Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz wants State Street area bars to quit serving alcohol earlier on Halloween weekend to make the unsponsored megaparty safer this fall. The celebration, attended by as many as 75,000, has been marred by violence and broken up by police in the early morning for three straight years.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday ordered state health officials to direct $10 million to stem-cell research, putting Illinois among a select group of states that have started their own programs in the face of federal funding restrictions.
Anti-cloning legislation passed by the state Assembly last month has triggered a debate over what is more important: Economic development linked to the potential for new cures or ethical concerns over research that uses human embryos. The debate has pitted Republicans against Republicans and stem cell pioneer James Thomson against Rep. Steve Kestell (R-Elkhart Lake), the lawmaker behind the bill. Across the nation, other state legislatures are grappling with cloning concerns. The debate’s ramifications are particularly significant in Wisconsin, given the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s distinction as the place where human embryonic stem cells were first isolated and cultured and its reputation as a leader in life sciences research.
Madison has had its turn. Now the suburbs of Dane County are being recognized as among the country’s best places to live.
Middleton came in seventh Monday on a list released by CNN and Money Magazine, which “spent months looking for Great American Towns – where you would want to raise your children and celebrate life’s milestones,” according to their Web site.
The state Supreme Court today ordered a new trial for Ralph Armstrong, convicted in the 1980 rape and murder of UW-Madison student Charise Kamps.
Armstrong, 52, who is serving a life sentence after his 1981 conviction, has sought a new trial for 12 years, claiming that new evidence in the case warrants it.
It was late on a night in 1969 when Marie and Frank Radtke pulled away from a stop sign, missed a turn and rolled down an embankment into a utility pole.
Bones in her face, and eventually her life, were shattered. Doctors were able to put Radtke’s face back together, but as the years went on, the pain in her face became more and more intense, almost unbearable. Several months ago, Radtke’s doctor at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison offered a solution. It was a novel therapy that would require removing part of her skull, peeling back the membrane that covers her brain and implanting strips of electrodes on the surface of her motor cortex, the brain region that controls movement in the face and other parts of the body and processes sensory input from nerves in those areas.
Eight local governments including Green Bay, the Town of Caledonia and the New Berlin School District will ask a judge to allow them to be defendants in a lawsuit filed against the state seeking to extend unemployment benefits to domestic partners of state workers.
Quoted: Jeff Nelson, research specialist in the biological systems engineering department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Zhang Hongming, a professor of Chinese linguistics at the University of Wisconsin
Dear Editor: As an alum and now a faculty member at UW-Madison, I am saddened by the declining quality of resources for educational programs and the waning morale of my fellow UW employees….
More than one in five state residents is obese, according to a new analysis in the Wisconsin Medical Journal that for the first time measures the problem county by county. Casey Schumann, one of the authors of the new report is a UW-Madison grad student.
Quoted: Norman Drinkwater, an oncology professor at the University of Wisconsi
What would have been the tallest residential building in Madison….won’t become a reality. The city council voted down a proposal for a 16-story apartment building on Charter Street….and Alderman Ken Golden believes it would have set a bad precedent.
At least once a day – in the aftermath of a 10-year, violent civil war – someone would step on a land mine in Nicaragua and either be killed or maimed.
It was the severity of these lower extremity injuries that turned a 1991 missions trip of plastic and reconstructive surgeons from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to Nicaragua into a cooperative medical training project.
Quoted: Susanne Desan, professor of French history at the University of Wisconsin
It doesn’t look like a place that has lost millions of its state funding.
While registering for her freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Rachael Barger saw manicured lawns, met staff who could answer questions, toured roomy residence halls and saw top-of-the-line technology.
I was born and grew up in the Midwest, but subsequently studied both on the East and West coasts. I therefore know firsthand that there is a strong impression on both coasts that the middle of the country is an intellectual void.
If a TV sitcom takes place in either L.A. or New York, and the writers want to introduce a character that is a well-meaning yokel, they often put a T-shirt on him with “Wisconsin” printed on the front to establish his character. It has been a great source of pride to me that the publicity surrounding human embryonic stem cells and its universal association with Wisconsin has helped to remove that T-shirt. Please be absolutely clear: Any legislation that impacts basic science that is more restrictive than current federal legislation will only help put that T-shirt back on.
