Quoted: Cynthia Jaspar, a consumer spending expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that although young people are vulnerable to job losses during a recession, they will continue to be an important retail sector. Cohen points to the video game industry as a sign that young adult buying power remains strong.
Quoted: Five men from a 53-player roster, all gone in their 20s and 30s. Marjorie Rosenberg, a professor of actuarial science and biostatistics at the University of Wisconsin, calculated the odds of something like this happening at less than 1 percent.
Quoted: But education experts say the push needs to start well before college. This month, it was announced that the performance of American students on the most recent international science test had declined. And researchers have found many students do not retain what they’ve learned, says Sarah Miller, co-director of the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Bret Bielema will wrap up his third season as the University of Wisconsinâ??s head football coach Saturday, when the Badgers play Florida State in the Champs Sports Bowl.
After going 12-1 in his first year, Bielemaâ??s team dropped to 9-4 last year and 7-5 this season.
Thatâ??s got some fans concerned, along with the impending graduations of 11 senior starters, but former coach and current athletic director Barry Alvarez says the 38-year-old Bielema has proven that he can coach and can produce in big games.
U.S. scientists have created the first human model for studying a devastating nerve disease, which allows them to watch how the disease develops and could help researchers find a way to treat it.
Using skin cells from a child with spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disease that attacks motor neurons in the spinal cord, researchers grew batches of nerve cells with the same genetic defects. The finding allowed scientists to watch the nerve cells die off.
If you were one of the many people who checked out President-elect Barack Obama’s topless Hawaiian beach photos this week on the Internet, don’t worry, you’re not a presidential pervert.
“Everybody’s gonna talk about it,” says Charles Franklin, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, who admits that he, too, visited paparazzi blog bauergriffinonline.com late Monday night to see our soon-to-be commander in chief in swim trunks, looking sun-kissed and svelte.
The arts are in trouble.
Or are they? “The good news is that the arts seem a little bit immune to challenging economic times. Donations to arts groups sometimes stay the same or go up,” says Samantha Crownover, one of the organizers of the Arts Enterprise Symposium at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Layoffs from arts groups may be the result of past difficulties that the economy only exacerbated, Crownover suggests. Still, even in good times, funding is dependent on at least rudimentary business and marketing skills that are seldom taught in conservatories or
Q: Is it possible to catch the same cold more than once?
A: Probably not the exact same cold, says Jonathan Temte, an associate professor of family medicine at UW-Madison. “With an infection, you will mount an immune response that is specific to that particular strain, but the common cold is usually caused by a rhinovirus, and well over 100 rhinovirus strains affect people.”
Hillel Foundation University of Wisconsin in Madison is gearing up for another exciting winter Taglit Birthright Israel trip, scheduled for next month.
Twenty-five UW students are weeks away from embarking on their free trip to Israel, and they will share a bus with 15 students from New York University.
UW-Hillelâ??s new Israel program coordinator Nilli Glick will be on staff for this trip. Nilli brings with her several years of experienc
Quoted: Jim Leary, director of UW-Madison’s folklore program.
The man’s smiling face overlooks Madison Area Technical College from a canary yellow billboard high above the Truax campus, next to the words, “The Smart Choice.”
ORLANDO, Fla. â?? Wisconsin Badgers athletic director Barry Alvarez knew what he was getting when he picked Bret Bielema as his successor.
UW-Madison Chancellor Carolyn â??Biddyâ? Martin: A long honeymoon. Martin is following a tough act in retired Chancellor John Wiley, who helped elevate the university’s private fundraising into a different league. The combination of the financial market meltdown and the recession will make chasing donors harder, and it’s not as if the UW will get everything it asks in a tight state budget cycle. Tuition hikes, spending cuts, or both will test Martin’s first year.
Signs going up at UW Health clinics next month will tell patients that their doctors might be getting paid by drug companies for research or consulting work, officials announced Monday.
A Dane County judge has ruled that recordings of the Brittany Zimmermann 911 call should not be released at this time because Madison police say keeping the audio secret could help them catch the University of Wisconsin-Madison student’s killer.
