Football season tickets for University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduates sold out in 2 hours and 35 minutes, the fastest sale in memory, said spokesman Vince Sweeney.
Traffic was so heavy on UWBadgers.com this morning that some students who tried to log on to buy tickets may have been put into a â??waiting roomâ? while they tried to access the site. The sale began at 8:30 a.m.
â??What that meant was it wasnâ??t as timely as we would have liked,â? Sweeney said.
University of Wisconsin researchers are pinpointing a promising way to target tuberculosis medicines.
A string of sugar units strung together into long carbohydrate chains has pinpointed a promising way to target new medicines against tuberculosis.
With little fanfare, the iconic statue of Abraham Lincoln that sits atop UW-Madisonâ??s Bascom Hill turned 100 today.
He does look a little worse for his 100 years. He was professionally restored in 1999, but since then, his left toe boot and nose have been rubbed raw â?? to a shiny brass color â?? as people touch him for good luck.
Marcelitte D. Hood (nee Porter), age 101, a resident of Omro Care Center, passed away on June 12, 2009. She was employed as a ward clerk at the University Hospital, Madison, until retiring in 1973.
William R. “Bill” Hansen, age 83, of Sun Prairie, formerly of Madison, passed away on Thursday, June 18, 2009. Bill was formerly employed at UW Hospital and Whalen Transfer.
Robert Grilley, age 88, died in Madison on Monday, June 15, 2009. Robert joined the UW Art Department faculty in 1945, where he taught life drawing and painting for 42 years. He was selected by a prominent group of individuals representing Art in America as one of the country’s rising new talents as a painter in 1957. He was chair of the Graduate Art Program from 1960-65, of the Art Department from 1962-65 and conferred Professor Emeritus status upon retirement in 1987.
David C. Brown, age 76, passed away after a long illness, in Dallas, Texas, on Monday, June 15, 2009. Dave was an assistant basketball coach at UW-Madison from 1963-1971.
Ella Ilene Miller, age 85, of Richland Center, died on Thursday, June 18, 2009. Ella had worked for a brief time at the Richland Hospital, for Premo Orchard and at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
The University of Wisconsin Athletic Department has lost an institution.
Jim Mott, the schoolâ??s Sports Information Director for 34 years, died Sunday night. His age was not available late Sunday night, but research showed he most likely was 79 or 80.
â??It might sound corny,â? Mott told The Capital Times just before his retirement in June 1990, â??but it really has been a love affair between me and Wisconsin athletics.â?
If buying the naming rights to a football stadium or bowl game is a little out of your price range, take heart — you can now have a class course named after you at City College of San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Chancellor Don Griffin is hoping to save some of the 800 classes up for cancellation next year because of the state’s budget crisis. On the chopping block are such courses as human biology, elementary French and financial accounting, the newspaper reports. Griffin tells The Chronicle that the price tag for supporting one class is $6,000.  “And if you designate it for that class, we’ll make sure the class is reinstated, and we’ll put your name on it,” he says.
The newspaper says each class serves about 30 students who attend three times a week for a little more than four months per semester.
Because so many news sites are incorporating live blogging into their daily dose of content and conversation with readers, Katy Culver, a faculty member in the journalism school at University of Wisconsin at Madison, had her students learn how to use CoveritLive, which can be embedded within a site.
Baseball Hall of Famer Phil Niekro learned to pitch knuckleballs from his father. Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Montana was schooled in passing by his dad. When Phil Hellmuth Jr. decided to drop out of the University of Wisconsin to play pro poker, he was definitely not on the same page as his dad, a dean at the school.
“In fact, he hated it,” says Hellmuth.
But this Father’s Day story worked out in the end with a father-son embrace in 1989 in Las Vegas when Hellmuth won the Main Event at the World Series of Poker.
Philip D. Curtin, a historian of the African slave trade who after World War II was a leading figure in reviving the neglected field of African history, has died. He was 87.
A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Curtin applied more rigorous and scholarly methods to the study of the slave trade and brought the topic to the attention of a wider academic audience. He published more than a dozen books and co-founded the department of African languages and literature at the University of Wisconsin, which the American Historical Assn. said was the first in the United States.
