Big-time college athletics programs are not going to let a few cases of the H1N1 influenza virus get in the way of their home football games this fall.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its most-detailed recommendations yet concerning the containment and prevention of the virus for institutions of higher education. Among the suggestions, the report advises that colleges find ways to “increase social distances.”
In whatâ??s becoming a semi-annual event, UW-Madisonâ??s student government is holding a textbook swap from Friday to Sunday.
This is the fourth semester the Associated Students of Madison is holding a textbook swap among students.
The idea is that students can essentially cut out the middle man (a book store) and save money by selling books directly to each other.
University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema is beginning his fourth season leading the Badgers and said heâ??s committed to using his growing experience to translate into victories on the field.After 12 wins in his first year, the win totals have slide to nine in 2007 and then to seven wins last season. Much of the pre-season talk has been whether Bielema is on the hot seat this year. Some have speculated that if he doesnâ??t win more, his job could be in jeopardy.
The combination of new freedoms and unhealthful conditions can be “incendiary,” says Richard Gower, president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology and a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, Spokane
Quoted: At Eulau, as at several previously excavated Neolithic mass graves, â??the attackers seem to have been members of the same cultural group, perhaps neighbors,â? remarks anthropologist T. Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison.
With so many options on the market for programs, pills and treatments to help you kick the habit, how can you tell which is the best method to use? Time asked Dr. Michael Fiore, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and founder of the schoolâ??s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.
Wisconsin’s attorney general said Friday he will not defend a new law that grants same-sex couples spousal benefits such as hospital visitation and inheritance, saying lawmakers went against voters’ decision not to extend such privileges.
“When the people have spoken by amending our Constitution, I will abide by their command,” said Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who believes the law is unconstitutional. “When policy makers have ignored their words, I will not.”
Quoted: Dr. Gwen McIntosh, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said most kids experience some degree of homesickness when beginning college, especially if they are leaving their hometown or community.
Quoted: Cooperative efforts between states are difficult and unlikely because of the federalist system, said Dennis Dresang, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor who is an expert on federalism. Each state is unique, and merging laws, programs and regulations is difficult.
Quoted: Barry Burden, a professor of political science at University of Wisconsin-Madison who focuses his research on U.S. elections, says New York may be ripe for strategic voting, because it has a partisan split between upstate and downstate voters and a high volume of city residents owning upstate homes.
Answers for a man suffering from amnesia in Seattle might be hidden in Madison.
Picture waking up: and not knowing who you are. That’s what happened to a man in Seattle two weeks ago.
Family members have since told the Seattle Times they believe he’s 53-year-old Edward Lighthart.
Quoted: With a history intertwined with the cityâ??s, the Progressiveâ??s leftist voice is one â??a lot of people in Madison pay attention to,â? said Katy Culver, a journalism teacher at UW-Madison.
Some campus-area streets will be closed or limited to one-way traffic next week as UW-Madison students move into residence halls.
Maureen Durkin is an epidemiologist, professor of population health sciences and pediatrics and Waisman Center investigator at UW-Madison. Sheâ??s also a principal investigator for the National Childrenâ??s Study in Waukesha County, one of seven pilot sites for the study, which will follow the health of children before they are born to age 21.
Q. I saw some cloud pouches hanging down from another cloud. What are they?
A. There was a nice case of these lumpy lobes of clouds called mammatus about two weeks ago near sunset over Madison.
Quoted: Whatever the future of health-care co-ops, Americans frequently interact with some kind of co-op without knowing it, said Ann Hoyt, a UW-Madison economist.
More than 29,000 co-ops around the country, from credit unions and Ace Hardware to Ocean Spray and the Associated Press, together have revenues of about $650 billion a year, Hoyt and other researchers with the UW Center for Cooperatives reported this year.
Weeks after Gov. Jim Doyle won re-election, two top state air regulators discussed how to give “payback” to environmentalists who supported him during the 2006 campaign, according to notes of the conversation.
Department of Natural Resources Air and Waste Division Administrator Al Shea told a colleague the governor “has got to deliver” by reducing pollution at four coal-fired power plants that were a priority of the Sierra Club, according to the notes, which were obtained through an open records request.
In Room 411 South of the state Capitol, a gathering of college students could well be the future of K Street, the lobbyistsâ?? boulevard in Washington, D.C.
The men have swapped typical campus attire of T-shirts for ties; the women, sneakers for skirts. Theyâ??re all there to learn the slick art of influence and persuasion. In other words, theyâ??re being trained as lobbyists.
Quoted: The state hasnâ??t had any outbreaks of late blight since 2002, according to UW-Madison plant pathologist Amanda Gevens.
