MADISON, Wis. — An April snowstorm brought down a 100-year-old tree.
People don’t usually think of a tree as a landmark, but people WISC-TV spoke with said the tree was a sort of a historical record for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A European larch tree, the centerpiece of the university’s Allen Centennial Gardens, fell on Wednesday. The tree was bought from Door County back in 1899 when it was only 2 feet tall.
It was named after Emmett S, Goff, a professor of horticulture.
Quoted: UW-Madison Medical Professor Betsy Trowbridge.
On an overcast, chilly day in late March, scraggly rows of experimental crops line the test plots here at Iowa State University’s research farm.
Corn is king in Iowa, both as a food grain and now as a focus of efforts to rev up the biofuel industry. But these plants bear less-familiar names: switch grass, miscanthus, and kenaf.
The brown and black stalks are not much to look at, having weathered Iowa’s winter snows. But Iowa State researchers see these crops as seeds of change in alternative fuels. By summer, the grasses will be lush, tall, and green.
(MADISON) Most students are now back from spring break. While many took in beach parties and dance clubs, some chose to do some volunteer work down by the border.
Last week, ten UW-Madison students drove 30 hours to San Juan, Texas, which has a large immigrant community. They worked with LUPE, a group affiliated with the United Farmworkers Union, to visit with farm laborers and fix up their homes.
UW senior Adrian Coon says the trip was also a way to reconnect with his Mexican heritage. He says he now understands what they had to go through and adds it makes him even more grateful of what he has and how lucky he is to be one who succeeded.
Alternative Breaks sponsored the event. The organization has coordinated other community service trips across the country, including New Orleans and South Dakotaâ??s Cheyenne River Indian reservation.
MADISON– The recent resignation of University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor Martha Saunders should send up a red flag with the UW-Board of Regents.
Saunders came to Whitewater at a critical time when the campus was struggling with several issues including unethical conduct on the part of top administrators.
She arrived on campus in August of 2005 to replace Jack Miller, who left to become president of Central Connecticut State University.
 UW-Madison senior Johnathon Godlewski is frank about why he wants UW-Madison to sever ties with athletics apparel manufacturing giant Adidas.”I would just like to wear a Bucky Badger shirt without feeling bad about it,” Godlewski said.
Responding to a rising tide of similar sentiment, UW- Madison Chancellor John Wiley is sending an envoy to El Salvador this week to look into allegations that Adidas isn’t doing enough to address workers’ rights abuses at an apparel factory it formerly contracted with there.
After President Bush vetoed legislation that would have eased restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research last year, supporters of the bill from both parties vowed to try again. That was even before the Democrats gained majorities in both houses of Congress.
Quoted: Terry Devitt, a spokesman at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Is Fair Trade Coffee fair? Not always, says Jeremy Weber, a University of Wisconsin researcher who spent 10 months studying the prospects and challenges of small coffee-growers in the hills of northeastern Peru.
A key prosecution witness at a trial that sent Thompson to prison for four months said he’s glad the woman has been acquitted and freed.
University of Wisconsin-Madison associate dean Frank Kooistra said Thompson is not a crook.
Kooistra served on a committee with Thompson that evaluated proposals from companies seeking a contract to book travel for state employees.
Kooistra and other committee members testified at Thompson’s trial last summer on charges that she steered the contract worth up to $750,000 to Adelman Travel Group because it was politically favored by Doyle’s administration. (Second item.)
Quoted: Donald Downs, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of political science, law and journalism, said that there’s clearly a First Amendment issue involved in banning such political calls that’s going to have much more weight to it than on bans of commercial solicitation over the telephone.
While the second candidate for Vice President for Research didn’t see UK’s top-20 goal as unrealistic, he said it might not be reached as soon as the university would like.
James Tracy, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said UK’s research goals for the Top 20 Business Plan’s 2020 deadline are a “steep climb.”
“I don’t know if you’ll get there,” Tracy said. “It might be 2020 or 2030.”
The Top 20 Business Plan isn’t unreasonable, he said, but it will be a challenge to implement.
Quoted: Susan Fischer, director of student financial services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Pollens are in the air, and a Wisconsin specialist warns that this allergy season may be one of the longest in recent memory.
