Commentators have increasingly been wondering if the end might finally be in sight for the many yearsâ?? worth of steady and often not-so-slow increases in college tuitions. How much longer, the thinking goes, will American students and parents be able to afford â?? and/or put up with â?? rapidly rising prices and expenditures on higher education?
Noted: Even if their pets show no signs of the illness, owners should always be careful. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine said last year that they were able to easily isolate Salmonella spp. from healthy-looking dogs and cats, making them classic carrier animals.
â??Dogs and cats may suffer salmonellosis as a â??reverse zoonosis,â?? with infection transmitted from human-to-dog and subsequently back to other humans,â? the researchers wrote. â??Similarly, outbreaks of salmonella infections in large animal teaching hospitals have been linked to the introduction of bacteria from infected human personnel, with subsequent spread to animals and then back to other human workers.â?
Quoted: “Particularly during a downturn in economic times, we have to think about what’s important for us, what are our priorities, and make sure we continue to invest in the infrastructure of our education system,” said Jill Underwood, former dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education and facilitator of the School Finance Network.
A UW-Madison scientist says “exciting” new research could pave the way for slowing or even stopping the onset of Alzheimers. Director of Alzheimer’s Research Dr. Sanjay Asthana says researchers are conducting studies with an experimental drug designed to stop amyloid protein from developing in the brain. Abnormal development of the protein has been linked to the disease’s progression.
Students dressed to impress for this years Spring Career Expo.
With 115 companies including Geico, General Electric and Epic, it was a buffet of jobs and these potential grads are hungry.
“Be confident, go in and talk to people. Hopefully my confidence will reflect how the conversation goes,” says UW student Sunchit Mulmuley.
Troy Runge, research director at Kimberly-Clark Corp., has been named director of the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative.
The initiative, a public-private partnership in bioenergy research, is based in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A bundle of energy, a spark plug, a leader, a personality. A pillar of the community.
These were among the descriptors friends and colleagues ascribed to Alfred De Simone, a Kenosha businessman who devoted his energy to scores of causes, most notably the University of Wisconsin System.
De Simone, 90, died Tuesday at Brookside Care Center, after recent battles with pneumonia and other illnesses.
A longtime agent of the AXA Equitable Life Insurance Co., De Simone is credited as one of the founders of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, and he later served a six-year term on the governor-appointed UW System Board of Regents.
It’s hard to find any good news on the job front and hundreds of graduating college seniors are doing their best to stay optimistic.
Tuesday night at the UW sponsored job fair it was hard to do.
Some students say they feel a little bit cursed, like they’re graduating at the worst possible time.
It has them reaching for anything they can get.
From construction to factory work and even retail the jobs keep disappearing.
Gov. Jim Doyle said he might delay releasing his proposal for a state budget if a federal stimulus package isn’t ready.
Doyle expects to release his budget on Feb. 10.
Wisconsin faces a $5.7 billion deficit and Doyle said he hopes the state will get billions in federal stimulus aid to help fill it. But Congress continues to debate the size and scope of the stimulus package.
Clara Penniman, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin at Madison, died on January 30, 2009. Ms. Penniman taught political science on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin at Madison from 1953 to 1984, where she held the Oscar Rennebohm Chair for Public Administration for the last ten years.
A Memorial Service will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday February 7, 2009, at the Chapel Oakwood Apartments, 6209 Mineral Point Road.
Wilmott “Rags” Ragsdale, a war correspondent and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who taught a generation of journalism students in the 1960s and â??70s, died last month at age 97.
Ragsdale told students to “be bold” in their reporting, said his daughter Amy Ragsdale. That same philosophy led him to London during World War II, where he covered D-Day, landing on Omaha Beach on the second day of the invasion.
Clara Penniman, 94, a ground-breaking University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist and scholar of public finance, died Friday of pneumonia in Madison.
Penniman was the first female chairwoman of the UW-Madison political science department, serving from 1963-1966, when all the political science faculty were men. She also founded the Center for the Study of Public Policy and Administration at UW-Madison, the precursor of todayâ??s Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs.