Quoted: Police can use the Web sites as a two-way street to put out information to the public and get tips, anonymous and otherwise, in exchange, said Michael Scott, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
â??The sites have â??proven to be pretty effective in finding missing people or wanted people,â? Scott said.
Quoted: Judith Leavitt, a professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked back at the show’s groundbreaking pregnancy series in her new book “Make Room for Daddy: The Journey From Waiting Room to Birthing Room,” to illustrate that like “real-life men in this period,” Ricky was left in the waiting room.
Quoted: Once the domain of hippies and purists, locally grown and organic foods now are considered mainstream by many.
“That’s not really a niche anymore,” said Michelle Miller, assistant director for the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
My father loves movies.
The cozy apartment he shares with my mom is inundated with more than 1,000 movies on tape and DVD, films he has carefully catalogued and conscientiously cross-referenced by title, director and actor.
Noted: Bradley is assistant director of marketing and communication for UW-Madison Corporate Relations. His father, Jack, died May 12.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Crazylegs Classic could go global.
Crazylegs is set for next April 24 in Madison. The university’s athletic department, the National W Club and the Wisconsin Alumni Association are trying to set up simultaneous Crazylegs runs anywhere else in the world that might have interest.
Terry Murawski is the executive director of the National W Club, an organization for UW-Madison athletic letter winners. He says participants would pay a registration fee and receive an official T-shirt and race-bib, just as they would in Madison. The money would go to UW-Madison athletics.
Quoted: â??Nuclear is the only large baseload source of energy that is not a fossil fuel, and the Obama administration has wisely decided to invest in nuclear along with other non-carbon sources,â? said Michael Corradini, who chairs the UW-Madison Department of Engineering Physics. Baseload sources such as nuclear run around the clock, while solar and wind operate intermittently.
After admitting 550 to 600 students from its waiting list, UW-Madison officials say they have filled next fallâ??s freshman class.
In late May, the State Journal reported the university had admitted about 300 Wisconsin students and about 50 out-of-state students.
Since then, UW-Madison has admitted roughly 200 more students from out-of-state, after exhausting the list of qualified Wisconsinites.
What is the origin of the saying, “Red sky at morning, sailorâ??s warning; red sky at night, sailorâ??s delight”? Does a red sky in the morning actually foretell a storm?
“Long before computers and the Weather Channel, humans needed weather forecasts,” says Steve Ackerman, a UW-Madison professor of oceanic and atmospheric sciences. “Farmers and sailors in particular needed to know if storms were approaching.”
The UW Arboretum is celebrating its 75th Anniversary.
Visitors and employees had a party Sunday, complete with historical presentations about when the nature preserve first opened in 1934.
Back in 1934 scientists transformed worn-out farmland just southwest of downtown Madison and UW’s campus into a 72. Today the Arboretum spans 1,200 acres. Employees are focusing on maintaining the land and its treasures.
At least 11 doctors with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health received more than $50,000 from drug or medical device companies last year, including seven who pulled in six-figure amounts, according to records obtained by the Journal Sentinel.
As part of an effort to enforce more stringent conflict-of-interest rules, UW doctors for the first time have had to specify how much outside income they receive.
The disclosure forms show that orthopedic surgeons, who command some of the highest salaries among university and state employees, also got some of the biggest outside income checks, mostly from companies that make medical devices.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison marks the 75th anniversary Sunday of a project by some of the UW’s most famous scientists who turned a tract of worn-out farmland into a prairie landscape in the city.
In 1934, the UW Arboretum was inaugurated in an experiment to see what it would take to restore farmland to a natural state.
The Army and the Madison Fire Department’s Hazmat team collaborated on Saturday. Fortunately it was for training purposes only.
Operation Red Dragon is the name given for the realistic training undertaken for potentially dangerous scenarios. Saturday’s exercise brought the teams to a mock chemical contamination site.
