The family of slain UW Madison student Brittany Zimmermann launched a reward fund Wednesday with an emotional appeal for information that will bring her killer to justice.
“We have to believe that someone has additional information that has not been shared with the police,” said Kim Heeg, Zimmermann’s aunt, as she tearfully announced the fund, now at $5,000, for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin said the Cedarburg visit shows McCain’s campaign still believes it can win Wisconsin.
Quoted: Anders Carlson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a team of researchers say the problem is potentially a lot worse. They say the oceans could rise by as much as 1.3 meters (4.3 feet) by the end of the century, double the IPCC’s estimate.
Are tropical cyclones getting stronger? Three years ago, the massively destructive Hurricane Katrina suggested as much, and two studies pegged global warming as a possible culprit (Science, 16 September 2005, p. 1807). Now another study bolsters the case, finding that the most intense storms have indeed been getting stronger over the past 30 years as the waters that fuel them get warmer.
The nation’s largest freshman class in history is moving into college dorms, hanging posters, meeting roommates and learning fight songs. In Indiana University’s Assembly Hall last Friday, a remarkably large chorus hailing from private high schools in the Northeast was singing the school’s ode to the “Cream and Crimson” in a pronounced New York accent.
Quoted: Anders Carlson, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison.
She attended high school in Middleton, but Y Mae Sussman’s musical tastes span the globe. Most recently, she’s been making sonic journeys to exotic pop landscapes like Sweden and Denmark.
For Sussman, the names of Scandinavian artists â?? Jens Lekman, the Figurines and Peter, Bjorn & John â?? come as easy as John Mayer and Coldplay.
Sussman will be broadcasting an hour of Scandinavian folk, rock and electronic tracks every Friday at 3 p.m. this fall on WSUM, 91.7 FM, the student-run radio station of UW-Madison. At 11 a.m. each Friday, Sussman will be on the air with her roommate, Mary Beth, spinning Bollywood hits.
Quoted: UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin said the Cedarburg visit shows McCain’s campaign still believes it can win Wisconsin.
Gov. Jim Doyle touted Wisconsinâ??s continued commitment to education, research and knowledge today at the opening of the $134 million Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research East Tower on the UW-Madison campus.
Doyle congratulated university officials for their persistent pursuit of the project, even through times when it was unclear whether ratification would be possible.
â??Even when times are not so good and even when the state budget picture doesnâ??t look great, it is still crucial that we move forward on major investments in the state that will be here for decades and decades and decades to come,â? Doyle said.
Madison police officials said a Madison man died after being stabbed during a fight outside a well known downtown bar.
The victim has been identified as Juan Bernal, 22.  Bernal attended LaFollette High School in 2005 and his friends told 27 News he was the father a three year old boy.
Authorities said the stabbing took place outside The Plaza on North Henry Street just before midnight Wednesday.  “Bar patrons were able to trail some of the involved parties in this,” Captain Mary Schauf said.  “They were able to detain one individual who had critical information for us.”
Thursday morning, the Madison Police Department reported the sixth murder in Madison in 2008. Juan J. Bernal, 22, of Madison was stabbed outside the Plaza Tavern following an altercation with another bar patron Wednesday evening.
This homicide comes only two days into the new school year and follows a tragic end to the 2007-â??08 academic year.
In February 2007, the Madison City Council approved the Downtown Safety Initiative, citing the need to decrease crime before and after bar time. The Initiative received $100,000 in funding to increase police overtime on Friday and Saturday nights in addition to the installation of new security cameras in the downtown area.
Somewhere between the election of Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and the appointment of Noble Wray as police chief, the annual Mifflin Street Block Party began to lose its spark. Revelry was replaced by restriction as the arrest tally ballooned from seven in 2003 to more than 400 last May.
In the wake of this frivolous increase in official presence, the Majestic Theatre has proposed sponsoring the event in order to address the cityâ??s concerns about security as well as student concerns about arrests.
The titles of senior class president, vice president, treasurer and secretary may soon become a thing of the past, Associated Students of Madison leaders said Thursday.
Senior class officers currently do not officially report to ASM, nor do they have many responsibilities beyond finding commencement speakers and photographers.
The family of Brittany Zimmermann announced Thursday they have established a $5,000 reward fund to help further the investigation of the University of Wisconsin studentâ??s homicide.
â??We are here today to remind all of you to please remember her as much as we still are,â? said Kim Heeg, Zimmermannâ??s aunt. â??Itâ??s been five months, and it feels like we are at a bit of a dead end.â?
