UW Madison implemented the WiscAlerts text messaging system this fall.
The system is suppose to alert students of staff about any potential danger on or near campus.
Wednesday, officials tried it out and found a number of glitches.
Out of more than 13,000 students and staff, 25% did not receive the test message.
(MADISON) The manager of the U-W Madisonâ??s new emergency text-alert system says heâ??s satisfied with todayâ??s first full-scale test of the serviceâ?¦despite just 65-percent of the test calls reaching subscribers.
Lieutenant Michael Newton of the U-W Police Department says at 1:15pm today, 13,470 calls went out to peopleâ??s cell phones whoâ??d signed on for the WiscAlert program. Newton says an â??unusualâ? delay would be 30 minutes or longer, but nearly 2500 people never received the alert .
Newton says that’s because some companies — including U-S Cellular and Virgin Mobile — arenâ??t enabled yet to receive text alerts, but WiscAlert developers will work with them to do so. (10th item.)
Quoted: “Economic growth has become a spectator sport for many workers,” says Laura Dresser of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a UW-Madison group that tracks state economic trends. “You can see it, but you can’t take it home with you.”
Q. How many people can the Earth support?
A. It depends on the kind of lifestyle those people enjoy, says Lisa Naughton, a UW-Madison professor of geography and environmental studies.
The late 18th century English economist Thomas Malthus — one of the first to express concern about overpopulation — observed that there should be no more people in a country than can “daily enjoy a glass of wine and piece of beef for dinner.” But what if people choose tofu and beer instead?
The University of Wisconsin Credit Union will donate $215,000 to need-based scholarships at UW-Madison and match contributions from its members today through Dec. 31, university officials said Wednesday.
In addition, the UW Foundation will match total gifts from the credit union and its members. That means a donation from a credit union member of $100, for example, would yield $400 for the university.
This is part of the UW Foundation’s initiative, “Great People. Great Place.” The foundation has set aside $20 million to match private gifts designated to need-based scholarships.
This time, the police put out an incident report, albeit one flagging it as a mere “robbery.” There was even a four-sentence item about it on the Cap Times’ website.
But what happened to Jon Young, 23, in downtown Madison on Sept. 15 is far more disturbing than the MPD release or news brief conveyed.
At about 8:30 p.m., the UW-Madison engineering student was walking past James Madison Park when he passed a group of young males. One asked him for a cigarette. He said he didn’t smoke. That was all it took.
Walgreens’ pingpong balls and plastic cups are back in their regular places â?? no longer displayed together in a manner that UW-Madison officials said promoted binge drinking.
And peace has returned to the relationship between Bucky Badger and the nation’s largest drugstore chain.
Gov. Jim Doyle made a bold and reassuring statement in front of stem cell scientists from around the world last week in Madison.
Doyle declared the political fight on stem cell research over in Wisconsin.
Youngsters close to the age of three who develop wheezing with the virus have a 30-fold risk of becoming asthmatic by the time they turn six.
The older the toddlers are when they catch the virus, the greater their chance of developing the condition, which is called Rhinovirus, according to the research.
Around 5 million people in Britain, including more than 1m children, suffer from asthma.
Daniel Jackson, from the University of Wisconsin, who led the team which carried out the study, said that the Rhinovirus was a “significant predictor” that children would go on to become asthmatic.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Four University of Wisconsin chancellors will have to wait for raises that had been expected to be approved this week.
University System spokesman David Giroux says the Board of Regents will not take up the raises on Friday because of “turmoil and uncertainty in our nation’s economy.”
Quoted: “She had done a lot of interesting and surprising work” as an undergrad, says Sean Carroll, a University of Wisconsin molecular biologist and Wittkopp’s PhD advisor.
Quoted: “There are states that are pretty close in the electoral college where a small vote sure could matter,” said University of Wisconsin political scientist Barry Burden, an expert on third party candidates and their influence.
The armed forces and cigarettes have a long history, going back to World War II. That’s when Ancel Keys, a scientist who spent his career studying the relationship between diet and disease, helped the Cig2 military develop an adequate meal suitable for combat. Named K-rations, after Keys, the meal considered sound at the time contained bacon, canned cheese and dextrose tablets. For relaxation, the military threw in gum and cigarettes, triggering massive nicotine addiction in young GIs.
The post-war tragedy unfolded over decades as smoking by WWII veterans led to a nine-fold increase in lung cancer deaths by 1980.
Cigarettes are no longer freebies in field K-rations, but the nicotine addiction rate in the military is still sky high, according to a news release put out by the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.
