A: Our high temperature of 78 degrees Farenheit on March 14 set the all-time record for the date and established a new record for the first 78-degree F temperature of the year, breaking the standing record of March 23, 1910 ? over a century ago.
Quoted: But, leaders elsewhere say lab schools are not necessary to run a top-notch teacher education program. Jeff Hamm, the associate dean for student services in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the school uses a combination of a professional development school model, a new partner school network and a tried-and-true teacher database to place students in the community.
Quoted: “We lined up 100 children..same age, she would weigh less than the skinniest or the lowest weighing child in that entire group,” said physician Barbara Knox, the medical director of the University of Wisconsin Child Protection Program.
It feels like summer, and, yes, that itch you feel is the mosquito bite you just got. Right along with the weather, the bugs are back. “We have some mosquitoes that winter over in caves and the like, and those have woken up,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension entomologist Phil Pellitteri.”I hear so many people concerned that it?s going to be a terrible insect year, and I don?t see anything to suggest that right now.”
With hindsight being 20/20, cartoonist Mike Konopacki isn?t laughing at the fake press release he sent the Capital Times in February, now that he knows his forgery of a state representative?s official document could cost him $10,000 and three-and-a-half years in prison.
According to Wisconsin State Statute 946.69, a person commits a Class-I felony if they ? assume to act in an official capacity or to perform official functions.? It is this law could be used to implicate Konopacki, though its application would be ?nitpicking,? according to UW-Madison journalism and law professor Robert Drechsel.
Dane County officials announced on Thursday a plan to buy and preserve the land along the southern shore of Lake Waubesa for public use….Cal DeWitt, a professor of wetland ecology at UW-Madison, has lived near the marsh since he moved to Madison in 1972. DeWitt teaches a course on the wetland for graduate students and has been working with neighbors to preserve the wetlands south of Waubesa since the mid-1970s.
Researchers working on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus have found a way to use neurons derived from human embryonic stem cells to restore muscle coordination in mice inflicted with a Huntington?s disease-like condition….?This is very exciting, and next we?ll try to move onto different models, particularly in primates, to see whether this actually works in a larger brain,? says Su-Chun Zhang, a UW-Madison neuroscientist and the senior author of the study.
Quoted: Karen Holden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found children just need to understand concepts like waiting, making choices and developing values to learn how to manage money.
University Health Services, the UW-Madison on-campus clinic for students, is handing out free condoms, lip balm, sunscreen and safety advice on Wednesday, 10 days in advance of the UW?s spring break holiday from March 31 through April 8. The items and advice will be offered at College Library beginning at 5 p.m. and from 6-7 p.m. on the Ogg Hall lawn during the spring break fair.
“If you normally make good choices, keep it up,” said UHS executive director Dr. Sarah Van Orman in a UW-Madison news release.
At least one of the biggest shareholders of Great Wolf Resorts stock is questioning the deal announced Tuesday for Apollo Global Management, a New York private equity firm, to buy the Madison indoor water park company for $5 a share. With the share price above Apollo’s $5 offer, it could be an indication of “investors guessing it’ll be sold at a higher price,” said Jim Seward, associate professor at the UW-Madison School of Business and faculty director of the Nicholas Center for Corporate Finance and Investment Banking.
Not only did Wednesday?s high of 78 in Madison break the March 14 record of 75 set in 1995, but the long-range forecast shows continued warmth as far as can be predicted by atmospheric science.”The prolonged nature of how likely it is going to stay nice and warm is even more unusual than breaking an individual day?s record,” said Jonathan Martin, chairman of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW-Madison.”It?s very unusual,” he said. “But it?s at the tail end of an unusually warm winter, so maybe it?s just part of the deal.”
The mother of all outdoor patios, the Memorial Union Terrace, was caught off guard this week. The terrace is open, but its 650 signature sunburst chairs, which are in storage in Verona, probably won’t be out until the first week of April.
It?s NCAA Tournament time once again and the hoopla surrounding March Madness has been used in recent years by higher education policymakers to help draw attention to the unimpressive graduation rates of college men?s basketball players and the gulf between the academic successes of black and white student-athletes. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (TIDES), housed at the University of Central Florida, continued its annual drumbeat on this issue Monday by releasing ?Keeping Score When it Counts: Graduation Success and Academic Progress Rates for the 2012 NCAA Division I Men?s Basketball Tournament Teams.?
