Quoted: “This is a compelling study that adds to the existing research and leads us to one unequivocal conclusion, and that is that smoking in movies should result in an R rating,” says Dr. Michael C. Fiore, director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research, in Madison. Fiore was not involved in the study.
Gov. Scott Walker declared a drought emergency for 42 Wisconsin counties on Monday.
This declaration will speed up the permit process for farmers who want to use streams or lakes for irrigation. The Department of Natural Resources must inspect the stream or lake within three days of the request to ensure aquatic life will not be harmed.
James Danky, a faculty associate in journalism at UW-Madison and an expert on minority communities and the press, said Our Lives has several things going for it despite the sour publishing climate. It is a free-distribution, niche publication at a time when subscription-based, general-interest magazines such as Newsweek are foundering. Its target audience has considerable discretionary income, a draw for advertisers.
A study of UW-Madison students found no link between Facebook use and depression, calling into question a warning by a national doctor group last year that the popular social media site could cause depression. “We?re not really sure ?Facebook depression? is something parents or patients really need to be advised about yet,” said Lauren Jelenchick, a UW School of Medicine and Public Health researcher who led the study.
A: A derecho (pronounced deh-RAY-cho, a Spanish word meaning “straight ahead”) is an hours-long windstorm associated with a line of severe thunderstorms. It is a result of straight-line winds, not the rotary winds of a tornado ? hence its name. Derechos in the United States are most common in the late spring and summer (May through August). The extreme winds of a derecho ? up to 150 mph in the strongest storms ? are often associated with a quasi-stationary front in mid-summer.
A: There are many similarities, said Douglas DeBoer, a professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine at UW-Madison. “The most common environmental allergen in dogs is house dust, especially dust mites. Next comes grass, weed and tree pollens, followed by mold spores. “Cats have about the same list of allergens, said DeBoer, a specialist in dermatology and allergy.
Noted: Mark Browne, a professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Wisconsin School of Business, says people with middle-class incomes or better should chip in more against the risk that they?ll require long-term care someday. ?If something doesn?t change it?s going to be a huge issue for the states and federal government,? says Browne.
Quoted: Jerome Dempsey, who studies breathing problems at the University of Wisconsin and wasn?t involved in the study, said it makes sense that airway infections and weather could have an effect on sleep apnea, but that the changes across the seasons were small.
Quoted: Steve Vavrus, a senior scientist in the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that while more research needs to be done, unusual conditions — including last winter?s ranking as the fourth-warmest in the U.S.; spring turning out to be the warmest since record-keeping began in 1895; and April marking the end of the warmest 12-month period in U.S. history — are harbingers of what?s to come if greenhouse warming persists.
Quoted: “It is a dangerous plant for several reasons, and probably human health is at the top of the list,” says Mark Renz, an authority on invasive plants at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: ?This is always the million-dollar question, but unfortunately, there?s no definitive way to answer it,? says Steve Vavrus, a senior scientist in the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?We?ve experienced extreme heat, drought, floods, wildfires and windstorms throughout history, so in a sense this is nothing unusual. We need time to assess whether this year?s set of extreme weather events falls outside of normal variations.?
Quoted: Still, Robert Cropp, a dairy marketing specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, doubted most people would pay more for milk or other products to support family farms.
Quoted: Charles H. Franklin, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and co-founder of Pollster.com
Wisconsin?s application for flexibility under the federal No Child Left Behind law has been approved, the U.S. Education Department is set to announce Friday.
The hot, humid weather has been taking its toll across the area this week, with one death attributable to the record-breaking temperatures. Dozens of others have been seeking medical treatment for heat-related health problems.
At a moment in science history that many are hailing as one of the most important in a century, UW-Madison researchers were front and center, playing lead roles in a discovery that takes modern physics to the very edge of human understanding. Scientists from UW-Madison were deeply involved in figuring out the physics and building and operating the $10 billion machine used to discover a particle believed to be the so-called ?God particle,? responsible for giving matter mass and shaping the very early universe.
Quoted: Still, Robert Cropp, a dairy marketing specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, doubted most people would pay more for milk or other products to support family farms.