Time was you could hurl a Frisbee clear across a college green in summer and be assured that you would not bop anyone on the head. If not exactly a ghost town, the typical campus was strangely still from June to August, offering administrators an opportunity to regroup and recharge.
This discussion of furloughs for state employees is right in my wheelhouse because, well, been there and done that.
Like everyone on staff at Madisonâ??s favorite daily newspaper, I was directed to take a weekâ??s worth of unpaid days off to help the company balance the books during this economic hitting slump.
Took one for the team, you could say.
A UW developmental biologist wins one-year grant to continue research into how animals react to bacteria.
University of Wisconsin-Madison developmental biologist Margaret McFall-Ngai has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a one-year grant that will support her investigation into how animals interact with their natural complement of microbes.
Along the way, she hopes to explore a theory about the origin of immunity among vertebrates.
Edythe Hawthorne Myers, 89, has died. Beginning in the 1960s, Edythe worked for the American Red Cross and later the University of Wisconsin Hospital in cancer research.
A committee of Wisconsin lawmakers is working on the final draft of the state budget.
They are trying to reconcile differences between the assembly and senate versions.
It is less than two weeks away from the budget deadline.
Compromises have to be reached before it heads to Governor Doyle’s desk for consideration.
College life may look different in the not-so-distant future: Students squinting out dirtier windows, faculty offices with full wastebaskets and no phones, sporting events in which opponents never meet, and paper course catalogs existing only as artifacts of the wasteful old days.
Almost all state workers will have to take furloughs, regardless of whether their paychecks come from the state, federal grants, or private sources, under versions of the budget passed by both the state Assembly and Senate.
Some state workers paid with federal grants, particularly university researchers, argued they shouldnâ??t have to take the 16 unpaid days off as mandated by Gov. Doyle over the next two years because it wouldnâ??t save the state money.
An amendment proposed by Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D-Madison, that would have shielded some of those employees from taking furloughs never made it into the Assembly’s budget.
Formal action on the state budget will have to wait until next week.
In order to resolve differences between the versions of the budget passed in the Senate and Assembly, lawmakers are expected to meet in a conference committee. However, officials in both chambers say they don’t intend to form the committee until at least next Tuesday.
Robert Grilley, age 88, died Monday, June 15, 2009. Plans for a Memorial Service are pending. A full obituary will appear in the Sunday paper.
The musical rings of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s 56-bell Memorial Carillon will resonate throughout the campus more often this summer with two recital series and a Fourth of July program performed by Lyle Anderson.
Anderson succeeded John Wright Harvey as University Carillonneur in 1986, and has performed orchestral tunes ever since. The hourlong performances are scheduled for 3 p.m. on Sundays from June 21-Aug. 2, and at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays from July 9-30. In addition, Anderson plays on Saturday, July 4, at 1 p.m., concurring with “Let Freedom Ring,” a nationwide project that began in 1963.
Ascend the neo-gothic tower, situated on Observatory Drive between Ingraham Hall and the Social Science Building, and watch Anderson in action on the baton-shaped keyboard and pedal board that keeps the bells operating. For more information about the upcoming programs, contact Anderson at 219-5291.
My friend Phil Curtin died a couple of weeks ago. William Grimes published one of his characteristically nicely researched and written obits in The New York Times yesterday, accompanied by a nice photograph that was probably taken by his wife, Anne. Phil was 87 at the time of his death, and his health had been quite poor for the last couple of years. Still, it is hard to lose Phil.
Adria and I have been close to Phil and Anne since those years in the 1960s when we all lived in Madison, where Phil and I taught in the history department of the University of Wisconsin. I was then an altogether obscure assistant professor of early American history, but Phil was already a genuine titan. He was, above all, one of the pioneers of serious African history â?? one of those who studied Africa in context rather than as an emanation of European imperialism. He collaborated with Jan Vansina in those years to produce an entirely new school of African history, the most important in the world.
The state Senate passed a budget Wednesday that kills Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to tax oil companies and instead repeals the tax break on capital gains, which would cost investors $485 million over two years.
