University of Wisconsin basketball fans hope that Bucky Badger will be very busy in Chicago on Sunday afternoon.
But supporters of Columbus Mayor Dave Bomkamp, who is locked in a race with council member Nancy Osterhaus in the April 3 election, are disappointed that Bucky won’t also be in Columbus at that time to help them cheer on their candidate, which is something that the mascot apparently is not allowed to do.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the body that controls UW-Madisonâ??s lucrative stem cell technology patents, has decided to play nice. Criticized for its high licensing fees even to other universities, the nationâ??s leading stem cell technology producer will now offer lower fees for universities and other non-profit research organizations.
Give Adidas the boot, Student Labor Action Coalition members cried throughout Bascom Hall Wednesday afternoon during the organizationâ??s second rally in less than a month protesting the universityâ??s deal with the athletic apparel company.
As state lawmakers move on legislation to provide incentives for using biofuels instead of gasoline, several University of Wisconsin professors said they are concerned corn-based ethanol may not be a practical large-scale fuel source.
A contract to manufacture DNA-based flu vaccine has been awarded to the Waisman Clinical BioManufacturing Facility at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center.
The vaccine will be tested first on animals, with human testing expected to begin early next year during the flu season, said Allen D. Allen, chief executive of CytoDyn of Santa Fe, N.M., which developed the vaccine.
High on the brick wall of the Psychology Building, a red and white sign proclaims the four tenets of University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s We Conserve campaign to students passing below: â??Efficient systems. Informed people. Realistic expectations. Responsible actions.â?
In spite of mounting pressure to sever ties with Adidas, Chancellor John Wiley announced Wednesday that the University of Wisconsin would not terminate its licensing contract with the athletic apparel company.
A local biotech company is eyeing major growth after acquiring platform technology from global pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline Inc.
….The UW-Madison spinoff, which was formed six years ago, now expects to become profitable within two years, although one giant deal could make it instantly profitable, according to GenTel CEO Alex Vodenlich.
The majority of professors at University of Wisconsin System institutions continue to earn less than their colleagues at nearby technical colleges, according to a report released Tuesday.
Nine years ago, in the forefront of a national trend, the University of Wisconsin launched an initiative to combine many academic disciplines and create new collaborative fields of study.
Physically safe working conditions and fair employee treatment help make a workplace healthy, but some say another aspect needs to be confronted.
The on-the-job bully, who is usually but not always a boss, drains productivity, creativity and employee health, says Gary Namie of Washington, director of the nonprofit Workplace Bullying Institute, established in 1997 and financed by consultant work.
Quoted: Corliss Olson, a labor educator at UW Extension’s School for Workers
BusinessWeek Magazine ranked UW-Madisonâ??s School of Business undergraduate program 28th nationally and fourth among the Big Ten schools. The magazine ranked 93 undergraduate programs for 2007, compared to the 61 it ranked for 2006, according to BusinessWeekâ??s website.
For the second year in a row, the University of Wisconsinâ??s undergraduate business program ranked in the top 30 nationwide in BusinessWeekâ??s annual survey.
UW-Madisonâ??s Surplus With A Purpose Shop, a store featuring wares ranging from used computers to bar stools to bicycles, will move from its 2102 Wright St. location to a Madison suburb, the Wisconsin State Journal reported Saturday.
The MIT Club of Wisconsin, a state association for alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is honoring a UW-Madison influenza researcher and a bioscience spinoff company.
The researcher, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a UW virologist and professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine, has gained worldwide recognition for his research on how influenza viruses replicate and the genetic contributors to virulence.
Quintessence Biopharmaceuticals of Madison, a company that grew out of the research of UW chemistry and biochemistry professors Laura Kiessling and Ron Raines, is being honored in the small company category.
Women in Wisconsin have significantly increased their participation in the workforce but still suffer from gender and racial inequalities, according to a report released last week.
Eleven of the universities that are the most active and successful in commercializing their inventions issued a series of suggestions last week for how institutions can best license their patents while serving the public good.
Among the suggestions: sue only when necessary; avoid licensing patents to companies that do not seriously commit to developing the inventions; be more stingy about exclusive licenses; and, particularly for inventions related to human health, find ways to carve out protections in licensing deals so that poor people and those in developing nations are not barred by patent rights from gaining affordable access to life-saving cures.
