MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics has earned a prestigious honor for the second straight year.
“Working Mother Magazine” has named UW Hospital one of the nations 100 best companies for working parents.
The magazine is one of the only magazines for working moms, and has about 2 million readers.
For the second straight year, University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics has received the prestigious honor of being named one of the nationâ??s 100 best companies for working parents by Working Mother magazine. The hospital was the only Dane County company to receive the award and only one of three in Wisconsin to be honored.
Working Mother selected University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics as one of its â??100 Bestâ? companies to work for after assessing the hospitalâ??s culture, family-friendly programs, flexibility and time off, opportunities for growth and development and benefits for part-time workers.
Gov. Jim Doyle highlighted Wisconsinâ??s important role in the stem-cell industry during his keynote speech at the World Stem Cell Summit in Madison Monday.
Researchers from across the globe gathered at the World Stem Cell Summit Monday in Madison, stressing the need for further clinical trials funded by the federal government.
Gov. Jim Doyle addressed the World Stem Cell Summit in Madison Monday night and asked attendees to take one question back to the people of their state or country: Should â??science triumph over personal ideologies?â?
When University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist James Thomson announced a groundbreaking discovery in November of 2007 that ordinary adult skin cells had been reprogrammed to resemble embryonic stem cells, some jumped to the conclusion that the ethical debate surrounding this science could finally be wiped away.
That day, however, is not yet here.
So with the Nov. 4 election just six weeks away, some of the world’s most prominent stem cell researchers made it a point Monday to reiterate what they’ve been saying all along: Studies on stem cells from human embryos must continue for at least several more years while the new technique is tested and perfected.
Some of the nation’s top embryonic stem cell research advocates say they are growing concerned that Sen. John McCain will backtrack on his previous support for the work if elected president.
The Republican senator from Arizona has supported lifting President Bush’s ban on using federal money to create new stem cell lines from surplus embryos and to award more grants to researchers studying them. His rival for the presidency, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, has a similar position on the research that holds promise to treat a range of disease.
Quoted: UW law professor and bioethicist Alta Charo and researcher Tim Kamp
This week Madison is playing host to the World Stem Cell Summit, and Sunday’s “Lab on the Lake” segment featured inspirational speaker Sam Schmidt, the former Indy Racing League driver who now is chairman of the Sam Schmidt Paralysis Foundation.
“I am really proud to be here and be a part of (the conference),” said Schmidt, who also now owns his own race team. “There is so much information here, and I am still learning every day about the research that is going on everywhere (on stem cells).”
Though stem cell research has become a hot-button issue in the political arena, there is a lot of confusion about what it really involves. To educate the public, those who are putting on the World Stem Cell Summit offered a free primer on this burgeoning area of research on Sunday. Dubbed “Lab on the Lake,” the event was open to people of all ages and interests.
A UW-Madison bioethicist has stirred up the stem-cell world by saying scientists who created some of the embryonic stem-cell lines approved for federal funding didn’t properly obtain consent from embryo donors.
A study by Robert Streiffer, a professor of bioethics and philosophy, raises new questions about President Bush’s policy limiting federal research grants to the 21 lines, or colonies, of stem cells derived before August 2001.
Indoor air quality tests conducted this summer in Fond du Lac found five bars and restaurants where smoking is permitted had levels of indoor air pollution upwards of eight times what’s considered safe daily exposure by the state Department of Natural Resources.
Data analysis and a report on the tests were completed by staff from the Paul P. Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center at UW-Madison.
Steve Stricker has selected two Madison area organizations to receive $50,000 each and two Big Ten Conference universities to receive $45,000 each as part of the charitable designations available to him for being a member of this year’s United States Ryder Cup team.
Stricker designated VSA of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin Children’s Hospital to each receive $50,000.
The Edgerton native and Madison resident, who is a rookie member of the United States Ryder Cup team, designated his alma mater, the University of Illinois, as well as the University of Wisconsin, to receive $45,000 through the Play Golf America University program.