A popular and well-respected political science professor will be returning to the University of Wisconsin after leaving in 2007, UW officials said Thursday.
Jon Pevehouse, who took a position at the University of Chicago for triple his UW salary, will begin teaching at UW again in the fall of 2009.
MADISON (WKOW) — A $5,000 reward has been established for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible for UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann’s April murder.
Madison police chief Noble Wray said authorities were particularly interested in anyone who may have seen Zimmermann, 21,  during the mid-morning hours of April 2 as Zimmermann made her way from campus to her West Doty Street apartment.  Zimmermann was found fatally wounded by her fiance in the early afternoon.
Dignitaries gather for the grand opening of the East Tower of the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research.
The seven-floor East Tower is the first of three interdisciplinary research towers that will grow to also house cardiovascular, neuroscience and regenerative medicine research in Madison.
Bob Golden is Dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health. “And when they are finished, the work done at in the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research will touch on every aspect of human disease.”
Letâ??s take a minute, step back and take a good look at the amazing university we belong to. Not only do we have phenomenal professors leading cutting-edge research, top-notch academic facilities in all areas of campus and across-the-board excellent arts programs, we also have an amazingly vibrant campus extending beyond the reaches of the academic world.
As UW-Madison students, we literally have hundreds of opportunities to become involved in our campus. Last year alone, there were 750 student organizations registered through the Student Organization Office. Nearly all areas of interest are represented in one way or another in the multiple student-run organizations. Only at UW-Madison are we able to attend meetings about the importance of divestment in Sudan, greener energy solutions, volunteer opportunities in the Madison public schools and martial arts techniquesâ??all on the same night.
The Offices of the Dean of Students and University religious workers will hold a campus memorial service Monday for three UW-Madison students killed in a car crash last week.
The service will commemorate the lives of UW-Madison chemistry lecture volunteers Lindsey Plank and Richard Putze, as well as elite pianist Dan Myers, who died in a car crash Aug. 27 on Midvale Boulevard, days before the start of the fall semester.
UW-Madisonâ??s Office of the Registrar issued a new Wiscard to incoming freshmen and business school students this semester.
In addition to acting as a debit card, the new â??one cardâ? gives students access to some classrooms and computer labs across campus. Freshmen received the first round of Wiscards this summer.
According to Wiscard administrator Jim Wysocky, the university plans to increase key-card access throughout campus, and Grainger Hall, the School of Pharmacy and campus residence halls already have security card technology in place.
The UW-Madison Athletic Department, Student Athlete Advisory Committee, and Rethink Wisconsin are working to boost recycling during Badger football games this fall.
According to Vince Sweeney, senior associate athletic director for external relations, Rethink Wisconsin formed as a student organization last fall in response to studentsâ?? completion of an environmental studies class with professor Jack Kloppenburg.
MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research officially opened its first building Thursday in a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Gov. Jim Doyle.
The state-of-the-art facility will bring hundreds of scientists together under one roof — all working to find a cure for cancer.
MADISON, Wis. — Authorities are hoping a new reward fund will help investigators solve the killing of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student from Marshfield.
At a news conference Thursday morning, Madison police announced the reward fund through the Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Foundation for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the death of Brittany Zimmermann.
If the separation anxiety isn’t enough, teens headed to university have to face a scary fact: They’ve got no choice in a first-year college roommate. But that doesn’t have to spell dorm doom, according to a study from University of Michigan researchers.
Quoted: James Kossin, Space Science and Engineering:
“By creating a better, more consistent historical data set, we’ve been able to weed out quality issues that introduce a lot of uncertainty. Then, by looking only at the strongest tropical cyclones, where the relationship between storms and climate is most pronounced, we are able to observe the increasing trends in storm intensity that both the theory and models say should be there.”
Colleges beware: One more tuition hike and your name might just end up on a new federal Wall of Shame.
The College Opportunity and Affordability Act, signed Aug. 14 by President Bush, will require the Department of Education to post online the colleges and universities with the highest percentage increases in tuition and fees in a three-year period. It also calls for the department to list the 5% of colleges with the highest overall sticker prices.
Several colleges and universities in Texas, Ohio, Maryland and New York are freezing 2008-2009 tuitions at last year’s levels in an effort to make college more affordable for the nation’s middle class.
Colleges experiencing larger-than-expected freshman enrollments are scrambling to relieve overcrowding in dorms, classrooms, cafeterias and elsewhere.