Gov. Jim Doyle dismissed the latest Republican version of the state budget as smoke and mirrors after GOP leaders added a series of tax breaks and changes early Friday to win the final two votes they needed for Senate approval of the $52.9 billion plan.
The two-year budget now goes back to the Assembly after the Senate approved it 17-16 following an all-night session.
Senate leaders inserted a new tax break for parents who teach their children at home or send them to private school, a $1 million cut to UW-Madison and a new requirement for nonunion state employees to contribute toward their retirement funds.
A former University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who follows Middle East politics says whether Iran�s new President took part in the hostage crisis may not matter. Kemal Karpat says many former revolutionaries have since moderated their political views, although the new President has been described as a hardliner.
UW-Madison researcher and embryonic stem cell pioneer James Thomson is expressing deep concern that Wisconsin will be left behind if the Legislature passes restrictive legislation limiting research on stem cells, saying he is “saddened and disappointed” by some recent developments.
The Madison Landmarks Commission has put off making a decision about the historical significance of the 80-year-old Rennebohm Building until Aug. 8. UW-Madison officials say making the building a landmark would complicate plans for a high-tech research center.
Madison, Wis. – Educators and video-game developers gathered last week in Madison to explore how learning technologies can alter traditional classroom and textbook education models, which speakers agreed early e-learning projects failed to achieve.
Madison, Wis. – It would be misleading to suggest that scientists at UW-Madison or anywhere else in Wisconsin are cloning human embryos. They arenââ?¬â?¢t. In fact, no scientist in the state has even announced plans to do so.
Dear Editor: I am an American, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, cousin and friend. And I am a liberal. I am all these things and more, and I am living with an incurable, deadly disease. I have cystic fibrosis.
….Embryonic stem cells could provide treatments or cures for many diseases, not just cystic fibrosis. I want to ask you: How you can promise to fight for the lives of people who do not exist yet, and look living citizens in the eye and not fight for their lives?
After a debate that pitted hope for cures to some of humanity’s deadliest diseases against the specter of vats of proto-humans grown for spare parts, the Republican- controlled state Assembly voted Thursday to ban human cloning in Wisconsin.
Madison has become home to a new laboratory to study radio frequency identification technology, or RFID.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s E-Business Consortium late last year established its RFID lab to put into practice concepts studied by the group’s RFID workgroup. During the first half of this year, the lab has been installing donated equipment and preparing for an official opening Aug. 12, announced Wednesday during the consortium’s second annual RFID Conference in Waukesha.
SAN FRANCISCO ââ?¬â? Universities nationwide are racing to lure top biotech scientists and research dollars, resources that could fuel one of this century’s most promising industries.
Perhaps nowhere is the outcome more crucial than in the bicoastal battle pitting Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology against Stanford and the University of California in San Francisco.
California-based Geron was once feared for its patent might. Because the company held exclusive rights to many embryonic stem cells developed at the University of Wisconsin, biotechnology rivals believed the company would establish a stem cell monopoly. In 1999 Geron purchased rights to the cloning technology used to make Dolly the sheep in Scotland, a technique given patent protection by the British government a year later.
The head of the UW research park is lobbying heavy criticism at state lawmakers today…for recent attempts he claims are scaring scientists. Mark Bugher tells WIBA news…proposals to ban cloning and certain types of stem cell research…have researchers “worried.”
Insurance coverage of medications that help people quit smoking rose 32 percent from 2002-04, according to a survey by the UW-Madison Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.
Of the more than 3 million insured Wisconsin residents included in the 2004 survey, 74 percent have coverage for at least one stop-smoking medication through their health plans. In 2002, only 56 percent had that benefit.
The Assembly approved one of the nation’s toughest bans on human cloning Thursday despite concerns the bill would cripple embryonic stem cell research in the state where it was discovered.
The bill not only bans cloning to create a baby but also outlaws so-called therapeutic cloning that researchers say could advance the understanding of genetic diseases. It also would prohibit Wisconsin scientists from using embryos cloned in research labs in other states.
Not surprisingly, a lot of folks remain unconvinced ââ?¬â? including a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Justice Department to study the matter.