….?Having a researcher follow these trends over time has had a positive effect on the academic success of student-athletes,? says Dawn Crim, a former women?s basketball player at Virginia and a former assistant coach at UW-Madison who today serves as the School of Education?s associate dean for external relations.
Among college students who drink heavily, those who black out are more likely to seek emergency care, costing about $500,000 a year at a campus the size of UW-Madison, a new study says. Prevention efforts should be targeted at students whose drinking leads to memory loss, not only at students who drink the most, said Marlon Mundt, a UW-Madison researcher who led the study published Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs.
Quoted: Wisconsin?s stalking law was created in 1993 and amended in 2001. Prior to the law, Wisconsin, unlike other states, did not have an assault statute that applied to patterns of activities that caused fear in others, said David E. Schultz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor who is an expert on criminal law and procedure.
Quoted: “Most places include everybody in some kind of growth model. They say, Do what you can to get these people to school,” said Robert H. Meyer, director of the Value-Added Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As part of an initiative to overhaul the Human Resources department at University of Wisconsin, the first of two engagement meetings allowed interested campus members to provide input Tuesday afternoon.
Quoted: Jordan Gerth, a University of Wisconsin-Madison meteorologist and an expert on Great Lakes weather.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison wildlife researcher Adrian Treves warns that instead of trying to reduce the incidence of wolves killing livestock or pets, the wolf hunt proposal seems like a plan to simply reduce the wolf population or provide recreation to hunters.
When UW-Madison Chancellor David Ward learned that a senior athletic department official allegedly sexually assaulted a student, he called Athletic Director Barry Alvarez within hours with a message: Do not ?interfere.?
Quoted: Ken Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.
Adrian Treves – associate professor in the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at UW-Madison ? says the news is good for the state?s native food web.
The original goal, set once it was clear that wolves were coming back in the state, on their own, was 350 wolves. With protection, the wolf population has grown to about 800. Adrian Treves, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that the carrying capacity of the state is probably about 1,000.
Quoted: “The more exposure there is to trauma the worse it?s going to be,” said Dr. David Reiss, a psychiatrist in private practice who has treated patients with PTSD. “Especially if someone is deployed repetitively, then the whole issue of expecting to go home, not going home, just amplifies it.”
A: Solar storms are a particularly important manifestation of the solar dynamo, the physical process that generates the sun?s magnetic field, said UW-Madison physics professor Cary Forest.
Quoted: But whether the changes actually caused injustice to researchers is unclear. Hearing requests are very rare, said James Wells, director of the office of research policy at the University of Wisconsin, perhaps because ORI only goes after the gravest offenses.
Noted: The report recommends a more “risk-informed approach” to emergency planning so that evacuation zone distances wouldn?t be preassigned, says Michael Corradini, professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: “It?s a large impact economically, but given how large the whole event is, it?s a small part of it, only a few percent,” says Michael Corradini, a professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin. It?s in the range of 5 to 10 percent, he says.
Quoted: Gary Grossen of the Babcock Hall Dairy Plant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A presentation to the UW System?s Board of Regents Thursday afternoon on financial aid and student costs was not only informative, but a little scary for anyone hoping to someday help send kids to college. ?Save your brains out,? Susan Fischer, director of financial aid at UW-Madison, said afterward when asked for any tips she?d offer to parents. ?I?m not going to say how or where, because I?m not a financial advisor. But start saving now.?
Quoted: “It?s a matter of planning,” said Michael Corradini, director of the University of Wisconsin?s Institute of Nuclear Systems and the panel?s co-chair. “For certain types of events and certain severities, they may change how they evacuate, or who would evacuate.”
Quoted: Experimental studies conducted by Professor Joanne Cantor at the University of Wisconsin have shown that movie-goers, particularly teenage boys, are most drawn to the media version of “the forbidden fruit”–to films that carry an R rating or a parental warning. In this research, boys shown a bland synopsis of a fictitious film but told that it was rated R were significantly more likely to indicate a desire to see the forthcoming movie than those subjects told that the film was PG.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Andrew Reschovsky said the bottom line is Wisconsin?s economy remains sluggish and, despite all the rhetoric, politicians really can?t do much to change it.
