MADISON, Wis. (AP) — University of Wisconsin System officials Thursday approved raising tuition for out-of-state, graduate and professional school students by hundreds of dollars at more than a half-dozen campuses as they grapple with a Republican-imposed freeze on in-state undergraduate tuition.
Author: jplucas
On Campus, Trump Fans Say They Need ‘Safe Spaces’
New York Times
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Amanda Delekta, a sophomore at the University of Michigan and political director of the College Republicans, was ecstatic when her candidate, Donald J. Trump, won the presidential election.
UW System Regents OK Salary Increase Request To Lawmakers
Wisconsin Public Radio
University of Wisconsin System leaders have approved asking legislators for an additional $78 million to bulk up employee raises over the next two years.
Man accused of killing Beau Solomon out of jail
WISC-TV 3
The homeless Italian man accused of pushing a University of Wisconsin student into the Tiber River during his study-abroad trip to Rome is out on bail.
UW-L professor pay lower than peer institutions, private sector
La Crosse Tribune
Professors at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse don’t earn what their peers at other institutions or many professionals in the private sector do, according to a recent study.
Sweeping Health Measure, Backed by Obama, Passes Senate
New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Senate approved complex health care legislation on Wednesday that would increase funding for disease research, address weaknesses in the nation’s mental health systems and vastly alter the regulatory system for drugs and medical devices. The vote sealed a final legislative victory for President Obama, who strongly supported the bill against objections from many liberal Democrats and consumer groups.
UW-Milwaukee students protest controversial speaker scheduled to come to campus
WISN-TV, Milwaukee
Hundreds of students and faculty members are calling on the university to denounce a controversial speaker that is coming to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee next week.
Law School Victim Of A Cyber Attack, Applicant Data Compromised
Above the Law
The stress of applying to law school can be intense. The LSAT, the essay, the hassle of it all. Now there’s an additional stress factor — well, if you applied to the University of Wisconsin Law School in 2005-06.
Letters for Thursday, Dec. 8
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
State legislators should fully support the moderate and reasonable budget request submitted by the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents.
These wood floors could generate energy from your steps
Business Insider
Every step you take has the ability to generate energy — if you’re walking on the right kind of floor.
Foot power
Isthmus
Associate Professor Xudong Wang holds a prototype of the researchers’ energy harvesting technology, which uses wood pulp and harnesses nano fibers. The technology could be incorporated into flooring and convert footsteps on the flooring into usable electricity.
Lyall: We must support state’s flagship university
Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune
The University of Wisconsin-Madison recently slid two spots in the national rankings for total research funding. The shift is a troubling indicator for our state’s economic future. While this prestigious flagship university is certainly capable of a rebound, these are signs of things to come and no one should be surprised.
Our Views: Website lets agenda get in way of facts
Janesville Gazette
The conservative website, professorwatchlist.org, claims its list comes from credible sources, but the website’s entry portraying a UW-Whitewater professor as a left-wing radical smacks of fake news.
University Forced Students to Wear Hijabs for Event?
snopes.com
It is true that an “Islam Appreciation Week” was held at the University of Wisconsin, but no students were forced to wear hijabs.
Editorial: Time to invest in University of Wisconsin again
WISC-TV 3
Earlier this year a prominent Republican business executive said to me that even as a conservative he recognized it was time to once again invest in the University of Wisconsin.
Madison roommates receive surprise gifts from Ellen
WKOW-TV 27
Christmas came early for a group of six roommates and it came courtesy of Ellen DeGeneres.
Vintage ‘Glass Menagerie’ Performance Will Return to Air
New York Times
Noted: She kept after archivists at the University of Wisconsin until they checked an all-but-forgotten closet and found what she was looking for, a videotape of Edward Albee’s play “The American Dream,” recorded in 1963, but never broadcast. She had seen it on a listing of the places in which the producer David Susskind’s programs were housed.
Girl Tweeting From Aleppo Draws Enormous Sympathy, but Doubts Follow
New York Times
Quoted: Kathleen Bartzen Culver, the director for the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said some news outlets, including morning network news shows in the United States, seemed to have “suspended skepticism.”