Cellectar, a Madison biotech company developing a shot-in-the-arm treatment for cancer, is about to take a big leap forward, thanks to a healthy wad of cash, a one-of-a-kind machine and a new, well-credentialed chief executive with big hopes and plans. Cellectar is a UW-Madison spinoff company.
UW-Madison’s popular SWAP Shop, where bargain hunters can find everything from Badgers sportswear to test tubes, is moving to the burbs.
The UW Materials Distribution Services Center, which includes the Surplus With A Purpose (SWAP) Shop, will move into a new 102,780- square-foot building in Verona this fall.
Student demand for more entrepreneurial education and opportunity at UW-Madison are finally being heard as initiatives take form. Many on campus are familiar with the student-run businesses at UW-Madison such as netNerds, Sconnie Nation, ExchangeHut, and U-DUB, but until recently, there have been few resources for students such as these companiesâ?? founders who are interested in experimenting with entrepreneurship.
A report released Wednesday by the Association of American Medical Colleges was signed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundationâ??among other large research universitiesâ??to establish guidelines for institutionsâ?? technology licenses.
Wisconsin women, as a group, are still earning smaller paychecks than men, according to a new report. The report, issued by UW- Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy and the Wisconsin Women’s Council, was timed for release on International Women’s Day on Thursday.
Universities have plumbed a rich source of cash in recent years by aggressively patenting and licensing faculty inventions, but some schools now want to set limits on the practice. An elite group–11 top research institutions and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)–have signed a pledge to take a kinder, gentler approach to licensing intellectual property. Yesterday, they released principles on the sharing of patented discoveries, urging other universities to follow their lead.
Former state purchasing officer Georgia Thompson is appealing her federal conviction on charges that she steered a lucrative state travel contract to one of Gov. Jim Doyle’s campaign donors.
….In briefs filed in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Thompson contends that she could not have violated federal law – that she enriched herself by betraying her official state duties – because she did not personally benefit from the deal.
A proposed merger between the University of Wisconsin campuses in Waukesha and Milwaukee would be less cost-efficient than other alternatives, UW System President Kevin Reilly said at a legislative hearing Tuesday.
Many economists believe that entrepreneurs and small business owners are the major drivers of job growth in the United States. The Small Business Administration says companies with fewer than 500 employees have accounted for nearly 80 percent of the new jobs created in the United States over the past decade, and this trend is likely to continue.
Opening day will be May 11 for Sundance Cinemas 608, the Madison-based flagship venture for a national movie theater circuit founded by actor and director Robert Redford.
….The debut of the six-screen theater, which will also feature a cafe, a restaurant, a rooftop bar and an art gallery and gift shop, will begin with special grand opening events benefiting three Madison-based nonprofit organizations – the Chazen Museum of Art, OutReach and the River Alliance of Wisconsin.
In an attempt to both inform and highlight research innovation, local business members and campus faculty gathered Friday for a stem cell symposium at the University of Wisconsin.
A group of higher-education scholars met Thursday to discuss new ways to integrate various academic disciplines at the University of Wisconsin.
OK, IT was more than 70 years ago, but Lenor Zeeh remembers it vividly. Of course he does. It was the turning point of his life.
Zeeh, who is a lively 92 and lives on Madison’s west side, last month made a gift of $1 million to the UW School of Pharmacy, but he still recalls that moment in 1935 when it looked as if he might have to drop out of that very same school.
For local arts and entertainment presenters, last weekend’s major snowstorm – called “an act of God” in the legal contracts they have with artists – left canceled performances, empty seats, lower sales at concession stands and debt.
….At the Wisconsin Union Theater, “the storm hurt us very little,” said director Ralph Russo, sounding surprised and relieved.
Geeks will rule the world – in fact, they already do, Rick Davidson, chief information officer for Manpower, in Glendale, told a conference in Madison on Wednesday.
But today’s young people don’t necessarily understand that, so there aren’t enough employees who have the computer and engineering skills that companies need, Davidson said.
A panel of Madison-area entrepreneurs shared their business experiences Wednesday in an effort to tap into the young minds of University of Wisconsin students and promote entrepreneurial awareness.
The University of Wisconsin is still searching for answers after a review last fall showed more than 80 area employers owe the university $150,000.
