Q. We keep hearing about alternative fuels. What will be the most likely fuel to replace gasoline?
A. Today, ethanol is a fuel additive used to replace or decrease the need for fossil fuels in trucks, automobiles and other engines. Most of this ethanol comes from the sugars within corn kernels, but the search for other sources of sugar is under way.
Call it extreme home makeover, university edition.
For the past 10 months, the official residence of the UW-Madison chancellor has undergone a major renovation to rework the plumbing, heating and air conditioning, wiring and other interior updates.
It sounds like a child’s fantasy: a school with lessons that flow in sugary hard candies, gooey gums, light-as-air marshmallows and rubbery gummy bears.
Yet for this week, the basement of Babcock Hall becomes Willy Wonka’s factory, an annual ritual in which UW-Madison hosts professionals who learn all about candy in a course confectionately called “candy camp.”
Congress wants to blow the whistle on colleges that raise tuition sharply, while helping students pay less for textbooks and making Pell grants available year-round â?? part of a wide-ranging bill designed to address concerns about rising college costs.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin opened a new building meant to spur a major Wisconsin industry.
The facility is about 30 minutes north of Madison near Arlington. It’s a big step forward for dairy research.
Having a dairy facility on the UW agricultural research station is nothing new, but that was the problem. The facilities were built in the 1970s, leaving them out of date.
Greg Gard, a longtime Bo Ryan assistant and southwest Wisconsin native, has been named Ryan’s top assistant on the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team.
According to a UW press release issued Wednesday, Ryan promoted Gard to associate head coach, a title most recently held by Rob Jeter, now the head coach at UW-Milwaukee.
As of last week, more than 90 percent of the ads aired by Obama did not mention McCain, whereas one-third of McCain’s ads referred to Obama negatively, according to a study of political commercials by the Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin.
For many years during his busy career as a doctor, Jules Roy Lodish hardly had time to stop for death, although as an oncologist and hematologist, he was certainly aware of its presence.
Earlier in his career, he had focused on end-of-life issues and had created a nationally recognized hospice program for the terminally ill while serving as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school.
MADISON, Wis. — Renovations of the Olin House, the official residence of the University of Wisconsin chancellor, are nearing completion.
The home, originally built in 1911, was in dire need of repairs.
In all, the privately funded $2.4 million project will have taken about 10 months to complete.
More than 50 events are held at the home each year and improvements will make holding those functions easier, WISC-TV reported.
MADISON, Wis. — Nearly half the money spent recently on television advertising in the presidential race has been spent in Wisconsin and three other states in the Upper Midwest, according to a report issued Wednesday.
Spending in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin totaled nearly $26 million between June 3, when the primary season ended, and July 26, the Wisconsin Advertising Project found. Ads run in 17 other states totaled about the same amount.
The television campaign is already wearing thin on some voters.
To the Editor:
Is reading the nutrition information on a bag of potato chips â??readingâ?? What about the box score for a Yankees game or closed captions on a TV program?
People have always been able to read in different media and circumstances. Whatâ??s important is the personâ??s purpose in reading, not the medium itself.
Are you looking for specific information, following a historical narrative or savoring the language in a Jane Austen novel?
Thereâ??s very little reading that can be done in one medium (the Internet) but not in the other (traditional print). The rest is all convenience.
Itâ??s harder on the Internet to stumble on those small interesting stories in the back of a newspaper, but itâ??s easier to find specific facts. Thereâ??s no single answer to which is better, but itâ??s all good.
Mark Seidenberg
Madison, Wis., July 29, 2008
The writer is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.
As far as Charles McDowell, 58, is concerned, there arenâ??t many places where a person can get the best of a big cityâ??like world-class concerts and top-notch health careâ??and still be in a very small town: â??When we go shopping at the Farmersâ?? Market, itâ??s not just a great place to get food, itâ??s a big social outletâ??I can see 30 or 40 people I know in a few hours.â?
So when he and his wife, Candace, 57, director of the University of Wisconsinâ??s Multicultural Student Center, started planning for retirement, the decision to stay in town was an easy one. Charles loves that itâ??s an easy walk to shopping and health clubs, and that there are four golf courses within ten minutes of his house. And between the university and civic groups, meaningful volunteer opportunities are everywhere.
