With the recent release of the second of two ad hoc reports addressing the structure and needs of the University of Wisconsin Graduate School and research enterprise, faculty, administrators and the campus community now have a foundational analysis from which to move forward.
The rush to find new drugs to fight cancer is spurring big growth for a Madison company. Founded in 1998 as Tetrionics, the company was purchased in 2004 by a division of Sigma-Aldrich, of St. Louis. Its main product at the Madison building is still the vitamin D compound discovered by UW-Madison professor Hector DeLuca that forms the basis of Zemplar, by Abbott Laboratories.
State wildlife officials reeling from hunter frustration and distrust announced a $2 million project to better track Wisconsinâ??s deer population Wednesday. The initiatives include working with UW-Madison and UW-Stevens Point to study hunter participation and develop retention strategies.
UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin and Provost Paul Deluca put out this statement thanking a pair of ad hoc committees on campus for their work in looking into the proposed restructuring of the $900 million research enterprise on campus.
Itâ??s at least mildly surprising that the UW-Madison administration appears to agree with much of what these reports were saying. The statement put up on the universityâ??s website Tuesday reads, in part: “We are inclined to agree with the major recommendations of the faculty task force. We are eager to hear from the broader campus community and are committed to working with the University Committee and faculty on developing and implementing a plan of action before the conclusion of the academic year.”
While much focus in town has been on filling vacant land at Hilldale Mall or the squabble over the downtown Edgewater Hotel, a big development is coming to the far west side that has sort of floated under the radar — the addition of a second University Research Park, or, as its backers call it, “URP2.”
I talked with Mark Bugher, research park director, who says they will break ground on a undetermined date this spring and that he foresees the first occupant there late in 2011 or early 2012. After city approval last fall, Bugher says the project has been moving along and it was decided to name new streets within the park after the five UW faculty members who won Nobel Prizes while at the university.
One of the greatest remaining benefits for government workers in Wisconsin is under fire as being too expensive and unfair to taxpayers.
In a report released Wednesday, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute says public employees pay almost nothing toward their own retirement while enjoying pension benefits that far exceed the private sector.
The doors at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul food pantry on Fish Hatchery Road donâ??t open for another 30 minutes, but a line has already formed.They wait quietly, for the most part, this rainbow coalition of all ages: African-American grandmothers, Latino families, young women with pierced tongues, disabled seniors and working fathers.
What they have in common is poverty.
….Measuring poverty in college towns can be somewhat misleading, researchers caution, since many students live below the poverty line and are counted by the U.S. Census Bureau as officially â??poorâ? even if they come from wealthy families.
Quoted: Tim Smeeding, director of the UW-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty and professor of public affairs
Noted: UW-Madison research on manure and other issues related to factory farms.
Researchers who mixed together bird flu and ordinary flu viruses created three extremely virulent new strains, a reminder that influenza viruses can swap genes to create dangerous offspring. Their experiment, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates that as H1N1 swine flu wanes, other forms of flu continue to circulate and could make surprise appearances.
Time is running out on the last season of Lost. And time travel may be the key to the finale. Alternate realities, the grandfather paradox and magnetic fields are all elements of time travel in â??â??Lostâ??â?? that arenâ??t all that far fetched.
“From a pure empirical point of view, it’s very difficult. That’s why you need to make some conjectures.” According to UW Physics professor Daniel Chung. He says basically, that means making your best educated guess, which is something lost fans are used to.
A UW-Madison Faculty Senate committee released a report Monday opposing any separation of graduate school education from research in response to a recent restructuring proposal from UW administrators.
A faculty ad hoc report released Monday evaluating the structure of the University of Wisconsin graduate school confirmed some common concerns with UWâ??s research enterprise, but directly opposed a wholesale reorganization.
When the 2009 H1N1 flu virus emerged last April, it triggered the first new pandemic in more than 40 years, producing endless headlines and panic. But, now, some 10 months into the pandemic, the publicâ??s fear has subsided. H1N1 turned out to be relatively weak, and action by global and national health officials has helped blunt the damage caused by the virus; by mid-February, more than 16,000 people worldwide had died from the new flu, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), but that figure is in line with mortality in a normal flu year.
Research in mice suggests the avian flu virus and the ordinary seasonal flu virus could combine to create a new deadly kind of flu, researchers say. A single bit of genetic material from the seasonal virus converted the avian flu — officially known as H5N1 — into a very dangerous form, the scientists report in a study published in the Feb. 22-26 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Quoted: Steve Ackerman, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW-Madison.