Q: Are there more food recalls now? Why?
A: 2009 has been a big year for food recalls, largely because salmonella-contaminated dried milk, pistachio nuts and peanut products affected thousands of items in a wide variety of food products, says Kathleen Glass, a microbiologist and associate director of the Food Research Institute at UW-Madison. “If you have a single whole food, from one manufacturing plant or one farm, the contamination event will have a much smaller effect.”
Supporters of Wisconsinâ??s Domestic Partnership Registry hope the Attorney Generalâ??s decision not to defend it could actually help their case.
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen last week said he would not represent the state in a challenge to the registry, since he believes it violates a 2006 Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
Regardless of whether they are called university spinoffs, spinouts, or just plain start-ups, the University of Utah sure has a lot of them: 23 that started just last yearâ?? thatâ??s second best of all universities in the nation. Think about how impressive that is. Like many places here in the Midwest, Utah has not historically had the amount of venture capital, the number of serial entrepreneurs, or the depth of tech company managerial talent that much of the coasts and the handful of hotspots in between enjoy.
Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin noted that Doyleâ??s approval rating in voter polls hovered at around 45 percent through his first term and reached 55 percent following his 2006 re-election, but is now at 31 percent following last yearâ??s economic meltdown.
As you pack for college, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told all its students in a recent e-mail message, donâ??t forget a thermometer, some over-the-counter cold remedies and a weekâ??s worth of food.
A poster and hand sanitizer standing duty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
But the real plan in case of a major swine flu outbreak on campus, said the head of the universityâ??s health center, is simple: Donâ??t try to sweat it out in your dormitory room. Go home. Let Mom and Dad take care of you.
Converse Herrick “Connie” Blanchard, emeritus professor of physics, University of Wisconsin – Madison, died unexpectedly on Aug. 13, 2009 in Chilmark, Mass. He taught at UW-Madison from 1961 to 1991.
Quoted: The observation is echoed by Peter Carstensen, an antitrust expert at the University of Wisconsin law school who closely watches the dairy industry.
“Where there is a competitive market for buying milk, dairy farmers are paid more. When DFA comes to dominate a market, then farmers are paid less. Monopolists behave like monopolies,” Carstensen says.
A notorious plant disease that destroyed the Irish potato crop decades ago has been found in two commercial potato fields in Wisconsin.
Plant pathologist Amanda Gevens of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said it’s a community problem because each infected plant puts more spores into the air, which threatens to infect more plants.
Noted: John Lucas, a spokesman at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that Edward Lighthart graduated in 1984 with a bachelorâ??s degree in French. Before that, he had attended the University of Arizona and Pima County Community College, both in Tucson. He also attended the Culinary Institute of America.
Quoted: “That story is a great story for any candidate, and theyâ??d love to have that,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin.
The state’s wasp population seems to be down this year, possibly because of the wetter spring and cooler summer.
Phil Pellitteri is a bug expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He says every summer he gets calls about wasp problems from farmer’s markets or outdoor restaurants. He says this year he hasn’t gotten any complaints.
The first phase of the Credit Card Holder’s Bill of Rights is in effect.
President Barack Obama signed the legislation guaranteeing sweeping changes to credit card rules in May. It pass with broad support, but credit card companies lobbied hard against it. The changes could slash their profits by $12 billion.
The changes that started Thursday, Aug. 20, are aimed to help consumers, like UW-Madison senior Andrew Weckerly.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison made the top ten list for best public universities in the country in the U.S. News and World Report’s 2010 edition of America’s Best Colleges.
This is two notches down from last year, when UW-Madison ranked seventh on the same list.
U.S. News and World Report looks at selectivity, faculty resources, financial resources, graduation performance rates, and other criteria when creating the list.
The latest U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings are out, but a survey filled out by a University of Wisconsin-Madison administrator is causing some controversy.
UW-Madison was ranked No. 39 overall and ninth in public universities.
UW-Madison’s ranking itself is not under dispute — it has stacked up similarly in past years. But a survey that one of the university’s administrators filled out is raising some red flags.
State senators heard from doctors yesterday who favor a plan that would limit the practice of letting kids drink at Wisconsin bars with their parents consent.
Right now, kids of any age can get a drink in Wisconsin bars as long as they’re accompanied by a parent or guardian who’s at least 21 and the bartender agrees to serve them.
Paul Grossberg, a pediatrician at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health told a state senate panel that even if a parent is supervising, kids are not equipped to drink because the part of their brain that controls judgment is still “under construction” and those thrill-seeking parts of the brain are going pretty actively.
Madison police want your help to find a bank robbery suspect.