University HealthSystem Consortium ranked UW Hospital fourth among 88 of the nationâ??s highest performing teaching hospitals.
The University of Wisconsin Hospital is one of the top five teaching hospitals in the country, according to a study conducted by University Health System Consortium.
The Dane County Board voted Thursday night to put an advisory referendum question about universal health care on the county-wide ballot Nov. 4.
The referendum will read: “Shall the next state Legislature enact health care reform legislation by December 31, 2009, that guarantees every Wisconsin resident affordable health care coverage with benefits that are substantially similar to those provided to state legislators?”
MADISON â?? A nationally recognized â??scorecardâ? for measuring the quality of major teaching hospitals puts University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in the nationâ??s top five best-performing institutions.
The purpose of the annual assessment is to measure the performance of teaching hospitals in several areas known to be essential to delivering excellent care consistently across a wide variety of populations. This year, 88 academic medical centers were included in the analysis.
University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics has been named one of the top five best-performing teaching hospitals in the country by the University HealthSystem Consortium.
UHC is presenting UW Hospital with the award Thursday at the organization’s eighth annual quality and safety fall forum in Scottsdale, Ariz.
No one, including Bernard Siegel himself, pictured the day he would become a passionate advocate for the cause of stem cell research and regenerative medicine.
“As I often say, my 10th-grade biology teacher would really be surprised,” said Siegel, who is credited with spearheading the World Stem Cell Summit and related events, slated for Sept. 21-23 in Madison.
Using engineered adult stem cells from bone marrow to deliver a growth factor directly to atrophied muscles, scientists at UW-Madison have successfully slowed the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — in rats.
The finding was published Tuesday in the journal Molecular Therapy.
Although it’s at a relatively early stage, the research offers hope that the process might someday provide a new therapy for people who suffer from the debilitating and fatal disease, which is caused by the progressive loss of motor neurons and their connections to muscles.
Millions of young Americans are off to college, and many will rely on those institutions for health care. But that reliance might be misplaced, because our college health systems are gravely ill. Unless colleges address widespread problems with insurance coverage, students risk being one disease or accident away from losing the potential for getting the education they are paying for.
(Bryan A. Liang is professor of law and executive director of the Institute of Health Law Studies at California Western School of Law in San Diego. This column first appeared in the Baltimore Sun.)
This year’s Devil’s Challenge Triathlon was emotional for Dino Lucas of Madison. He was a personal friend of the late Dr. Daniel Eimermann, who died after collapsing in the water during last year’s event.
Before athletes plunged into Devil’s Lake Sunday morning, Lucas asked them to bow their heads in a moment of silence to honor his friend, Eimermann, a psychiatrist who volunteered as a clinical assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
“I just wanted people to take time out to remember him and be happy that they’re healthy,” Lucas said.
A pass/fail grading system for first-year medical students could be instituted by the University of Wisconsinâ??s School of Medicine and Public Health if approved next month by a faculty committee.
A campuswide group consisting of key faculty members recommended the policy for a medical school faculty vote in late July, and two committees related to the medical school have already unanimously approved the measure.
High pollen counts and little rain in late August mean it’s going to be a bad season for allergy sufferers.
But for those people who suffer from ragweed allergies, a new treatment is being tested at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
There will be no competition for the top grade among first-year medical students this year at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
That’s because the school is eliminating grades for first-year medical students in favor of a pass/fail system, a trend in medical education already embraced at Harvard, Stanford and the universities of Minnesota and Michigan, among others. The last three years of medical school will still be graded.
Although it was mostly gray and rainy around the Madison area on Thursday, nothing was going to dampen the enthusiasm of those who attended the grand opening ceremony for the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research.
“It’s pretty obvious I’m not a weatherman, but as far as I’m concerned, today is actually a wonderfully bright, beautiful, sunny day,” said Robert Golden, dean of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “And I say that because we are basking in the sunlight of a remarkable, glowing new gift which will help us melt away the cold, dark shadows of cancer and other horrible diseases.”