Biomedical engineer John Webster told the Associated Press that he believes many Taser-related deaths were actually caused by a combination of drug use and medical factors, but that others may have been caused by a rare condition known as malignant hyperthermia, in which bodies essentially overheat as a result of an electrical jolt. He also theorizes that other deaths may be attributable to potassium released into the bloodstream after muscle contractions caused by a Taser shock reaching the heart. He�s hoping his research will help set standards for how powerful Tasers should be and provide guidelines for emergency room doctors on how to treat those who have been hit with the weapon�s jolt.
A $500,000 federal grant given by the U.S. Department of Justice to shock-test pigs with Taser International, stun guns should be withdrawn, according to People for Ethical Treatment of Animals.
PETA called for the grant withdrawal as well as prosecution and punitive damages Wednesday against two Taser executives who reportedly conducted experiments by shocking pigs in 20
Professor Don McCready of the University of Wisconsin believes the true explanation rests in the fact that our brains tend to make objects smaller when they appear closer to us based on distance cues.
The bill on cloning – introduced last week – would ban reproductive cloning, as well as therapeutic cloning for research intended to create custom stem cells to repair damaged nerves and tissues.
Supporters said the measure would prevent science from moving ahead of ethics, but critics fear it will inhibit stem-cell research.
It passed 59 to 38, generally along party lines. Two members did not vote but indicated their preferences; they split 1 to 1.
Supporters of the ban said it was important for the state to take a stand before technology moves beyond many people’s moral beliefs.
Universities nationwide are racing to lure top biotech scientists and research dollars, resources that could fuel one of this century’s most promising industries.
Madison has become home to a new laboratory to study radio frequency identification technology, or RFID.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s E-Business Consortium late last year established its RFID lab to put into practice concepts studied by the group’s RFID workgroup. During the first half of this year, the lab has been installing donated equipment and preparing for an official opening Aug. 12, announced Wednesday during the consortium’s second annual RFID Conference in Waukesha.
Patents for discoveries made at UW-Madison brought in more money than at all but four other universities nationwide, a new study shows.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Despite optimism and enthusiasm, stem cell researchers arriving here Thursday for a conference are rowing hard against strong currents of financial, political and technical turmoil.
Madison, Wis. – A proposed state ban on all forms of human cloning has been approved by the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Children and Families and is headed for a full Assembly vote.
On the 14th floor of Moos Tower, the laboratory appears ordinary. Researchers wear jeans, put plates under microscopes and record their observations. Also under their eyes is a controversy ââ?¬â? cells that offer extreme hope to some and cause extreme apprehension to others.
The University�s Stem Cell Institute is at an important juncture in its brief existence, especially in the politically and morally contentious realm of embryonic stem cell research.
MADISON, Wis. ââ?¬â? Seven years ago, when James Thomson became the first scientist to isolate and culture human embryonic stem cells, he knew he was stepping into a whirlwind of controversy.
He just didn’t expect the whirlwind to last this long.
In fact, the moral, ethical and political controversy is still revving up ââ?¬â? in Washington, where federal lawmakers are considering a bill to provide more federal support for embryonic stem-cell research; and in Madison, Thomson’s base of operations, where Wisconsin legislators are considering new limits on stem-cell research.
A ban on cloning could lead to “a mass exodus” by Wisconsin researchers, according to the chancellor of UW Madison. (Audio.)
Madison – Legislative committees Tuesday approved a bill that would impose a comprehensive ban on human cloning.
The five Republicans on the Assembly’s Committee on Children and Families supported the bill, while two Democrats opposed it; one Democratic member wasn’t present for the vote. In the Senate’s Judiciary, Corrections and Privacy Committee, three Republicans voted in favor of the bill, while two Democrats voted against it.
Two people working on cows at the U.W. get their care benefits retracted after ten beef cows die because of neglect.
A spokesperson from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences says the cattle were fed poor quality hay and corn silage over the winter and were left malnourished. Six cows died of complications during birth and the other four died of malnutrition.
Paul S. Peercy, dean of the UW-Madison College of Engineering for the past five years, likes to call technology transfer a ââ?¬Å?contact sport.ââ?¬Â
He doesn�t mean bruises and broken teeth, though, as in hockey or football. Peercy is talking about interdisciplinary research with scientists and engineers talking to each other at the earliest stages of product development.
A proposal to give landmark status to the former Rennebohm’s drugstore at University and Randall avenues came in for tough sledding before the Madison Landmarks Commission.
The building at 1353 University Ave., built in 1925, is one of several in a run-down former commercial strip that would be demolished to make way for the first phase of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Discovery. Construction is tentatively scheduled to begin later this year.