Itâ??s a stereotype. When the scientist finally isolates the protein and solves the age old conundrum, he yells â??Eureka!â? in a fit of joy. These days, however, that shout is immediately followed by a call to the lawyers.
The UW-Madison School of Business has scheduled its semi-annual “Economic Outlook” briefing featuring four prominent economists for March 16 at the Fluno Center on campus.
For more than 40 years, the event has been helping business leaders and owners translate economic trends into competitive intelligence, the UW said in announcing the event.
The economists will explore factors impacting the economy such as oil prices, federal budget deficits, interest rates, employment outlook, and the war on terrorism.
A licensing committee prepared a statement Friday urging the University of Wisconsin to cut its clothing ties with Adidas after the Student Labor Action Coalition delivered a giant paper mache boot to Chancellor John Wileyâ??s office last week.
SLAC has been a longtime supporter of the rights of workers in a particular El Salvador factory that produces Adidas clothing.
While the factory closed more than two years ago, several investigations said nearly 63 workers remain unpaid and on a blacklist.
IT can take years, sometimes decades, for the commercial applications of a scientific or intellectual breakthrough to become apparent â?? like the notion that brainless bacteria communicate through networks to cause diseases that can also wreak social or economic havoc. [. . .]
Quorum sensing has captured the interest of a new generation of scientific researchers. One of them is Helen E. Blackwell, an organic chemist and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She received her bachelorâ??s in chemistry in 1994, when quorum sensing was on the rise, and then earned a doctorate in organic chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and received a post-doctoral appointment at Harvard, but she did not hear of quorum sensing until she joined the faculty at Wisconsin in 2002.
When the subject of money comes up, most college students talk about how much they – or their parents – have spent to pursue a degree.
That’s not the case for UW- Madison students Ben Fiechtner and Troy Vosseller, who turned their college experience into a money-making venture by forming the campus clothing company Sconnie in 2005.
“You buy, we fly.” That’s the motto of a new Madison business that caters to the late night whims of University of Wisconsin campus area residents.
Every night except Monday and Tuesday until as late as 4 a.m., Madtown Munchies delivers everything from soda and chips to cigarettes and condoms to an area between lakes Monona and Mendota from roughly Camp Randall Stadium on the west to James Madison Park on the east.
Lawmakers and activists encouraged the Wisconsin State Investment Board to divest from companies that facilitate genocide at the Capitol Wednesday.
A bipartisan bill spear-headed by state Sen. Shelia Harsdorf, R-River Falls, and state Rep. Fredrick Kessler, D-Milwaukee, stipulates that state money be invested in companies that donâ??t indirectly fund genocide in Sudan.
Members of the Student Labor Action Coalition delivered a giant boot to Chancellor John Wiley Wednesday, urging him to â??give Adidas the bootâ? in protest of alleged workersâ?? rights violations in Adidas factories.
In a symbol of political protest against the alleged genocide in Sudan, Wisconsin legislators introduced a bill Wednesday that aims to divest state funds from companies associated with the countryâ??s central government.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Cracking down on college students, the music industry is sending thousands more complaints to top universities this school year than it did last year as it targets music illegally downloaded over campus computer networks.
A few schools, including Ohio and Purdue universities, already have received more than 1,000 complaints accusing individual students since last fall — significant increases over the past school year. For students who are caught, punishments vary from e-mail warnings to semester-long suspensions from classes.
The eight winners of a campus-wide competition for $3 million in Discovery Seed Grants offer an early look at the breadth and scope of the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery at UW-Madison.
“The seed grants are a wonderful way to begin the program of the institutes,” said Marsha Mailick Seltzer, interim director of the institutes’ public half, known as the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID), and director of the UW-Madison Waisman Center.
At least two dozen universities each earned more than $10-million from their licensing of rights to new drugs, software, and other inventions in the 2005 fiscal year, according to a survey released Tuesday night, while the number of institutions creating large numbers of spinoff companies based on their researchers’ inventions apparently dropped off sharply from the previous year.
The findings are drawn from a report on a survey conducted by the Association of University Technology Managers.
In a break from past years’ practice, however, the association did not release summary data for all colleges and universities that participated in the survey (there were 160 respondents for 2005). But it did provide selective information from the 151 institutions that agreed to have their name and responses published.