I currently serve as the acting special assistant to the Chancellor for community relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In my role, I am largely responsible for local government and community relations, alcohol issues and labor licensing.
In April, I had an opportunity to visit Thailand and Cambodia with representatives from six other universities and three staff members of a Washington, D.C.- based organization, The Workers Rights Consortium (WRC). The purpose of our travel was to learn first-hand about the garment industry in Southeast Asia and use that information in relation with our labor policy on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Stanley J. Peloquin, age 87, passed away Sunday, July 27, 2008. A Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin in the Departments of Horticulture and Genetics, he was a world-renowned potato geneticist and breeder.
Buford E. “Sonny” Burlingame, age 76, passed away on Tuesday, July 29, 2008. He worked at the UW Medical School as an animal caretaker.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Nearly one-third of leukemia patients do not respond to chemotherapy, but this is not typically discovered until they have already endured a week-long course of chemotherapy and waited even longer to see if the chemotherapy worked.
A new study shows that positron emission tomography, known as PET scans, may tell doctors how well a leukemia patient is responding after just one day of chemotherapy.
“This has very profound implications for patients,” Dr. Matt Vanderhoek told Reuters Health. “Instead of making the patient go through a week of chemotherapy only to find out after the fact that their chemotherapy wasn’t successful, therapy could be modified and changed on the fly.”
The University of Wisconsin researcher will present the research Thursday at the 50th annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, underway in Houston, Texas.
Brian Butch hopes to have the next phase of his basketball career settled soon.
But whether that means receiving an invite to an NBA training camp or taking his game overseas remains a mystery.
The former University of Wisconsin and Appleton West High School standout recently was in Las Vegas to participate in the 2008 NBA Summer League with the Memphis Grizzlies but is now back in Appleton, working out and pondering his future.
WASHINGTON â?? Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama have run more than 100,000 advertisements so far in their general election advertising, a tally that is well beyond anything seen at this point in a presidential campaign, according to an analysis by the Advertising Project of the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: Ken Goldstein of the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project, which tracks political ads, says Obama’s Olympic buy means he’ll reach different viewers, such as sports-loving men who might not see a political ad. “You reach people who are not watching the local news in Scranton, Pa.,” Goldstein says.
The ethical quagmire surrounding human embryonic stem cell research is getting even stickier.
It seems that some of the cell lines sanctioned for use by the current US administration may have been obtained without proper consent from the women who provided the original embryos. The ethical storm could halt some federally funded stem cell research.
But Robert Streiffer, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has now obtained the original consent documents from the NIH using the federal Freedom of Information Act.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison is putting cameras, microphones and other technology in some of its intensive care patient rooms, officials said.
Hospital spokeswoman Lisa Brunette said that cameras, microphones and secure data lines that can transmit changes in a patient’s status are in the UW Hospital’s Trauma and Life Support Center and will start being used next week.
A new study by the Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin shows that in terms of paid advertising, Mr. McCain has so far been able to nearly match Mr. Obamaâ??s volume with help from the Republican Party. But the early advertising suggests a heightened ad war this election cycle: Together, the two sides have combined to spend more than $50 million already on general-election commercials, running roughly 30 percent more spots than President Bush and Senator John Kerry had at a comparable point in 2004.
And as Mr. Obamaâ??s campaign begins to intensify its advertising drive, including a planned campaign during the Olympics in August, televisionâ??s receptivity is a welcome boost for Mr. McCain.
â??For McCain, itâ??s the cheapest and most efficient way to keep himself in the game when heâ??s up against a candidate whoâ??s essentially going to have unlimited funds,â? said Kenneth M. Goldstein, director of the Advertising Project.
Steven James Meacham, age 61, of Lone Rock, passed away in his home on Sunday, July 27, 2008. Steve did many things in his life, including janitorial work for the UW system.
Health care and biotechnology companies in south-central Wisconsin are struggling to attract and hire enough highly-skilled workers.
Grocers in the region say they need easier ways to connect with local farmers to buy and sell fresh produce.
In both cases, the area ‘s young and ambitious economic development booster, called Thrive, is hustling to help.
The parents of slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann dropped their federal civil rights lawsuit against Dane County and a former 911 dispatcher on Monday, about a month after the county’s attorneys moved to dismiss the case.
