Despite a longtime rivalry, Minnesota Vikings fans and Green Bay Packers fans found common ground last week. David Mandelbaum, an ownership partner of the Vikings, unveiled a monetary gift to bolster cancer research at the University of Wisconsin during last Monday�s game.
Dave Cooley was running a chainsaw in the woods near his western Wisconsin home when he suddenly lost strength in his arms and legs.
He sat on a tree stump for nearly half an hour before recovering.
“I lost my senses, and it took a long time to get my senses back,” said Cooley, a farmer from Bagley.
It may be little comfort, but it’s official now.
Students in the University of Wisconsin System are drinking dangerously at a rate fully one-third higher than their peers nationwide, with the hangovers, missed classes, DUIs and unprotected sex to show for it.
The National Institutes of Health has awarded BellBrook Labs a $250,000 Phase I SBIR grant that will aid development of a microscale mammary tissue model to accelerate the understanding and treatment of breast cancer.
The work originates in the laboratory of Dr. David Beebe of the UW-Madison Department of Biomedical Engineering.
A new procedure at UW Hospital, one of just four hospitals in the country to offer it so far, is expected to greatly reduce the risk of stroke by clearing clogged blood vessels in the brain.
The procedure involves a new application of an old device – a stent, or mesh wire scaffold, which props open arteries narrowed by the buildup of plaque, allowing blood to freely pass through again.
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is losing almost one-third of the doctors at its Milwaukee campus after its controversial move to transfer the faculty to Aurora Health Care.
Sixteen of the 49 doctors and two of the nine nurse midwives who were offered contracts with Aurora instead have opted to leave the medical school’s faculty.
At night, when Sue Hunt reads stories to her daughter Anna, the rambunctious 7- year-old squirms in bed, seemingly seeking affection but asking her mother to go away.
“She has this way of keeping you at arm’s distance, yet she needs you so bad,” said Hunt, of Madison.
Now UW-Madison scientists say they have found a biological clue to anti-social behavior in children such as Anna, who was adopted from a Russian orphanage.
Broadcaster Pat Robertson recently issued a fatwa over the citizens of Dover, Penn., who voted out of office school board members who supported intelligent design in the school curriculum. ââ?¬Å?Iââ?¬â?¢d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, donââ?¬â?¢t turn to God. You just rejected Him from your city,ââ?¬Â Robertson said. Hmm ââ?¬Â¦ is this about science or religion?
Quoted: Frank Greer, professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
University of Wisconsin pediatrician Bruce S. Klein has been awarded the National Institutes of Health�s Method to Extend Research in Time award, which will fund his research for 10 years, officials announced Monday.
To keep students in class and out of the doctor�s office this winter, University Health Services announced Wednesday the department will again offer students free flu vaccinations throughout the semester.
The 64 doctors and nurse midwives on the faculty at the Milwaukee campus of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health have until Friday to decide if they want to work for Aurora Health Care – a move that several contend will enable Aurora to cut back on services for the urban poor.
MADISON ââ?¬â? University of Wisconsin Childrenââ?¬â?¢s Hospital critical care pediatrician Timothy Corden doesnââ?¬â?¢t need a lot of statistics to convince him that using child booster seats in vehicles is a good idea.
Global warming, which scientists say is causing higher temperatures, rising sea levels and more droughts and floods, is also killing 150,000 people each year, a UW-Madison research review finds.
The review includes an assessment in 2002 by the World Health Organization.
A bill that would make it easier for University of Wisconsin professors to cash in on their research is part of a package of “Invest Wisconsin” legislation announced by Republican legislators today.
Other laws – some already introduced and others to come – would create wide-ranging tax credits and exemptions aimed at promoting investments in high-technology projects and businesses.
Lynnae Meyer quit smoking last year – until a house fire forced her to move in with her mother, and the stressful situation led her back to cigarettes.
This year, the 28-year-old from Mineral Point decided to quit again. She had developed bronchitis, and with a family history of cancer, she worried that poor health could keep her from caring for her 6-year-old son.
“I was afraid I would never see my son graduate from high school,” she said.