Doctor Mark Moss of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health says the season began about two to three weeks ahead of schedule in the state this year.
MADISON, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin is ready to sign a contract giving a Missouri-based company the exclusive marketing rights to Badgers’ sports through 2019 in exchange for guaranteed payments of $76 million.
The contract, to be considered by the Board of Regents this week, calls for Learfield Communications, Inc. to continue managing television and radio shows for Badgers’ coaches and play-by-play radio broadcasts for football, men’s and women’s basketball and hockey.
Quoted: Maureen Durkin, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Vince Sweeney, senior associate athletic director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be the guest speaker for the 18th annual Janesville Sports Hall of Fame induction dinner.
The event, sponsored by The Janesville Gazette, is Saturday, May 19, at the Rotary Gardens. There will be a 5:30 p.m. reception, followed by 6:30 dinner and the program.
Quoted: Linda Greene, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and a founder of the Black Women in Sport Foundation.
Quoted: Dr. Allan Luskin of the University of Wisconsin, who is working with the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America’s new patient campaign.
Undergraduate research is exactly what UK needs, the second candidate to visit campus for the vice president of research position said Friday.
“Research changes the way we think about the world,” said Jim Tracy. “Undergraduates should be as involved as possible.”
Tracy, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is one of four candidates for the new vice president of research position. He will visit campus today and participate in a public forum from 4 to 5 p.m. on the 18th floor of the Patterson Office Tower.
Quoted: Prof. Jerry Kulcinski of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Ed Jesse, a specialist in dairy economics with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin is ready to give Learfield Communications the marketing rights to Badgers sports through 2019 in exchange for payments totaling $76 million.
The proposal calls for the company to manage television and radio shows for Badgers coaches and play-by-play radio broadcasts for many games.
Learfield has had the contract since 2002 and proposed the 10-year extension last year.
Quoted: Psychologist Joanne Cantor, a professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin and author of “Teddy’s TV Troubles,” a children’s book about dealing with frightening media.
Quoted: Walter Hopkins, a scientist in the Division of Urology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Quoted: Jonathan Patz, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison, whose licensing agreement with Adidas is worth $1.2-million annually, says it will not cut its ties to the athletics-apparel company despite a recent recommendation to do so by its own licensing-policy committee.
Instead, the institution plans to meet with Adidas executives to discuss reports of workers’-rights abuses at one of Adidas’s former subcontractors. The university will also send an envoy this week to El Salvador, where the now-closed Hermosa Manufacturing plant is located, to investigate those claims.
“I am prepared to pursue my very grave concern about what has happened with the Hermosa facility directly to the senior management of Adidas,” Chancellor John D. Wiley said in a written statement.
The Ho-Am Foundation has announced the five recipients of its annual prize, often referred to as the Korean equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
One of the winners is Eom Chang-beom, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Jonathan Patz, an associate professor of environmental studies and population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
‘The air is now completely filled with cowboys, fertilizers and inanity,” Groucho Marx growled in 1959. “The country is full of jerks, and they’re now getting exactly what they deserve.” Two years later, Newton Minnow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, agreed that television was “a vast wasteland.” Network executives, he claimed, were bottom-line businessmen who reached for the largest – and lowest – common denominator.
Gov. Jim Doyle continued to push his bioenergy policy Thursday as he launched initiatives to stimulate growth in the state’s renewable fuels industry while addressing the problems of global warming.
In front of a crowd that filled the UW-Madison Engineering Center atrium, the governor signed orders to create the Office of Energy Independence and the Task Force on Global Warming. Doyle also said the state will participate in the Midwest Renewable Energy Tracking System in cooperation with Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota and the Canadian province of Manitoba.
A student in a public university dormitory room had a â??reasonable expectation of privacyâ? for his personal computer and its hard drive, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday. The decision also found that despite that right to privacy, an administrator in the case under review had the right to conduct a remote search of the computer â?? without a warrant â?? because of the circumstances involved.
The decision â?? by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit â?? is among the highest level court rulings to date on a set of legal questions pitting privacy vs. security that are increasingly present in academe. While experts cautioned that the decision involved a specific set of facts, several also said it provided guidance for students on their privacy rights and for administrators at public colleges and universities on setting computer policies that give them the flexibility they feel they need to prevent security breaches.