The 17-16 vote endorsed a two-year spending plan that totaled $62.5 billion – about $300 million more than the budget recommended by the state Assembly on Saturday.
Dozens of public and private colleges have taken steps to ensure their students are exposed to a range of intellectual views on campus, and to ensure that students can freely express their views, says a report being released Thursday.
Quoted: Dr. Alta Charo, an ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, said that much of the Bush councilâ??s work â??seemed more like a public debating societyâ? and that a new commission should focus on helping the government form ethically defensible policy.
A commission of this kind, Dr. Charo said, â??lets the president react judiciously to rapid and often startling changes in the scientific landscape.â?
The state would raise the capital gains tax by nearly a half billion dollars and ditch a tax on oil companies that could have been passed on to consumers under the budget bill passed by Senate Democrats Wednesday.
In a 17-16 vote, Senate Democrats barely approved wide-ranging changes to the $62 billion state spending plan, adding an automatic increase to the state minimum wage but dropping provisions that would have aided illegal immigrants and expanded defendantsâ?? liability in negligence lawsuits.
Quoted: “The most common treatable cause of male factor infertility is called varicocele,” said Dr. Dan Williams, director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
As outgoing President of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, I am reassured and confident that despite the bleak economic times, our public university is on the right track.
Affirmation of this outlook came with the UW System’s latest annual accountability report, “Investing in Wisconsin’s Future.” In its 15th edition, this revised report now aligns directly with the UW System’s strategic plan, and includes several new performance indicators. We’re now tracking and reporting important measures such as the number of degrees conferred in high-need and leading-edge fields. We’re evaluating the university’s community outreach and engagement, as well as overall UW System revenues and our progress toward increasing educational collaborations.
The Wisconsin Senate passed a $62 billion state budget Wednesday night just before 9 o’clock.
The vote was 17-16, with Democrat Jim Sullivan of Wauwatosa voting with Republicans against the budget.
The senate began debating the budget at about 4:30 Wednesday afternoon.
The UW School of Medicine and Public Health received a â??Bâ? for its conflict-of-interest policies this week on the American Medical Student Associationâ??s annual PharmFree Scorecard.
Last year, the medical school initially got a â??D.â? School officials appealed and the mark was upgraded to a â??B.â?
By a narrow one vote margin, the Wisconsin Senate has passed its version of a state budget. Democrat Jim Sullivan sided with Republican members in the 17-16 vote. A conference committee will resolve differences between this Senate version of the budget and the Assembly version of the $62.2 million spending plan, which passed last weekend.
A UW-Madison psychiatrist says it will probably be another decade before researchers pinpoint which genes– and how many–play a role in depression.
There was widespread excitement that followed a study linking one gene mutation to depression which has since been dampened. A follow-up review in the Journal of American Medical Association shows little or no connection between one gene regulating the neurotransmitter serotonin and the likelihood of depression.
Dr. Ned Kalin chairs the psychiatry department at UW Medical School. He says it means scientists will have to broaden their search for genetic causes of depression, and the quest for clues in DNA could be a decade away. He says what it tells researchers is that thereâ??s not going to be one gene to explain why someone suffers depression or develops schizophrenia. Kalin says it’s probably going to be like many other illnesses, mainly â??A complicated story in which there are numerous genes.” (5th item.)
A second attempt by the University of Wisconsin System to install a new computer payroll program is millions of dollars over budget and a year behind schedule. Moreover, a company fired over subpar work creating Wisconsin’s statewide voter database in 2007 is working as a subcontractor on the project.
The system’s top budget official, Tom Anderes, told the Board of Regents this month that planning for the project alone is now expected to cost $12 million. A year ago, officials had said planning would cost $1.6 million and implementation would begin that fall. In February, they raised the planning budget to $8 million and said it would last through this summer.
The University of Illinois official who oversees undergraduate admissions told a state commission Tuesday that decisions about well-connected applicants were out of his hands.
Keith Marshall, the university’s associate provost for enrollment management, described a process in which admissions officers were at times overruled by university Chancellor Richard Herman and other top administrators when it came to politically connected students.