Gov. Jim Doyle touted Wisconsinâ??s continued commitment to education, research and knowledge today at the opening of the $134 million Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research East Tower on the UW-Madison campus.
Doyle congratulated university officials for their persistent pursuit of the project, even through times when it was unclear whether ratification would be possible.
â??Even when times are not so good and even when the state budget picture doesnâ??t look great, it is still crucial that we move forward on major investments in the state that will be here for decades and decades and decades to come,â? Doyle said.
Dignitaries gather for the grand opening of the East Tower of the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research.
The seven-floor East Tower is the first of three interdisciplinary research towers that will grow to also house cardiovascular, neuroscience and regenerative medicine research in Madison.
Bob Golden is Dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health. “And when they are finished, the work done at in the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research will touch on every aspect of human disease.”
MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research officially opened its first building Thursday in a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Gov. Jim Doyle.
The state-of-the-art facility will bring hundreds of scientists together under one roof — all working to find a cure for cancer.
With a $1 million donation, Ron Skoronski launched Forward Lymphoma to fund research at UW-Madison’s Carbone Cancer Center.
Brittany Saylor is a typical college student: She likes pizza, meeting new people and spending time on the computer navigating Facebook.
Though she’s quick to dismiss any differences, what sets the Wisconsin Rapids 19-year-old apart from many young adults who began classes Tuesday at UW-Whitewater is that she gets from place to place by wheelchair and uses a ventilator at night to help her breathe.
Men who have too much calcium in their bloodstreams could face an increased risk of dying of prostate cancer, according to an analysis from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin that is being released today.
MADISON, Wis. — In a few days UW Hospital will open the doors to the area’s only interdisciplinary research complex.
Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, or WIMR as it is known to those in the local medical community, is unique in that surgeons, researchers and bio-engineers will all work side-by-side to tackle problems and bring innovative medicine from the lab to patients’ bedsides.
Doctors have long thought of such a complex as the holy grail of medicine.
A newly arrived UW researcher and colleagues at two other universities published stem-cell research results this week based on the successful growth of sound-signal-sending hair genes in the ears of lab mice, a process that could eventually be used to restore hearing to deaf people.
A team of scientists has figured out how to transfer special genes to regenerate damaged cells in the inner ear, a technique that researchers say could one day lead to the restoration of hearing for both children born deaf and the elderly who are hard-of-hearing.
UW otolaryngologist Samuel Gubbels, working with a team of scientists at Oregon Health and Science University and Stanford University, grew specialized cells crucial for hearing by transferring a gene responsible for the formation of those cells into the inner ear of mouse embryos.
Some 500 scientists from a variety of fields â?? medicine, physics, biology, chemistry, engineering and more â?? will work in a medical research building to open next week near UW Hospital, most of them focusing on cancer.
The seven-story, $185 million facility is the beginning of the planned Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, one of the largest projects ever in Madison.
The three-tower complex, to be finished by about 2015, will house 1,500 lab workers and cost more than $600 million, officials say. More than $10 million in state money has been spent; another $72 million is being requested, with a plan to seek $150 million more.
Most people struggling to pay off their student loans keep quiet about it. They do not want to acknowledge that, perhaps in a fit of naïve, youthful optimism, they borrowed more than they could handle.
Then there is Alan Collinge, who for years has described his struggle with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt to anyone who will listen. He has appeared on â??60 Minutesâ? criticizing Sallie Mae, the nationâ??s largest student lender, and has been quoted in the pages of this and other newspapers attacking loan companies.
The WiCell Research Institute, a private, not-for-profit supporting organization to the UW-Madison, is launching its own stem cell bank to distribute cell lines beyond the 21 lines eligible for federal funding and distribution through the National Stem Cell Bank.
“We are establishing the WiCell Bank to grow, test, store and distribute cell lines that the National Stem Cell Bank currently is unable to offer since it is limited to the 21 human embryonic stem cell lines approved for federal funding,” said Erik Forsberg, executive director of the WiCell Research Institute.
