Quoted: ?We are concerned with where this might head concerning with what people can and cannot do with research,? said Rhonda Norsetter, director of federal relations for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?We respect the invaluable health research that is being conducted, including, in some cases, animal research.?
A. Long before computers, the Weather Channel and the Internet, humans needed weather forecasts. Farmers and sailors particularly needed to know if storms were approaching. Over time, various folklore forecasts, often in the form of short rhymes, were devised and passed down through the generations. Although memorable, the folklore forecasts are of uneven quality ? some good, others bad. Groundhog Day is an example of predicting the weather based on folklore. If the groundhog comes out of its hole and sees its shadow, we are in store for 40 more days of winter.
The new DNR wolf regulations have led to speculation about the creation of a public wolf-hunting season. Despite opposition from some groups, UW-Madison Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Adrian Treves said he believes legislation will be passed in 2012. According to his research, most Wisconsin residents endorse a wolf hunt. Treves warned that while the state needs to have some authority over the wolf population, “the successful conservation of wolves depends on people tolerating them, accepting them, and that tolerance has been declining,” Treves said.
Quoted: But some critics said that shift in focus takes away from what was seen as the administration?s primary goal: enrolling and graduating more low-income students. Further expansions to the Pell Grant Program would do more to make college accessible, said Sara Goldrick-Rab, an associate professor of higher education policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: “Folks are looking at Wisconsin as a kind of barometer,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “We are a swing state, a purple state, and this could be a pretty good indication of where things are heading nationally.”
High-risk surgeons can get caught in a “Catch-22” when trying to save a life: what if the patient doesn?t want extraordinary measures taken to keep living? A new study from a UW-Madison surgical professor suggests advance directives, or “living wills,” don?t work in the surgical suite. Dr. Margaret “Gretchen” Schwarze, assistant professor of surgery at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, discovered that only 50 percent of surgeons who do high-risk operations discuss advance directives with their patients before surgery.
A UW-Madison professor received one of South Korea?s highest honors earlier this month for his work on a multibillion-dollar initiative to restore the area surrounding four major rivers in the country. The honor, called the Order of Service Merit, is comparable to the U.S. Medal of Honor. The professor of civil and environmental engineering, Jae Park, is a top academic advisor for the an ongoing collaboration called the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project, which is dedicated to cleaning and restoring the watershed surrounding the Han River, Nakdong River, Geum River and Yeongsan River in South Korea.
Quoted: ?When you hear the word ?fracking,? what lights up your brain is the profanity,? said Deborah Mitchell, who teaches marketing at the University of Wisconsin?s School of Business. ?Negative things come to mind.?
Quoted: Charles Franklin, co-founder of pollster.com and a visiting professor at Marquette on leave from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A UW-Madison scientist, testing how bird flu could spread in nature, mixed a bird flu virus with a swine flu virus to create a bird flu strain that spread among ferrets in the lab, he reported Wednesday. The research, embroiled in international controversy, should continue despite an agreement last week that it will be halted for 60 days, Yoshihiro Kawaoka wrote in a commentary in the journal Nature.
Quoted: “It?s a pity how comedy is often seen as culturally suspicious when awards season comes around,” Jonathan Gray, a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, wrote in an email. “I?m pleased to see comedies nominated, but under no illusion that Hollywood and The Oscars won?t simply go back to business as usual.”
Quoted: John Hall, a military historian at the University of Wisconsin, noted that special operations forces have been around since World War II, but they were initially designed to be stay-behind forces in Eastern Europe, a response to the Soviet Union.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have renamed their newest Earth-observing satellite after Verner Suomi, a longtime professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who often is called the father of satellite meteorology.
Quoted: “The window of opportunity to avert a humanitarian, environmental and climate crisis is rapidly closing, and we need better information and tools for managing the tradeoffs in how we grow our food and use our resources,” says Molly Jahn, dean of the University of Wisconsin?s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and another author of the Science article. If we hope to thrive in a warmer world ? one that?s coming ? we have no other choice.
Reported by The Lancet, the privately-funded study led by UCLA and Advanced Cell Technology researchers reported tentative signs of improved vision in two women suffering a progressive form of blindness.For perspective, we asked stem cell pioneer James Thomson of Cellular Dynamics International to comment.