Quoted: â??Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women,â? said Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin whose research on trends in Milwaukee since 2002 provides a rare portrait of gender patterns in inner-city rentals.
Rising demand for locally-grown produce means farmers need to adapt new strategies, according to a new UW-Madison study.
Whether itâ??s at farmers markets, food stands, restaurants or grocery stores, producers are having a tough time keeping up with consumerâ??s appetites. UW researchers looked at 11 operations in Wisconsin and other states, and found that oftentimes producers donâ??t need to grow more food to meet demand, but rather a better way to distribute their products.
MILWAUKEE â?? Shantana Smith, a single mother who had not paid rent for three months, watched on a recent morning as men from Eagle Moving carried her tattered furniture to the sidewalk. Bystanders knew too well what was happening. â??When you see the Eagle movers truck, you know itâ??s time to get going,â? a neighbor said. New research is showing that eviction is a particular burden on low-income black women, often single mothers, who have an easier time renting apartments than their male counterparts, but are vulnerable to losing them because their wages or public benefits have not kept up with the cost of housing. â??Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women,â? said Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin whose research on trends in Milwaukee since 2002 provides a rare portrait of gender patterns in inner-city rentals.
Guest: UW-Madison journalism professor Deborah Blum, author of “The Poisonerâ??s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.”
In one of the coldest places on Earth, UW-Madison scientists are building the worldâ??s largest telescope to search for some of the universeâ??s smallest particles.
Over the past six years, the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute has ranked the health of each county in Wisconsin. While calling attention to the counties with the best and poorest health is often controversial and may at first glance seem somewhat punitive, we have learned that in both rural and urban low-ranking areas, the rankings have raised awareness and inspired action to improve health. A column by David A. Kindig, emeritus professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Michael Budkie, the executive director of Stop Animal Exploitation Now, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack demanding an independent investigation of the agencyâ??s animal research oversight organizations due to a number of animal deaths in labs across the country in the past year-plus.
We bring this up because some on the UW-Madison campus have argued in recent months that animal research at the university is ethical, in part, due to stringent federal oversight.
But Budkie, whose group opposes primate research for moral and financial reasons, says thatâ??s not the case.
It would be a wonderful thing if counties all across the United States responded the same way leaders in Juneau County did four years ago when they found themselves ranked last among the stateâ??s 72 counties in a health status evaluation done by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Rather than rail on the ratings or the rating system, Juneau County responded to the challenge. Now thereâ??s a dental clinic for the poor, more prenatal care offered to more women and an increased awareness of public health issues. Thanks to a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, similar county-by-county rankings will be done on a nationwide basis.
Itâ??s hard to believe today, but it wasnâ??t that long ago that watching a movie simply meant watching a movie. There was no watching the advance trailer during the Super Bowl, or checking Imdb.com or other movie blogs beforehand to check out rumors about the production, or reading early advance reviews from anonymous posters. Love it or hate it, hype is an inescapable part of pop culture today. UW-Madison communication arts associate professor Jonathan Gray tackles the hype machine in his new book “Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and other Media Paratexts.”
University of Wisconsin researchers in collaboration with scientists from around the globe are nearing the completion of a device that will allow the study of a unique particle with the potential to answer questions concerning the creation of the universe.
A software program developed by a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researcher has been shown to successfully predict what type of cell individual stem cells will eventually turn into.
With demand outpacing supply, local food producers need to shore up delivery systems to get their goods to customers, according to a study out Thursday from UW-Madison and the UW-Extension.
“Scaling Up: Meeting the Demand for Local Food” takes a look at 11 enterprises and organizations trying to fill the middle level distribution role, which has suffered a setback in recent years when established distributors went out of business.
A team of scientific sleuths claims that malaria and a degenerative bone condition, not human assassins, killed King Tutankhamen, the boy pharaoh who died at age 19 around 1324 B.C., according to a study published in this weekâ??s issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
….It turns out that nobody at UW Madison was part of the international team of medical scientists and anthropologists lead by the charismatic Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Court of Antiquities in Cairo. But there is another local connection.
Dr. Laura Knoll, an associate professor of medical microbiology and immunology at UW Madison, is working on an idea for a vaccine for malaria. It involves cat litter, of all things.