Quoted: “It’s sort of paradoxical: They’re both supportive and pessimistic,” says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies public opinion. Still, President Obama “has been saying this is going to be a long process, so maybe it’s not so surprising that voters would pick up the idea that there’s no quick fix.”
In April of last year, the US Food and Drug Administration invited three large biotech companies – Geron, Advanced Cell Technology, and Novocell – to testify about how to safely test human embryonic stem cell (ESC) products in patients. The science was discussed, recommendations were made, and, seemingly, everyone was on the same page toward moving ESCs into the clinic.
Some might call it pork, but the University of Wisconsin-Madison is asking for cow cash.
Dairy researchers want $2.5 million to make life a little easier for the university’s cows. Their barn was built in the 1950s, and the stalls were designed for smaller dairy cows. Improved genetics have made research cows a little “beefier,” and they don’t fit in their stalls. Gov. Jim Doyle said it is a needed expansion.
“It’s like putting a new roof on a building,” Doyle said.
Noted: After much brainstorming and research, they developed the Wisconsin Veterans Intervention Program (WI-VIP). WI-VIP has three components.
The first utilizes law students. The Frank J. Remington Center at the University of Wisconsin Law School will develop and facilitate an outreach program to assist in a whole range of problems facing returning vets, from housing, divorce and drug dependency. The goal, says Ginger, is to address veteransâ?? needs with a multidisciplinary approach, emphasizing the resolution of any civil legal needs, to head off any potential negative brushes with the criminal justice system.
When I was growing up, I would hear stories about Madison and the University of Wisconsin from my mother as we were driving past the campus. Sheâ??d point out what had changed, like where a Rennebohmâ??s soda counter had been or that the Medical Sciences Center used to be Madison General Hospital. Among these stories were the classics; how the Sterling Hall bombing was planned in a dark booth at the Nitty Gritty, how 1,000 pink flamingos dotted Bascom Hill, and how the Statue of Liberty was erected on the frozen surface of Lake Mendota.
I’m working with a group of people in Hoofers to bring back the original Statue of Liberty — a stunt pulled off by the pranksters in the UWâ??s Pail and Shovel party. Our plan is to return it to the ice of Lake Mendota in front of the Memorial Union for Valentineâ??s Day weekend (and possibly longer) during the Hoofers Winter Carnival, a tradition itself stretching back to at least the 1930s.
Quoted: The new findings show â??how Mom is helping to tune that whole system early on,â? said William J. Burlingham, an immunologist at the University of Wisconsin, who is not connected with the research. â??Itâ??s a major advance, very new and very exciting.â?
Quoted: Kris Olds, a University of Wisconsin professor, studies the impact of Olympics on cities and concludes Games have few benefits for low-income residents. In Calgary, buildings were cleared and rented to tourists. In Atlanta, the homeless were ticketed or jailed. Expo 86 saw SRO evictions and 2,000 units were lost.
As economic news worsens and the projected state budget deficit grows, it’s increasingly unlikely that state government will begin to reverse the 25-year funding decline for the University of Wisconsin System in the next biennial budget. Nevertheless, Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, and others that tout the economic value of academic research and development say the Governor and lawmakers must do more than cut spending and raise taxes – they must figure out a way to stimulate economic growth. In this Visions interview with Still, he tells WTN that boosting university support and technology transfer is a demonstrated jobs creator.
A man convicted of a 1984 homicide walked out of prison and hugged his sister Friday, after a judge released him partly because of evidence that the Wisconsin Innocence Project uncovered.
A Milwaukee County jury convicted Robert Lee Stinson of first-degree murder more than 23 years ago in the death of Ione Cychosz, 62, who had been beaten, stabbed and bitten when a neighbor discovered her body in a vacant lot behind her house. Stinson, 21 at the time of his arrest, proclaimed his innocence from the witness stand and hasn’t wavered.
Boosting the output of a protein produced by brain cells called astrocytes can provide complete protection from Parkinson’s disease, a study published Monday showed.
In the study, the results of which were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied mice with astrocytes that produced twice the normal level of a protein called Nrf2.