For a smaller, independently run arthouse, spending between $70,000 and $120,000 to convert to digital is a huge expense to shoulder, but might be unavoidable if 35mm prints can?t be found anymore. Also hurt are places like the UW-Cinematheque, the free on-campus film series that specializes in foreign and classic films often on loan from studios and private collections. The Cinematheque theater at Vilas Hall shows only 35mm film, as do the Marquee Theater in Union South and the Chazen Museum of Art?s screening room. But that may have to change down the road if studios stop making their movies available on film.
…UW professor emeritus David Bordwell said he was caught off guard by how swift and total digital?s rise to dominance came, and decided to chronicle the changeover through a series of detailed blog entries on his website, davidbordwell.net.
A Dane County judge on Tuesday barred the enforcement of the state photo ID law at polling places during the general election on April 3, calling it an “extremely broad and largely needless” impairment of the right to vote.
Circuit Judge David Flanagan said the Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP and Voces de la Frontera had demonstrated that their lawsuit against Gov. Scott Walker and the state Government Accountability Board would probably succeed on its merits and had demonstrated the likelihood of irreparable harm if the photo ID law is allowed to stand. Flanagan cited testimony by UW-Madison professor Ken Mayer, who found that as of 2002 there were 221,975 constitutionally qualified voters who do not have a driver’s license or a photo identification card.
Locked behind a set of double doors in a sparkling clean warehouse on the city?s far east side is a miniature refinery. The tangle of silver metal tubes and columns resembles the huge oil refineries along the Gulf Coast ? although at 20 feet tall and 40 feet long, it?s just a fraction of the size. But instead of using crude oil as the main ingredient, the refinery at Virent Inc. uses sugar water. Through a patented catalytic process called aqueous phase reforming, the sugar molecules are converted into a product with the same chemical makeup as gasoline. Science fiction? Not at all.
….”I think we’re at a point where these advanced biofuels are nearing commercialization and Virent is right in the front row,” says Gary Radloff, director of Midwest energy policy analysis for the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative at the UW-Madison. Virent officials remain cautious, however, about tooting their own horn.
A pending lawsuit against the University of Wisconsin System may determine whether professors must disclose their course syllabi under the state?s Open Records Law or whether the material is exempt under copyright law. The National Council on Teacher Quality sued the UW System earlier this year for refusing to hand over syllabi for UW?s schools of education.
Quoted: Sara Goldrick-Rab, an associate professor in the School of Education, and Donald Downs, professor of political science and an expert on academic freedom.
While Wisconsin?s unemployment rate is below the national rate, many in the Badger State are now working two jobs just to make ends meet. Minorities are especially struggling in the current economy, according to a report titled ?Wisconsin Jobs and Low-Income Working Families? from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a liberal UW-Madison think tank….?One in four families, half of minority families and three in 10 children now live in families with low incomes — and our commitment to these families is shrinking even as their needs are rising,? says COWS associate director Laura Dresser in a statement.
Quoted: “Videogames change your brain,” said University of Wisconsin psychologist C. Shawn Green, who studies how electronic games affect abilities. So does learning to read, playing the piano, or navigating the streets of London, which have all been shown to change the brain?s physical structure.
A. There are four basic shapes of ice crystals: the hexagonal plate, the needle, the column and the dendrite. The dendrites are hexagonal with elongated branches, or fingers, of ice; they most closely resemble what we think of as snowflakes. The temperature at which the crystal grows determines the particular shape. A snowflake is an individual ice crystal or an aggregate of ice crystals. Large snowflakes are aggregates of ice crystals. Aggregation is the process by which ice crystals collide and form a single larger ice particle.
As a 15-year-old volunteer at a sleep laboratory in a Brooklyn, N.Y., hospital, Richard Davidson watched a room of sleeping participants, heads pasted with electrodes, experience dreams or nightmares that registered as brain waves on a gigantic machine. His time in the sleep lab, Davidson writes in his new book, taught him ?virtually every dream contained significant emotion ? terror or joy, anger, sadness, jealousy, or hatred.?
Tim Smeeding gestured at the white board in his University of Wisconsin office and told me the indecipherable scrawling related to a model for measuring poverty. I?ll have to take his word. Like many professors on the Madison campus, Smeeding is a star. He?s been director of UW-Madison?s Institute for Research on Poverty and is a national poverty expert, a prolific author and someone regularly quoted in the national media.