Madison-based Cellular Dynamics International has raised $40.6 million, according to a filing the company made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The privately held company, known as CDI, sells stem cell-derived heart cells to Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche and others to help them test the toxicity of drugs. CDI was founded by stem cell pioneer James Thomson and several other University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, along with some people previously associated with NimbleGen Systems LLC.
Today, whether you live in Malibu or Atlanta, you can learn if your community is holding its own in health. “County Health Rankings: Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health,” a health report card for almost every one of the nationâ??s more than 3,000 counties, is being released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsinâ??s Population Health Institute. “This is a complicated story about what makes a community healthy and another not so healthy,” says report author Pat Remington, the associate dean for public health at the University of Wisconsin.
Steven Mixtacki, American TV and Applianceâ??s longtime senior vice president and chief financial officer, has joined the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation as its chief financial and operating officer.
Laura Calandrino hasnâ??t had a cold or the flu this winter. George Hagenauer has had one cold but thinks he fought off a few others. The Madison-area residents are among 154 people in a UW-Madison study, which started in September, asking if exercise or meditation can ward off colds and the flu. Researchers are looking at whether either activity makes the immune system better able to fight respiratory infections, according to Dr. Bruce Barrett, a UW Health family physician heading up the research.
Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), the company founded by UW-Madison stem cell pioneer James Thomson, has raised $40.6 million in an equity offering.
Quoted: Steve Ackerman, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the UW-Madison
A survey of every county in the nation ranks them on how healthy residents are and how long they live. In Wisconsin, the County Health Rankings lists Ozaukee, St. Croix, Washington, Waukesha, and Portage counties as the five healthiest. The five counties with the poorest health are Menominee, Milwaukee, Marquette, Jackson, and Adams. The report was released Wednesday by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The snow-rimmed hole where the tree once stood looks like any other ragged cavity left behind when fierce winds uproot white pines like ragweed yanked from a widowâ??s flower garden. In it was an old black bear — a male, most likely — who had made it through another hunting season and returned to the dirt cave to hibernate. Bears are studied by to University of Wisconsin students and professors, including professor Tim Ginnett at UW-Stevens Point and graduate assistant Karl Malcolm and Professor Tim Van Deelen at UW-Madison.
Residents of St. Charles County have the best opportunities in Missouri to be healthy, while people who live in St. Louis city have the worst, according to a new report.
The counties and independent cities in each state were ranked by various factors that can affect health â?? smoking, obesity, poverty rates, binge drinking, violent crime, education levels and birth weights among others â?? for the national County Health Rankings report from the University of Wisconsin and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Pleasant View Road is little more than a dirt path in places right now. Drive west on Mineral Point Road past Target and it is easy to miss the beginning of Pleasant Viewâ??s southern extension, which will connect it to Valley View Road and the cityâ??s burgeoning southwest side.
But stand at the intersection of Pleasant View and Mineral Point at 5 p.m. on any weeknight and look east toward Madison, and itâ??s easy to see why Pleasant View may become one of the most important new roads in the city.
….The majority remains farmland, waiting for the recently approved University Research Park II to be built as one of the cityâ??s largest new economic development projects.
When Juneau County ranked last among the stateâ??s counties in health status four years ago, local officials got mad — and then took action to improve the countyâ??s health.
They opened a dental clinic for the poor and started offering reduced rates at medical clinics. They gave prenatal care to more pregnant women and handed out books to children.
Itâ??s too early to know how much those steps have helped. But researchers from UW-Madison hope similar activity takes root around the country Wednesday, when their annual county health rankings for Wisconsin expand nationwide.
A Milwaukee research institute is donating 500 pounds of frozen yellow perch to the Hunger Task Force. Itâ??s the second year that the WATER Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the UW Sea Grant Institute have donated perch to the Milwaukee-based food pantry.
Despite a great deal of hype surrounding the potential of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, a study published Monday by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor shows these cells donâ??t quite measure up to the “gold standard” of their embryonic stem cell counterparts.
The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that academic inventions spurred the “creation of a record 543 new university spinoff companies in the 2008 fiscal year, while generating more than $2.3 billion in licensing revenue for 154 institutions and their inventors.”
According to this Chronicle survey, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was one of just 10 institutions that reported licensing revenue of more than $50 million. The survey shows UW-Madison ranked No. 9, with $54.1 million in licensing income.