It?s an age-old question for teachers: how do you capture students? interest in subjects that seem to have little relevance to their daily lives, such as history or art? For some educators, the answer is superstar rapper Jay-Z (Or, to put it more generally, hip-hop). A free 15-week lecture series at UW-Madison will bring in national experts to talk about how educators are using hip-hop as a culturally relevant teaching tool, especially to reach students under-served by traditional schooling.
“This is a viable educational pedagogy,” said Willie Ney, executive director of the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives at UW-Madison. “It really helps engage students. It’s going to help close the achievement gap. All these things are big ticket items for education.”
Can?t sleep? Other health problems might be looming, according to a UW-Madison sleep researcher. Ruth Benca, director of the Wisconsin Sleep laboratory and clinic, said insomnia, a condition where you have trouble falling or staying asleep, can increase risks for anxiety, depression, alcohol or drug abuse, even heart failure and diabetes.
Spoken word poet Michael Cirelli kicked off an event series Monday that focuses on hip-hop as a means of engaging under served minority students with their educations. The lecture was the first in the 15-week Getting Real II: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and Culture in the Classroom and Beyond series, which will explore the integration of spoken word and hip-hop culture in teaching and the development of students? critical thinking. Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings, a professor of Urban Education at UW?Madison, orchestrated Monday?s event, as well as the entire series.
The state could more aggressively intervene in the lowest-performing publicly funded schools under a proposed accountability system unveiled Monday. The system would rate schools on a scale of 0 to 100 based on student performance and growth on state tests, closing achievement gaps and preparing students for college and careers. Ratings also would be tied to dropout rates and third-grade literacy levels.
“This is light years ahead of where the state is now,” said Doug Harris, a UW-Madison education and public affairs professor who advised the state’s accountability reform task force.
A University of Wisconsin scientist has suspended his research on the avian flu virus following concerns that it may pose a bioterrorism or pandemic threat if the strain were released or fell into the wrong hands.
A: Accurate and precise measurement of snow accumulation is a difficult task. The measurement tools are simple: a ruler or yardstick that measures in inches and tenths of an inch. The trick in measuring snow consistently is simply finding a good place to measure and a firm surface for your ruler to set on.
Despite having recently moved to a new location in a more populated and accessible area on campus, the McBurney Disability Center and its staffers behind the scenes are still mysteries to a sizeable population at the University of Wisconsin.
The Synchrotron Radiation Center, a major UW-Madison science center, is still running despite losing its federal funding last year. But the center is down about one-third of its 35-member staff, through a combination of retirements and layoffs, said Joseph Bisognano, the center?s director. Wendy Crone, associate dean for graduate education, said it was particularly important that the roughly two dozen UW-Madison graduate students who rely on the center could continue working. Bisognano said the biggest cutbacks are in education, outreach and support for researchers who come to use the facility from other parts of the country and the world.
Quoted: “It feels like we have a lot of everything,” says Kathleen T. Horning, director of the Cooperative Children?s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She?s also the author of “From Cover to Cover,” a guide to evaluating children?s books.
Quoted: In an interview, Molly Jahn, a plant breeder at the University of Wisconsin, said the research also needs to focus on ways to help the poorest people, who will not necessarily come out as winners if agricultural systems in developing countries become more sophisticated. Virtually everywhere it has happened, that transition has involved larger farms, more capital ? and fewer farmers.
Quoted: “The economic boom in China and Asia has expanded demand and Wisconsin can meet this demand consistently, if the growers do it carefully,” says Paul Mitchell, associate professor at the department of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Although there?s no standard definition for insomnia, suggested criteria include taking more than 30 minutes to fall asleep, waking up too early, or sleeping less than 6.5 hours a night, write Morin and co-author Ruth Benca, MD, PhD, a sleep disorders doctor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. If you meet any of those criteria and feel like you can?t focus during the day because you?re so tired, you might have insomnia, they say. But if you feel fine after sleeping less than 6.5 hours at night, you might just be a short sleeper.
Quoted: “He was in a bunker mentality very quickly in February of his first term and maybe having survived that may make a more resilient politician now,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: Still, UW-Madison Political Science Professor Barry Burden expects labor to play a big role if there is a recall race. Burden says unions are already weighing in on the potential Democratic candidate.
