A million-dollar federal grant helps to get public school students excited about the study of American History.
The experimental program, “Life During Wartime,” is designed specifically to raise student achievement first by improving his teacher’s knowledge and understanding of American history.
It was billed as a $100 million “urban village,” a project to energize the entire east side.
Union Corners promised to transform the site of a contaminated battery factory three miles from the Capitol into a mix of condominiums, offices and retail shops. There was talk of shady green public plazas, bubbling water features, even a light rail transit stop.
But today the 15-acre site is a tangle of empty lots, broken concrete and piles of gravel along one of the city’s busiest corridors. The only things standing are three mature oak trees where employees of Rayovac once enjoyed their lunch breaks before the aging brick factory on Winnebago Street was shuttered by new corporate owners five years ago.
Quoted: Colleen Dunlavy, economic historian at the UW-Madison.
Quoted: Drinking is ingrained in Wisconsin culture and heritage, said Nina Emerson, the director of the Resource Center on Impaired Driving at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “If you have a losing hand, you’re going to use every amount of rhetoric you can to distract people from the fact that you don’t have any facts,” Sean B. Carroll, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me in his lab last week. “And that’s what ‘Expelled’ is all about.”
Quoted: Shawn Peters, a University of Wisconsin-Madison instructor who studied faith healing cases for his book “When Prayer Fails,” called the legal hurdles faced by Falstad “significant.”
Quoted: Stanley Schultz, UW-Madison History Professor, hopes to “light a fire” under the 150 teachers in the test project.
http://www.channel3000.com/news/16069040/detail.html
MC FARLAND, Wis. — Redshirting is a common term in sports. It’s the practice of having the youngest players on a team sit out their first year in order to gain another year of eligibility when they’re older and most likely stronger.
The Badgers count basketball star Mike Wilkinson and football standouts Tyler Donovan and PJ Hill among their recent redshirts.
Now the term is being applied to children whose parents hold them out and enter them into kindergarten at age 6, rather than age 5.
Studies have found the practice, called redshirting, happens more often for boys with birthdays in June, July and August.
The practice means the youngest children in a class will then become the oldest in the class the following year.
“They’ll look at the kindergarten entrance age and say, ‘My child is not ready yet. I’ll wait a year and then have them go to kindergarten the following year,'” said UW professor Beth Graue.
UW-Madison stem cell scientist James Thomson has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
The announcement of Thomson’s election was made Tuesday by the university.
Thomson is among 72 new fellows going into the 145-year-old academy this year, considered one of the most prestigious honors in American science.
New technology in Weeks Hall, home to UW-Madisonâ??s geology and geophysics department, allows students to see 3-D images of the earth.
Imagine a nutrient that could help prevent cancer, heart disease and tuberculosis, preserve bones, and thwart autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile diabetes.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
But that’s the potential now being attributed to Vitamin D, whose usefulness was once thought to be limited to prevention of rickets in children and severe bone loss in adults. Known as the sunshine vitamin because it is produced when the skin is exposed to ultraviolet light, Vitamin D has been garnering increasing attention recently, because of what it may be able to do and because many people appear to be getting too little of it.
“There are a lot of benefits to Vitamin D that have surfaced in the last 20 years,” notes Hector DeLuca, a University of Wisconsin biochemist who has been a pioneer in Vitamin D research.
Quoted: Shawn F. Peters, a University of Wisconsin-Madison teacher and author of “When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law.”
Quoted: Edward Friedman, an expert on Chinese nationalism at the University of Wisconsin, says when Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1977, “anti-Japan nationalism became a great legitimating glue to hold the society together, eventually ending up in the really ugly April 2005 anti-Japan racist riots in China.”
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison environmental educators Tom Eggert and Dan Anderson said that there’s too much boasting about being green — from food to packaging to products.
Q. Do perennial plants ever wear out? Why or why not?
A. “Perennials are flowering plants that come back year after year, but some come back year after year much longer than others,” said Eileen Nelson, an herbaceous plant specialist with UW-Madison and UW-Extension.
For David Drake, nothing compares to a Wisconsin dawn shared with Tympanuchus cupido, the drummer of love.