Researchers at Marshfield Clinic want to speed up their understanding of rare diseases and find cures — by learning how to store, share and use medical records created by universities and clinics across the country.
The clinic, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan are taking part in a pilot project led by Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland to test the effectiveness of a system. The group will share records on sleep disorders because diagnosing sleep apnea involves large amounts of data, said Dr. Justin Starren, who leads the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation’s efforts to better apply information technology to health and medical research.
Sarah Manski was talking to Sara Alvarado early last November when she was struck by a bolt of inspiration. A green-business entrepreneur, web designer, consultant, print and radio journalist and UW-Madison graduate student in life sciences communications, Manski was interviewing the principal of the Alvarado Real Estate Group about the firm’s green orientation. Manski was impressed by the way Alvarado had networked her business with green builders and contractors, and got to wondering about the way green ideas spread from business to business.
The UW Hospital Board will soon decide how to proceed on a proposal to offer late term abortions at its Park Street clinic.
Wednesday’s hearing is the last chance for people — who passionately believe and don’t believe the UW should be doing this procedure — to speak their piece.
The debate spilled into the streets of Madison over the weekend. Hundreds of people expressed either their support or disdain for a proposed late term abortion program.
Kim L. “Vito” Jenkins, age 59, passed away on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2009. Kim was employed with the UW Hospital for more than 16 years.
Just a stone’s throw from UW-Madison’s seat of power on top of Bascom Hill is a place that melds old scientific methods with modern research that you likely have not heard of – The Wisconsin State Herbarium.
The herbarium in Birge Hall is a collection of 1.1 million dusty, dried plant specimens, taped or glued inside manila folders and tucked inside row upon row of huge, vertical metal file cabinets protected with insect traps. Boxes of overflowing specimens sit in the hallways.
Maybe happy cows really do come from California – because right now they aren’t particularly pleased to be in the UW-Madison Dairy Cattle Center, said Ric Grummer, dairy science department chairman.
That is why the university is requesting about $3 million from the state to upgrade its cattle stalls, silos and locker rooms and make second-floor classrooms handicapped-accessible.
From roomier cattle stalls to a new hockey rink, UW-Madison is seeking the state’s approval to build more than $450 million in projects.
About $150 million of the construction projects will require state funding. The others would be built with gifts or grants, or by borrowing the money and paying it back with fees from students.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student government, Associated Students of Madison, is attempting to create a more professional image, and in doing so, engage more students. ASM recently created a press office, a new Web site, and a new logo.
Nursing programs within the University of Wisconsin System must expand in order to avoid a future nursing shortage, a new report commissioned by the System found.
Celeste Lewis is in a pickle that could prove costly, all because of something she did mostly in high school, when it seemed like everybody else was doing it.
The UW-Madison junior said that back home in Chicago, she started using file sharing software to illegally download music. She said she did it briefly as a freshman in college until her conscience told her that downloading music for free was wrong.
The giant economic stimulus bill working its way through Congress should deliver enough money to Wisconsin to keep the state from taking such draconian measures to close its $5.7 billion budget shortfall as furloughing prisoners, knocking poor children off Medicaid rolls and slashing school aids.
Quoted: Cheese prices in December fell below the level that triggers government purchases, although they have recovered slightly in recent days, which may avert those purchases, said Robert A. Cropp, a dairy economist at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: Take, for example, smoking. “Think about 100 people who got up on New Year’s Day and quit smoking,” said Dr. Douglas Jorenby, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.
Quoted: “Drunken driving is out there as a policy issue and it is getting a lot of legislative attention,” said Tara Jenswold-Schipper, assistant director of the Resource Center for Impaired Driving at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Quoted: Political science professor David Canon of the University of Wisconsin said, ”It does appear to be a high-risk move on their part to remain unified against this, especially if the economy does turn around by 2010 and the next election. I think they’re banking on being able to ride some of the concern people have about the large budget deficit.”
“How are things in Calgary, anyway? It’s a beautiful day here. Sun’s shining. About four degrees. Hockey tonight. Hockey tomorrow. Hockey next week.