A new kind of stem cells, which donâ??t involve the destruction of embryos, canâ??t turn into brain cells as well as embryonic stem cells can, a UW-Madison study found. Induced pluripotent stem cells, discovered in 2007 in part by campus scientists James Thomson and Junying Yu, can morph into several types of brain cells. But they donâ??t do so as consistently or efficiently as embryonic stem cells, which Thomson was the first to create, in 1998.
A new study has raised doubts about the creation of “ethical” all-purpose stem cells for use in research and treatments. Embryonic stem cells have the power to develop into any of the 220 cell types that make up the different tissues of the human body, but they are mired in controversy because they must be extracted from cannibalised early-stage human embryos.
Embryonic stem cells have the power to develop into any of the 220 cell types that make up the different tissues of the human body, but they are mired in controversy because they must be extracted from aborted foetuses.
Feature on James Lattis, an astronomer at UW-Madison and the director of the UW Space Place.
UW instituteâ??s formula interprets satellite data so meteorologists can better predict water vapor patterns for everyone from pilots to picnickers.
A first head-to-head comparison of human embryonic stem cells with ones grown from skin cells, reported Thursday by biologists, revealed early aging and other abnormalities in the less-controversial alternatives.
Madison fire authorities said a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student burned his right hand after a fire broke out at a laboratory.
The privately-funded Morgridge Institute for Research, part of the public-private Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, plans to recruit 10 principal investigators among 100 researchers and support staffers to be hired over the next five years.
Student inventors are squaring off at the UW-Madisonâ??s annual “Innovation Days” competition. The emphasis is on helping people live more efficiently.
Inside the universityâ??s Engineering Hall, students show off their inventions. At one table, a temperature controlled window opens and closes automatically. Nearby, a digital “bread box” alerts people when their food has gone bad. Further down, a stove runs entirely on plant oil, while a hand-powered generator at another demonstration table supplies enough energy to light a bus stop.
A UW-Madison graduate student suffered burns to his right hand late Thursday night while conducting an experiment in the Medical Sciences Center, authorities reported.
Madison Fire Department firefighters were called to the building at 1215 Linden Drive at about 11:15 p.m. Thursday, and found smoke and haze in the building from a dry chemical extinguisher that the student used to put the fire out.
Maureen Durkin, a University of Wisconsin researcher who also has studied the influence of parentsâ?? age on autism, said itâ??s important to note that the increased risks are small and that most babies born to older mothers do not develop autism. Durkin said the overall low risk for autism “may be the most important take-home message,” especially for prospective parents.
Quoted: Nasia Safdar, medical director for University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Infection Control, and UW-Madison food chemist John Lucey.
Quoted: Phil Moy, a University of Wisconsin Sea Grant researcher.
A workshop in southeastern Wisconsin will concentrate on preventing aquatic invasive species. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the UW Center for Limnology are offering a “Smart Prevention of Aquatic Invasive Species” workshop on Saturday at the Waukesha County Technical College in Pewaukee.
Noted: These true believers come as a flood of new gene crops approaches. The European Union estimates the number of GM traits in crops will quadruple to 120 by 2015. Only half will be made by for-profit companies. Stewart Brand, one of the founders of the back-to-the-land movement, has been arguing fiercely that environmentalists need to drop their anti-GM stance. So has Karl Haro von Mogel, a 27-year-old plant sciences graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, whose blog promotes the technology. “Thereâ??s so much stuff going on that nobody even knows about,” says Von Mogel. “There is this huge potential if we use the science to pursue those things that are possible.”
“Embryonic” and “senescent” arenâ??t supposed to go together any more than “good” and “grief” or other oxymorons, which is why biologist Robert Lanza was “devastated” when he saw what was happening with the human stem cells he and colleagues were trying to grow. Like hundreds of other stem-cell scientists, they had been intrigued and energized by the 2007 discovery that adult cells can be regressed back to an embryonic state simply by inserting four genes into them. The discovery, by scientists at Kyoto University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, seemed to promise a way out of the bitter debates over embryonic-stem-cell research: rather than using human embryos as a source of stem cells, produce them from adult cells.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor has replied to a letter from Dane County supervisors who are concerned about the UWâ??s Primate Research program.
Chancellor Biddy Martin wrote a response Wednesday to the members of the Dane County Board of Supervisors, who have recently expressed concerns with the ethics of primate research at UW-Madison.
