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Author: jplucas

Madison Snaps — Ogg Hall (The Daily Page)

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Isthmus

Today’s image is titled Ogg Hall awaiting demolition and was photographed by Nadine Goff.

Ogg Hall, a UW-Madison residence hall originally opened in 1965, is currently being prepped for destruction as the latest step in the makeover of the southeast element of the Campus Master Plan. This shot focuses on scaffolding climbing the north face of one of the dorm’s towers, as seen from West Johnson Street. It is one of nearly a score in a photo set taken by Goff, capturing the incremental death of the onetime downtown skyline standout.

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Reality, Fiction Blur In Mildred Fish-Harnack’s Story

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WISC-TV 3

Mildred Fish-Harnack’s alma mater, UW-Madison, talked of a memorial in 1947. Wisconsin Sen. Alexander Wiley initiated an investigation but reported that the U.S. government had “no official” record of Mildred Fish-Harnack’s resistance efforts.

“And then suddenly it stops and there is something, a note to the effect of ‘pro-Communist sympathies can not be ruled out’ or something like that, and you’ve got Joe McCarthy riding very high,” Heitzer said.

UW-Madison declined to honor her and quietly shelved the project.

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Big Ten contract questioned

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Wisconsin Radio Network

Most cable networks across Wisconsin are not airing the Big Ten Network this season, leaving a number of Badger football fans in the dark. State Representative Dave Travis (D-Westport) wants to know why that’s happening.

The lawmaker is calling for an audit of the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics at the UW-Madison and its contract with the Big Ten Network. Travis wants to know what kind of deal the University received and why it’s stopping some UW games from showing up on the public airwaves.

A first: Stem cell lines made from embryos of primates

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USA Today

Scientists in Oregon have successfully cloned monkey embryos and used them to make two embryonic stem cell lines. It is the first time this has been accomplished in primates and brings the possibility of human stem cell lines one step closer to reality.

This is the heart of the controversy over stem cell research, which researchers hope will provide cures for diabetes, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries, among others. Embryonic stem cells are important because they can become almost any cell in the body. But the destruction of embryos to harvest those cells is vehemently opposed by right-to-life groups.

Attracting business talent to area is hard

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Wisconsin State Journal

The cultural shift from Wall Street to Willy Street can make it difficult to recruit top-notch management talent for Madison companies, Shawn Guse, TomoTherapy’s vice president and general counsel told a gathering of entrepreneurs and investors on Tuesday.

UW-Madison is a lure for scientific talent, but “recruiting commercial talent into Madison is a challenge,” said David Snyder, Nimblegen’s vice president and chief financial officer.

Letter: Questionable timing on such spending

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

As a University of Wisconsin-Madison student who resided at Ogg Hall during its farewell year, I think the construction of a $28 million state-of-the-art residence seems unjustified in a time when the university struggles to fund desperately needed diversity initiatives (“Raucous UW dorm goes upscale,” Nov. 12).

The intimate rooms and dated decor of “Odd Ogg” would have been small inconveniences to endure for attending a university that achieves a diverse student body by allocating ample financial aid to under-represented groups. At the present tuition rate, the $28 million spent on Ogg could have provided complete four-year scholarships to about 1,000 students who might otherwise be financially unable to attend UW-Madison.

Alvarez asks lawmakers for sales tax exemption for donations (AP)

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La Crosse Tribune

MADISON, Wis. â?? Wisconsin athletics director Barry Alvarez asked lawmakers Wednesday to shield his department from a potentially huge tax liability.

The Department of Revenue is threatening to start collecting sales tax on payments made by people trying to qualify for Badgers season tickets, Alvarez said. His department would owe $400,000 in the first year and up to $2 million if the tax is collected retroactively to 2001.

Proposed segregated fee changes draw criticism (UW-EC Spectator)

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All UW System chancellors received copies Monday of a proposed segregated fees policy that could alter what student organizations can and cannot do with state funds.

A committee of System administrators and students met Nov. 7 to discuss minor changes to the System’s current policies regarding the use of student segregated fees and to condense the two current policies into one document, said UW-Eau Claire Student Senate President Ray French, a member of the committee.

