The race to craft stem cells that have the virtues, but not the notoriety, of their embryonic brethren faces its final hurdle: becoming safe enough to help patients.
Researchers have unveiled a flurry of advances in recent months in the development of “induced pluripotent” stem cells. “The induced pluripotent stem cell field is probably one of the most fast-moving areas in all of biology,” says researcher Leonard Zon of Children’s Hospital in Boston.
Quoted: The key issue is trust, said UW-Madison School of business senior lecturer Deborah Mitchell.
â??Consumers perceive bankruptcy as an off-the-scale risk,â? as far as service, parts and warranties, she said.
When the University of Illinois rejected her son, Erin Reum called admissions officers in hopes of getting his application a second look.
She thought maybe the Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School senior could appeal the decision. She was wrong.
“They said there’s no such process,” Reum said.
Appeals aren’t unusual at competitive colleges and universities, particularly state schools. But unlike the University of Illinois, most said they publicize the option.
Only one university contacted by the Tribune said it had an unadvertised process similar to the U. of I.’s.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison doesn’t publicize appeals either but says it is not swayed by clout.
“Some people think getting a letter of recommendation from a name will make a difference, and it really doesn’t,” said Joanne Berg, vice provost for enrollment management.
Madisonâ??s Alcohol License Review Committee is recommending tough discipline for another troubled Downtown bar.
The ALRC on Monday voted 5-2 for a rare 30-day license suspension plus new license conditions for Ram Head Ratskeller, formerly Bull Feathers, 303 N. Henry St. The suspension, which would run July 1 through July 30, and license conditions requiring use of better technology to detect fake IDs, will be considered by the City Council on Tuesday.
Noted: But security for the abortion clinic planned at the Madison Surgery Center isnâ??t being changed because the clinic hasnâ??t opened and organizers already were prepared for the risks, a spokeswoman said.
â??We went into it with the knowledge of including security from the beginning,â? UW Hospital spokeswoman Lisa Brunette said. â??There is a long history of these things happening from time to time. I donâ??t know that there is a new concern.â?
The UW System has done well on its goal of producing more graduates than ever before, while falling short on enrolling, retaining and graduating students of color.
Thatâ??s according to the Systemâ??s annual report on its progress in key areas.
A record number of students â?? 175,056 â?? enrolled in the UW System in 2007-2008. The largest number of students â?? 32,475 â?? also graduated.
But graduation rates for African American, American Indian, Southeast Asian, and Hispanic/Latino students were below target. While 65 percent of students graduated within six years of entering the UW System, only 33 percent of African Americans graduated and 41.5 percent of American Indians.
Thousands of state employees who get paid by federal or private funds will need to take 16 days of unpaid time off, according to a document (http://oser.state.wi.us/docview.asp?docid=6977) posted on the Web site for the Office of State Employee Relations.
We reported (http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/453127) on some employees who were critical of that plan in Sundayâ??s paper. They argued that money saved by forcing those employees to take furloughs could not be used to help the state close itâ??s $6.6 budget gap because of restrictions on its use.
Noted: Earlier this year in Madison, the issue of abortion was thrust into the spotlight when the board for the Madison Surgery Center in February agreed to offer a procedure for second-term abortions. The facility at 1 South Park Street is jointly operated by UW and Meriter hospitals.
UW Health spokesperson Lisa Brunette said the procedures have not started yet and that implementation is moving a measured pace that could take months. Brunette also said the procedure will be offered for women between 19 and 22 weeks of pregnancy.
To understand why someone applying to the University of Illinois would seek help from a trustee or legislator — as detailed in a Tribune series that began last week — consider how the battle for admission has changed over the last 25 years.
In 1984, nearly 14,000 students applied for roughly 6,000 freshman spots on the Urbana-Champaign campus, few students from outside Illinois enrolled and high school graduates with decent grades had a good shot of getting in.
Today, 26,000 students are bidding for 7,100 spots, non-residents make up a growing percentage of the freshman class and applicants across the board have more impressive academic credentials than ever before, said Stacey Kostell, director of admissions.
My port of entry to Madison was a frozen field of tallgrass, an echelon of dark pines and a patch of oak woods. As my brother and I drove into town along the south Beltline, searching for the Seminole Highway exit, I looked around and marveled: Hey, this is all right…. There’s a forest in the middle of the city!
