enrolled at UW in January.