University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine Dr. Greg DeMuri said necrotizing fasciitis is a rare, but serious bacterial infection. He said adults can get it, but it is most prevalent in children.
But R. Alta Charo, a professor of medical ethics at University of Wisconsin, said CHOP?s statement suggested their decision was not based solely on Mia?s disability but “in compliance with with current norms.”
A conservative-leaning think tank issued a report this past week that proposes a Wisconsin teacher compensation system designed to give principals who oversee high-performing schools additional resources to reward educators in the building. The study from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI) — “A Modern Teacher Compensation System for Wisconsin” — is an interesting read, a timely topic and, of course, controversial. In fact, a UW-Madison researcher notes a similar system has already been tried in New York City and failed to produce positive results.
Adam Gamoran, a UW-Madison professor of sociology and educational policy studies, says that while research clearly shows some teachers are much more effective than others, what’s not so clear is which attributes these top educators share and whether or not it’s even possible to lead them to teaching more effectively with incentives. UW-Madison’s Allan Odden, a professor of educational leadership and policy analysis, is glad WPRI took the time to publish its report because he agrees the current structure is outdated.
Until recently, Keith Findley served as the president of the Innocence Network, an affiliation of 64 innocence projects in North America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. He is the co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project. In this extended conversation, Gillian Findlay learns about his first case defending a client charged with SBS, what he has learned about the science, and his perspective on the issue globally.
A. It may seem implausible at first glance, but current research in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UW-Madison is exploring connections between tropical cyclones (hurricanes) near the Philippines and extreme weather events in southern Wisconsin.The connection appears to derive from unusual jet stream structures forced by the outflow from the hurricane at high levels in the atmosphere.
When Dr. Frank Greer visited the hospital room of brand-new mother Amy Hurt last month, he came bearing an unusual baby gift: Two boxes of slides from a surgery 27 years earlier that made Wisconsin history. The June 1984 operation separated the newborn Amy from her conjoined twin sister only days after their birth. It was complex, closely documented, and celebrated in local news headlines.
UW-Madison?s School of Education is phasing out many of its popular one-credit physical education classes and suspending a master?s program for those who want to become school counselors in an effort to deal with state budget cuts. “There is this perception that the state can continue to make cuts and everything at the university will run just exactly like it was,” says UW-Madison Professor Bruce Wampold, who recently concluded his term as chair of the counseling psychology department, which houses the master?s program that?s being cut. “Well, it doesn?t work that way.”
Quoted: “The modern era started in the 1960?s,” says John Lucey, director of the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin, when food scientists figured how to capture the best stuff from the whey.
Quoted: Dr. Ken Robbins, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, said, “Some people don?t make it to full moral development and don?t learn about empathy or feel guilt or remorse.”
Quoted: ?If it passes in Indiana it would certainly galvanize people looking to weaken unions,?? said William Jones, a labor historian at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Noted: Many people base their systems on past experience and knowledge, said Sharon Derry, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison Scandinavian Studies professor James Leary believes our sense of place in Wisconsin has a lot to do with it. “The root-for-the-home-team stance is a ubiquitous sports phenomenon,” says Leary. “So like fans everywhere, we love the Pack because they?re ours. But because we?re from Wisconsin we have a special relationship with our state and, by extension with our state?s team.”
Noted: Illinois, with its budget woes and recent income tax increase, serves as a regular foil in Walker?s political narrative. “The governor uses Illinois as a straw man,” said Andrew Feldman, who teaches at UW-Madison and runs a nonprofit that tracks state economic data. “But Illinois has been much better than Wisconsin in job growth.”
Quoted: “Many people who did not qualify in past years may be newly eligible because of lower earnings stemming from the tough economy,” says Judith Bartfeld, Extension food security research and policy specialist and professor at UW-Madison.
Quoted: Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, a professor at the Centre for South Asia at the University of Wisconsin and a leading expert on the Indus Civilisation, said he had visited the Lahore Fort every year for the last 20 years. ?The monuments appear improved every year I come,? he said, but added that the Fort needed more information signs and public toilets.
Quoted: Meaningful use and accountable care organizations will encourage patient engagement, according to Patti Brennan, a professor of nursing and engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and national program director of Project HealthDesign.
Quoted: Professor Morris A. Davis, a real estate expert with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business.