Public Forum: State Lawmakers need to support UW budget request
Lake Country Now
State lawmakers should fully support the moderate and reasonable budget request submitted by the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents.
Were 300,000 Wisconsin voters turned away from the polls in the 2016 presidential election?
PolitiFact Wisconsin
Noted: Political scientist Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told us: “There is no evidence that 300,000 people were turned away in the November 2016 election. We will never know the precise impact of the voter ID law on turnout. It is almost certainly not true that all 300,000 or so people who are registered but lack ID tried to vote this year.”
New medical research bill aims to help early-career scientists
Science
Among the nearly 1000 pages of the 21st Century Cures Act—approved by the House of Representatives last Wednesday and being considered in the Senate today—is a section focused on what the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should do to encourage earlier independence and improve opportunities for junior biomedical researchers.
Wisconsin regents set to increase out-of-state tuition, OK pay raises
AP
University of Wisconsin System officials are poised to raise out-of-state and graduate tuition rates again to help offset Gov. Scott Walker’s resident undergraduate tuition freeze and give their employees raises for the next two years.
UW-Madison Professors Pass Resolution Supporting Undocumented Students
Wisconsin Public Radio
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Faculty Senate is calling for the support of undocumented students on campus. During their monthly meeting Monday, about 140 faculty members passed a resolution that calls for the federal government to continue and strengthen Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an immigration policy that protects certain undocumented students who came to the United States as children from deportation.
UW System Regents To Consider Employee Raises
Wisconsin Public Radio
University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents will consider two years of 2 percent raises for UW System employees at its meeting Thursday. The increases are an effort reduce the faculty turnover rate.
Former MLB commissioner Bud Selig — ‘Maybe I should have said more’ about steroids
ESPN.com
The class was held just last week in Professor Bud Selig’s classroom at the University of Wisconsin. The topic of the day, in the professor’s “Baseball in American Society” curriculum, was a whopper: steroids and baseball.
The Great Lakes Have More Than 100 “Mini-Tsunamis” Every Year, According to New Research
WKSU-FM, Akron
The Great Lakes have their own miniature version of tsunamis – more than 100 times per year. That’s according to new research led by the University of Wisconsin Madison. The name of these waves – and the danger that comes with them – are relatively unknown to those in the region.
Ten-year-olds tackle ‘The Lie’ of demeaning stereotypes in video
Washington Post
Noted: Children ages 6 to 10 begin to understand stereotypes about racial groups, said John Diamond, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He said the project showed the power of education to help students express themselves and learn from other young people in a diverse classroom.
North America’s grasslands are slowly disappearing — and no one’s paying attention
Washington Post
Noted: “Those areas can really provide vital services to our nation’s people and wildlife,” said Tyler Lark, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, who was not involved with the new report.
To Find Out Who You Are, Peer Into the Cheese Ball
New York Times
Noted: They sometimes packed it into crocks to give to customers as gifts, according to the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison Professor Building A Better Flu Vaccine
Wisconsin Public Radio
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are working to produce flu vaccines in a different way. The goal: better protection from what is a seasonal annoyance for many but a serious health concern for others.
Officials urge hygiene on dairy farms after outbreak
Wisconsin State Farmer
Quoted: Dr. Pamela Ruegg, a veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said young calves and cows that have just given birth are more susceptible to the bacteria.
Italian PM Renzi vows to resign after referendum defeat
Al Jazeera
Quoted: “Italy has just done something very interesting. After all, Italy is one of the founding nations of the EU but I don’t think it’s mistaken to look at the results of this vote alongside the Brexit vote earlier this year, as well as, frankly, the Trump vote in the United States,” Patrick Rumble, Italian professor at the University of Wisconsin, told Al Jazeera.
Mom: Daughter cooked to death
CNN.com
Noted: But regulation may be difficult, admits Christine Whelan, a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies the lucrative self-help industry and now sits on the board of SEEK Safely.