Quoted: “Especially at high risk is an infant wrapped up in a blanket,” who is unable to tend to himself or tell an adult how he feels, said Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
When you get all choked up watching Fourth of July fireworks, save a little of that ooh-ahh emotion for chemistry and other scientific disciplines. Bassam Z. Shakhashiri knows all about this: He?s a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and is the president of the American Chemical Society. Shakhashiri is also an entertainer by choice, giving lectures and programs around the world that help better connect people with the often obtuse world of science.
The summer after Paul Rowe joined the faculty at UW-Madison?s School of Music, something felt amiss. ?In July, the building was totally lit, the air conditioning was on, and nothing was going on,? he said. For a building meant for music-making, the whole place was eerily silent. Why not fill it, he thought, with musicians who shared his passion for early music? Rowe?s wife, singer Cheryl Bensman-Rowe, and music professor Chelcy Bowles, UW-Madison?s director of continuing education in music, agreed. By 2000, the three had founded the Madison Early Music Festival, filling early July with sound.
Wesley Smith, a UW-Madison physicist, has spent much of his career doing the physics and helping design the machinery that went into the construction of the Large Hadron Collider, the giant European particle smasher that will make headlines around the world this week. Very early Wednesday morning, scientists from the collider are expected to announce that they have confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle that physicists say will fill a crucial and mystifying gap in our understanding of how the world is put together.
Leave it to Wisconsin’s controversial governor to turn one of the least sexy topics in government ? public pensions ? into a nail-biter. There are plenty of things in state government in need of reforming, but Wisconsin?s pension system ain?t one of them. But even if you?re not particularly concerned about getting the best returns for WRS beneficiaries, you should know that the system?s administrative costs are low, according to UW-Madison public affairs and consumer science professor emerita Karen Holden.
Quoted: ?Chinese pottery appeared long before animal domestication and has no obvious connection to the origins of agriculture or sedentary living,? remarks archaeologist T. Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsin ? Madison.
Noted: Madison has not seen a June this dry since 1988, says Chris Kucharik, associate professor of agronomy and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That year, he explains, “people would categorize as the last real catastrophic drought that happened in the Midwest, but it was much more widespread than what we?re seeing this year.”
Quoted: Stephen Ward, former head of the University of B.C. journalism pro-gram, is trying to help us figure out an answer. He?s doing so for the sake of democracy, truth and maybe planetary survival.Much depends upon how we resolve the mind-boggling issues that people like Ward, a veteran war correspondent who is now director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are trying to wrestle into some semblance of coherence.
Noted: Which is why policy makers should flag a recent study that found more than three-quarters of patents from America?s top ten patent-producing universities, including MIT, Stanford, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, were the result of breakthroughs by immigrants. Those universities produced 1,466 patents?a fraction of the total awarded?but many were in such cutting-edge fields as information technology and molecular biology.
Quoted: Lin Yu-sheng, an academician and professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the current university assessment mechanism in Taiwan is disorderly and going in the wrong direction, leading to universities expending an excessive amount of effort and resources in striving to meet the assessment?s requirements.
Quoted: Todd Szymkowski, deputy director of the Wisconsin Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said there are various ways to enforce speed limits in work zones. Illinois, for example, uses photo enforcement in which cameras automatically capture the image of a speeding motorist?s license plate.
On a Wednesday in May in a courtroom in San Francisco, Jim Gray, a legendary figure in the technology industry, was declared legally dead. Few in Madison likely noticed, but maybe they should have, for part of Gray?s considerable legacy exists here. It was in 2004 that Gray, a Microsoft scientist and world-renowned database expert ? recipient of the Turing Award, his field?s highest honor ? first suggested to his friend David DeWitt, a celebrated UW-Madison computer science professor, that Microsoft and UW should collaborate on a Microsoft lab in Madison that DeWitt would run.
A: The answer to the first part of the question is yes and no, according to Scott Craven, UW-Madison professor emeritus of forest and wildlife ecology. “Crows are territorial during the nesting season from March into May. During nesting they are much less conspicuous than during the rest of the year. “For most of the year crows are gregarious. They spend the night in large communal roosts consisting of hundreds to sometimes thousands of birds. Roosts are usually located in woodlots, parks or quiet places with large trees.
