Noted: It became “the equivalent of a knish,” says Henry Sapoznik, an ethnomusicologist at the University of Wisconsin. Incidentally, he considers it to be “a really crummy little tune.”
Quoted: Julianne Zweifel, clinical psychologist and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, and current chair of the mental health professional group within the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.
Noted: What accounts for the rapid adoption of social networking? Convenience, said C. Shawn Green, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.
The British Cheese Board recently launched a competition inviting songwriters to compose an anthem celebrating cheddar, Britain?s most popular cheese. Of the five entries shortlisted for the finals, four pay tribute to the cheese?s notable hue. (Sample lyric: “Every pickled onion/ dreams of lying beside/ a wedge of golden cheddar, /crusty bread on the side.”) But why is cheddar yellow or orange when milk is white?
Quoted: ?They seem pretty unconnected,? said University of Wisconsin political scientist Barry Burden. The recall election was bitterly fought around a rather narrow spectrum of state issues, he pointed out. Even on the day Wisconsin voters turned out to save Walker from recall, a majority of recall voters said they planned to vote for President Obama in exit polls.
Quoted: Julia B. Isaacs, an expert on poverty and child and family policy and a visiting scholar at University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Institute for Research on Poverty.
UW-Madison has received a $7 million federal grant that will help a large dairy farm near Green Bay convert cow manure into ethanol, fertilizer and mulch.”The idea is to use virtually everything,” said John Markley, a biochemistry professor and a principal investigator for the project, which is a joint effort between the university, Madison-based biotech company Soil Net and Maple Leaf dairy farm near Green Bay.
A UW-Madison professor is set to receive a $2.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health as part of a push to study drug safety. The NIH is giving up to $70 million over the next five years to research projects across the country that use “tissue chips” to predict how human cells will respond to some medications, according to a news release.
Noted: The first one appeared in Hudson, Wis., in 2009, when Todd Bol, whose background is in international business development, built a little library in his yard as a memorial to his mother, a school teacher. People seemed to love it, he said, so he and friend Rick Brooks of Madison, Wis., an outreach program manager at the University of Wisconsin whose specialties include social entrepreneurship work, decided to create the Little Free Library project.
The Transform Wisconsin Coalition will distribute grants to 30 organizations for projects advocates say will encourage active lifestyles, healthy eating habits and smoke-free places to live. Their goal: Avoid higher health costs down the road from obesity and smoking. Tom Sieger, prevention director for University Health Services at UW-Madison, which oversees Transform Wisconsin, said the “return on investment” in funding preventive health initiatives is high. According to Sieger, $3 of every $4 spent on health care in Wisconsin goes toward treating chronic health problems, many of which are preventable. “We can realize tremendous health care savings in this state,” he said.
It?s exciting to see stem cell pioneer James Thomson attracting millions of more dollars to Wisconsin for exciting research. Yes, the famed scientist and so many of his talented colleagues in the public and private sectors still call Madison their home ? something we should all be proud of and thankful for. Thomson?s lab just landed a $2.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to help speed the discovery of drugs and improve their safety for humans.
The State Journal reported in April that Madison’s stem cell enterprise may not be as big as those in Boston, San Diego, San Francisco and other big cities on the coasts. Yet Madison likely has more people per capita working in the field ? and a drive to stay on top. Let’s root for this important sector of our economy that’s increasingly important in saving, improving and extending lives.
The ACA is far from perfect, but by extending coverage to an estimated 93 percent of all legal U.S. residents, it is a major step forward in providing affordable coverage to nearly all Americans. It is the first U.S. law to attempt comprehensive reform touching nearly every aspect of our health system. The law addresses far more than coverage, including health system quality and efficiency, prevention and wellness, the health care work force, fraud and abuse, long-term care, biopharmaceuticals, elder abuse and neglect, and many other issues. Most physicians recognize that the road ahead will require congressional Democrats and Republicans to collaborate and modify some ACA elements, as is required after any major law.