Q. Do IQ tests really measure how smart you are?
A. No, they do not, according to Mitchell J. Nathan, professor of learning sciences in the UW-Madison departments of educational psychology and curriculum and instruction.
Like any test, IQ tests present certain test items and exclude many others. One’s IQ test score simply measures how one did on those particular items relative to other people.
Just a whiff of an infant can quickly lower a father’s testosterone levels and inhibit the likelihood its father will try any monkey business â?? in marmosets, at least.
The study done by the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at UW-Madison focused on the small monkeys native to South America and the hormone levels of marmoset fathers.
About 20 UW-Madison students will be cruising around campus on a free Huffy this fall â?? the only catch is they’ll also be peddling a product.
Free Bikes â?? a business started by Matt Lerner, a graduate of the UW-Madison School of Business â?? offers students a semester bike rental, lock and storage, and in exchange they ride around with an advertisement affixed to the bike’s basket and between the frame.
John E. “Jack” Mitchell passed away on Aug. 30, 2008, at the HospiceCare Center in Madison. In 1956 Jack joined the UW-Madison faculty as an assistant professor of plant pathology. He was eventually promoted to associate and then full professor and served as chairman of the Department from 1975-1980.
Phil “Curly” Hoffman, age 90, passed away surrounded by his family at HospiceCare in Fitchburg. He worked for the University of Wisconsin as an animal caretaker.
Quoted: Wind speeds measured for the largest storms from 2000 to 2006 were faster still, says James P. Kossin, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison Linguist Anja Wanner.
Quoted: Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin political scientist.
Often it is the phrasing of a statement and not its truth that gets the publicâ??s attention.
Take the recent furor surrounding former Chancellor John Wileyâ??s savage indictment of the state Legislature and the business lobby group, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. In a massive column, Wiley slammed both, drawing comparisons that made their members appear to be little better than mobsters.
Quoted: Luis Piñero, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant vice provost for workforce equity and diversity.
After a six-year break from teaching, former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin is revisiting a passion for teaching as an adjunct associate professor at the University of Wisconsinâ??s La Follette School of Public Affairs.
Soglin is instructing a public management course intended for students working on masterâ??s degrees in public administration. The course also occasionally enrolls other graduate students from schools such as the School of Education or the School of Business.
After the first two days of classes, lines are wrapping through the aisles of every bookstore on campus as University of Wisconsin students shell out lots of cash to pay for their books.
But while most students complain about the steep prices of textbooks, individuals are turning to other websites and methods to get the needed material at a cheaper price.
The Badger Herald was wrong to publish the guest column written by Rep. Steve Nass (â??University governance must permit conservative valuesâ?) in its Sept. 1 registration issue.
Printing this article was a mistake that the editors of this paper need not make. Nassâ?? article not only fails to conform to the basic standards of journalism this paper seeks to uphold, but provides no basis for any of its accusations beyond mere speculative leaps of logic and cheap shots at public figures.
Quoted: Kate Gordon of UW-Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy.
Men whose serum calcium levels fall within the high end of the normal range are three times more likely to develop fatal prostate cancer, a new report shows.
The results suggest the possibility of a new biomarker for aggressive prostate cancer, the researchers said. But one expert cautioned against reading too much into the study, given the relatively small number of individuals involved.
Gary Schwartz, of Wake Forest University Health Sciences in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Halcyon Skinner, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and NHANES Epidemiologic Follow-up Study to determine the risk of prostate cancer among men with relatively high, but still normal, blood serum calcium readings.
http://www.dailycardinal.com/article/20293
Wisconsin Democratic officials elected UW-Madison junior Analiese Eicher as national chair of the College Democrats of America Womenâ??s Caucus during the CDA National Convention last week in Denver.
Eicher said educating women about their option to be vaccinated against HPV and challenging students around the country to do their part and vote are major priorities.
An anticipated 10 to 15 UW-Madison students will participate in the â??Show and Blowâ? program Saturday at the Badger football game because of alcohol-related offenses at the first game against Akron, university officials said Wednesday.
Pre-game Breathalyzer tests will be given to the students as part of UW-Madisonâ??s Offices of the Dean of Studentsâ?? program implemented last fall. Underage students must blow .00 percent to enter, and of-age students must blow below .08.
Eight years ago, Texas Tech University started a financial-literacy program to help its students master the basics of budgeting, saving, and not buying what they can’t afford. Now, as colleges grapple with rising costs and an economic downturn, the university has found itself at the forefront of a growing effort to sharpen students’ financial know-how.