A bill to make human cloning a crime in Wisconsin is nothing more than a “back-door attempt to criminalize embryonic stem cell research,” UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley says.
“That’s the only reason I can think of for banning a tool that could be used for good or for ill,” Wiley told state lawmakers on Monday.
The head of Wisconsin’s biggest technology transfer organization has been in Washington, D.C., the last few weeks trying to temper enthusiasm in Congress for making big changes to U.S. patent law.
Carl E. Gulbrandsen, who testified at the invitation of House and Senate subcommittees, said the push to give courts more discretion about whether to grant injunctions in patent infringement cases could hurt organizations like his, which are trying to move technology out of university laboratories and into commercial use.
An internal investigation by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and its College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, has confirmed that animal abuse is the reason why 10 beef cows died last winter at one of the schools research farms.
Though no scientists are now cloning embryos at UW- Madison, university officials told legislators Monday that it is important to leave the research avenue open in order to study genetic illnesses and pursue potential cures.
Chancellor John Wiley testified before a legislative committee that is considering a proposed ban on all cloning. The ban would prohibit both therapeutic cloning, or cloning to create cells for research and medical treatments, and reproductive cloning, which is cloning to create an embryo that would result in a child.
Madison – Concerned that technology is outpacing ethics, Republicans in the Legislature are pushing a ban on human cloning, but critics say the move would block future research into genetic diseases.
The proposal is on a fast track. Identical bills – SB 243 and AB 499 – were introduced late Thursday, and Senate and Assembly committees will jointly hold a public hearing on the measures Monday.
Ten cows at a UW-Madison research farm died earlier this year after starving through two cold winter months, university officials said Monday.
The beef cattle were fed a diet of poor-quality hay and corn silage in late December and January that apparently left them thin and malnourished, said Ben Miller, assistant dean at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Following the discovery of the cattle, the technician charged with caring for them has quit his post and a professor has been disciplined, he said.
A shaky, amateurish video shows everything in graphic detail: Four masked people break into darkened university labs, pour toxic chemicals onto computers and stacks of files, and release hundreds of research rats and mice. They spray-paint walls with slogans such as “Science not Sadism” and “Free the Animals.”
The November break-in at the University of Iowa’s Spence Laboratories – a crime for which there have been no arrests but for which the group Animal Liberation Front, or ALF, has claimed responsibility – is characterized by university and law-enforcement officials as terrorism.
UW Madison’s chancellor is warning of the impact of a proposal at the Capitol that would ban human cloning in Wisconsin. Chancellor John Wiley testified at a legislative hearing yesterdayââ?¬Â¦and he believes the measure would also ban embryonic stem cell research. (Additional UW-Madison items follow.)
Drinking vegetable juice, getting regular exercise, even brushing your teeth could offer protection against Alzheimer’s, a much-feared brain disease that affects 4.5 million people in the USA. Those and other findings were reported Sunday in Washington, D.C., at the first Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on the Prevention of Dementia.
Quoted: Mark Sager, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School
Gov. Jim Doyle has announced the members of the Consortium on Biobased Industry, which is charged with preparing a roadmap over the next year on how to best support the development of biobased products and energy in Wisconsin.
“In Wisconsin, we may not have oil fields,” Doyle said Friday. “But we can grow our own biobased resources. We will use these resources to produce renewable energy and value-added products, and reduce our dependence on oil.”
UW-Madison professors Charles Hill and Michael Sussman were among those appointed by the governor.
WAUSAU (AP) – A Madison man walking around the state to support a new University of Wisconsin-Madison cancer research building took a break in Wausau over the weekend before embarking on the second half of his journey.
Ron Reschke left his home in Madison on April 29 and since then has traveled more than 600 miles, stopping in La Crosse, Eau Claire, Ashland, Rhinelander and Merrill.
Anyone caught cloning a human being in Wisconsin could face up to a decade in prison and a million dollars in forfeitures under a Republican bill that outraged stem cell scientists fear could handcuff their work in the state.
The measure would ban cloning to create babies. It also would outlaw so-called therapeutic cloning, a term for cloning human embryos for research such as extracting stem cells. Embryos are destroyed after taking out the cells.
The bill also would ban a practice called parthenogenesis, in which a female egg cell is stimulated to divide without fertilizing it.