“The consensus view is that (economic growth) will be negative until the middle of next year,” said UW-Madison economist Menzie Chinn. “For the ordinary American, it may feel like you’re in a recession for a lot longer than that.”
A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor is upset that Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton’s re-election campaign asked him for money in an e-mail sent to his state-owned account, a violation of state law.
UW-Madison students graduating this month will take part in two commencement ceremonies Sunday at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the Kohl Center.
UW-Madison scientist James Thomson was among three stem cell researchers who received the Massry prize for 2008.
Eight of the award’s recipients have gone on to receive the Nobel Prize.
As hundreds of new University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates filed out of the Kohl Center on Sunday, some huddled close with friends and family, others lingered inside in their caps and gowns, while several trudged into the into the subzero afternoon making new prints in the snow.
On many of the about 1,500 graduating minds was the blistering economic news of recent months and the uncertain prospects of the job market.
James R. Kuska Sr., age 83, passed away peacefully on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008. James was employed by UW-Madison in the Photo Media Department until his retirement in 1987.
The University of Wisconsin Athletic Department is trying to build its 2009-10 budget without raising ticket prices for the second straight year.
That may be unrealistic, but UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez believes the attempt must be made given the economic challenges facing many Badgers fans.
“We’re very, very sensitive to ticket increases,” he said this week. “I really don’t want to do it. I hope we can build a budget without having to do it.”
The process is taking place against a backdrop of harsh concerns and stark realities involving the bread-winning UW football program.
If you are having trouble coming up with the money to follow the University of Wisconsin football team to the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Fla., you are not alone.
These are tough economic times and it is reflected in the Badgers’ ticket sales for the bowl game.
Senior associate athletic director Vince Sweeney estimated Wednesday the school would use about 3,000 of its allotted 12,000 tickets by the end of the week. That includes ticket sales to the public and tickets for UW’s traveling party.
The UW-Madison has decided not to file as an intervenor in American Transmission Company’s request to build a 345-kilovolt power line across Dane County. Being an intervenor would allow the UW to be more involved with the Public Service Commission’s decision-making process. But the UW says its concerns are already being addressed.
“We feel like at this time, we’re having our issues heard,” says UW spokeswoman Dawn Crim. She notes that the PSC required ATC to evaluate burying the line underground, if the route chosen would go along the Beltline, past the UW Arboretum.
After years of growth and earlier predictions that higher-education fund raising would escape the brunt of the economic crash, the recession has started to affect colleges’ efforts in that area, according to results of a Chronicle of Higher Educationâ??Moody’s Investors Service survey. Predictions are that 2009 may be even tougher, with shrinking annual funds and even job cuts among fund raisers.
VistaGen Therapeutics, a biotechnology company based in South San Francisco, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation have signed a license for human embryonic stem cell patents for the development and commercialization of stem cell-based research tools.
A UW-Madison economist says any rescue plan for the auto industry should have a time limit.
Donald Hester says the idea behind any bail out package should be to help the auto makers avoid bankruptcy. He says they need enough help to stay in business for a few months, but then the decision on how much help to provide them in the future needs to come from the next administration.
As the state faces a major budget deficit and big cuts, U-W Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin has the daunting task of running the state’s flagship university in lean times. She recently joined us to talk about the difficult road aheadâ?¦(Audio, seventh item.)
Indiana assistant coach Todd Yeagley will be the next men’s soccer coach at the University of Wisconsin.
The Herald-Times newspaper of Bloomington, Ind., reported this morning that Yeagley accepted the position, and a source familiar with the situation confirmed the report.
A new reality series on MTV called “College Life” will document University of Wisconsin-Madison students as they embark on their freshman year.
But the real reason Madison is perfect for some kind of event with Michael Mann and “Public Enemies” is that Madison is where Mann first fell in love with movies and made it his life’s dream to be a director.