The ruling dates back to an incident in 1999, and the actions of administrators at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, when they were notified by Qualcomm Corporation, a San Diego company that produces wireless computing devices, that someone on Madisonâ??s network was hacking into the companyâ??s network.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has officially dedicated its new Cereal Crops Research Unit. The facility, which will be operated by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, will serve as a testing venue for scientists to improve barley, oats and other cereal crops.
After adopting a new, “holistic” approach to reviewing applications, the University of California at Los Angeles has reversed a decline in the share of black students in the freshman class it has admitted for the fall, university officials said on Thursday. The new admissions policy appears to have increased black and Hispanic students’ chances of being accepted, while making it more likely that white and Asian-American applicants would be turned away.
Quoted: Gemma Narisma at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, US.
Quoted: John Williams, who studies plant dynamics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
MADISON, Wis. — A new research facility on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus will improve inspections of barley and oats for foods and beverages that are shipped across the nation.
Researchers and politicians helped dedicate the $11 million USDA-ARS Cereal Crops Research Unit at 502 Walnut Street on Thursday morning.
They said that barley and oat inspections have been made in Madison for 75 years and that the new building will only continue that tradition.
University of Wisconsin regents may extend a program that gives discounted tuition to children and grandchildren of alumni living in other states.
UW System President Kevin Reilly has recommended continuing the Return to Wisconsin program for three more years. The program has an enrollment of 49 students this year.
Quoted: Jack Williams, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author on the paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Gov. Jim Doyle continued to push his bioenergy policy Thursday as he launched initiatives to stimulate growth in the state’s renewable fuels industry while addressing the problems of global warming.
In front of a crowd that filled the UW-Madison Engineering Center atrium, the governor signed orders to create the Office of Energy Independence and the Task Force on Global Warming. Doyle also said the state will participate in the Midwest Renewable Energy Tracking System in cooperation with Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota and the Canadian province of Manitoba.
The list is always too long.
In the last week alone, one University of Minnesota student died after falling from the third floor of a parking ramp, three days after another Minnesota student drowned. One Northeastern University student died Tuesday after falling down the stairs of a bar,
Construction won’t interrupt business on State Street this summer. City officials agreed Thursday to delay the project for a year.
With the parents of potentially thousands of Wisconsin eighth-graders poised to sign up for a guarantee of higher education, state officials concede they still don’t have details on what they are promising or what it will cost taxpayers.
At issue are critics’ concerns that the “Wisconsin Covenant” will cost so much it won’t pass the Legislature, or that it will be a hollow promise that doesn’t deliver enough financial aid to ensure students can reach their college dreams.
Gov. Jim Doyle proposed more tha
In a stunning reversal, a federal court of appeals struck down a state worker’s fraud conviction that Wisconsin Republicans used in efforts to paint Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration as corrupt.
In the mid-1990s, James A. Thomson of the University of Wisconsin helped launch the field of regenerative medicine by isolating embryonic stem cells and perfecting methods for self-perpetuating them in a laboratory.
Thomson’s work helped fuel the current push to study these cells, understand how they function and see if they can help cure spinal cord injuries, juvenile diabetes and other diseases. While Thomson deserves historic credit for his contributions, his university should not be allowed to own a patent on these cells, limiting how they can be used, by whom and at what cost.
Ed Jesse, a dairy marketing specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that the spike in prices is related to higher demand for ethanol. It’s driven corn prices up to nearly $4 a bushel.
Formerly of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Duke lured McCahill’s new boss from Badger country five months ago, offering to support her area of research.
“When you have a big school like UW-Madison â?¦ everything has to be done on this really huge scale, and that kind of makes it difficult to experiment on a small scale,” Jelinkova said. “That kind of narrows your options.”
Students and officials are surprised at UW-Eau Claire’s prominence in the Record Industry Association of America’s spate of lawsuit threats.
‘It’s weird that we would have so many,’ junior Brianna Schieve said.
Possible causes include university policy, students’ view of file sharing and the RIAA’s own methods.
Madison – The legal case involving University of Wisconsin defensive back Jack Ikegwuonu doesn’t appear as if it will be resolved in the near future.