Quoted: Tom Purnell, assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: “It’s a very large magnetic field strength for a galaxy by any standard,” confirmed astronomer and galactic magnetism researcher Ellen Zweibel of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Stephen Lucas, a professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies political rhetoric.
Quoted: “There’s a lot of gun lovers here — about 40 percent of the respondents in our poll said they own a gun,” said UW Madison Prof. Charles Franklin.
Tonight’s Vice Presidential debate may see both candidates taking a cautious approach. UW Madison political scientist Charles Franklin says Delaware Senator Joe Biden is unlikely to take the gloves off, despite his vast experience edge over Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. “I think, from the Democrats’ point of view, they would rather see Palin get herself in trouble, rather than have Biden seeming to attack her” says Franklin.
Quoted: Pete Shult, of the the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene, oversees infectious disease testing at Wisconsin’s state laboratory.
Walgreens’ pingpong balls and plastic cups are back in their regular places â?? no longer displayed together in a manner that UW-Madison officials said promoted binge drinking.
And peace has returned to the relationship between Bucky Badger and the nation’s largest drugstore chain.
A cold is the most common illness on the planet, and having a medical degree hardly makes you immune to catching one. Being around people who are sick is part of the job.
Many swear by nasal irrigation as a remedy for allergies, sinusitis and colds.
ABCNews.com asked four holistically minded doctors what they do when they feel under the weather. Their prevention and treatment advice might help you dodge or short-circuit the next bug that comes your way.
Quoted: David Rakel, M.D., director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Integrative Medicine in Madison, Wis.
Quoted: â??But this review certainly does seem to contradict the notion that cognitive or other short-term therapies are better than any others,â? said Bruce E. Wampold, chairman of the department of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin. â??When itâ??s done well, psychodynamic therapy appears to be just as effective as any other for some patients, and this strikes me as a turning pointâ? for such intensive therapy.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison reported that two students were victims of separate incidents of apparent fourth-degree sexual assault.
According to a UW news release, the first incident took place in the 120 block of East Gorham Street at 10 a.m. on Monday.
In that incident, a student reported a strange man approaching her from behind, grabbing her on the outside of her clothing and making a sexual gesture while hugging her around the chest area. When the victim reacted, the man ran off.
People might think the members of Students for Obama have an easy job — backing a Democrat in a president election in which the Republicans are blamed for an unpopular war and tanking economy. But Bryon Eagan nonetheless perceives the stakes as high.
â??If he didnâ??t win and I didnâ??t give my all, I would be kicking myself down the line,â? says Eagon, 20, from Neenah, Wisconsin.
Eagon, a a junior majoring in political science and communication arts, is taking the semester off to serve as state coordinator of for Students for Barack Obama. The Daily Page recentlty sat him down for a few questions.
The media often take political polls out of context, Charles Franklin, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said during a speech Tuesday night in Woodburn Hall.
Franklin, the co-developer of Pollster.com, spoke on â??The Shape of the Campaign: Composition and Dynamics in the 2008 Election,â? as part of a three-part series sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study, where scholars talk about the election.
Two University of Wisconsin-Madison grads have launched a new website they say will boost peopleâ??s grades. But others say itâ??ll diminish the learning process.
UW-alumni Christopher Klundt and Dave Sargent began devising TheClassConnection.com three years ago, after becoming dissatisfied with the Universityâ??s online study aids. Klundt calls their creation the worldâ??s â??first and bestâ? academic network.
â??We offer students a diverse collection of tools that allow them to create academic content, to share that with other people who have similar academic interestsâ?¦and thatâ??s built around a network, that we connect students from your class, your campus, campuses around the world, anybody whoâ??s connected to you academically so that everyone can collaborate together and work together,â? says Klundt. (7th item.)
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison Athletic Department is changing the way it lets students into Camp Randall Stadium.
The procedure has been under review since the Badger’s last home contest — against Marshall — when too many students complained it took too long to get into the stadium, WISC-TV reported.
Starting Saturday, the UW is reverting back to the system used last year.
I was in Madison, Wisconsin, last week at the 2008 â??World Stem Cell Summit,â? a gathering of hundreds of scientists, pharmaceutical company reps, patient advocates and policy folks united in their evidence-based faith that stem cells are going to revolutionize biology and medicine.
Iâ??ve been to a fair number of stem cell meetings over the years, but this one was remarkable in several respects. For one, it was held in Madison, where Jamie Thomson and his colleagues first discovered and isolated human embryonic stem cells ten years ago this fall. So it was something of a decadal celebration and homecoming for the Wisconsin team. Go badgers!
Name: Margaret J. Nellis, Ph.D.
City: Monona now – born in Neptune, N.J., and I’ve had 30 addresses since then.