The man is suspected of robbing the UW Credit Union on State Street Thursday afternoon. The man showed the teller a note and said he had a weapon, but didn’t show one.
Dr. Paul Grossberg of the UW School of Medicine says the younger teens are exposed to alcohol, the greater the risk theyâ??ll develop lifelong problems. Grossberg says thatâ??s because theyâ??re brains are not developed enough to process the intoxicating effects.
The U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services on Thursday released their most detailed guidance yet on how colleges should prevent H1N1 outbreaks and what options should be considered if they take place despite such efforts. Given that the severity and size of outbreaks could vary widely, the guidance is more of a menu of options than a rulebook — and the ideas cover everything from washing doorknobs to ending the requirements that students submit medical notes for absences to when to consider suspending operations.
Here’s a mystery with a UW-Madison connection. This man with amnesia can’t remember his name, but claims he attended UW-Madison many years ago.
When the Seattle Times contacted the State Journal this week looking for help on the story, we checked records and paged through archived newspapers from the mid-1980s, but found no record of him or his Wisconsin wife Tina, who he remembers dying.
The annual U.S. News and World Report rankings are out today.
UW-Madison was ranked 39th in the “Best National Universities” category, tied with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. That’s a drop of four spots from last year, when the school was ranked 35th.
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, was ranked 61st, tied with four other schools.
Quoted: Nationwide, roughly 30 percent of PhDâ??s in mathematical sciences are awarded to women compared with 5 percent in the 1950â??s, according to Janet Mertz, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and co-author of the June study “Gender, Culture, and Mathematics Performance.”But while that may sound like a success, todayâ??s figure isnâ??t a lot higher than the period between 1890 and World War II, when 15 to 20 percent of top math degrees went to women, Mertz said. After the war women were told to give up their “Rosie the Riveter” jobs doing “menâ??s workâ??”to returning veterans ,and the volume of women continuing in these jobs and pursuing degrees in math plummeted.
Perennial contenders Harvard and Princeton share the top spot in the latest edition of the influential U.S. News & World Report university rankings. Williams heads the list of liberal arts colleges while Dartmouth wins a new category ranking commitment to undergraduate teaching. The latest edition of the contentious but closely followed “Americaâ??s Best Colleges” appears online and in print Thursday.
Quoted: “I’m always getting calls about wasp problems, but this year, I’m not hearing a thing from the farmer’s markets or outdoor restaurants or some of the other places where they usually have problems,” said Phil Pellitteri, the extension entomologist with the University of Wisconsin, who monitors insect populations through a state diagnostic laboratory that he operates.
A Web-based appeals process for Urbana campus admissions will go online this fall at the University of Illinois, Chancellor Richard Herman said today.
“At the end of the day, we want a model which can be used nationally, so when people think about improving admissions, they’ll think of Illinois,” said Herman, who was at the State Fair with Gov. Pat Quinn.
Unemployed University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates now have a new tool to find job opportunities.
The Wisconsin Alumni Association said on Wednesday that graduates can sign up to receive alerts for job openings through the Badger Career Network.
The network connects employers with 350,000 UW-Madison alumni. The service is available to Wisconsin employers and is expected to expand to companies around the country.
Ralph Armstrong, whose charges for the 1980 rape and murder of a UW-Madison student were dismissed last month, will be heading to New Mexico to face decades-old parole violations.
The Dane County district attorneyâ??s office said Wednesday that it will not appeal the dismissal of the charges against Armstrong in the death of Charise Kamps.
After someone rattled off the four opponents the University of Wisconsin menâ??s basketball team must play on the road over its first six Big Ten Conference games this coming season, Bo Ryan paused before saying dryly, â??And the ones at home (in that stretch) arenâ??t exactly easy, either.â?
Just donâ??t think the Badgersâ?? coach is looking for any sympathy. Not after a non-conference schedule that includes the likes of Arizona and possibly Gonzaga among others at the Maui Invitational, and then returning home to play Duke and Marquette.
If first-year students must face the trials and yes, sometimes ridicule, of being freshmen, then they should at least be able to band together as a group.
Thatâ??s why UW-Madison student government, Associated Students of Madison (ASM), is considering a proposal to broaden the definition of who is a â??freshman.â?
Under the ASM bylaws, only students who meet the strict university definition of freshmen â?? someone with under 24 credits â?? can vote for the five â??freshmanâ? seats on the student council.
College participation in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings increased this year, after reaching its lowest level ever last year. Forty-eight percent of college leaders who were sent the peer-assessment survey responded this year, up from 46 percent.
The peer surveyâ??the most controversial part of the rankings formulaâ??asks presidents, provosts, and admissions deans to rate institutions on a scale of 1 to 5. The response rate has dropped from 68 percent in 1999, amid a steady drumbeat of anti-rankings rhetoric.