Native Madison ? a new camp run by the Madison Children?s Museum ? originated from a fascination with the effigy burial mounds on Observatory Hill on the UW-Madison campus. The camp, which ran July 16-20, was designed for third-, fourth- and fifth-graders who toured the effigy burial mounds with guide Aaron Bird Bear, a Native American who works in the School of Education.
Yiddish culture is experiencing a renaissance in ? of all places ? Madison. At its peak, Yiddish culture displayed incredible diversity in its music and literature, Henry Sapoznik told a crowd Sunday in his opening remarks at A Biselle (?A little bit of?) KlezKamp, a daylong program of Yiddish language, music, dance and arts on the UW-Madison campus. One of the great historical facts about Yiddish, not widely acknowledged, is that in 1916, UW-Madison was the first university in the world to offer a class on Yiddish language, said Sapoznik, director of the UW-Madison?s year-old Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture, which put on KlezKamp.
Musicals are more than just jazz hands and tap dancing. But with the lighthearted qualities typically associated with the art form, it can be hard to avoid certain escapist tendencies. Music Theatre of Madison?s production of ?Parade,? which opens Thursday, July 26, is grounded in the dark reality of an important story. MTM has also partnered with the Jewish Federation of Madison for a special program on Sunday, July 29. The program will include a historical summary by Randolph and UW-Madison Jewish studies and theater professor Bob Skloot, as well as a talk by Matthew Bernstein, author of ?Screening A Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television,? before the evening?s show.
It weighs 600 pounds, was built at UW-Madison, has visited space aboard the Hubble Space Telescope and is now comfortably retired on the South Side after about 535 million miles of travel. Now, the public can see this instrument, called the High Speed Photometer, at Space Place, 2300 S. Park St. in the Villager Mall. It is exhibited among other Wisconsin-built instruments and telescopes that tell a story of the university?s role in space exploration going back to the 1950s.
Noted: “It is phenomenally difficult to measure with precision what the effect of advertising is,” said Ken Goldstein, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and president of Kanter Media during a Brookings Institution panel discussion on political advertising Monday. “But advertising very, very much matters at the margin.”
A: The answer is unclear, said Katherine McMahon, an associate professor of civil engineering at UW-Madison, and an expert on cyanobacteria, as the blue-green algae are known to science. “This is the bazillion dollar question,” she said. “Certain cyanobacteria simply don?t have the genes to make toxins, while others have the genes, but don?t always make the toxins.”
A: A reader wondered whether his perception that it has become windier in southern Wisconsin over the past couple of decades has anything to do with the shorter Lake Superior ice season during the same time. Though it has been demonstrated by recent research by our UW Atmospheric and Oceanic Science colleagues, Dr. Ankur Desai and Galen McKinley, that the shorter ice season on Lake Superior has led to warmer water in the summer and stronger winds locally near the lake ? which, in turn change the currents in the lake itself ? these effects are confined to the near vicinity of the lake.
Phil Pellitteri, a UW-Extension insect specialist, said he has been surprised at how quickly the ash borer has seemed to spread just this summer. In recent weeks, it has shown up for the first time in the city of Janesville as well as in Milwaukee. “It?s just kind of popped,” said Pellitteri of the insect?s recent spread. “That?s what it has felt like . . . So would it surprise me if it comes here this year? No, it would not.”
If you?re concerned the heavy rains that hit some parts of the Madison area last week might put our previously mosquito-free summer in jeopardy, stop worrying. ?I?ve been asked about mosquitoes, and honestly I find that question a little silly from my standpoint,? says Phil Pellitteri, a distinguished faculty associate with UW-Madison?s Insect Diagnostic Lab. ?We?re just not holding water.?
Quoted: “Peppers really like hot weather,” said Irwin Goldman, a horticulture professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “When it?s dry and hot outside, you?ll get a higher concentration of alkaloids.”
Quoted: ?It?s certainly unusual. Data suggests that 95 to 98 percent of people Holmes? age are on social media,? Dr. Megan A. Moreno, of University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, told CBS News. As for that other 5- to 2 percent, Moreno, who has no connection to the case, highlighted a link between extreme Internet use ? or lack of use ? and depression.