“Things are great. Couldn’t be better.”
The last name. That persuasive, invasive, effervescent optimism pumping fresh oxygen into deflating lungs. Even the area code on the phone — 608, for Madison, Wisc. It’s all very much an H. G. Wells/Time Machine moment.
With Fond du Lac’s smoke-free workplace ordinance set to take effect Monday, Feb. 2, more area smokers than ever will be thinking about quitting.
There are free, state-funded treatment resources available to help.
“Smoke-free laws have a significant effect on the rates at which tobacco users break their addiction,” said Dr. Michael Fiore, director of the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. “We expect to see a lot more people in Fond du Lac and surrounding communities electing to quit around the time of the workplace smoke-free ordinance. That’s good news because smoking is the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the nation. It causes more deaths than AIDS, drugs, suicides, murders and motor vehicle accidents combined.”
Too much television, low self-esteem, disappointing grades and poor family relationships can be a formula that adds up to early teenage sex, according to a new study.
“If you add up all the factors, you get a much more powerful predictor of who has sex and who doesn’t,” said Dr. Janet Hyde, of the University of Wisconsin, who headed the research team.
University of Wisconsin medical officials say they do not plan to make a profit by performing late-term abortions even though an internal document lists increased revenue as one benefit.
Advertisement
University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, its faculty doctors’ group and Meriter Hospital are proposing a plan to offer second-trimester abortions at the Madison Surgery Center, which the hospitals jointly own.
Quoted: Dr. Joe Cline, director of emergency medicine at University of Wisconsin Hospital, said the I-Stan helps paramedics learn exactly what training mistakes they might have made during training.
“This mannequin logs in high detail everything that happened — everything that was done; everything that happened to it physiologically. We can go back and debrief the point at which the point of no return was reached, and what should have been done at that point that could have turned things around,” Cline said.
A man sentenced to life in prison for killing a woman in 1984 had his conviction overturned and was released Friday after spending 23 years behind bars.
Robert Lee Stinson, 44, of Milwaukee, still faces a charge of first-degree homicide, said Byron Lichstein, an attorney with the Wisconsin Innocence Project, a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison law students and professors who work to right wrongful convictions.
Noted: Then there is the fact that companies often continue to see high turnover, always a destabilizer, even after the layoffs are done. A study by Charlie Trevor and Anthony Nyberg of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found that companies with big staff cuts saw, on average, an annual turnover rate of 13%, compared with 10.4% for firms with no layoffs.
All life – plants, animals, people – depends on peaceful coexistence with a swarm of microbial life that performs vital services from helping to convert food to energy to protection from disease.
Now, with the help of a squid that uses a luminescent bacterium to create a predator-fooling light organ and a fish that uses a different strain of the same species of bacteria like a flashlight to illuminate the dark nooks of the reefs where it lives, scientists have found that gaining a single gene is enough for the microbe to switch host animals.
The finding, reported this week (Feb. 1) in the journal Nature by a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is important not only because it peels back some of the mystery of how bacteria evolved to colonise different animals, but also because it reveals a genetic pressure point that could be manipulated to thwart the germs that make us sick.
The downturn in the economy is driving up the number of students who are returning to community and technical colleges for a second year. A survey by ACT found 54% of students returned for a second year nationwide.
And as NBC 15’s Michelle Riell reports, not only is MATC above the national trend, it’s seen a dramatic jump in enrollment at a very untraditional time.
If you are wrongfully convicted of a crime in Wisconsin and sent to prison, current state law sets the wrongful conviction compensation rate at $5,000 for each year you spend behind bars. But if it takes you more than five years to prove your innocence, then $25,000 is all you get.
That cap makes for the lowest compensation rate of any state in the country. But the Wisconsin Innocence Project is working on changing that.
The groupâ??s attorney, Keith Findley, theyâ??ll soon release a report advocating the boosting of the compensation rate. “It’s really woefully inadequate… it’s an insult to the people who’ve been through this,” he says. (4th item.)