UW-Madison may be losing its reputation as a hard-partying school.
For the second-straight year, it didn’t make the list of top party schools in the annual Princeton Review rankings.
Powerhouse companies are focusing on the Madison area for acquisitions, and not just to steal away their Midwest technology and talent.
A string of local companies purchased over the past two years features buyers with big names, including Roche and Microsoft. (Numerous UW-Madison spinoff companies are cited.)
More college athletic departments are developing or publicizing online social networking policies for student athletes, experts say.
USA TODAY researched social networking policies for 27 schools in six major conferences, including the University of Iowa, which will implement a new monitoring policy Friday. Last fall, pictures emerged on Facebook of two 19-year old Hawkeye football players holding cash and liquor bottles.
The University of Florida can raise a glass to another national title â?? best party school in the country. The Gators, known for wild celebrations following national championships in football and basketball, wrested the party title away from West Virginia University and beat out the University of Mississippi and Penn State University, in the Princeton Review survey of 120,000 students released Monday.
The Princeton Review’s annual guide, The Best 368 Colleges, out Monday, comes with the traditional rankings of best party schools (University of Florida is tops this year), most beautiful campus (Princeton) and best professors (Middlebury College in Vermont). But this year’s edition adds a new wrinkle: how “green” a school is.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin Political Science Professor Barry C. Burden.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin bioethicist R. Alta Charo.
Stanford University and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine are considering stopping research on some of the 21 human stem cell lines approved to receive federal funding because of potential ethical problems about the line’s creation, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Several medical research institutions are reconsidering the use of five stem cell lines that are approved for federal-funded research by the National Institutes of Health, citing recently discovered problems with the consent forms signed by the patients at fertility clinics who donated their extra embryos to medical research. Now, ethics oversight committees at universities across the United States are questioning which lines should be permissible for research [Nature News].
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Charles Franklin.
MADISON â?? Gov. Jim Doyle interviewed the four finalists for the University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor job in May, days before Biddy Martin was selected, his calendar shows.
The interviews raise questions about whether the governor had any influence in Martinâ??s selection. A regent said Monday that was not the case, but one Republican aide still criticized Doyleâ??s involvement as inappropriate.
The process used to pick university leaders is under scrutiny after a new chancellor at another campus resigned his appointment because he is under federal investigation.
Every year, the Princeton Review releases a list of Top Schools in certain categories.
For UW administrators, unfortunately, the University has topped or been close to the top of “Top Party Schools” for several years. In 2005, it was #1.
Not in 2008.
UW-Madison didn’t even make the Top 20 list.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin-Madison police said they arrested two suspects Monday in connection with the robbery of a graduate student on campus more than two years ago.
Authorities said that a 31-year-old graduate student was walking in the 1400 block of Observatory Drive on July 6 when a man wielding a pipe struck him in the head several times, knocking him to the ground. After a short struggle, police said the attacker fled with the victim’s wallet.
MADISON, Wis. — The parents of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student who was killed in her campus-area apartment this spring have dropped their lawsuit against Dane County and a 911 dispatcher regarding the alleged mishandling of a call from the victim’s phone.
Higher education canâ??t resist a ranking: best college, best cafeteria, biggest endowment, biggest party school. It says something about whatâ??s important on campus, then, that when the Princeton Review releases its annual guide to colleges this week, it will include a new metric: a â??green rating,â? giving points for things like â??environmentally preferable food,â? power from renewable sources and energy-efficient buildings.
Quoted: Mark D. Ediger, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has found a way to make thin films of glass with the more stable structure of a glass that has been â??agedâ? for at least 10,000 years. He hopes the films will help test Dr. Wolynesâ??s theory and point to what really happens as glass approaches its ideal state, since no one expects the third law of thermodynamics to fall away.
Q. What’s behind the claims that the new particle accelerator in Europe may create black holes that could destroy the Earth? Should we be worried?
A. When the Large Hadron Collider starts running this summer near Geneva, Switzerland, some physicists have predicted that some of its high-energy proton collisions could produce microscopic black holes.
One of the greatest of all UW football players, and certainly the most mysterious, was Pat O’Dea, an Australian who near the turn of the 20th century set kicking records in Madison that reverberated across the country, and then disappeared, only to be found 17 years later living under an assumed name in northern California.