I had known Mann was a UW-Madison alumnus, but until the other night, when I saw a documentary on his career on the Reelz channel, I didn’t realize the profound impact Mann’s campus experience had on his career.
Mark Musolf, a calming, quiet and influential presence at the highest levels of state government for 30 years, was killed Tuesday afternoon in a car crash in Price County on Highway 13, near Park Falls.
His wife, Jocelyn Jacobs, 55, a passenger and well-known Madison trust attorney, was in critical condition at Marshfield Hospital.
Climate change dogma posits that the invention of the steam engine and the advent of the coal-fueled industrial age marked the beginning of human influence on global climate. But a radical new climate theory contends that the Earth would currently be experiencing an ice-age if it weren’t for the fact that humans began planting crops and clearing forests thousands of years ago.
“This challenges the paradigm that things began changing with the Industrial Revolution,” says Stephen Vavrus, a climatologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Climatic Research. “If you think about even a small rate of increase over a long period of time, it becomes important.”
An admissions officer for the UW-Madison says thereâ??s an unusual trend developing among this yearâ??s applicants which may be tied to the nationâ??s struggling economy.
Tom Reason is the associate director of admissions at the U-W Madison. He says currently, his office has received nearly 18,000 applications from students wrapping up high school. Thatâ??s on par with last yearâ??s rate. However, he says in-state applicant numbers are down significantly while out of state applicant numbers are up significantly.
â??Thatâ??s particularly unusual,â? says Reason.
Reason says the increase in out-of-state applicants is roughly 10-percent, with a nearly identical decrease from Wisconsin applicants. He says other Big 10 Conference schools are reporting the same disparity in their applicant pools. (Second item.)
Daily Variety is reporting that one of cable channel MTV’s new programs will be a reality show from the UW-Madison campus.
“College Life” will feature freshmen chronicling their own life with cameras, and will be a part of the network’s new round of reality shows, several of which focus on higher education.
The dispatcher accused of mishandling a 911 call from a slain college student’s cell phone had sent an e-mail to the 911 Center director suggesting that equipment problems might have been to blame.
Dispatcher Rita Gahagan had said she didn’t know why she didn’t hear a scream on the 911 call from Brittany Zimmermann in April.
“If I heard the initial ‘scream,’ it didn’t register as a scream,” Gahagan said during a personnel interview in April.
With the country in a recession and daily doses of bad economic news, could another Great Depression lie ahead?
UW-Madison economist Donald Hester says he doesn’t think we’re heading for another Great Depression, but he won’t rule it out. Hester does have hopes for an economic turnaround late next year, even though we’re currently in uncharted territory for many markets, such as housing and other commodities.
More people than ever have been calling the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line. Dr. Michael Fiore, with the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, says about 39,000 smokers contacted the service, which provides them with help in kicking the habit. That’s four times more than the Quit Line has received in any year since it was launched seven years ago.
A Madison city committee is quietly working on ways to end the violence in the streets around bars in the central city.
The Downtown Hospitality Council is a group of bar owners, business owners, and cops. It has been meeting for a few months.
The idea discussed by the group include expanding the police department’s safety classes of liquor license holders, creating an award program for establishments with clean security records, and establishing management practices prohibiting alcohol consumption by tavern staff members while they are on duty.
It is possible that China, just like Japan in East Asia, could be the main driving force for African development in the short term, according to Chinese politics expert Edward Friedman in Yale Global, a publication of the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation, of Yale University.
Quoted: Dr. Adam Rindfleisch, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Family and Integrative Medicine Clinic in Madison.
An international team of scientists is working under Antarctica’s snow-covered surface to build the world’s largest neutrino telescope.
The telescope — called “IceCube” — will occupy a cubic kilometer of Antarctica when it is completed in 2011, said University of Delaware Professor Thomas Gaisser, one of the project’s lead scientists.
“IceCube will provide new information about some of the most violent and far-away astrophysical events in the cosmos,” said Gaisser, who is managing the deployment of the telescope’s surface array of detectors, known as “Ice Top.”