Family: Partner/Husband Fares Kerkeni, native of Tunisia, and stepson, Sam, 21.
Age: 57 Occupation: As an educator at UW-Madison, I am privileged that my job is also a place where I get to invest in my community. I promote student health and learning by connecting students with opportunities to learn from and contribute to the community, especially along the Park Street corridor and the “heart” of South Madison, the gateway to our campus.
Quoted: Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, said the ad was “designed to confuse voters.”
George W. Bush rode to the White House pledging high standards for all students. Heâ??ll leave Washington with the nationâ??s public education system focused on teaching basic skills to disadvantaged student populations, with the United States lagging in international comparisons of educational attainment, and with his signature education law plagued by so many problems and mired in so much controversy that it has put at serious risk two decades of work to improve public schooling by making educators accountable for their studentsâ?? success.
Douglas N. Harris is a professor of education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Madison, Wis. – Stratatech Corp. has announced the successful completion of a clinical trial of its StrataGraft human skin substitute.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Michael J. Schurr was the trial’s principal clinical investigator.
Madison – The next two weeks will help define the character of a football team, players and coaches included.
They will signal the direction of a football program, one that blossomed in the 1990s but has forgotten how to win a championship.
The geek elite was out in full-costumed force this weekend for the second annual Geek.Kon at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which simultaneously drew amused smiles and bemused headshakes from casual passers-by and n00bs like me. The campus setting was a bit labyrinthine, with patrons wandering from room to room excitedly, but it was fitting. What better place for a total nerd fest than the decrepit windowless sweat sock that is the Humanities building and the equally dank Vilas Hall on Park Street?
A federal district Judge ruled in favor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison last week, saying it had the right to both grant and deny funding to religious student organizations, the Daily Cardinal reports. The suit was originally brought by the Roman Catholic Foundation, a campus student group that was refused funding for some activities for the past two school years.
Quoted: “The system could have been up and operating a year ago,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin.
Quoted: Morris Davis, assistant professor of real estate and urban land economics at UW-Madison, said any government solution should address the ongoing concern of falling home prices.
Some 16 of Wisconsinâ??s private colleges have signed agreements with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Natural Resources allowing the schools to perform their own compliance audits for seven major environmental laws, officials announced Thursday.
Congress whiffs on a proposed financial bail out plan, and Wall Street responds with a plummeting market.
A panel of UW-Madison business experts believe the developments should not lead to panic.
The panel of experts used terms such as “historic,” for what’s going on in our economy at the moment. And during more than an hour forum for alumni and students at the UW School of Business, “recession,” not “depression,” was as far as any of the experts would go, as they looked down our economic road.
Recently they met to try and explain the current state of our economy and more importantly where we go from here.
It was a busy day on Wall Street.
The House rejected a $700 billion bailout plan, stocks fell about 770 points and everyone is left wondering what’s next?
A panel of UW experts came together to try and explain what all this talk of financial crisis means to you.
One expert says, ” There were serious discussions starting back in 2002 about whether or not this was a bubble.”
Madison, Wis. – Carolyn “Biddy” Martin is an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but that wasn’t the only thing that convinced her to pursue the chancellor’s job following John Wiley’s decision to step down.
Interviewed at the World Stem Cell Summit, which was held last week in Madison, Martin said the UW’s leading edge work in life sciences, including stem cell research, also interested her in the job.
â??The cutting-edge research in the life sciences here in general piqued my interest in the position, but of course the stem research is really right at the leading edge of what is an enormously impressive life sciences infrastructure,â? said Martin, who came to the UW-Madison after serving as provost at Cornell University. â??It definitely played a role.â?
Madison, Wis. – Relentless innovation is considered by many business gurus to be America’s only remaining edge in a global marketplace marked by labor arbitrage and the competitive threats posed by exploding economies in China and elsewhere.
While some progress is being made on the innovation front, too many U.S. companies still are underperforming when it comes to driving the type of sustained innovation needed to meet this competitive threat, according to Tom Koulopoulos, an internationally recognized management consultant and author of the forthcoming book The Innovation Zone.
MADISON, Wis. — Madison residents have another tool to help fight crime — texting on their cellular phones.
Officials said the public can now use a cell phone to text anonymous tips to Crime Stoppers.
Police said the change is because texting seems to be where the future of communication is headed. They say more technology will help stop crime.
Alcohol was “a significant contributing factor” in the Aug. 27 crash on Midvale Boulevard that killed three UW-Madison students, Dane County Coroner John Stanley said.