A group of UW-Madison students attended the meeting in opposition to the consolidated policy. But French said the committee was only voting in favor of sending the policy to schools for comment, and he doesn’t think the proposal restricts the student voic

Langdon Street Attacker Found Guilty of Battery, Attempted Sex Assault

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WKOW-TV 27

Sometimes tearfully, but often assertive, a former UW student described her vicious beating at the hands of a stranger in the stairwell of a Langdon Street building.

The testimony came during the trial of 34-year-old Paul Aud. Late Wednesday afternoon, Dane County Judge John Markson convicted Aud of substantial battery and attempted sex assault. Aud followed the victim into her apartment building in August 2006, attacked her and tried to rape her.

Chimps offer glimpse of humans’ past (UPI)

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United Press International

MADISON, Wis., Nov. 12 (UPI) — Chimpanzees living in a harsh African environment and using stick tools offer scientists new insight into early human behavior, U.S. researchers said.

Researchers found evidence of tool use among chimps living in western Tanzania’s Ugalla Forest Reserve to harvest tubers, roots and bulbs, the University of Wisconsin-Madison said in a news release Monday. Their study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Order your Thanksgiving dinner

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Wisconsin State Journal

Another option is to order through a caterer. On the UW-Madison campus, Wisconsin Union Catering,www.union.wisc.edu/thanksgiving, 265-8691, offers side dishes and turkey a la carte, such as a whole roast 10- to 12-pound turkey for $59.95 or bourbon roast turkey for $6.99 per pound, a dinner package for a family of 6 with a 10- to 12-pound turkey, $99, and individual dinners for $8.95.

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Climate science: Sceptical about bias

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BBC News Online

Reid Bryson, a US meteorologist and climatologist whose team at the University of Wisconsin has developed its own method of looking at historical climate change.

He said he had had problems getting research published on the extent to which he believes volcanoes drive climate change. But he had not kept his rejection letters, so it was impossible to investigate specifically.

DISH Network Allows Big Ten Network For Assisted Living Home

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WKOW-TV 27

After a 27 News Report, DISH Network changed it’s policy about an assisted living home and unblocked the Big 10 Network.

Residents at Creekwood Assisted Living in Waunakee will get to see the Badger game against the Gophers.

As 27 News reported Friday November 9th, the center wasn’t getting the Big 10 Network, despite subscribing to DISH Network.

Wisconsin Woman Helped Lead Nazi Resistance

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WISC-TV 3

MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin woman’s amazing story stretched beyond America’s borders to Nazi Germany, where she became a major force in the underground resistance to the Nazis and personally caught the attention of Adolph Hitler.

In the 1920s, her courageous journey into Nazi Germany started with a mix-up in Madison. Graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1925, it’s easy to pick her out of the yearbook. Mildred Fish is the only one with her picture in profile, and with her beauty and poise, those who knew her said Mildred stood out.

Staying to attend graduate school, she shared an office on the third floor of Bascom Hall and taught modern American literature.

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A Computer Scientist Battles Botnets

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Chronicle of Higher Education

Computer-security analysts have long since learned to hate â??botnetsâ?: clusters of computers, infected with worms or Trojan-horse programs, that are taken over by outside users. After all, botnets can do plenty of awful things: They trawl for passwords and credit-card numbers, fire off spam, and propagate automatically.

But now Paul Barford, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says he may soon be able to stop botnets in their tracks. Mr. Barfordâ??s company, Nemean Networks, is developing software that can identify 99.9 percent of â??malicious signaturesâ? associated with botnet attacks, according to Roland Piquepaille of ZDNet.

A Computer Scientist Battles Botnets

Posted on
Chronicle of Higher Education

Computer-security analysts have long since learned to hate â??botnetsâ?: clusters of computers, infected with worms or Trojan-horse programs, that are taken over by outside users. After all, botnets can do plenty of awful things: They trawl for passwords and credit-card numbers, fire off spam, and propagate automatically.

But now Paul Barford, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says he may soon be able to stop botnets in their tracks.

Fires may raise concern about student housing

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Wisconsin State Journal

Two recent fires in student housing should give renters and their parents pause as they start looking for a place to live for the next school year.