Consider yourself lucky. It could be much, much colder outside — like ice age cold.
Cellular Dynamics International, the company founded by UW-Madison stem-cell pioneer James Thomson, is adding three executives.
Every area has a niche, and local leaders defined ours Tuesday: food production, innovation, biomedicine, health care and transportation.
More than four years after its inception, the 56-member Collaboration Council has drawn what it calls a road map to business development and cooperation among communities in southern Wisconsin that for decades have competed for tax base.
Jack Balkin of Yale and Ann Althouse of the University of Wisconsin debate whether marriage should be replaced with civil unions for both gay and straight couples. (Video.)
When David DeWitt gave the closing keynote address at last month’s annual Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference, it was the first time he addressed a large audience of database developers and administrators.
DeWitt spent the past 32 years lecturing in computer science classrooms.
You think ethanol from corn kernels is environmentally friendly? How about gasoline made from cornstalks? Bioforming, a new catalytic technique for converting biomass materials into fuels and chemicals, resembles the alchemy used to turn garbage into energy in Back to the Future. But it actually seems to work.
Co-inventor Randy Cortright was a scientist at the University of Wisconsin when he developed the process in 2001; he left the following year to found Virent and commercialize his findings. Virent can already produce small amounts of fuel from stalks, and Cortright says the process would also work with anything from wheat straw to sugarcane stalks to switchgrass. Grass in; gas out.
Quoted: And it will be a fitting way for Biden to leave Wilmington after traveling by train between the city and his Washington office throughout his 36-year Senate career. The trip also fits with the other events of Obama’s presidential campaign, said Charles O. Jones, political science professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher remained on the job Tuesday even though he was caught in an online sex sting weeks ago.
Kevin Kreisel, 29, is charged with attempting to cause a child to view sexual activity and attempting to expose a child to harmful material. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which accuse him of exposing himself on a Web cam to a police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl.
Quoted: Robert Bradley, emeritus professor of dairy science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. â??Why not butter?â?
President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday he values his choice for education secretary, Arne Duncan, for his dogged determination to use data to drive his decisions about how he sought to improve the Chicago Public Schools.
Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools superintendent known for taking tough steps to improve schools while maintaining respectful relations with teachers and their unions, is President-elect Barack Obamaâ??s choice as secretary of education, Democratic officials said Monday.
Quoted: Allan R. Odden, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin, heads a project that is studying how school districts recruit, assign and train their principals and teachers. He said Chicago had made considerable progress under Mr. Duncan.
As part of its efforts to make college more affordable nationwide, the Lumina Foundation for Education announced today that it would give grants to 11 states, including Wisconsin, to help them develop policies to make their higher-education systems operate more efficiently and to get more residents to earn college degrees.
Mary Helmer Schmidt Ph.D., M.D., age 88, died on Friday, Dec. 5, 2008. Dr. Schmidt worked for the University of Wisconsin Polio Lab before returning to graduate school.
Alice J. Berkan, age 83, formerly of Middleton, passed away on Sunday, Dec. 14, 2008. Alice worked as a housekeeper at University Hospital until her retirement.
Last weekâ??s column about the UW-Madison student who a decade ago won a prize on campus for an idea that would allow snowplows to avoid burying the end of peopleâ??s driveways brought a spirited response.
Richard Schifreen is the new president and chief executive officer of Platypus Technologies. The Fitchburg company is developing a series of products based on technology that uses liquid crystals to quickly detect molecular interactions. He is also a faculty member in the Masters of Science in Biotechnology program at UW-Madison.
Wisconsin Badgers running backs coach John Settle didn’t think junior P.J. Hill had any interest in dipping a toe into the NFL waters.
University of Wisconsin-Madison students celebrated Study Day Monday at Blackhawk Evangelical Free Church in Verona, where the congregation opened its doors and hearts to 1,000-plus students in the midst of final exams. They arrived with books, laptops and appetites for free meals, quiet or group study, tutoring, recreational breaks of ping-pong and basketball, Christmas-themed movies and an optional worship service.