Quoted: David Egan-Robertson, a demographer with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied Population Laboratory.
Quoted: Joe Lauer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and corn agronomist for the UW Extension Service.
….Wow. We?re graying fast. And that means longer lives, something we all hope for. In fact, Wisconsin enjoys higher life expectancies than the nation as a whole, a trend that?s expected to continue. But our rapidly aging population also will mean fewer workers per retiree to pay the state?s bills for everything from schools to health care to government services for the elderly and poor. And that makes keeping, educating and attracting young, talented, highly productive people more important than ever for Wisconsin. Our state and region need to encourage entrepreneurs, innovation and technology that lead to more high-paying jobs.
?The single most important experiment in higher education,? reads the headline to this piece posted at TheAtlantic.com. Slate.com asks: ?Will online education startups like Coursera end the era of expensive higher education?? Those posts were related to the news announced earlier this week that a dozen more universities have signed on with Coursera to deliver free, online classes to the masses that are known as MOOCs (massive online open classrooms).
?The news certainly caught my eye,? says Paul Peercy, the dean of UW-Madison?s College of Engineering, which has a long tradition of delivering master?s degrees and continuing education online. ?I?m convinced that the rapid advances in information technology are going to change the world. And they?re going to change education at all levels.?
Researchers with UW-Madison are not only adding to our understanding of the strange and ancient life form but also coming up with better ways to detect its lethal presence.
“Now, public health officials just look at the water and, if it looks blue-green, they close a beach or post a warning near a waterway,” said Katherine McMahon, a UW-Madison microbiologist and engineer. Now, however, using funding from the Sea Grant Institute at UW-Madison, McMahon has worked with Ph.D. student Lucas Beversdorf and the School of Freshwater Sciences’ Matthew Smith to build and test an automated sampler that can monitor bloom conditions around the clock.
Noted: Attitudes are similar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Wisconsin School of Business. ?We don?t look at what we?re doing as a training program,? says Steve Schroeder, assistant dean for the bachelor?s of business administration program and director of its Business Career Center. ?We?re different than that. We?re not in the profession of training students for a particular job. I think what we do?and do particularly well?is train students on how to think, how to solve problems and how to analyze situations.?
Noted: The trade group?s claims are based on academic work by Dermot J. Hayes of Iowa State University and Xiaodong Du of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The professors? original peer-reviewed work on the subject, published in 2009, assigned a more modest amount of credit to the biofuel for its ability to reduce gasoline prices. That work, however, was updated in May ? with financial support from the trade group ? for Iowa State?s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, and the findings ascribed greater price-reducing powers to ethanol.
Quoted: ?Peppers really like hot weather,? said Irwin Goldman, a horticulture professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?When it?s dry and hot outside, you?ll get a higher concentration of alkaloids.?
Wisconsin has a “long way to go in all our racial/ethnic groups,” said Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at UW-Madison. My hope is that, given Wisconsin?s overwhelmingly white population, proficiency problems among white students will spur more people to push for policies inside and outside of school that help children ? all children ? learn.
Quoted: ?I don?t care who he plays for ? I?m a Lin fan, not a Knicks fan,? says Timothy Yu, an associate professor of Asian American Studies (and Jeremy Lin Studies pioneer) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. ?What I?m mad about is that the Knicks just completely cut him loose ? and they?re blaming him for cutting such a hard-nosed deal with the Rockets. The fact of the matter is that even the team that benefited from Linsanity doesn?t believe it?s for real. That really burns me as an Asian American fan. But shed no tears for Jeremy: An Asian American athlete is getting paid like a superstar, because he is one ? and that?s cool.?
Noted: To help me understand why every state has such laws, Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, gave me a history lesson.