Burden, Mayer: The Wisconsin recount may have a surprise in store after all
The Washington Post
Thanks to the efforts of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, a recount is underway in Wisconsin. It is highly unlikely to change the outcome — as Hillary Clinton’s campaign has stated — but it is much more likely to overturn some conventional wisdom about counting votes. In particular, we may learn, yet again, that computers are better than humans at counting ballots.
Why—and Where—Hillary Clinton Got Fewer Votes Than Barack Obama
The Atlantic
Quoted: “Democrats did better this time in places that were already blue , and did worse in places that were already red,” said Barry Burden, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “It sort of is a battle of the many versus the few. You add up those smaller rural places, and they were enough to swamp the bigger urban areas, and even suburban counties.”
Retention of young teachers a challenge
Appleton Post-Crescent
Noted: In a given school year, 13 percent of full-time teachers at a typical Wisconsin school district are new employees, said Peter Goff, an assistant professor of education leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-L puts pay changes on hold after Obama overtime rule blocked
La Crosse Tribune
About 100 University of Wisconsin-La Crosse employees who would have been switched to hourly pay will remained salaried.
Wisconsin obesity rate higher than thought
Wisconsin Radio Network
Noted: Dr. Patrick Remington, associate dean of public health at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, said the finding is concerning. “It means that more Wisconsin residents are at risk for Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and other obesity-related illnesses, and, in turn, our state is at greater risk for higher health care costs and lost productivity due to these illnesses.”
Automatic Voter Registration a ‘Success’ in Oregon
New York Times
Quoted: “For Oregon to get that just among the people who are automatically registered is quite a feat,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of that school’s Elections Research Center.
Will the bells still toll?
Isthmus
The massive bell tower that has served as the symbolic voice of UW-Madison has been silent since August.
University of Wisconsin Researchers Win Grawemeyer Award For Education
WFPL-FM, Louisville
The 2017 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Education goes to a pair of University of Wisconsin researchers.
This scientific quest to find “missing” memories is changing the way we think about the brain
Vox
Neuroscientist Nathan Rose and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin recently lost track of a memory.
Partnerships in health care could help heal rural, urban discontent
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The simmering frustration from in both rural and urban areas has boiled over. This turbulence, whether evident through community demonstrations or election results, conveys an urgent message of discontent rooted in social and economic inequities that result in health disparities.
Retrieving Short-Term Memories
The Scientist
Neuroscientists have long tried to uncover the neuronal connectivity and patterns of activity that explain human cognitive behaviors. The prevalent theory of working memory—using information stored in short-term memory to complete a task—is that the brain’s connections that code for the needed information must fire continuously. Now, in a paper published today (December 1) in Science, researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and their colleagues provide evidence for a different theory, in which information can be stored in working memory in an inactive neuronal state.
Partnerships in health care could help heal rural, urban discontent
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The simmering frustration from in both rural and urban areas has boiled over. This turbulence, whether evident through community demonstrations or election results, conveys an urgent message of discontent rooted in social and economic inequities that result in health disparities.
Donald Trump leaves US media all in a twitter
The Straits Times
Noted: “I think there are some norms, some unwritten rules on how Washington works and he doesn’t feel obliged to stick with those,” Dr Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, told The Straits Times.
Russia and its influence on the presidential election
PolitiFact
Noted: “Even if something is consistent with Russian government interests, it doesn’t mean the Russian government did it,” said Yoshiko Herrera, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies Russia and former Soviet states.
How Sleeping Memories Come Back to Life
Time
It’s almost a good thing that we’ve never been entirely able to figure out how human memory works, because if we did, we’d probably just forget. Memory has always been that kind of meta-mystery, and one of its greatest puzzles is the question of what’s known as working memory: information we hold in short-term storage, like a phone number we’ll need to call or a face we’ll need to recognize at a meeting, and can then forget.
Bronson Koenig shares his thoughts on role models, Standing Rock in essay
La Crosse Tribune
MADISON — Even after two Final Four runs, Wisconsin basketball star Bronson Koenig said he didn’t think of himself as a role model when he took a September trip to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota.