O’Dea’s story, and many others, can be found in a new book, “Wisconsin Football Vault,” which might be described as a kind of next generation coffee table book.
Quoted: Phil Pellitteri.
Chuck Falkner, a long time resident of Madison and professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, passed on Friday, July 11, 2008.
Just blocks from the University of Washington, a line of people shuffle toward a food pantry, awaiting handouts such as milk and bread. For years, the small University District pantry has offered help to the working poor and single parents in this neighborhood of campus rentals. Now rising food prices are bringing another group: Struggling college students.
Quoted: Phil Pellitteri, an insect expert for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says in the last 10 to 15 years the beetle has arrived in northern Illinois and Wisconsin as well as Iowa and Minnesota.
Anxious individuals may be hard-wired in childhood to be tense, nervous and prone to depression, new research suggests.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have discovered the part of the brain linked to anxiety in young monkeys, a finding that could help our understanding of the neural basis of temperament in human children as well.
When Scott Rankin smells stinky cheesesâ??the kind so potent that the French refer to them as “the feet of God”â??he doesn’t just use his nose.
In spite of such a rarefied interest, Rankin isn’t an evangelist of the curd, a champion of cheese. No, he’s a food scientist, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He studies not only the chemistry of cheese, but also the intricacies of production (10 gallons of milk equals 1 pound of cheese) and the evolution of craft. He experiences dairy’s golden cousin like few others.
Teenagers may start smoking because of peer pressure, but they become addicted to nicotine in part because of their genes.
Young smokers with a particular set of â??high riskâ? genes are more likely to become hooked on cigarettes for life than their peers with different DNA, according to a new study published this month in the journal Public Library of Science Genetics.
Scientists from the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied DNA samples from 2,827 long-term adult smokers â?? including about 400 smokers from Milwaukee and Madison â?? to look for changes in the genetic code linked to nicotine dependence.
The money is an unsung resource, totaling more than $700 million, and the stateâ??s two medical schools are responsible for using it wisely.
The investment income from that money is funding grants for medical education, research and public health throughout Wisconsin that total more than $100 million so far.
Now the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine & Public Health must decide how to use that income for the next five years.
Quoted: Yi-Fu Tuan, a cultural geographer at the University of Wisconsin, writes in his book â??Escapismâ? that culture itself is â??the totality of means by which I escape from my animal state of being.â?
Quoted: Charlie O. Trevor and Anthony J. Nyberg of the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden.
Quoted: Dr. Richard Brown of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Milwaukee poet Dasha Kelly stood on the stage of the dimly lighted Miramar Theatre last Wednesday night and addressed a small but supportive audience.
“This is more than just a hobby,” she said. “This feeds your soul.”
Kelly was referring to the art of spoken-word poetry, in which poems are written to be heard by an audience rather than read on a page. Her words resonated with the audience, many of whom had come to perform in Soul Fire, a weekly open mic night that Kelly hosts.
MADISON, Wis. — Charlene M. Aitkin of Chicago, Ill, was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison and 10 years probation for identity theft.
A joint investigation between the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Police Department found that between January 2006 and September 2007, Aitkin and at least three other individuals stole purses and wallets from buildings on the both campuses.
Several of the top institutions that conduct embryonic stem-cell research are considering ending research on nearly a quarter of the cell lines eligible for federal funds because of new ethical concerns raised about the origin of the lines.
A consensus to ban research on the lines would further limit, from 21 to 16, the number of human embryonic stem cell lines available to researchers supported by federal funds. A policy announced by President Bush in August 2001 restricted federal support for the research to cell lines that existed before the president’s speech.
The discussions come in response to an article published in May by an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Robert Streiffer. Mr. Streiffer found problems with the consent forms donors signed before the lines were originally derived. In one case, Mr. Streiffer wrote, patients were told their embryos would be destroyed at the end of a single experiment.
A fat that actually helps control weight gain has gotten approval from the Food and Drug Administrationâ?¦three decades after its discovery at the UW-Madison. The ruling gives the go-ahead for companies to add this nutritional component to foods. Shamane Mills reportsâ?¦(Audio.)
Study was lead by UW-Madison researcher, Janet Hyde, departments of psychology and women’s studies.