I didn’t know at the time that I was seeing the UW Arboretum. I didn’t know those tawny grasses were the Curtis Prairie, the world’s first prairie restoration project. I didn’t know those were the Leopold Pines, planted in the 1930s. I didn’t know the highway had been punched through the Arboretum in the early 1950s. I didn’t know my new place was just beyond those oaks.
The inspiration for writer Kurt McGinnis Brown’s play, “Broken and Entered,” came from an image. What if, after the house lights go down in the theater, all the audience can see are two flashlights?
It’s a compelling start, one that caught the eyes of the judges for Wisconsin Wrights, the annual new play development project at the UW-Madison. Wisconsin Wrights focuses on writers creating plays in Wisconsin, though not necessarily about the state.
Brown’s play is one of three that will receive a staged reading in the Hemsley Theatre this week.
“Broken and Entered” tells the story of two brothers, Vern and Wally, who inherit their mother’s house. Vern decides to wipe the slate clean by removing all of their family possessions and replacing them with other items stolen from neighborhood homes.
Noted: Indeed, some observers think the incentive bar for coaches has been set too low. Wisconsin State Journal sports columnist Tom Oates took the University of Wisconsin athletic department to task in March for paying head football coach Bret Bielema a $100,000 bonus after leading the Badgers to a 7-6 record and a 42-13 loss to Florida State in the Champs Sports Bowl â?? the fifth of seven bowl bids awarded to Big Ten teams. “Even though the bonuses are paid with booster money and therefore don’t cost the school a dime, this is all about perception, and the perception is this is easy money for coaches while the rest of the state-supported university struggles to make ends meet,” Oates wrote. “If UW wants to change that perception, coaching bonuses should be earned, not handed out like Halloween candy.”
Q: Why do the blue eyes of babies often turn brown after a year or so?
A: Melanin is the pigment that makes body parts dark, said Burton Kushner, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. “Melanin makes freckles brown, hair brown and pigmented races brown, and it can make the iris brown as well. Melanin is not fully developed in newborn babies, so the iris is relatively devoid of whatever melanin pigment it will have, and that gives the eye its baby-blue eye color.”
Quoted: Steven Deller, a professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says local governments’ dependence on the state in Wisconsin is the result of continual â?? and mostly unsuccessful â?? efforts to control property taxes.
Quoted: “It’s one thing to say that looking at it from a social science or behavioral perspective, judges’ decisions are seldom completely divorced from the intellectual and moral and experiential things they bring to the table. We’re imperfect creatures,” says Donald Downs, law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It is, he says, “unprecedented for Madison.” Jin-Wen Yu is talking about “What Moves Us,” and the UW-Madison dance professor is not exaggerating. Indeed, he may be flirting with understatement.
The University of Wisconsin announced groundbreaking plans Friday for the new Union South.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the new larger, improved and environmentally sustainable south campus union is scheduled for Tuesday, June 9, at 3:30 pm, at 1308 W. Dayton St., future site of the building.
The $94 million new building, as yet unnamed, will open in spring 2011.
Chris Meyer uses the word â??funâ? a lot.
Working all day on dirty, smelly engines is â??fun.â?
Learning the business, software and electronics sides of inventing is â??fun.â?
Even working with the bureaucracy to get his latest invention established on the UW-Madison campus is â??fun,â? he says with a grin that makes you not quite sure heâ??s being sarcastic.
Last-minute additions to the state budget early Friday morning elicited cries of â??pork-barrel spendingâ? from state Republicans, though Democrats defended their actions as addressing local needs.
Critics particularly singled out projects in the Madison area, such as $500,000 for a climate change education center in Monona and $4 million to begin relocating the Wisconsin Historical Museum and Veterans Museum to a new joint site.
It wasnâ??t at the top of UW-Madisonâ??s wish list for new buildings. But in the early hours Friday, Sen. Judy Robson, D-Beloit, inserted a $47 million facility for the UW-Madison School of Nursing into the state budget.
It was one of a number of projects that were included as part of a sweeping motion passed by the Legislatureâ??s budget committee as it worked to bridge a new $1.6 billion budget shortfall.
From UW-Madison basketball coach Bo Ryan to stem cell pioneer James Thomson, there are thousands of state employees paid at least in part by private or federal funds who will likely have to take unpaid days off over the next two years as mandated by Gov. Jim Doyle.
But much of that money canâ??t be used to help the state close its budget gap due to tight restrictions on its use, prompting criticism from some of those employees.
In graduation season, the phrase “make a difference” is in the air. Students dream of making a difference. Commencement speakers urge graduates to make a difference.