With Wisconsin ascending to the top of the heap in men’s college basketball, it’s time to look at other No. 1 rankings attained by the Badger State.
….Beyond boosting the state with its basketball program, the University of Wisconsin has its own list of superlatives. For starters, it has more CEOs of Standard & Poor 500 companies than anywhere else.
The UW is also the school that “parties the heartiest,” according to Playboy magazine.
And, making sure no category is too specialized to brag about, the Financial Times says that Wisconsin has the best food and accommodations for executive education facilities in the country.
An effort to replace an aging radio tower on the southeastern edge of the UW Arboretum has some wondering about moving it out of the environmentally sensitive area altogether.
Last year, officials learned the WHA-AM tower, which broadcasts Wisconsin Public Radio throughout Dane County, is in an “unsafe and unreliable condition” due to internal corrosion. As a result, the state plans to build a new tower in the same vicinity, just south of Martin Street, and tear down the tower.
Jon Foley was a sixth-grader in Bangor, Maine when the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.
Though he was just 11, Foley says he remembers how it was front-page news for days and how relieved everyone was when disaster was finally averted.
….Foley, director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, says he tends to believe nuclear experts when they say today’s nuclear plants are far safer than those built 30 years ago.
It’s been just over 50 years since I first laid eyes on – and fell in love with – Wisconsin.
After the dull ride through bleak Illinois, my college buddy, Marty, and I entered the green, rolling, exuberant countryside of Wisconsin in its late spring glory and thought we had suddenly entered paradise. The prosperous-looking farms with their gleaming white houses, bulging Holsteins, just-emerging corn and carpets of new alfalfa quickly erased the gloom of Illinois.
Even the University of Wisconsin was a sort of bucolic haven.
Duke University received $30 million in grants this month to fund its DukeEngage program, which will allow students to participate in civic engagement service learning projects.
VIROQUA, Wis. â?? A former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter will host a writing workshop in Viroqua in the fall.Patrick Strickler, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize while at the Post-Dispatch, lives on a 40-acre farm in Avalanche since retiring in July from communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The prospect of new nuclear power plants rising on the Wisconsin horizon sent sparks flying on the UW-Madison campus Friday.
UW engineering physics professor Michael Corradini irked many in the audience at Grainger Hall with his call for expanding nuclear energy, saying that concerns over safety and waste disposal have been overblown.
….”This is an industry that built two bombs that killed a lot of people and since then they have been trying to make something good out of it,” said Jim Pawley, a UW professor of zoology.
For the third time in five years, a team of UW-Madison accounting students has won a national case competition.
Gov. Jim Doyle says he can’t understand why hospital officials aren’t applauding his plan to tax hospitals.
The two-year state budget proposal envisions a 1 percent tax on gross revenues at the state’s 132 hospitals, which Doyle said would generate $418 million that would bring in $575 million in federal matching funds. Most of the money would be used to increase reimbursements to hospitals for care provided to low-income people under the Medicaid program. The rest would apparently cover other Medicaid and health costs.
…public education must be our highest priority, and somehow we must find the money to fund schools properly; the UW and civil servants could develop a computer system to overhaul Workforce Development, create voter rolls and figure out who is eligible to vote.
We need strong civil service and confidence in our university. Not more outsourcing or privatization.
Gov. Jim Doyle’s request for lawmakers to include health insurance coverage for the domestic partners of state employees, including the UW system, should be made a priority as part of Wisconsin’s 2007-2009 budget.
Gov. Jim Doyle met with a British politician and world-renowned stem cell researchers Monday to discuss research collaboration possibilities between the two countries, closing the gap between Abbey Road and State Street.
British Honorary Consul Michael Bright, the self-described â??eyes and ears of the British government in Wisconsin,â? said the meeting witnessed the first talks between two top stem cell research facilities, the U.K. Stem Cell Bank and the UW-Madison based-WiCell Research Institute.
Yesterday, Gov. Jim Doyle announced a breakthrough collaborative effort between the University of Wisconsinâ??s WiCell stem-cell bank and the United Kingdomâ??s stem-cell bank. For most present, the press conference was another strong push in the direction of improved stem-cell research.
While hosting officials from the United Kingdom at the state Capitol Monday, Gov. Jim Doyle announced University of Wisconsin-affiliated laboratories would team up with its U.K. counterparts on embryonic stem-cell research.