Chris Walker dances with the orishas in the university’s hallowed Lathrop Hall. The UW Dance Program assistant prof is a long way from his native Jamaica, but the walls of his cozy fourth-floor office sport big pictures of Ochun, Oyá, Obatalá, Changó and Yemayá. Even in the dead of winter the Afro-Caribbean saints seem content in their new surroundings.
After the November election, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin sent every lawmaker a note of congratulations.
In December, she had the school’s lobbyist hand-deliver Christmas cards to their Capitol offices. And she has invited all 132 lawmakers and guests to her official residence for an informal get-to-know-you event Monday, the first of its kind in years.
Since taking over as chancellor last year, Martin has made a determined effort to improve relations between the state’s flagship university and the Legislature. The style is a major contrast to that of her predecessor John Wiley, who denounced lawmakers as petty and overly partisan as he left office.
It’s still early in the admissions cycle â?? but not too early for colleges to be worried about yield.
Projecting yield, the percentage of admitted students who enroll, is a perennial concern for admissions deans. Their anxiety has only grown as technology and millennials’ habits make it harder to anticipate the whims of 17-year-olds. In many ways, it looks like that trend will continue this year.
The Madison woman tasered by UW Police at a Badger football game in October has taken steps to sue.
Margaret Hiebing tells 27 News she filed a notice of claim with the state on Friday.
The notice of claim basically tells the state that Hiebing intends to sue for compensation of some kind.
Protestors on both sides of the abortion issue clashed on the streets of Madison, days before UW Hospital will discuss offering second-term abortions.
The hospital has been considering opening such a clinic since the only doctor in the area, who offered second trimester abortions, recently retired.
Starting at noon on Saturday, hundreds of pro-life supporters gathered on UW campus to protest that possibility. Melissa Zielski, a registered nurse at the hospital, said staff were informed of the plans by email.
University of Wisconsin medical officials said they don’t expect to make a profit by performing late-term abortions.
UW Hospitals and Clinics and Meriter Hospital are proposing a plan to offer second-trimester abortions at the Madison Surgery Center, which the hospitals jointly own.
UW Health spokeswoman Lisa Brunette said the university does not expect to generate revenue above expenses by performing the procedures.
The governor’s plans for oversight of federal stimulus funds are drawing some criticism. Governor Jim Doyle last week named Madison Gas and Electric Chairman, President and CEO Gary Wolter and UW Madison Associate Vice Chancellor Al Fish to head Wisconsin’s new Office of Recovery and Reinvestment.
Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk said Friday that an agreement has been reached between municipalities to move forward with the slated reconstruction of University Avenue, with engineering work for the project to begin this year.
Dane County, the cities of Madison and Middleton and the village of Shorewood Hills have agreed on the project.
Falk said $350,000 is included in the 2009 county budget for the project.
The 43rd annual Super Bowl may be Sunday in Tampa, but the 13th annual Souper Bowl, a tasty celebration for a good cause, was held Saturday in Madison.
The fundraiser is the biggest one of the year for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity. Its goal is to help build change in Madison.
The gymnasium at Madison West High School, the site of the Souper Bowl, looked like a pep rally before a big game Saturday. But unlike the Super Bowl, there are no losers at the Souper Bowl, because every ceramic bowl filled helps to continue a building project.
A new Pew Social & Demographic Trends survey reveals that Wisconsin is the fifth “stickiest” state in the U.S.: the fifth highest percent of population born in the state and still living there.
Four candidates have emerged for the job of athletic director at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The four include Vince Sweeney, currently senior associate athletic director for external relations at UW-Madison, and George Koonce Jr., a former Green Bay Packers player and currently senior associate athletic director at Marquette University.
Troy Vincent, an All-American cornerback at the University of Wisconsin and five-time Pro Bowl selection for four National Football League teams, gained the overwhelming support Thursday from veteran players on the two Super Bowl teams in his bid to become executive director of the NFL Players Association.
Q: Why does snow squeak when you walk on it?
A: Snow can make a â??squeakyâ?? sound as well as a â??crunchyâ?? sound. Snow is a mixture of ice, liquid water and air. The sound snow makes when you walk on it depends on this mixture.