And cynics scoff at the notion that any one person can make a difference.
Admissions officials across the University of Wisconsin system have made their decisions about who will be in next yearâ??s freshmenâ??s class.
Some UW campuses say the down economy is affecting enrollment in unexpected ways.
Pamela Harvey-Jacobs, director of Admissions at UW-Green Bay, says theyâ??re expecting about 1,000 students on campus next fall, on par with last yearâ??s enrollment numbers. But Jacobs says theyâ??re still leaving spots open specifically for students from across the Green Bay area. (8th item.)
Same sex couples say it’s a frustrating and confusing time, with courts in different states issuing different decisions about marriage, and the benefits that go along with it.
“We’ve been in a relationship for 21 years now,” said Cathy Cox, of Madison. “We’ve been married for less than one,” said partner Kim Whalen.
Scientists and engineers with the University of Wisconsin-Madison who are working on a giant neutrino observatory at the South Pole are coming off one of their most successful construction seasons.
Workers in Antarctica installed 19 strings of optical sensors in 1½-mile-deep holes drilled into the crystalline ice. That surpassed the projectâ??s goal by three and put the observatory on track to be completed by 2011, according to Francis Halzen, principal investigator of IceCube and a UW-Madison physics professor.
At a time when it’s more competitive than ever to get into the University of Illinois, some students with subpar academic records are being admitted after interference from state lawmakers and university trustees, a Tribune investigation has revealed.
Hundreds of applicants received special consideration in the last five years, according to documents obtained by the Tribune under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. The records chronicle a shadow admissions system in which some students won spots at the state’s most prestigious public university over the protests of admissions officers, while others had their rejections reversed during an unadvertised appeal process.
Quoted: â??We have a work-based safety net without work,â? said Timothy M. Smeeding, an economist at the University of Wisconsin. â??Weâ??re really in a pickle.â?
We learned a lot about Madison, but we also learned a lot about Lexington, each other and maybe ourselves.
About 260 Central Kentuckians spent three days last week on Commerce Lexingtonâ??s 70th annual Leadership Visit. Like many others I spoke with, I left Wisconsinâ??s capital city thinking the same thing I did last May when we left Austin, Texas.
Metro Lexington is a more beautiful place, with better year-round weather, than either of those cities. So why do they rank higher on national surveys of quality of life and economic vitality?
A two-year spending plan that relies on furloughing and laying off state workers, cutting aid to schools and raising taxes on large oil companies, cell phone users and the rich passed the Legislature’s budget committee early Friday morning.
All 12 Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee voted for the plan, while all four Republicans opposed it. The $63 billion budget now heads to the state Assembly, where it could be debated as early as June 9. It must pass there and in the Senate and be signed by Gov. Jim Doyle before it becomes law.
“The work represents another important milestone, however, challenges remain,” says University of Wisconsin stem cell biologist James Thomson, by e-mail. “The most important criteria for choosing a particular reprogramming approach will be whether one can derive an (induced pluripotent stem) cell line from an easily obtained clinical sample consistently, and whether the resulting (induced pluripotent) cell line has a normal genetic and epigenetic (gene activation) status. It is not yet clear what approach, or combination of approaches, will most consistently meet these criteria.”
(Second item from beginning.)
“A lot of people want to avoid chemotherapy because they’re afraid of it, and what they’re actually afraid of is the symptoms,” said Dr. Lucille Marchand, clinical director of integrative oncology services at the University of Wisconsin Paul C. Carbone Cancer Center.
Quoted: “A lot of people want to avoid chemotherapy because they’re afraid of it, and what they’re actually afraid of is the symptoms,” said Dr. Lucille Marchand, clinical director of integrative oncology services at the University of Wisconsin Paul C. Carbone Cancer Center. “And symptoms can be treated.”
The first of three candidates for the academic affairs provost position at the University of Wisconsin spoke to the university community Wednesday afternoon to explain exactly why he would be the perfect fit for the job.
Irwin Goldman, current vice dean and associate dean for research in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UW, said his main goal if hired will be to â?weave togetherâ? the elements of academic freedom, shared governance, the Wisconsin idea and the promotion of diversity.
Presentations continued Thursday afternoon for the provost position as Paul DeLuca Jr., current vice dean and associate dean for research and graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, argued the university needs to reach for new sources of funding to maintain the quality of education in a time of economic crisis.
John Okonek said he was unaware of how concerned Madison police were about two Downtown bars he owns.