“We have a responsibility as a university to help students in this area,” says Dorothy Bagwell Durband, who directs the program. Financial literacy affects more than students’ wallets, she says. It also has an impact on retention, productivity, even wellness.
Textbook sales are headed downward at many university presses, and the negative trend has accelerated in the last couple of months. That’s the word from press directors anxious about the decline but unsure what’s causing it or what to do to stop it.
“I am hearing more and more complaints from people about their textbook sales, which for university presses means sales of specialized books that come in for upper-division courses,” says Peter J. Givler, executive director of the Association of American University Presses. “I’m hearing it from big presses and small presses.”
MADISON, Wis. — Madison police are offering a correction following the investigation of a University of Wisconsin student hit by a car in downtown Madison last week.
Police have now said that the pedestrian was crossing Lake Street last Thursday when a car ran a red light. Initial reports said police ticketed the woman but tickets were dropped, WISC-TV reported.
Madison, Wis. – The presence Google and Microsoft has focused more attention on Madison’s information technology status, and the former chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Computer Sciences Department believes Madison is likely to see more technology giants set up stakes here.
Guri Sohi, who is preparing for an academic-year sabbatical in Spain, said more computer professors might be looking for the challenge of driving research for prominent technology firms, but such companies may have to catch them at the right time.
StubHub has struck multiyear deals with the University of Wisconsin and the University of Washington, its first college deals in more than a year.
Washington recently finished a two-year deal with RazorGator, while Wisconsin has operated a lightly used, face-value-only resale window for athletic program donors in conjunction with Paciolan. That offering will still exist, but StubHub will gain significant exposure throughout campus sports facilities â?? including Camp Randall Stadium as well as team-affiliated media â?? as a Proud Sponsor of Wisconsin athletics.
Because of these environmental factors, most storms fall far short of their maximum possible intensity. But Dr. Elsner, along with Thomas H. Jagger, a postdoctoral researcher at Florida State, and James P. Kossin, a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reasoned that warmer waters increased the possible intensity and that storms that develop in ideal conditions might have become stronger.
With a $1 million donation, Ron Skoronski launched Forward Lymphoma to fund research at UW-Madison’s Carbone Cancer Center.
Arnold Miller of Tucson, Ariz., formerly of Madison, passed away peacefully on Friday, Aug. 22, 2008, due to complications from a routine medical procedure. Arnold was a professor of French in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 29 years.
After months of delays due to the termination of the original contractor, the demolition of the University of Wisconsinâ??s Ogg Hall should see completion by mid-November.
The demolition was originally scheduled for completion by the end of March. But after a series of mishaps including a fire and a piece of the building falling on a workerâ??s car, Dore and Associates of Bay City, Mich., was terminated by the stateâ??s Department of Administration in mid-March.
A large hole and construction fencing will block a portion of Library Mall until October, as the University of Wisconsin works to complete a utility project for the new East Campus Mall.
UW physical plant director John Harrod said Library Mall will be back to normal in time for Halloween festivities on State Street, and pedestrians will be able to navigate their way through a detour on the north side of Library Mall.
A record spike in University of Wisconsin merchandise sales will double the number of grants for low-income students for the 2008-09 school year.
According to Cindy Van Matre, UW trademark licensing director, Bucky apparel raked in $2.8 million in royalties by the end of June 2008. Half of the royalties will be given to the UW athletics department, and the other half will be designated to the Bucky Grants fund.
On the night of May 12, University of Wisconsin sophomore Nate Anderson and junior Mike Miesen were both studying for their upcoming finals â?? one was at the library and the other in the study of the Sigma Phi Epsilon house, 237 Langdon St.
At about 11:30 p.m., Miesen, the fraternityâ??s chapter president, heard screaming and yelling. When he turned to look at the back of the house, he saw a fire
Outgoing University of Wisconsin Chancellor John Wiley overturned two decisions made by the student finance committee this summer, granting contract status to a student organization and funding another for the upcoming academic year.
In December 2006, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents unanimously voted to include domestic partner benefits as part of their pay plan for 2007-08 budget year.
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle similarly introduced domestic partner benefits in the last two biennial budgets and plans to include it in the 2009-11 budget.
After experiencing several systemic issues last semester, the University of Wisconsin student government is awaiting approval of a new constitution in the October elections they hope will build a more sound and receptive organization by next spring.
According to Jeff Wright, Associated Students of Madison Constitutional Committee chair, 10 appointees of the constitutional committee have worked vigorously this summer to create a document he hopes will generate direct accountability and a more effective structure.