Amazon pickup point a divisive issue for UW
Madison Magazine
When the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents approved a five-year contract in August to allow online retail giant Amazon to put a package pickup point on the UW–Madison campus, among the deciding factors were convenience and the minimum of $100,000 per year in commissions the deal would bring to the university. Under the plan, packages with campus ZIP codes would be dropped off at a single pickup site, which is expected to open by spring 2017.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank Can’t Declare Sanctuary
Wisconsin Public Radio
University of Wisconsin-Madison officials say Chancellor Rebecca Blank doesn’t have the authority to declare the school a sanctuary for students who entered the country illegally as minors.
UW Chancellors urge lawmakers to restore and boost funding in
WFRV-TV, Green Bay
Leaders of two U-W System schools, including U-W Oshkosh, hope lawmakers will consider the benefits of increased funding for the system. Last budget cycle, the U-W System had to cut spending by $250-million. U-W-O Chancellor Andrew Leavitt and U-W Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank say they’ve made the cutbacks work. But they say the time has come to look at state funding of higher education as an investment for the state.
UC won’t assist federal agents in immigration actions against students
Los Angeles Times
The University of California announced sweeping actions Wednesday to protect its students who came into the country illegally, saying it would refuse to assist federal immigration agents, turn over confidential records without court orders or supply information for any national registry based on race, national origin or religion.
House approves sprawling bill that would expand medical research
Los Angeles Times
The House overwhelmingly backed broad legislation Tuesday to increase federal support for medical research, advancing a long-anticipated bill that is expected to clear the Senate soon and get President Obama’s signature.
Trump’s pick to run HHS has researchers speculating on how science will fare
Science
Representative Tom Price (R–GA), the orthopedic surgeon and six-term congressman who President-elect Donald Trump yesterday picked to be his secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is a conservative spending hawk and fierce opponent of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and abortion. But he has also spoken generally in favor of increasing funding for federal research agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which he would oversee if confirmed to the job by the Senate.
What I Found in Standing Rock
The Players' Tribune
Near the edge of the Standing Rock camp in North Dakota, about 50 yards from a tributary of the Missouri River, there’s a basketball hoop. It’s one of those worn-out outdoor hoops that leans forward a little bit, almost as if the wind had bent it.
Chancellors talk budget woes
The UW-Oshkosh Advance-Titan
UW Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank and UW Oshkosh Chancellor Andrew Leavitt met with officials and alumni on Wednesday to discuss the Wisconsin state budget and its role in public higher education.
Nostalgia narratives and the history of the “good ol’ days”: We’ve lamented present decay for centuries.
Slate
Noted: The Roman historian Tacitus captures the mood. He records the empire from its beginning, in 509 B.C. (which he says was full of glorious heroes) to his time in about 100 B.C. (which he keeps apologizing for). “He’s constantly saying, ‘I’m sorry for telling you about yet more murders that the autocratic emperors have committed against their own subjects, and more rapes, and more sexual perversion, and more records of excessive dining, eating, and, you know, sumptuary practices,’” says Alex Dressler, an assistant professor of classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But Romans before Tacitus said basically the same thing, Dressler says. The more money and power the Romans acquired, the more they felt like their nation was getting indulgent and lazy, and therefore the more they looked backwards to a time before they got what they wanted. The wanting, it seems, mattered more than the having.
Next Generation: Observing Cancer-Associated Mitochondrial Change
The Scientist
Quoted: “This is something that has been on everyone’s radar for a long time,” said Melissa Skala of the University of Wisconsin–Madison who was not involved in the study. “We’ve been developing this technology for some time, and hoping it could fill a niche in the clinic. [This study] exploits specific aspects of this technology.”
Netflix announces downloading: how much will it change the industry?
Christian Science Monitor
Noted: “This was predictable,” says Barry Orton, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It is a small and incremental step towards severing the cord and getting rid of time restraints.”