The driver, Milwaukee native Richard H. Putze, 22, had a blood alcohol level of 0.144 percent, nearly twice the 0.08 legal limit for drivers in Wisconsin. Stanley said Putze’s speed was also “extremely high,” but the actual speed has not yet been determined.
The people involved in the failed search for a chancellor at UW-Parkside could have done a better job of sharing information about the top candidate, University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly said Friday.
Reilly commissioned a review of the search process used to choose chancellors at all System schools after Robert Felner, who was hired as chancellor of UW-Parkside last spring, resigned amid a federal criminal investigation in Kentucky.
Next semester, Jon Roll, 43, will teach a new class in bacteriology that might just become one of the more popular courses on the UW-Madison campus: “Fermentation and Zymurgy,” aka a beer brewing class.
He and microbiology student Brandy Day are developing the course after MillerCoors donated $100,000 worth of brewing equipment plus brewer training, which they took over the summer in Milwaukee.
t their gathering, Geek.Kon.08, at UW-Madison, they said they were fans of many things, from anime (Japanese animation) and role playing to computer games and a craze called Dance Dance Revolution.
In April, UW-Madison’s Jewish student community will be able to gather at the new, four-story, $14 million, 30,000-square-foot Barbara Hochberg Center for Jewish Student Life.
UW-Madison’s latest survey of student computing practices shows about three-quarters of students routinely text-message, an increase of 10 percent from the 2007 survey.
Elizabeth “Betty” J. Blied, age 85, died on Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2008. Betty had worked most of her career at the UW-Madison in various administrative positions.
Arnold Miller of Tucson, formerly of Madison, passed away peacefully on Aug. 22, 2008, due to complications from a routine medical procedure. A memorial service in Arnold’s honor will be held at the FRENCH HOUSE, 633 N. Frances Street, Madison, WI 53706 on Friday, Oct. 3, 2008, at 4 p.m.
RoseMary L. Niesen, age 83, of Dane/ Windsor died on Friday, Sept. 26, 2008. Her employment history included the State of Wisconsin Hygiene Lab and St. Benedict’s Center.
The consultant hired to review the University of Wisconsinâ??s screening process after a failed chancellor search at UW-Parkside recommended changes in checking finalistsâ?? references, including possibly visiting their home campuses.
Wisconsin cannot afford to skimp on higher education without hurting its economy and future.
That’s the warning state leaders need to hear loud and clear in the wake of another troubling report on University of Wisconsin System funding.
Wisconsin lagged behind every other state except one in providing funding increases for higher education over the last five years, according to a report last week by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, a nonpartisan state budget watchdog.
Geophysicists in the US are proposing a new magnetic field generated in the Earthâ??s core, the existence of which could help us understand why our planetâ??s magnetic moment has flipped several times in the past.
By measuring ancient field patterns frozen into the volcanic rocks of West Eifel in Germany and Tahiti in French Polynesia, Kenneth Hoffman of California Polytechnic University and Brad Singer of the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison have recorded the first data to suggest that the Earthâ??s dipolar magnetic field is accompanied by a second magnetic field with a distinct origin in the Earthâ??s core (Science 321 1800).
Quoted: Ken Goldstein, director of the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project, which follows ad spending, said he doubted these evening news commercials would have any influence on news coverage or be confusing to viewers.
The new effort to help treat malaria is just one facet of a major undertaking to find new antibiotics. Last year Metcalf and his colleagues at the U. of I.’s Institute for Genomic Biology, chemistry professor Wilfred van der Donk, Zhao, chemistry professor Neil Kelleher, and biochemistry professor Satish Nair, received a $7.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate just this. Jo Handelsman of the University of Wisconsin rounds out the research team.
Quoted: John Coleman, chairman of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has researched the 90 percent assertion and told me there are a few considerations the CQ data do not include.
SHREWSBURYâ?? It takes a few seconds to get a glimpse of the precious cargo loaded into the laboratory cooler that Dr. Gary Stein opens, mostly because of the frosty fog that billows out.
Then the air clears, and boxes of samples come into view: human embryonic stem cells.
Itâ??s the initial inventory for the new UMass Stem Cell Bank, a repository that organizers hope will come to hold more than 100 types of stem cells. Launched with a $7.7 million state grant, the bank is an early sign of Gov. Deval L. Patrickâ??s push to invest $1 billion in the life sciences in Massachusetts over 10 years to promote the stateâ??s economy. Starting Wednesday, the bank will begin accepting embryonic stem cell â??deposits,â? the first step in eventually making cells available to researchers.
This past spring, Sarah Muehlbauer began sewing coaster-sized circles of wax paper together in her textile design course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was experimenting with the materialâ??s transparency and sometime thereafter the project took over.