A hearing has been scheduled for June 22 in Sycamore, Ill., according to the district attorney’s office. Ikegwuonu’s attorney filed a motion in February asking that statements Ikegwuonu made to DeKalb, Ill., police be suppressed on the grounds he was not read his Miranda rights.
The issue is broadly called “internet neutrality.” It deals with the concern that internet service providers might someday control what their customers can do online by favoring their partners and slowing down their competitors.
Drew Petersen, legislative director at TDS in Madison, says no way.
“We want our customers to have the unique ability to choose and select where they want to go,” he said.
Hideko Mills, associate director of Campus Network Services at UW’s IT office, is concerned about the uncertain future. “A worst case scenario would be if an ISP had the kind of control that would block services or applications,” she said.
MADISON — Harnessing the power of stem cells in previously unexplored ways, Stemina Biomarker Discovery, Inc. is one of the newest startups to spring out of Madisonâ??s thriving biotechnology sector.
Elizabeth Donley, the companyâ??s chief executive officer, presented Steminaâ??s scientific goals and business model at the recent Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference in San Francisco.
Donley explained that when human embryonic stem cells are grown in culture, they can be used for disease diagnosis, screening drugs for side effects and reducing development costs of pharmaceuticals.
Madison, Wis. – The legal wheels still have some spinning to do, but suddenly the prospect of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation not owning three key stem cell patents, or deriving licensing income from them, seems very real.
The decision by United States Patent and Trademark Office examiners to reject WARF’s patent claims might still be overturned or modified, but for the first time since University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher James Thomson developed a method for isolating and defining human embryonic stem cells, some in Wisconsin are wondering whether the university actually has done something groundbreaking.
Tamiflu-resistant strains of flu have been found in patients who haven’t taken the drug, suggesting the mutated virus is capable of spreading between humans, according to an international team of researchers that includes a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist.
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle on Tuesday defended his state’s commitment to embryonic stem cell research after the U.S. patent office last week moved to revoke three
basic stem cell patents held by a Wisconsin foundation.
“As long as I am governor, the state will aggressively invest in, support and nurture this research,” Gov. Doyle said
in a statement.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the licensing arm of the University of Wisconsin, has vowed to appeal the preliminary rejection of three of its key stem cell patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, even if the appeal process drags out in the courts for years.
This appeal should prevail, not for the sake of Wisconsin’s biotech industry and UW’s pioneering stem cell research efforts but on the abundant facts. This should occur soon to spare everyone involved the time, energy and expense of a protracted legal battle.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin law professor Bert Kritzer.
Menlo Park biotech company Geron Corp. (GERN) said Tuesday that it opposes a decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to reject a set of important embryonic stem-cell patents, to which it holds the commercial development rights.A company spokesman said the company was unlikely to be harmed by the ruling, however.
Through a patent licence with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Geron holds the valuable commercial rights to develop treatments based on neural, cardio and insulin-producing cells developed from embryonic stem cells isolated by University of Wisconsin researcher James Thomson.
Most of what we know about the habits of “helicopter parents” comes from anecdotes about extreme parenting that have made their way into the popular lexicon. Now, though, what’s believed to be the first scholarly research on parents who hover too closely over offspring of any age finds that helicopter parenting appears to cross racial and ethnic lines, as well as socioeconomic status.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is among more than 100 universities across the country enacting policies to eliminate or greatly reduce their use of eggs from caged hens, according to the Humane Society of the United States.
Tamiflu-resistant strains of flu have been found in patients who haven’t taken the drug, suggesting the mutated virus is capable of spreading between humans, according to an international team of researchers that includes a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist.
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Experts say the study, which showed anti-viral resistance in the milder influenza B viruses, means that Tamiflu-resistant strains of other flu viruses, such as the more fatal avian flu, could spread between humans, too.
CHICAGO: A less common strain of flu has shown hints of resistance to two flu drugs among patients in a small study in Japan, a country known for prescribing the drugs more frequently than anywhere else in the world.
Signs of resistance to the drugs Tamiflu and Relenza turned up among a few patients who had type B influenza, normally a milder flu causing smaller outbreaks than the more common type A.