WiCell hosts the National Stem Cell Bank for the National Institutes of Health under a federal contract.
From the Los Angeles Times —
Scientists said Tuesday that they had devised a way to grow large quantities of blood in the lab using human embryonic stem cells, potentially making blood drives a thing of the past.
But experts cautioned that although it represented a significant technical advance, the new approach required several key improvements before it could be considered a realistic alternative to donor blood.
The UW-Madison lab that was damaged in a fire Monday night belongs to Arnold Ruoho, according to Brian Mattmiller of UW Communications.
Ruoho is chair of the department of pharmacology, which is in the School of Medicine and Public Health.
The Madison Fire Department responded to the fire at 1215 Linden Drive — which is at the corner of Charter Street and Linden — a little after 8 p.m. Firefighters found heavy smoke on the fourth floor and began extinguishing the flames.
The Madison Fire Department responded to a fire that damaged a UW-Madison molecular biology lab just after 8 p.m. Monday on campus.
Firefighters responded to a fire alarm sounding in the building, at the corner of Charter Street and Linden Drive. As they checked the building, at 1215 Linden Drive, they found heavy smoke on the fourth floor and began extinguishing the flames.
Firefighters broke out a window facing the street to ventilate the room. They had the fire under control within 15 minutes, according to department spokesman Eric Dahl.
Prostate cancer affects one out of six men as they age, and now UW researchers think they have discovered one reason why. Blame it on a misbehaving gene.
“We’ve found that there’s a gene in the prostate that alters its expression with aging, and that aberrant gene behavior is what promotes the development of cancer,” explained Dr. David Jarrard, the study’s principal author and a professor of urology at the UW Paul P. Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center in Madison.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A new report says the number of students seeking mental health services on University of Wisconsin campuses is increasing but staffing levels are not.
The report warns the wait for services is likely to increase if campuses do not add more counselors or find ways to better manage their existing workers. Already, most students have to wait a week to get an appointment in non-urgent cases.
For people with high blood pressure, exercise can be the most important lifestyle change they can make, researchers say.
Yet two-thirds of doctors don’t take the time to tell their patients with high blood pressure about the importance of exercise and physical activity, a new study finds.
“Patients do follow physician recommendations to exercise when instructed to, and patients who follow exercise recommendations tend to have lower systolic blood pressures than those who do not,” said lead researcher Dr. Josiah Halm, a hypertension specialist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Q. Do some people get allergies later in life — for example, a reaction to penicillin?
A. About 25 percent of all people who struggle with allergies develop them after age 30, said Dr. Thomas Puchner, clinical professor of allergy and immunology in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
Gov. Jim Doyle will receive the National Leadership award at the 2008 World Stem Cell Summit to be held in Madison next month, it was announced Wednesday.
The Genetic Policy Institute, the group presenting the summit, announced five major awards Wednesday including the one to Doyle. The summit is billed as the “epicenter of the burgeoning international stem cell revolution,” and will be held at the Alliant Energy Center on Sept. 22-23, bringing together hundreds of stem cell experts from throughout the world.
Getting a good job as a teenager can be difficult enough, let alone when the teenage job-seeker has a disability such as autism.
But thanks to a three-year study at-UW Madison, the issue is being examined with the intent of turning the problem around.
Project Summer, run by the Community Inclusion Unit at the university’s Waisman Center, aims to increase the levels of school, employment and community involvement for youth with a variety of disabilities.
Right now, there are only about a dozen bilingual doctors serving Dane County’s estimated 40,000 Spanish-speakers.
That means many patients need help communicating with their doctor.
Until a decade ago, just about anyone could claim they were bilingual.
Today, Dane County’s translators are not just qualified, they’re certified through a ground-breaking program started by UW Hospital’s Shiva Bidar-Sielaff.
The University of Wisconsin has been awarded a prestigious $8.9 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to continue its pioneering work with human embryonic stem cell research. An interdisciplinary team of researchers will use the grant to fund several projects aimed at exploring the unique ability of stem cells to transform themselves into all of the different types of cells that make up the human body.