The long list of violations compiled by both bars apparently had made little impression.
But he was snapped out of his ignorance this week by a public hearing on denying the renewal of the bars’ liquor licenses.
When the hearing was over, the city had an important agreement. Okonek got to keep the liquor licenses but only under strict conditions – a month-long license suspension for one bar, plus requirements that both bars make specified improvements to maintain law and order.
Nearly 300 Wisconsin students on the waiting list at UW-Madison have been offered a spot in its freshman class, marking the third time in four years the school has turned to the list.
Routinely taking students from the waiting list is a relatively new phenomenon for the stateâ??s flagship university, where for many years the list was as good as a rejection.
It reflects the â??volatility and unpredictability of this whole process,â? said Tom Reason, associate director of admissions.
After not admitting any students from the waiting list for five years, UW-Madison accepted students off the list in 2006 and in 2008. Last year, the university admitted about 500 students from the waiting list.
Democratic lawmakers late Thursday voted to bridge a $1.6 billion budget gap by taxing outpatient surgery centers in the same way as hospitals, refinancing state debt and making promised cuts to schools, local governments and state agencies.
After days of intense, closed-door talks, Democrats on the budget committee also approved mandates on insurers to cover the treatment of autism and mental health as well as controversial overhauls of rules governing automobile insurance and liability lawsuits.
Debate on a major amendment to the state budget bill broke down into partisan attacks Thursday night, after nearly five hours of majority Democrats rejecting amendments offered by Republicans.
Tempers flared after State Representative Robin Vos (R-Racine) began reading listings for attorneys out of a phone book, claiming they were the only people who would benefit from the budget plan being considered. When co-chairs on the committee challenged Vos, he launched in to reading from the actual amendment.
The leader of the University of Utah Hospital and Clinics is in critical condition after suffering major head trauma in a bicycling crash in Tooele County.
Entwistle, a 40-year-old father and a Brigham Young University graduate, was hired away from the University of Wisconsin two years ago to replace the late Richard Fullmer as president and CEO of the U.’s health care system, which employs 5,400 on a $731 million budget.
College students more often enter fraternities as heavy drinkers, rather than blossoming into boozehounds after initiation, report psychologists.
(Third item down.)
No one knows how many study abroad-related lawsuits are settled before landing in court. But you can probably count on two hands the number of cases where courts have ruled, several legal experts say.
Except for a dip in the first few years after 9/11, the number of students receiving credit for study-abroad programs has been rising steadily. It jumped nearly 150%, to 241,791, between 1996-97 and 2006-07, the latest year for which data is available, says the Institute of International Education, a New York-based non-profit. The House and Senate each have introduced a bill this year that aims to boost that figure to 1 million in a decade. As more students consider study abroad, international education experts say, a confluence of trends could lead to more risks for students.
A Jamaican police report sums up what happened on the last night of Jenee Klotzs semester abroad her junior year of college: She was robbed, sexually assaulted and stabbed while walking back to her host familys home. She says she spent nine hours in a Kingston hospital, and the next morning, the programs academic director dropped her at the airport â?? still wearing pajama bottoms and with dried blood on her neck and chest. Klotz, 23, knows that no program can guarantee 100% safety. But two years later, she and her family remain bitter about the way they say the incident was handled.
Elaine Marie Graber, age 41, died on Sunday, May 24, 2009. Elaine worked at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison as a certified transplant nurse.
Credit card reform is turning into a rebellion. As the federal government pushes toward stricter rules for credit card companies, those companies are passing on their pain to customers.
“Lenders don’t know who to trust anymore. And so almost all of us are paying a premium for that lack of trust in the economy. You notice in the fine print about late fees, over the balance fees, annual fees, they all seem to be going up and they’re being levelled pretty aggressively,” says University of Wisconsin financial specialist Michael Collins.
Quoted: But in the meantime, said University of Wisconsin political scientist Benjamin Marquez, who studies Latinos and American politics, â??this is truly a way that he can symbolically reach out to the Latino voter and Latino population, so in that sense this was a very savvy thing for him to do.â?
Quoted: “Our technology is not that advanced,” said Frederick Langheim, a neuroscientist and psychiatry resident at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Thousands of state employees and University of Wisconsin faculty and staff members won’t see any salary increases until July 2011, under budget-cutting action that legislative leaders took Wednesday.
The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations unanimously voted to rescind a 2% pay increase that was to take effect in June. The action is final; the full Legislature will not take up the matter.