Even before the midnight embargo lifted last night, colleges started sending out announcements about how they fared in this year’s annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report. The boasting — at least sometimes by colleges that criticize the rankings — is an tradition each August.
We’ll let you go to the magazine itself to find out who is No. 1, but can assure you that there are no shockers. What may be more newsworthy is the annual fight over participation in the survey portion — seen by many as the least valid part of the rankings.
After 29 years behind bars, a man convicted of raping and murdering a UW student is cleared of those charges.
This month, a judge tossed out the conviction of Ralph Armstrong and blasted prosecutors. On Wednesday, the Dane County District Attorney’s office said it will not appeal.
US News Faulty Methods UncoveredAugust 19th, 2009 · by Scott Anderson · Filed Under: College Admissions · College SelectionUS News and World Report is expected to publish its 2010 list of the â??Best Collegesâ? this week. In anticipation of the report, the journal Inside Higher Ed published a scathing review of US Newsâ?? faulty methodology.After accessing the original survey responses, Inside Higher Ed found some very telling responses:
Even as high school graduates in recent years have grown increasingly better prepared for college, too many members of the class of 2009 cannot adequately perform all of the academic skills they will need to succeed, a report says. Just 23% of students, up from 22% last year, earned test scores suggesting they can earn at least a C in first-year college courses in English, math, reading and science, says the report, released today by the non-profit Iowa-based testing company ACT. Itâ??s based on scores of 1.48 million 2009 high school graduates who took the ACTâ??s college entrance exam.
Quoted: Deborah Mitchell of the University of Wisconsinâ??s business school says that human beings instinctively try to minimize risk, though we might not even know itâ??s happening. And she says that in many instances â?? especially in the digital world â?? weâ??ve come to expect a price of zero.
Quoted: As members of congress make use of their August recess to meet with their constituents, UW-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer says anger at such political forums is nothing new.
When it was time to write her summer essay, Mary Moore recollected the chicken backs.
Moore is one of 12 adults in Meals and Memories, a summerlong class designed to hone writing skills with essays based on memories of food, cooking and sharing. The students, who will read from their collections at 6 p.m. Friday at the South Madison Branch Library, are all graduates of the 7-year-old Odyssey Project, a UW-Madison humanities course for adults facing economic barriers to higher education.
A new online jobs tool connecting highly skilled UW-Madison alumni with employers seeking candidates with specific expertise will be fully operational Wednesday, after a successful test launch from March through May.
The Badger Career Network Alerts program will use targeted e-mails to connect graduates in mid-career and executive-level jobs anywhere in the nation with Wisconsin companies seeking new management, scientific and professional talent in biotechnology, health care and information technology.
Noted: Of course, there is no lack of colleges working on green technologies of their own. It is hard to walk around the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus without seeing a slew of students on mopeds zooming by. One of my favorite projects I have heard about recently is a class at the university that immerses engineering students into various engineering disciplines. A recent class took on a project to improve the environmental performance of a Vespa moped, a vehicle that already gets 90 miles per gallon. The goal was to improve the fuel efficiency of the vehicle by 10 percent using a system based on electrolysis, or splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electric charge. Whatâ??s most impressive is that the class is comprised of freshman students, most being exposed to real-life engineering problems for the first time.
University of Illinois chancellor Richard Herman is seeking the advice of national higher education leaders as his campus decides how to implement admissions changes.
Herman said the task force will be guided by input from current and former university presidents and other higher education leaders, including M. Peter McPherson, President of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and the former president of Michigan State University; John Wiley, former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Shirley Strum Kenny, president of Stony Brook University. (Note: John Wiley has declined to participate in the taskforce.)
Scott Rosenow has a year left of college, but he already has his sights set on a prominent job upon graduation.
He wants to be the mayor of Neenah. He plans to earn a political science degree in May from the University of Wisconsin.
The form submitted by the provost at the University of Wisconsin at Madison deemed 260 of its 262 peer institutions to be of â??adequateâ? quality. A survey from the University of Vermontâ??s president listed â??donâ??t knowâ? for about half of the universities. The forms provided by Ohio State Universityâ??s president and provost were virtually identical. And the University of Floridaâ??s president, like his highly publicized colleague at Clemson University, rated his own institution well above many of his competitors.
Long a sore spot for many critics, the peer assessment survey for U.S. News & World Reportâ??s annual college rankings has been subjected to especially tough scrutiny since June, when an official at Clemson revealed that her bosses, as part of a larger strategy to propel the university up the rankings, had regularly given low scores on the “reputational” survey to other universities to make Clemson look better.