The grant will also help efforts to build and refine techniques for growing large amounts of embryonic stem cells.
The medical school at UW Madison has successfully challenged a poor review of its policies designed to keep pharmaceutical makers at arm’s length. Shamane Mills reportsâ?¦(7th item, audio.)
Now that more doors are opening for women who want to be surgeons, it may be time to look at the equipment they are given at the operating table.
A new study finds that some devices commonly used in what was once a male bastion are too big to be comfortable for women.
One of the reportâ??s authors, Dr. Peter Nichol of the University of Wisconsin medical school, said he had gotten the idea for the study while working with a resident and co-author, Dr. Danielle M. Adams.
It’s no secret that opponents of abortion have also been waging a war against birth control in recent years. Socially conservative lawmakers in Wisconsin and elsewhere have complied with proposals aimed at allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control and prohibiting university health systems from distributing emergency contraception.
So it was perhaps of little surprise that the Bush administration has been quietly working on draft regulations that would further restrict the contraceptive options family planning clinics are able to offer their low-income clients, if the clinics receive federal funds.
Quoted: UW-Madison Law School professor and bioethicist Alta Charo
The Wisconsin Sleep Cohort is led by Terry Young of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
The Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line sponsored by the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention has announced expanded services for pregnant women who smoke, in light of statistics which show Wisconsin is in the top 20 states in that category.
A new study conducted by a team of University of Wisconsin researchers shows that people suffering from severe sleep apnea have three times the risk of dying due to any cause compared to people without the disorder.
Sleep apnea is a condition with repeated episodes of breathing pauses during sleep despite an ongoing effort to breathe. Apnea often occurs when muscles in the back of throat relax, causing soft tissue to collapse and temporarily block the air passage.
The study, published in the Aug. 1 issue of Sleep, was led by Dr. Terry Young, professor of epidemiology at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health.
NEW YORK – Life-saving surgery to prevent repeated severe bleeding from ruptured veins in the esophagus or upper stomach may not induce some patients with alcoholic liver disease to stop drinking alcohol, researchers report.
Such a surgical procedure may be necessary to reduce the pressure in the veins of the esophagus and upper stomach among patients with cirrhosis, a scarring of the liver frequently caused by alcohol abuse.
The study group consisted of 132 patients with cirrhosis, including 78 with alcoholic liver disease, lead author Dr. Michael R. Lucey, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and colleagues report.
There has been plenty of excitement on the local biotechnology scene, with three local start-ups acquired in the past 13 months.
The most recent deal has the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holdings paying $125 million for Madison-based Mirus Corp. Established in 1995 based on the gene therapy work of UW-Madison scientists, Mirus has about 60 total employees here who are expected to keep their jobs.
Last June, Roche also purchased NimbleGen, a privately held Madison-based genomics company, for $272.5 million. NimbleGen has about 90 employees here. And earlier this summer, Boston-based Hologic Inc. announced a $580 million acquisition of Madison-based Third Wave Technologies that was just recently completed.
The deals have been widely cheered by the local biotech industry, and why not? It sure beats the drumbeat of job cuts and plant closings, the latest from Synergy Web Graphics in Mazomanie and Stoughton
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.
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.
….The opening of the enormous 16,000-square-foot mansion (on August 18) marks the culmination of a massive $3.5 million fundraising campaign chaired by UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez and his wife, Cindy, who have donated $100,000 of their own money to the cause.
Over the past few years the Alvarezes, who between them have lost three parents to cancer, and other members of the board have launched sporting events, parties, dinners, benefit shows, auctions and musical extravaganzas to raise money. Once they even auctioned off a red, white and chrome motorcycle bedecked with autographs from star UW athletes and coaches.
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.
Brunette said that the new technology will be used to add an extra “layer” of patient oversight. Officials will demonstrate the technology on Tuesday during a press conference.
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.