The advice from experts: Do your homework.

“If you look around the perimeter of the (UW-Madison) campus, there are numerous examples of really good buildings that are in compliance, ” UW-Madison Dean of Students Lori Berquam said Monday. “But there are still those pockets of places that could still potentially be problematic. I tell students and their parents to be very thoughtful before they sign a lease and to know what they are getting into. “

Blog features memories of Ogg Hall

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Wisconsin State Journal

Old Ogg Hall at UW-Madison, home to thousands of students for more than 40 years, is coming down.

But memories are surfacing, in part because of a Wisconsin Alumni Association blog that invites former residents to tell their stories. Dozens of alumni have posted on the site. Topics include: “The night someone dropped a boulder down the trash chute… ” and “The Fire. “

Registration open for ‘virtual college fair’

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USA Today

It won’t come to this, but none of the 10,000-plus students expected at today’s big college fair will know if Cristan Trahey and her staff show up in their pajamas.

“Some of us will be in our office,” says Trahey, acting admissions director at American University, a private college in Washington, D.C. “Some of us will be at home on our laptops.”

The two-day event, billed as a first-of-its-kind international “virtual college fair,” is from 3-11 p.m. ET today and Wednesday at www.college weeklive.com. It’s expected to give students worldwide a chance to talk to admissions officers at about 100 colleges, see streaming video of experts and hear panel discussions on the college admissions process â?? all without rising from their armchairs.

Study pinpoints factors for early sex

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USA Today

There’s a “recipe” that raises the odds of a teen starting sex early, and the more risky ingredients in a child’s life â?? for example, not feeling close to parents, low self-esteem and lots of TV â?? the more likely he is to be sexually active by age 15, suggests a study released over the weekend.

“It isn’t any one thing. It’s cumulative, and the more risks there are, the greater the chances that they’ll begin sex early,” says Janet Shibley Hyde, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She and co-author Myeshia Price reported on their two-year study of 273 children at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality meeting in Indianapolis.

UW in bowl mix

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Madison – With the University of Wisconsin’s regular-season football finale less than a week away, this much is known about UW’s bowl prospects:

A victory over Big Ten rival Minnesota on Saturday would keep UW in the running for a spot in the Outback Bowl on Jan. 1 in Tampa, Fla.

New firms look to get launched

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Dave Gruenwald and his team have developed a one-of-a-kind boat. Now all they need is the cash to float it.

Luke Schrab looks over a Briggs & Stratton 26-horsepower riding lawn mower engine that had been put into a Vent-T Boats prototype. Allenton-based Ven-T Boats Inc. is one of 21 firms pitching for investments at a Madison symposium this week.

The Vent-T Boats prototype employs an air-cooled engine coupled with a propulsion system that uses a surface-breaking propeller.

It features a propeller tucked so high, the boat can operate in 12 inches of water. Its air-cooled Briggs & Stratton engine means there’s no water pump to overheat or winterizing to do.

Raucous UW dorm goes upscale

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

When Mark Werth moved into the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Ogg Hall dormitory as a freshman in 1965, everything was new: the beds, the closets, the fluorescent lighting and the rotary phone in each room.
A large sculpture has been installed in the common area in front of the new Ogg Hall dormitory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

University of Wisconsin-Madison student Kelly Eickert (left) talks with her roommate, Jessica Zahn, in their new Ogg Hall dorm room. The rooms in the new dormitory complex are wider and deeper than the rooms in the old, 13-story Ogg Hall, which is undergoing demolition.

Werth helped build Ogg’s raucous reputation from scratch, pulling fire alarms and lobbing water balloons.

What’s in a name?

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CNN.com

LONDON, England (CNN) — It is a common way for business schools to secure their future: In exchange for a substantial bequest from a former student or other benefactor the school is re-named in their honor.

Big checks were written — but the Wisconsin School’s donors did not want a name change.

However, in a unique twist to this practice, the Wisconsin School of Business has just been given $85 million by a group of alumni on one condition — it keeps its name exactly the same.