Meyer is one of more than 300 people enrolled in one of the most comprehensive smoking cessation studies ever conducted at UW- Madison.
The two healthiest counties in the state are also the two wealthiest, while the two least healthy are counties with large American Indian populations and low incomes, according to a study by the UW Population Health Institute.
Not everyone can claim a chicken as a career counselor.
But sick chickens in Pennsylvania steered Yoshihiro Kawaoka into bird flu research.
As attention to the human threat of a worldwide epidemic from bird flu has swelled in recent months, the UW-Madison virologist has emerged as one of the country’s leading experts on the subject.
Through a microscope, the H5N1 flu virus looks about as menacing as a moldy doughnut hole: not something you’d want to put in your mouth, but not something you’d run screaming from either.
Working in a high-containment laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Stacey Schultz-Cherry and three other researchers have been studying the H5N1 virus.
A committee of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents on Thursday accepted an agreement in which the UW Medical School would spend an additional $920,000 a year on public health initiatives in Milwaukee, including plans for a possible public health school at UW-Milwaukee.
Freedom of choice and the right to privacy are two of the most fundamental principles in our country. Why, then, is a Wisconsin State Representative trying to restrict both of these key constitutional rights for UW women? The Republican-controlled Assembly passed legislation this summer introduced by Rep. Daniel LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, that would prohibit University Health Services from dispensing the morning after pill to students. While LeMahieu claims the bill promotes responsible choices, this gratuitous, offensive and otherwise unconstitutional legislation is nothing more than a malicious attack on the reproductive rights of women across campus.
Cancer patients involved in clinical trials in Wisconsin are one step closer to receiving health-insurance coverage for routine treatments, thanks to a bill unanimously approved by the Wisconsin Senate Tuesday.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will consider an agreement later this week that could bring a school of public health in Milwaukee closer to reality.
The board should approve it without delay and then closely monitor events to make sure the school actually gets established.
The University of Wisconsin Medical School would spend an additional $920,000 a year on various public health initiatives in Milwaukee under an agreement worked out with the City of Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Count us as among those who believe that if the subject is an avian flu pandemic, the administration would have been extremely negligent had it not raised the issue last week. mentions UW-Madison work on better ways to produce vaccines.
University preparations for a possible future avian influenza pandemic are still in progress, according to University Health Services Director Kathy Poi.
While individuals afflicted with the avian flu are as of yet confined to Southeast Asia, the disease�s severe attack on the respiratory system so far killed approximately 50 percent of the 120 people infected.
Saying the state shouldn’t stand in the way of stem cell research in Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle on Thursday vetoed a ban on all forms of human cloning in the state.
Supporters of the ban said it would have prevented unethical research from being conducted here. Doyle went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Biotechnology Center to veto the bill (AB 499).
University of Wisconsin Regent President David Walsh said the Board of Regents will not appoint a new investigator in the Paul Barrows matter.
Walsh wrote a testy reply to an angry letter from three lawmakers on Wednesday. The lawmakers were upset because UW President Kevin Reilly told a reporter that UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley informed him early on about his plans to demote Barrows, the former vice chancellor for student affairs.
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently delayed, once again, its decision on whether to make the “morning-after pill” available over the counter, a top official had enough.
Susan Wood, director of the FDA’s Office of Women’s Health, quit in protest.
President Bush on Tuesday asked Congress for $7.1 billion in emergency spending to prepare for a possible pandemic of avian flu, the illness that some scientists fear could spread to humans from the disease now devastating birds and chickens in Asia and Europe.
At the same time, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are forging ahead with advances that could make the president’s proposed goals easier to attain.
Does your brain feel lighter this morning? Today is some people’s favorite “holiday” – the end of daylight-saving time, which brings an extra hour of sleep.
What the body does during that or any hour of sleep – or why we slumber in the first place – remains a mystery. But some scientists, including a team of researchers at UW- Madison, have a theory.
LATELY I have had the brain on the brain.
Instead of fretting about the Packers, or the fact winter is coming, I have been thinking about the brain. Odd, I realize. But I have called on my own semi-functional brain to deduce a few reasons why this may be so….