Noted: People who don?t want to spend the time or money are in luck, though. Most lawns in Wisconsin are made up of Kentucky bluegrass, which is hardy enough to survive up to 60 days without water in drought conditions, said Doug Soldat, a turfgrass specialist with the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
Noted: The rises foreshadow expected price hikes in coming months for other food staples, such as meat, says Bruce Jones, a professor of agricultural economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dairy is affected quickly because cows immediately make less milk.
The dean of UW-Madison?s School of Pharmacy is stepping down in September 2013 to pursue other interests, the university announced in this news release. Jeanette Roberts has led the UW System?s only pharmacy school for the past decade, but said in a statement that she wants to turn her attention to the public policy and political sides of health care at a time when this topic is at the center of the national political debate.
The dean of UW-Madison?s pharmacy school will leave after the coming school year to pursue work in national health care policy, the university announced Tuesday. Jeanette Roberts has been dean of the School of Pharmacy since June 2003, arriving after 15 years as an administrator and professor at the University of Utah College of Pharmacy.
Mentions that University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kenneth Mayer estimated more than 301,000 do not have a driver?s license or state ID card. That?s 9.3% of registered voters.
Charles Franklin, a political-science professor who directs the Marquette polls, said the depth of support around the state for Milwaukee?s economy took him by surprise.
Quoted: Bruce Jones, an agricultural economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Is your lawn crunchy? Mine is….?We?re in a serious situation right now,? says Tom Schwab, superintendent of the O.J. Noer Turfgrass Research and Education Facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Schwab told me Monday that the Madison area was closing in on 50 days without significant rainfall and that turf grass can remain dormant for 60 to 75 days and recover the following growing season. At least that?s what the textbooks say.
With the Natural Resources Board scheduled to vote on the final version of a fall wolf hunt Tuesday, a UW-Madison expert on wolf management says the agency?s plan to allow hunting with dogs is unsafe and that the 201-wolf quota set for the proposed hunt is too high. Adrian Treves, a UW-Madison expert on predators and prey, said in a letter to the board that “wolves and hounds will die in savage ways modern society abhors,” if the DNR allows hunters to use dogs to hunt wolves.
Nearly two-thirds of Wisconsin students who took the state reading test last fall scored below proficient, and less than half were proficient in math, according to recalibrated results released Tuesday by the Department of Public Instruction. In previous reporting of the same results, about 80 percent of students scored proficient on the reading and math tests. The difference is a change in the yardstick used to measure “proficiency” ? what students in a certain grade level should know and be able to do ? rather than a change in how students performed on the tests.
Still, the new results should be a “smack in the face” for Wisconsin, said Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at UW-Madison. “It?s going to be a wake-up call,” Gamoran said. “It?s a more honest reckoning of where Wisconsin students stand relative to other students across the nation and relative to the goals we want for all of our students.”
The thorny, long-running dispute between the UW-Madison and Adidas over the apparel giant?s labor practices in Indonesia landed in Dane County Circuit Court Friday. The university alleged in a lawsuit that Adidas ? which outfits UW-Madison athletes and coaches ? must pay Indonesian workers up to nearly $2 million still owed for back wages and benefits to honor a code of conduct provision in its contract. The chairwoman of a university committee charged with ensuring ethical conduct by contractors criticized the lawsuit as ineffective.
“It’s disappointing,” said Lydia Zepeda, a professor of consumer science and chairwoman of the Labor Licensing Policy Committee. “I believe it’s a way to continue the relationship with Adidas.” She said that, with claims and appeals, the legal process could drag on for months or years as UW-Madison athletes and coaches continue to sport apparel bearing the tri-stripe Adidas logo.
Those white-, blue- and yellow-flowered plants popping up amid the dormant Kentucky bluegrass in parks and medians, for example, include Queen Anne?s lace, chicory and bird?s-foot trefoil, according to UW-Madison plant pathologist and turf specialist Jim Kerns and outreach specialist Eileen Nelson, who were nice enough to listen to my inexpert descriptions and play ?name that plant? with me. UW Extension turf specialist Doug Soldat said ?prairie-type plantings will remain greener longer than lawns,? but warned they require a lot of maintenance, don?t allow for the same types of human recreation, and ?should not be considered replacements for lawns.?