A: Recently, the Duluth-Superior metro area had devastating flooding a result of rainfall totals of 10 inches or more in some locations. You may have seen photographs of the damage wrought by the flood waters ? washed-out roads, flooded homes, ruined crops, etc. Even in the face of such dramatic damage it is easy to overlook the enormous amount of energy that is involved in simply processing the water involved in such enormous amounts of precipitation.
Sangtae ?Sang? Kim, the first executive director of the Morgridge Institute for Research, is leaving the organization at the end of the month ?to pursue new career interests and opportunities,? according to this UW-Madison news release posted Thursday. Nobody seems keen to elaborate beyond that, though. The main focus of the UW-Madison news release put out Thursday was to announce that James Dahlberg, emeritus professor of biomolecular chemistry at UW?Madison and a co-founder of Third Wave Technologies, has been named interim executive director of the Morgridge Institute by its board of trustees.
Noted: And your milk was not spoiled this morning because of work done at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant law professor Andrew Coan said that, based on the initial reporting of the decision, he believes the high court may have made significant decisions regarding some of the key constitutional questions in the case.
The Morgridge Institute for Research at UW-Madison has a new executive director. James Dahlberg, emeritus professor of biomolecular chemistry has been named the interim executive director, taking over for Sangtae “Sang” Kim, the institute?s first executive director, who is leaving the position at the end of June.
Have you ever walked past Camp Randall?s Memorial Park on the way to a Badgers football game and wondered what really took place on the historic grounds during the Civil War era?
On a warm Tuesday afternoon, Weston Weber sat on a shaded bench next to Middleton?s Splash Pad while his daughter ran through the fountains that brought scores of kids, parents and day camp counselors to Lakeview Park.
For decades, the nation?s highest court has shied away from making any sweeping changes to the interstate commerce clause, a section of the U.S. Constitution that gives Congress the power to regulate commerce and has been used to help define a broad collection of laws, from civil rights to criminal and drug enforcement laws.
A new grant will help researchers at UW-Madison test a new class of diesel biofuels for nautical use. The Engine Research Center in UW?s College of Engineering received a $2 million grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research to help develop a method of testing hydro-treated vegetable oil for ship and submarine engines. Rolf Reitz, director of the Engine Research Center, said the center?s six professors and a group of graduate students will work to develop a computer model that can accurately predict how certain blends of these fuels will perform in maritime engines.
Those within the Big Ten Conference and Ivy League are pooling their significant research and athletic resources in an effort to better understand head injuries. The two conferences ? which represent 20 institutions that are home to nearly 18,000 student-athletes ? announced last week a collaborative effort that?s designed to produce a broad set of data for researchers, athletic trainers and team doctors on the incidence and health impacts of concussions and other head trauma.
Dennis Helwig, UW-Madison?s assistant athletic director for sports medicine, notes that getting the various institutions to agree to a single protocol for the project will be the key to the initiative. ?If you can do that, instead of 20-some institutions gathering different data on concussions, you can now have all of them collecting the same information in the same way,? says Helwig, who has worked at UW-Madison since 1975.
Quoted: “I tell people to go ahead and balance on one leg, then the other for two to three minutes,” said Timothy McGuine, a sports medicine specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who added that two to three times a week is a good start.
Interviewed: And paleoanthropologist John Hawks at the University of Wisonsin, Madison, agrees: “We definitely evolved to eat meat.”
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule perhaps this week on the health care law President Barack Obama signed in 2010. Assistant law professor at University of Wisconsin Madison Andrew Coan says it could go either way, rather, many different ways.
UW?Madison paleoanthropologist John Hawks says we definitely evolved to eat meat, but ? in context with our modern diets and lifestyles ? that doesn’t mean it’s entirely good for us.
The announcement isn?t going to silence all of the NCAA?s many critics. But after years of tough talk without meaningful action, it appears college sports? governing body is gradually getting more intentional about ensuring athletic programs take academics seriously. The NCAA announced earlier this week it has barred 15 teams — including the perennially powerful University of Connecticut men?s basketball program — from postseason play due to poor academic performance.