(Professor Richard Davidson is mentioned in this column, along with professor emeritus Wally Welker, internationally recognized as a researcher in the brain morphology of mammals.)
Wisconsin’s Medicaid program spends an estimated $46 million a year to provide health care coverage to workers for some of the state’s largest employers, including the University of Wisconsin System, according to a report to be released today by a Madison consumer advocacy group.
Dear Editor: As Halloween approaches, Madison is again likely to see another demonstration of what a bad idea it would be to lower the age for legal alcohol consumption to match the legal age for military service.
Military service involves training that aims at increasing a person’s degree of responsibility for their actions – whether with weapons or among comrades. This is the exact opposite of the effect alcohol has on human behavior.
MONROE (AP) – A 23-year-old woman was charged Tuesday with killing an 88-year-old woman and taking about $50,000 from her.
Mary A. Sidoff of rural Monticello was charged in Green County Circuit Court with first-degree intentional homicide, hiding a corpse and theft. A $100,000 cash bond was set by Judge James Beer.
….A sheriff’s department report that accompanied the complaint said Sidoff told authorities she first met Sturzenegger in September when the elderly woman was a patient at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison and she was working as a nurse’s assistant.
Quoted: James Stein, an associate professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison.
Can you imagine spending a day without toilet paper and soap?
Most of us take these items for granted. Not so for needy families. They are lucky to get a bar of soap and two rolls of toilet paper from area pantries, where personal care items are in short supply.
That’s why Eileen Newman, a volunteer with the Middleton Outreach Ministry Food Pantry, is organizing a personal care items drive Nov. 1-13. During the drive, donation bins will be located at 33 locations (including the Morgridge Center on the UW-Madison campus).
Bioscience is one of the fastest growing industries in Wisconsin, a new report maintains, although it has a long way to go to surpass manufacturing, agriculture and tourism as the state’s top industry.
The report, Bioscience Wisconsin 2006, issued by the Wisconsin Association for Biomedical Research & Education, measures economic growth in bioscience research, development and industry in the state.
Police would not say how the victim and Sidoff became acquainted. However, they may have met in Madison, where Sidoff worked for the past four years at UW Hospital as a nursing assistant in the psychiatry in-patient unit. Sturzenegger was a patient there, Linda Brei, vice president of public affairs, confirmed Monday.
Local public officials and health care leaders from across the region pledged their cooperation Friday as the National Children’s Study was launched, the largest study ever undertaken to monitor and assess the effects of environment on children.
The Medical College of Wisconsin and the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have received a five-year, $16.2 million contract to lead the Waukesha County portion of the study.
If Asian avian flu shows up in Wisconsin, it will probably be in a backyard flock owned by someone who is not looking for the disease.
UW-Madison professor of animal science Mark Cook and professor of medicine Dr. Dennis Maki, head of the infectious disease section at UW Hospital, are quoted.
State and industry officials are already taking steps to prevent avian influenza.
A work group focusing on preparation and planning includes representatives of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, the Department of Health and Family Services, the Department of Natural Resources, USDA agencies, the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, the UW School of Veterinary Medicine, the State Laboratory of Hygiene and Wisconsin Emergency Management.
As Joel Plant knows all too well, rugby and drinking go hand in hand.
Now, two months into his new job as Madison’s first alcohol policy coordinator, Plant says he no longer overindulges. But he says his party days on the rugby team at Marquette University will serve him well in his new post.
“I’ve been there,” says Plant, who just turned 28.
Plant said he will work with bar owners, the city and students and officials at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to reduce the problems that lead to or result from binge drinking. This includes, but is not limited to, over-capacity taverns, fake IDs, property damage, fights and police calls. The city and UW-Madison are sharing Plant’s salary.
Smoking, of course, plays hob with the body. Heart disease, emphysema and various cancers – lung, laryngeal and stomach, to name a few – all have been shown to have tobacco as a cause.