Gov. Jim Doyle had recommended the salary freezes as a way to make up for a shortfall in tax collections that increased the two-year state deficit by $1.6 billion, putting it at $6.6 billion.
Wisconsin legislative leaders on Wednesday stripped more than 26,000 state employees of 2 percent pay raises they had been promised, froze their salaries for two years and moved to increase their health insurance premiums.
The Joint Committee on Employment Relations voted 8-0 for the measures affecting 7,000 nonunion state employees and elected officials and 19,500 University of Wisconsin System faculty and staff members. The cutbacks, which are final and don’t need approval from the full Legislature, are meant to help close an expected $6.6 billion budget shortfall.
Erupting from the turbulent social waters of the 1960â??s counter-culture movement, the genre known as underground comics kicked down the doors of the staid funny book status quo with frank depictions of in-your-face drug use, the sweaty excesses of every imaginable sexual orientation and radical political statements unimaginable in the pages of the conventional Comics Code Authority-sanctioned fare found at the corner malt shop newstand. This revolutionary era in American comics is preserved and celebrated with great aplomb in Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix by co-authors James Danky and Denis Kitchen, published this month by Abrams ComicsArts. A companion volume to a fascinating gallery show at the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s Chazen Museum of Art, the book documents the first time in American comics when the uncensored ideas of anti-establishment thinkersâ??from women, blacks and homosexuals to other disenfranchised members of American societyâ??were given full and unfettered voice.
It may be that in spring, a young personâ??s fancy turns to thoughts of love. But under some circumstances, falling in love may not be all itâ??s cracked up to be.
Thatâ??s the tongue-in-cheek message heart physiologist Richard Moss likes to deliver to medical students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The faster your heart beats, the shorter your lifespan,” says Moss, chair of the physiology department and an-award winning teacher at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “So to live longer, you donâ??t want to be using up heartbeats foolishly.”
A Madison company aiming to put itself at the center of the evolving field of regenerative medicine said Wednesday that it has licensed a key patent portfolio involving the differentiation of stem cells into heart cells.
Cellular Dynamics International negotiated an exclusive license to the technology from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, the company said in a news release.
Members of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee are hoping to finish their work on Thursday.
After delaying the start of Wednesday’s budget session by nearly nine hours, Joint Finance Committee co-chairman Mark Pocan (D-Madison) announced the panel would not be meeting after all. The Madison Democrat says drafting of the final budget language would likely be done by about 2 AM on Thursday. So, rather than delay the meeting further, the decision was made to push of final votes on the budget plan.
Will college students take the train? More specifically, will they take high speed rail? The answer is yes, according to UW Madison student Tony Uhl, who helped to organize a statewide tour of college students advocating for high speed rail
The Wisconsin legislature’s budget-writing committee canceled its Wednesday meeting, but still plans to finish all its work by the end of Thursday.
Committee co-chair Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, said the meeting had to be canceled because of delays in drafting motions for the committee to consider. But Pocan said there is agreement among Democrats who control the committee on the remaining unresolved issues. Those include aid to schools, cuts to state agencies and Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposals to impose a new tax on oil companies and let some felons out of prison early.
For years, some University of Wisconsin football fans have been cheer, cheering for old Notre Dame to appear on the Badgers’ schedule.
That wish might come true, though fans shouldn’t get too excited just yet.
UW athletic director Barry Alvarez acknowledged Tuesday during an interview on WTSO-AM/1070 that he and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick have had discussions this spring about scheduling a non-conference series.
A nutritious, mouse-eared waffle could win a team of UW-Madison students $2,500.
The student-created snack, called Mickioli, is a finalist in a food product development competition sponsored by Disney and the Institute of Food Technologists Student Association.
Mickioli is a waffle snack shaped like the head of Mickey Mouse. The waffles are made from quinoa, a gluten free grain, and are layered with strawberry and yogurt filling.
David Carley died of liver cancer at his home on Charlottesville, Va. on Wednesday, May 13, 2009. David completed his doctorate in political science and constitutional law at the University of Wisconsin in 1959. David was on the Board of Kalamazoo College, The University of Wisconsin, Folger Shakespeare Library, The Kennedy Presidential Library and Wisconsin Power and Light Company.
Grant Cottam died early Wednesday morning, May 13, 2009. He was a student of John Curtis and was very proud to receive an A from Aldo Leopold. Grant had a long career, beginning at the University of Hawaii, with the remainder spent at Wisconsin.