The recent temperatures along with a mild winter overall have kept area lakes from freezing over, but along Monona Bay, a few brave ice fisherman still were waiting for the days catch.
Madison doctor Bernie Micke has allegedly retired after practicing medicine here for 33 years, but he continues to pursue a passion that?s been with him for years ? improving the medical services in Madison?s sister city, Camaguey, Cuba. Over the years, he and the Wisconsin Medical Project, a nonprofit organization whose origins began with the Sister Cities program, have made 30 trips to Cuba, bringing with them medical equipment and supplies for doctors and nurses who do everything from basic pediatric care to treating people suffering from cancer and other major illnesses.
Most students, parents and leaders of higher education still view a college degree as a ticket to a brighter future. But as the economy continues to struggle picking up steam and as costs associated with higher education continue to soar, more and more people are starting to question whether it?s worth it. The answer? According to a new report out of Georgetown University?s Center on Education and the Workforce, it depends on your major.
….Steve Schroeder — the director of UW-Madison’s Business Career Center — isn’t sold on the notion that what one majors in is as important as some other factors. “We have seen a trend in the past decade with many employers caring less about the major and more about the leadership involvement and personal attributes of the candidates,” he says. John Archambault, an assistant dean for student development in UW-Madison’s College of Engineering, adds in an email: “I think students should study what they love — because they will do better academically.
Quoted: As Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, correctly observed back in 2008, the New Hampshire polls were wrong not because they overestimated Obama?s support; rather, the polls consistently underestimated how many voters would cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton. In fact, the polls were only wrong about the former first lady.
Noted: The latest economists to get on the inflation bandwagon are Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Jeffry Frieden, who teaches international monetary policy at Harvard.
Kai Hirata?s parents feed him healthy foods. When cold and flu season hits, they increase his vitamin C. But they haven?t given the 7-year-old any vaccines. Diseases such as measles, which sprang up around the country last year, including in Milwaukee and Minneapolis, don?t worry them.
“As more people get waivers, our herd immunity goes down to the point where the entire community is at risk,” said Dr. James Conway, a UW Health pediatric infectious diseases specialist who is on the board of the Dane County Immunization Coalition.
The professor who oversees biosafety for the University of Wisconsin-Madisons controversial avian influenza research responded Monday to mounting criticism about the necessity and safety of the research, saying “ongoing research with H5N1 remains salient.”
Quoted: A study conducted in Milwaukee showed that one of every 20 renter-occupied properties is evicted each year. In mostly black neighborhoods, the rate is one in 10 households. The research was based on an analysis of court records and fieldwork from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led by sociologist Matthew Desmond, now at Harvard University.
Quoted: ?Some studies have questioned these treatments, but the bulk of clinical trials have unequivocally endorsed them,? said Dr. Michael Fiore, director of the University of Wisconsin?s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention and the chairman of the panel that wrote the guidelines. Dr. Fiore, who has reported receiving payments from drug makers, said that ?there are millions of smokers out there desperate to quit, and it would be a tragedy if they felt, because of one study, that this option is ineffective.?
The University of Wisconsin-Madison community is mourning the loss of a legend: James F. Crow, professor emeritus of genetics, who passed away peacefully at his home on Jan. 4, two weeks shy of his 96th birthday.
When students are asked to rate various aspects of UW-Madison, its academic and career advising services consistently rank as a problem area. “It?s typical across the country that students will rate advising lower than other things,” says UW-Madison?s Wren Singer. “So we?re not alone in that but the university is committed to addressing this issue.”
Q. I notice fewer Asian lady beetles during the warmer months. Is it typical for a population of exotic insects to explode and then decline?
A. It often is, says Phil Pellitteri, distinguished faculty associate in the entomology department at UW-Madison. “The Asian lady beetle fell off the face of the Earth this year, and we have been seeing a decline for four or five years,” Pellitteri said. “I?ve gone to places where I used to see a tremendous number, and they are few and far between.”
A. A wind gust is a sudden, brief increase in the speed of the wind followed by a lull. According to National Weather Service observing practice, gusts are reported when the peak wind speed reaches at least 18 mph and the variation in wind speed between the peaks and lulls is at least about 10 mph.
With award season upon us, movie-lovers are rushing to the theaters to see the big contenders. And if you?re like most people, you sit fairly far back, maybe even in the very last row.