Now researchers are finding that nicotine can also alter the developing brain. A team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports in a recent paper that nicotine can affect the operation of a gene linked to the development of synapses of the maturing adolescent rat brain.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher (psychology professor Richard Davidson) is defending a speaking invitation extended to the Dalai Lama to a convention of neuroscientists.
UW Police say an alarming number of students are drinking themselves to near-death.
Records show more students at UW went to detox in the last 6 weeks than in previous years at the school.
UW leaders say Badger games play a part.
As of Oct. 17, the UW-Madison Police Department has had the most detox commitments in the past three years, according to Chief of Police Susan Riseling, who held a press conference yesterday, at the University of Wisconsin Police Department.
The Alcohol License Review Committee reviewed updates from the Policy Alternatives Community Education (PACE) project�s efforts to limit drink specials at Madison bars during a meeting Wednesday. The committee also gave a liquor license to the Ale Asylum, the east-side microbrewery set to open in February.
UW officials say student drinking is reaching an alarming rate, with the conveyances to detox centers double what they were a year ago.
“The bottom line is this is to the point where we’re seeing students physically endanger their lives,” interim Dean of Students Lori Berquam said.
In the first six weeks of this semester, police took 30 students to detox because of dangerously high levels of intoxication. In the same period last year they conveyed 17, although that number was down from 27 in 2003.
Wisconsin is finally gaining some traction in the high-paying technology job world.
A report issued today by the Wisconsin Technology Council shows the state, while still lagging, is improving its standing among the 50 states when it comes to producing patents, creating high-tech jobs and investing in research and development.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has named four finalists for its Medical School deanship.
The new dean will succeed Philip Farrell, who has served for a decade. He announced last winter he will step down at the end of this year. All of the finalists are external candidates.
As a deadly strain of bird flu spreads through Asia and into Europe, and public health experts warn of a likely human pandemic, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and other Big Ten colleges are scrambling to prepare.
The strain of flu scientists fear could spark a pandemic is showing signs of becoming resistant to an antiviral drug being stockpiled around the world, a warning that drugs being stored by governments might not be as strong a defense as hoped, flu experts say.
When a group of women approached Meg Gaines last year and offered to do volunteer fundraising for her pioneering patient advocacy program, Gaines said it was like “manna from heaven.”
The group is now gearing up to stage its second major fundraiser for the Center for Patient Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Thursday’s “If the Shoe Fits” features, among other things, an auction of shoe sculptures created by local and national artists.
Madison hospitals have been planning and practicing for years exactly what they would do if a natural or human-made disaster struck the community.
And the coordinator of a regional hospital preparedness group says that hospitals in Dane County have been doing an outstanding job.
Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed Assembly Bill 207 Friday, rejecting legislation that would allow medical professionals to refuse to perform procedures conflicting with their personal beliefs.
UW-Madison scientists working with colleagues in Vietnam and Japan have discovered that an avian influenza virus from an infected Vietnamese girl is resistant to Tamiflu, the main drug officials had hoped to use to treat patents in case of an influenza pandemic.
The findings suggest that health officials, who have been stockpiling millions of doses of the drug to hold back a global outbreak and buy time to develop and produce a vaccine, should consider other options, said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a professor in the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine.
But Dr. Dennis Maki, UW-Madison professor of medicine and head of the infectious disease division at University Hospital, cautioned Friday that more tests would be necessary to determine whether resistance exists.
In a controversial move Friday, Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed a bill known as the ââ?¬Å?Conscience Protection Act,ââ?¬Â squelching Republican efforts allowing health care workers to deny patients medical procedures due to moral or ethical views.
A University of Wisconsin researcher reported Friday a case of the avian flu in a human has gained resistance to a drug designed to treat the influenza virus, raising questions as to how health officials would combat a possible avian flu pandemic.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb is playing with one. Green Bay Packers center Mike Flanagan recently underwent surgery for one. And University of Wisconsin fullback Matt Bernstein, we think, is sidelined by one.
What is it? A sports hernia.
It’s become the injury du jour in football this fall, but, according to sports medicine professionals, it’s not a new phenomenon.
“It’s been something we’ve had going on for quite a while,” UW-Madison head athletic trainer Dennis Helwig said. “