Helping Displaced UW Students After Fires

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WKOW-TV 27

Early Monday morning, a fire erupted inside a fraternity house on UW-Whitewater’s campus. All 10 students inside got out safely because the house dog started barking.

All are staying with friends.

On Saturday, a fire at an apartment complex on Carroll Street in Madison sent UW-Madison students onto the streets.

As Ogg Hall readies to fall at UW-Madison, memories surface (AP)

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La Crosse Tribune

MADISON, Wis. â?? Old Ogg Hall at University of Wisconsin-Madison, home to thousands of students for more than 40 years, is coming down.

But memories are surfacing, in part because of a Wisconsin Alumni Association blog that invites former residents to tell their stories. Dozens of alumni have posted on the site. Topics include: â??The night someone dropped a boulder down the trash chute…â?? and â??The Fire.â??
.

Demolitions crews started ripping down the old hall last week. A new version of Ogg opened this fall across the street, with larger rooms, shared bathrooms and air conditioning.

Vet aims for cow comfort

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Wisconsin State Journal

When veterinarian Ken Nordlund visits a dairy farm, he checks cows for more than disease.

He measures how much room they have when they eat. He scrutinizes their milking schedules for rest time. He watches them lie down and stand up in their stalls. He tracks how often they move from pen to pen.

Conklin: UW surgeon overcomes challenges to save lives

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Wisconsin State Journal

Dr. Niloo Edwards anticipated challenging conditions when he agreed to participate with other Wisconsin doctors on a cardiac surgery mission to the Dominican Republic.

But in a real-life plot twist worthy of an “ER” season finale, Edwards ended up doing open-heart surgery and valve replacement with broken equipment, rain pouring through ceilings in patient rooms and power outages during the recent Hurricane Noel in Santiago.

Edwards, UW Hospital’s head of cardiothoracic surgery, describes the trip in detail in a blog at www.uwhealth.org. Joining him from UW Hospital were perfusionist Jake Young, technician Jody Baird and nurse Annette Macias-Hoag.

Report: USA sees first increase in foreign students since 9/11

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USA Today

The number of foreign students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities has increased for the first time in five years, a sign that efforts to recover from a post-9/11 dip are paying off, a report says.

The report also found that the number of U.S. students studying abroad is continuing its upward trend, increasing 8.5% in the 2005-06 academic year to a record 223,534

Number of Foreign Students Bounces Back to Near-Record High

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Chronicle of Higher Education

The number of international students enrolled in American colleges and universities rose by 3.2 percent last fall â?? the first significant increase since 2001. Thanks to two consecutive years of large gains in first-time students, foreign-enrollment figures have nearly returned to their peak level, seen in 2002.

Those results appear in the latest edition of “Open Doors,” an annual report on international academic mobility published by the Institute of International Education and supported by the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

Badgers fans suffer during TV tug of war

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Appleton Post-Crescent

A dispute between a newly launched sports network and major cable providers has kept one-third of University of Wisconsin football games off cable TV.

The impasse will take an even bigger toll on Badgers basketball fans.

Fewer than half of the Wisconsin men’s basketball games will air on cable TV this basketball season, which kicks off Sunday.

Of the 30 regular season games, at least 18 will be shown exclusively on the Big Ten Network â?? but Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications, the two major cable companies in Wisconsin, do not carry the channel.

Baggot: Dayne’s gains got us here

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Wisconsin State Journal

When Ron Dayne steps out on the field Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium, I hope he stops for a moment and takes a good look around at the fruits of his labors.

All those new luxury boxes and club seats, all that state-of-the-art technology and, most important, all those red-clad fannies looking out at him are due in great part to his blood, sweat and pain.

Letter: Wants Public Television to carry Big Ten sports events (Barron News Shield)

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Representative Mary Hubler has sent a letter to the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board (ECB) urging that the board study the possibility of televising all Big Ten sports events on Wisconsin Public Television.

Hubler noted that Wisconsin Public Television (WPT) has offered Badger sporting events on delayed broadcast for 35 years. Now, however, the University of Wisconsin, the Big Ten and the giant cable sports network ESPN have signed contracts that reserve these sports events for subscribers of certain cable or satellite providers

Graphics chips rev up research results

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BBC News Online

Professor Susan Hagness from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has turned to graphics cards to quickly analyse breast scans to spot cancer in its early stages.