If this sounds a little suspicious, rest assured. For Drake, a UW-Madison assistant professor of forest and wildlife ecology, such a morning is all about science. The drummer of love is the greater prairie chicken and Drake and others have watched in dismay as the colorful and once common bird has struggled to hang on in the state as the prairies in which it lives are destroyed. The population has shrunk to about 1,200 and the bird has been declared threatened by the state of Wisconsin.
Jerry O’Brien’s mission, as executive director of the Center for Retailing Excellence at UW-Madison, is to promote careers in retail to students, many of whom have years of experience in the industry, but at entry-level positions flipping hamburgers, selling clothes or stocking shelves.
Stewart Macaulay, a UW-Madison professor who teaches contract law, said it may not matter whether Huonker’s commitment letter was signed. Even unwritten agreements can be enforced, he said.
Quoted: Beverly Gordon, a design studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Bill Gengler, a veterinary dentist and oral surgeon with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, the toothâ??s outermost layer â?? which we brush â?? is enamel.
Quoted: Ed Jesse, a professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Sean Carroll, a Toledo native who teaches molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: James L. Baughman, director of the University of Wisconsin journalism school in Madison.
Quoted: One zoologist and animal behaviorist, Dr. Patricia McConnell, who hosts a radio talk show and is an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said FlexPetz sounds a lot like a video-rental service for dogs.
Quoted: Steve Schroeder, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business Career Center said jobs are out there and there is reason to be optimistic for years to come.
“Many people are starting to retire, and the forecast for the next 10 to 20 years, is more baby boomers are going to be retiring than we’re going to be graduating students from college,” Schroeder said
Gov. Jim Doyle took an early stop on his trip to the United Kingdom Thursday to drum up support for an upcoming Madison event.
Quoted: Steve Schroeder, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business Career Center said jobs are out there and there is reason to be optimistic for years to come.
A passionate textiles professor in Madison helped a California college system insist on buying environmentally friendly carpeting for an $83 million contract.
His work reflects growing interest in sustainable choices in carpeting, from homeowners to commercial contractors who want their buildings to be “green” from top to bottom.
“My whole research agenda for the past 26 years” has been focused on textile manufacturing and recycling issues to protect the environment, said Majid Sarmadi, 54, a professor of textile science at UW-Madison.
Quoted: Menzie Chinn, a University of Wisconsin economist who is one of the nation’s leading academic currency watchers.
Quoted: Hobbit watcher John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says he was initially intrigued by Henneberg’s claim. “[The] hypothesis was reasonable based on the photos,” he says.
Quoted: Joy Zedler, a botanist at the University of Wisconsin who has done research in the preserve since the 1970s, found last year that exotic plants were crowding out native ones, changing the ecosystem and altering the food chain.
Quoted: Don Waller, an ecology professor at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin and author of the book “Rice as Self,” said in a phone interview.
Quoted: Marie-Louise Mares, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin. Mares is the co-author of a recent study, to be published in the journal Media Psychology, of kindergarteners who watched a 10-minute episode of “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” a popular PBS show, in which Clifford and his friends interact with a three-legged dog. At first the characters fear the dog, worry that they might get sick from being around him and treat him as if he’s different. But after the dog tells them that he just wants to be friends, everyone becomes pals.
Also quoted: Joanne Cantor, author of “Mommy, I’m Scared,” a book about the effects of fear-inducing media, says that young children aren’t likely to get the broader lessons of those movies, nor even the storylines.
Quoted: Frank Halzen, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who heard Bernabei’s talk at the conference.
Quoted: Dr. James Stein, a University of Wisconsin-Madison cardiologist. If another study he is helping lead does not show benefit for rimonabant, “this drug’s already slim chances of approval will be even more jeopardized,” he said.
Human beings have changed the composition of the air itself â?? the global atmosphere â?? and something has to be done about it, UW-Madison professor Jonathan Foley told the state Natural Resources Board Tuesday on Earth Day.
“Between 1950 and 2000, the world population more than doubled. The economy grew sevenfold. Food consumption almost tripled. Water use roughly tripled. Fossil fuel use increased fourfold,” Foley said. “The planet started to notice.”
A long-term rise of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide â?? mainly due to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas â?? warmed the Earth, he said.
Quoted: Personnel changes are common as elected officials surround themselves with party friends and purge holdovers from the defeated administration. They earn that right when they win office, said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley says Laird’s work led to lasting and beneficial impacts on many walks of American life including healthcare, education, basic research, the modern military and veterans’ affairs.