?When a university as prominent as Connecticut is sanctioned due to low rates of academic progress, it?s a signal to all universities that the NCAA is serious about this and that colleges need to ensure that their students are making academic progress,? says Adam Gamoran, co-chair of the UW Athletic Board’s academics and compliance committee, and the director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
Starting a business is not the usual course of action for a budding doctor, pharmacist or scientist. But a UW-Madison program is trying to change that. Nearly 70 graduate students attended the weeklong Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Bootcamp at Grainger Hall last week, setting aside academics to learn the basics of the business world. “We?re trying to teach creativity, generating ideas, and different applications for their research,” said Dan Olszewski, director of the UW School of Business? Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship.
In 1957, after years of dwindling membership, the church was closed, with the exception of the occasional funeral, according to church history. Nine years later, Robert McCabe and Clay Schoenfeld, two UW-Madison professors with ties to Hyde, helped form the Hyde Community Association and bring the shuttered chapel back to life. McCabe and Schoenfeld each studied wildlife ecology and purchased land near the chapel. McCabe bought his in 1963 for hunting and fell in love with the area. “He wanted to become part of a community,” said Maureen McCabe, his widow.
A. Limestone is abundant in Wisconsin, and it?s the material of choice for the surface of gravel roads, and the base for roads paved with asphalt or concrete. Limestone contains calcium carbonate, often with a mixture of magnesium carbonate. When chunks of limestone abrade against each other, small particles called “fines” are created, said Craig Benson, chair of the departments of civil and environmental engineering and of geological engineering at UW-Madison.
A. A flood occurs when water flows into a region faster than it can be absorbed into the soil, stored in a lake or reservoir or removed in runoff or a waterway into a drainage basin. A flash flood is a sudden local flood characterized by a great volume of water and a short duration. It occurs within minutes or hours of heavy rainfall or because of a sudden release of water from the breakup of an ice dam or constructed dam.
Noted: ?At first only Chinese peasants were on my side, now an increasing number of Chinese intellectuals are with me,? Yi, 43, now a University of Wisconsin scientist, said in an interview in Beijing. He gave 23 talks at universities and forums in China in May and June opposing the policy. Yi Qiming, the Tangwan township head, declined to comment on the lunch.
Quoted: ?For most parents, the total benefits of children likely outweigh the financial costs,? said Lonnie Berger, associate professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. ?At the same time, parents may think about economic costs when making decisions about having children, especially with regard to timing and number of children.?
Noted: In a first step to get beyond polarization, the SPJ invited three panelists to address the issue: Tony Earl, former Democratic governor of Wisconsin, former U.S. Rep. Scott Klug (R-Madison), and Katherine Kramer Walsh, a political science professor at UW-Madison, whose research has taken her to coffee shops and community centers around the state to observe conversations about politics.
Quoted: Gretchen Viney, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor with expertise in family law, said it isn?t unusual for judges to waive bonding requirements entirely based on their high cost.
Interviewed: Walter Dickey, professor, University of Wisconsin Law School.
Noted: A team headed by Joshua Carter of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics was examining such systems looking for examples with multiple planets. Astronomer Eric Agol of the University of Wisconsin suggested that the team use a different algorithm to analyze the subtle changes in brightness that are detected by Kepler, and the Kepler-36 pair popped up immediately.
Quoted: “So called ?minor people? were very important in unravelling this story,” says Stanley Kutler, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin and author of The Wars of Watergate.
Whether or not Roger Clemens and Lance Armstrong are lying when they deny they used steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) is beside the main point, which is why we are prohibiting, and even criminalizing, the use of these products.
Noted: University of Wisconsin researchers even found that profile pictures and the presence or absence of a declared relationship status can predict the level of harmony between two people. Men who post their status as ?In a Relationship? rather than leave it blank were more satisfied with their relationships, the Wisconsin researchers found. Women whose profile pictures include their partners were similarly more satisfied.
Quoted: David Drake, wildlife specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A: The summer solstice (in Latin, sol, ?sun,? and stice, ?come to a stop?) is the day of the year with the most daylight. The first day of the astronomical Northern Hemisphere summer is the day of the year when the sun is farthest north (on June 20 or 21). In 2012, this occurs on June 20 at 6:09 pm CDT. As Earth orbits the sun, its axis of rotation is tilted at an angle of 23.5 degrees from its orbital plane. Because Earth?s axis of spin always points in the same direction ? toward the North Star ? the orientation of Earth?s axis to the sun is always changing.