Dr Hagness said official figures suggest x-rays missed 20% of the cancers that were present when a woman underwent screening.

“There’s clearly impetus to develop complementary technologies that can provide better and more robust tools to look for cancer,” she said.

Whitewater man charged with stalking Fairest of the Fair (AP)

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La Crosse Tribune

JANESVILLE, Wis. â?? A 58-year-old Whitewater man has been charged with stalking the 20-year-old East Troy woman who represents the stateâ??s county fairs.

Joseph G. Schraeder reportedly asked Sheri Nelson to be his â??first ladyâ? in June at the Walworth County Diary Breakfast and told her was planning their wedding for a year later, according to a criminal complaint.

Nelson is a former Walworth County Fairest of the Fair and the 2007 Wisconsin Fairest of the Fair. The University of Wisconsin-Madison student helps promote Wisconsinâ??s county fairs.

Madison Apartment Fire

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NBC-15

A fire early Saturday morning has caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to a Madison apartment building, which was home to a number of UW students.

Witnesses reported flames shooting from the building in the 500 block of North Carroll Street around five o’clock Saturday morning. No one was injured, but about 30 people have been displaced.

A fire captain on the scene says most, if not all, of the residents go to the U-W.

Elderly Fans Shutout Of Big Ten Network

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WKOW-TV 27

Local Charter Cable customers have been shutout of the Big Ten Network and its Badger game broadcasts, as Network and Charter officials haggle over money and the network’s placement in the cable tier.

But 27 News has discovered, a group of long-time Badger fans, with a satellite television subscription, still could not watch, a big game on Big Ten. These elderly Badger faithful are also worried about getting shutout of future games.

These fans live at Waunakee’s Creekwood Assisted Living Center.

Accountability System Launched

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Inside Higher Education

A new way for students and their families to compare colleges â?? and for legislators and others to evaluate them â?? was unveiled Sunday with the start of a campaign to get institutions to sign up to use it.

â??College Portrait,â? as the effort is called, is a template for information that public, four-year institutions will provide online in an easily comparable way. Some of the information â?? statistics on the student body, figures on college costs â?? is fairly commonly found (if not always in comparable ways) on collegesâ?? Web sites today

More Foreign Students — Everywhere

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Inside Higher Education

The total number of international students enrolled in the United States climbed significantly in the last academic year for the first time since 2001-2. As for American students studying abroad, the number increased by 8.5 percent to 223,534 in 2005-6, with short-term programs and study in non-traditional destinations outside Europe particularly hot growth areas, according to the Institute of International Educationâ??s annual Open Doors report, released today.

Brain Storm (Madison Magazine)

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Madison Magazine

The building is locked. Most of the windows are dark. But in a small room on the first floor of the Waisman Center, a group of four is gathered around Richard Davidson. It’s 8:30 p.m., and most people are at home letting their own minds unwind, trying to slough off a day’s work. But Davidson has shown up in the night to have his brain scanned, to have his mind read.
Actually, he’s here to read his own mind.

The room is lined with computer screens, and there is a small window that looks into the next room to the giant white MRI machine, which pulls mountains of data out of people’s brains. The four scientists are here to run the programs and sort through that data, mining it for nuggets of scientific gold.

“So,what are we doing?” Davidson asks crisply. He’s dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, as if this were no big deal to be here, peering into his own brain.

Madison’s Peace Prize winners

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Isthmus

For Ken Skog, it came as a pleasant surprise.

“It was kind of a fun thing,” says Skog, an economist with the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, on hearing last month that he’d won â?? sort of â?? the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. “Folks at the lab made a big to-do about it.”

Skog, 58, is one of hundreds of scientists who’ve played a part in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the award with former Vice President Al Gore. He was a lead author of a chapter in an IPCC report, released in 2006, which dealt with carbon storage in harvested wood products.

Several UW-Madison scientists played similar roles on the IPCC. But their achievement has gone locally unrecognized and unheralded. “There was no pick-up,” says UW research spokesperson Terry Devitt, referring to a press release on this topic.