Noted: The Hillel chapter at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was faced with the same challenge when it designed a new building, which is expected to open soon.
Unlike Jewish institutions that have roadblocks and physical barriers that make the entrance look like an Israeli Embassy, the Wisconsin Hillel opted for security cameras and doors that could be locked quickly and turned into entranceways that require permission to enter, executive director Greg Steinberger said.
A proposal to redevelop the Badger Bus site at the corner of West Washington Avenue and Bedford Street has moved forward, despite pleas from mass transit backers.
Badger Bus co-owner David Meier said 80 percent of his customers now use Memorial Union for a stop. Most customers today also buy their tickets online, he said.
Facing a record deficit that forced them to raise taxes and fees by $2.1 billion to balance the budget, Assembly Democrats added millions for projects they can brag about back home – a $500,000 upgrade for an opera house; $50,000 for a shooting range; and $46,000 for a town’s recycling bins.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin said the approval of the projects made it easier for the 49 Assembly Democrats to vote for the 2009-’11 budget, which will go before the Senate as early as Wednesday.
Nick Topitzes was gazing out at Lake Mendota Tuesday morning, smiling and remembering a few past indiscretions.
“Do you know who the Hot Nuts are?” Topitzes said.
“Who?”
“Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts,” Topitzes said. He grinned, and explained that they were the inspiration for the fraternity party band in the movie “Animal House.”
Fatemeh Mirsharifi teaches Persian at a special language immersion program at the UW this summer.
She’s also from Iran, the only member of her family not living in the country.
She drove to Milwaukee last week to vote in the Iranian presidential election. She says the Pakistani Embassy arranged for a special balloting process at a Best Western motel there.
The state Senate is scheduled to vote on the budget Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader, Wausau area Democrat Russ Decker, is still lining up votes and preparing amendments to the budget. “I think we’re getting closer,” Decker said Tuesday. “We’re narrowing it down and working out some compromises.”
A church that owns a private dorm for UW-Madison students wouldnâ??t have to pay roughly $239,000 in property taxes under an amendment inserted into the state budget last week.
Because the Pres House Residence, which opened in 2007, is the only residence hall operated by a religious organization on a public campus in the entire state, it fell into a â??gray areaâ? in the tax code, said Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison.
The University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s athletic program is the fifth-largest revenue-producer in the country, according to a report in Street & Smithâ??s Sports Business Journal.
The publication, citing Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act forms from the U.S. Department of Education, said UW had about $93.5 million in revenue during the 2007-08 school year.
The invasion of zebra mussels in the Great Lakes may be followed by a takeover from one of its close cousins.
While zebra mussels have been a scourge of the Great Lakes waterways, they too may become the victims of unwanted company, namely the quagga mussel which appears to be a growing presence.
Suzanne Peyer is a doctoral candidate with the UW-Madison Zoology Department who carried out some of the research. She says for some reason, quagga mussels just seem to be doing better. While slower to colonize, ultimately they seem to be the ones that are currently being more dominant in the calmer habitats.
Think men and women are different? Try the female adolescent brain versus the male adolescent brain.
Cutting-edge science shows the two develop at very different speeds and in very different ways â?? and thatâ??s critical for adults to understand if they are to help youths at risk for substance abuse, gang membership, illegal behaviors or even suicide, says Flo Hilliard, director of the Gender Studies Project at UW-Madison.
A University Square grocery store could open in October, said Jeff Maurer, former president of Pierceâ??s Supermarkets of Baraboo.
The 18,000-square-foot store would have all retail space on the first floor, with the second floor allocated to back-room operations and storage.
The leader in the Democrat-led state Senate pushed Monday to put controversial measures involving a tax on oil companies and negligence lawsuits back into the state budget, even as several key Democrats said any bill with those provisions in it was doomed.
“I donâ??t know how much clearer I can be in that I think it would be extremely difficult for the budget to move forward with this in it,” said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Waunakee, speaking of the changes to negligence lawsuits. “I donâ??t know how a budget would pass with this in it.”