The Wisconsin Alumni Association named Monday the seven recipients for the 72nd annual Distinguished Alumni Awards, which honor University of Wisconsin graduates who have achieved a high level of accomplishment in their fields.
Quoted: Neil Lerner, director of the Small Business Development Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Quoted: Mason Carpenter, UW-Madison School of Business associate professor, said in changing its name to Spectrum Brands in 2005, after buying lawn and garden care and pet supply companies, the company was “trying to be everything to everybody and became less of anything to anybody.”
Quoted: Douglas Jorenby, director of clinical services at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. “That seems to be rather unique.”
QUoted: Bush’s rating has worsened amid “collapsing optimism about the economy,” says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies presidential approval. Record gas prices and a wave of home foreclosures have fueled voter angst.
Quoted: Tuncer Edil, a civil engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a consultant for the company FieldTurf USA, said the concentration of volatile compounds released from crumb rubber is too low to be harmful when inhaled as dust from artificial turf-covered fields. And the bodyâ??s digestive system cannot extract any of the toxins if swallowed, Edil has written.
An earthquake with a 5.2 magnitude on the Richter scale shook parts of southeast Wisconsin early Friday morning despite it being centered in West Salem, Ill., 323 miles from Madison.
In Madison, in an empty office in Weeks Hall on the UW-Madison campus, the needle on the geology department ‘s seismometer started jerking wildly at 4:40 a.m. and didn ‘t stop bouncing around for more than a minute.
Bob Cropp, a dairy economist with the UW-Madison department of agriculture and applied economics, said that in the early 1960s, Wisconsin had more than 300 farms that packaged their own milk.
Gabriele Zu Rhein has twice done what few scientists do once: make key discoveries about a new disease.
But that second discovery, of a rare brain disease that she reported in December at the age of 87, is just one of the remarkable things about Zu Rhein ‘s life.
Quoted: Jonathan Patz, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Population Health Sciences and The Nelson Institute, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.
Quoted: Stanley A. Temple, emeritus professor of wildlife ecology and conservation biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: It’s not surprising that an earthquake of that magnitude, even in southern Illinois, would be felt hundreds of miles north in Wisconsin, said Cliff Thurber, a seismology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Marie-Louise Mares, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin. Mares is the co-author of a recent study, to be published in the journal Media Psychology, of kindergarteners who watched a 10-minute episode of “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” a popular PBS show, in which Clifford and his friends interact with a three-legged dog.
Quoted: While a complete bay analysis could be costly, requests for analysis for single lots wouldn’t be very costly â?? and, in some cases, could potentially be free, said Chin Wu, associate professor of coastal engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Jennifer Taylor, who workers for the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy Farmers and the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems through the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said she anticipated the trend would continue as farmers from the Baby Boomer generation retire and more younger people take over dairy operations.
Quoted: Biologist Sean B. Carroll of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of The Making of the Fittest (W.W. Norton & Co.) and other popular books on evolution, says evolutionary leftovers are born of a “use it or lose it” system.
For example, he says, we carry damaged versions of genes for dozens of smell receptors that give mice and other mammals far sharper noses. “Our repertoire of smell-receptor genes has gone to pot,” Carroll says.
Last week was bad for infectious diseases in Wisconsin. Measles and mumps, diseases seemingly reduced to only a memory in the United States by the introduction of vaccines, suddenly began making headlines once again.
If you felt a little shook up early this morning, you were not alone.
An earthquake, estimated at a magnitude of 5.2 and centered in southeastern Illinois, shook much of the Midwest just before 4:37 a.m. The tremors were felt in Madison, and as far away as Ontario, Canada.
Quoted: Clifford Thurber, UW-Madison professor of geophysics
Q. How do TV networks predict election winners with so few of the votes counted?
A. Charles Franklin, UW-Madison political science professor and co-developer of Pollster.com, looks to the kitchen to explain how a combination of exit polls and vote returns can sometimes foretell an election outcome shortly after the polls close.
Quoted: Keith Findley of the Law School and Wisconsin Innocence Project.
Quoted: John Hawks, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, explained evolution is all about natural selection and genes, and humans have evolved because superior genes led to the procreation and survival of those with the most robust genetic makeup.