A: With another wave of dangerous heat upon us, it is of interest to consider how the last heat wave rates alongside other memorable heat waves. First of all, each day from July 4-6, Madison?s high temperature was more than 100 degrees with the 104 on July 5 ranking as third highest of all time. Moreover, we set record high temperatures for five consecutive days from July 2-6.
A: Depending on the ingredients, sunscreen works like a mirror or by sacrificing itself to the marauding rays of the sun. According to Yaohui “Gloria” Xu, dermatology professor at UW?Madison, the compounds in sunscreen come in two types: physical and chemical.
Two independent teams of physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland made a surprising announcement early on the morning of July 4. The announcement: They had discovered a new particle, and it might help explain why things have mass….The University of Wisconsin-Madison played an important role as two Wisconsin scientists have been right on the front lines. Professors Sau Lan Wu and Wesley Smith, both in the UW-Madison physics department, played critical roles in designing the experiments and analyzing the data that led to the July 4 announcement.
Physicians Plus will save up to $30 million a year by shifting much of its UW Hospital outpatient services to Meriter Hospital, the health insurance company?s president said last week. About 9,000 health plan members who have primary care doctors at clinics owned by UW Hospital will have to switch to Meriter network doctors, Linda Hoff said. Some members who see UW Hospital specialists also will be told to go to Meriter, Hoff said.
Quoted: Mark Stephenson, a dairy policy analyst at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “Sports of all types, college and professional, play a larger role in American life,” says Harry Peterson, a retired president of Western State College of Colorado and a former chief of staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Is our hot, drought stricken summer due to climate change? A group of legislators and scientists are calling for policy actions, to reduce the risks associated with heat waves and drought ? events they maintain are likely to increase due to climate change. Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the UW-Madison Global Health Institute, said while scientists can?t conclusively show our hot spell is the result of climate change, trends are clear going forward.
Quoted: Dr. Ken Robbins, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: Tim Van Deelen, a University of Wisconsin-Madison wildlife ecologist.
Parents can play a key role in swelling the ranks of students pursuing careers in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) fields, according to a new UW study published in Psychological Science. Increasing interest in STEM fields is crucial to developing a strong 21st century U.S. workforce, but interest in science and math begins to wane in high school when students choose not to take advanced courses in those subjects, according to the study.
Lead author and UW-Madison psychology professor Judith Harackiewicz said the study shows schools can encourage more participation in STEM courses by directly communicating options to parents.
The poll, conducted by UW-Madison professor Charles Franklin for Marquette University Law School, stands in stark contrast to a poll released Tuesday by Public Policy Polling, a North Carolina-based firm that frequently works with Democratic candidates, as well as a recent poll conducted for the campaign of Democratic candidate Tammy Baldwin, who will take on the GOP nominee in the general election. PPP showed Hovde ahead of Thompson by two points, 31 percent to 29 percent, whereas the Marquette poll has Thompson leading Hovde 35 to 23 percent. Franklin says he is puzzled by the gap between the two polls.
UW-Madison will host a corporate open house on Thursday to show how university-industry partnerships can strengthen corporate competitiveness.
With the assistance of Bill Buckingham, a health geographer with the Applied Population Laboratory at UW-Madison, food deserts (areas of Madison without access to a grocery store within one mile) and food swamps (areas with no grocery but one or more fast-food and convenience stores within a mile) were plotted. Some campus areas where few people live or where students may use meal plans in dormitories show up as deserts, as well as areas along the city boundaries where the plotting of grocery stores stopped, Buckingham notes. Future mapping may eventually include all of Dane County.
Meditation and exercise can reduce the incidence, duration and severity of colds and the flu by about 30 percent to 60 percent, according to a UW-Madison study. A larger version of the study will start at the university this fall. If the benefits of meditation and exercise are confirmed, “this could be more powerful than flu shots,” said Dr. Bruce Barrett, a UW Health family physician heading up the research.