When Mike Lawler started asking people who lived through the 1970 bombing of UW-Madison?s Sterling Hall to talk about those days, he hoped to hear some compelling stories. But he wasn?t prepared for just how vivid the storytellers? memories would be. Those recollections have shaped ?Uncivil Disobedience,? a dramatic script to be performed as a staged reading Friday and Saturday in the Overture Center?s Rotunda Studio.
Quoted: ?The rest of the nation is moving upwards. We?re one of the few states moving downward. There?s something wrong,? said economist Steven Deller of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: But the existing “hyper-royalism” in Thailand has spiralled out of control and may actually be working to the detriment of the nation, said Thongchai Winichakul, a professor of south-east Asian history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who spent two years in prison after participating in a 1976 pro-democracy protest that saw over 100 demonstrators killed.
Noted: Sort of, says University of Wisconsin-Madison wolf researcher Adrian Treves. Wolves can cover lots of ground when they?re hunting or roaming — Treves co-authored a 2009 study on wolf dispersal patterns around the Great Lakes, which included several accounts of wolves roaming hundreds of miles in relatively short periods. One young male traipsed 428 miles during a five-month span in 2003.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison History professor Stephan Kantrowitz said the Confederate flag has been adopted by many different people for various reasons.
Quoted: Janet Hyde, the Helen Thompson Woolley Professor of Psychology and Women?s Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says such name-calling ?is a method for exerting power and control over women.?
A retired University of Wisconsin professor will receive an internationally recognized award for his work promoting relations between Germany and the United States.
Wisconsin legislators may take up a controversial bill that would establish single parenthood as a factor contributing to child abuse and neglect.
University of Wisconsin political scientist Ken Mayer is one of the most serious and responsible analysts of the politics of the state. Widely respected as fair player, whose work is well regarded by members of both major political parties, Mayer is someone conservatives and liberals listen to for reasoned comment on the political processes of the state. So when Mayer talks about the challenges raised by Wisconsin?s new voter ID law, we should all take him seriously.
The other day at the Wisconsin Newspaper Association?s annual convention in Madison, I represented the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism on a panel titled, “Nonprofit News: What You Need to Know About ?Free? Media.”….Moderator Stephen Ward, a UW-Madison journalism professor who specializes in media ethics, focused in on who funds our organizations and how that affects what we do ? worthy questions that merit a thoughtful response.
Quoted: John Magnuson, who has researched freshwater habitats at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for several decades, urges me to choose my words carefully when I ask him how serious the situation is.
Quoted: Although it may not be a bribe, it could be the simple perception that causes a problem, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in elections.
We woke up this morning to the rarest of dates: February 29th – the odd, extra day that comes every four years, since there are apparently more than 365 days in a year. Interviewed: Jim Lattis. He?s director of the University of Wisconsin?s Space Place, an education and outreach center for the school?s Astronomy Department.
Building a Grandview Commons grocery store with 58,000 square feet does not mean it has to be served by a “big, driver-friendly” parking lot, as suggested in columnist Chris Rickert?s Feb. 23 piece.
Quoted: Barry Orton, a telecommunications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he doesn?t think the Federal Trade Commission would pursue violations as well as the state has done.
Noted: According to Johnathan Martin, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, ?temperatures have been probably averaging 5 to 10 degrees above normal from November to the end of January, which is just exceptional.?
The University of Wisconsin is kicking off technological updates to campus libraries in a grand opening ceremony today as part of an effort to optimize student learning.
Regarding Sunday?s story titled ?Legislation would allow doctors to say ?sorry,?? readers may be interested in the view of one who teaches communication to doctors. The author examines the trial lawyers? view that protecting a doctor?s admission of error will prevent a patient from receiving compensation. That would be a bad thing ? there should be no tolerance for malpractice. But common sense suggests such rare cases would be far outweighed by the common good resulting from doctors feeling safe to speak openly after bad news happens.
A stack of books stood there a year ago. Now there is a beehive of hexagon-shaped tables, laptops, and flat-screen TVs. Welcome to the modern university library. UW-Madison will unveil new learning centers Tuesday at two campus libraries: College Library (UW-Madison?s undergraduate library) and Wendt Commons Library (the engineering library). ?We aim to provide a personalized learning experience, even while teaching large numbers of students,? said John Booske, a UW-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering, in a statement.
