While many consider America a leader in higher education and research around the world, a new study by the Education Policy Institute says the United States lags behind many nations in both affordability and accessibility.
Dr. Larry Bumpass, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Demography and Ecology
A speaker accused the Bush Administration of orchestrating the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in front of C-SPAN cameras, University of Wisconsin students and Madison community members at Bascom Hall Monday night.
Can something relying heavily on the course of the past have no future? Beginning last week and continuing through April 23, scholars and inquisitors conjoin on campus to tackle such issues in the hopes of understanding the future of folk. With only a week left of discussions and lectures, the role of folk culture in the future may not be resolved. Awareness of its endangerment will be.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin law Prof. Michael Smith.
Quoted: Karen Stauffacher, assistant dean and director of the Business Career Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin economist John Karl Scholz.
Quoted: Allen Odden, Ph.D., an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Jane Allyn Piliavin, professor of sociology and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Heinz Klug, a UW-Madison law professor.
Quoted: UW-Madison dairy economist Ed Jesse.
Their concepts sound like the type that could change the world: drugs to prevent Alzheimer’s or influenza, a test for mad cow disease, a new construction material that could eventually replace steel.
They are local finalists in the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest – seven young companies that are among 20 statewide being considered for a total of more than $100,000 in cash prizes.
Several companies have UW-Madison ties.
Madison: If you’re wondering how you can afford to travel when gas costs $2.25 at the pump, the answer may be in getting 40 miles per gallon.
While that’s out of reach for most vehicles today, UW Automotive Faculty Advisor Glenn Bower says it’s not unrealistic for the vehicles of tomorrow. “More like a Ford Taurus will be in the high 35’s to the 40 range 5 years from now is what I’d predict. The SUV’s will be around 30.”
With its especially large population of workers nearing retirement, Wisconsin needs more investment in training, not less, Center on Wisconsin Strategy director Laura Dresser said. “It would be better to get in front of the ball on this.”
Quoted: David Larbalestier, a superconductivity researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
Quoted: Politics professor Edward Friedman of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: James Gee, the Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin.
A type of chlamydia infection that often leads to pneumonia may also be linked to serious heart attacks in young men, according to a recent study.
Quoted: UW-Madison Limnologist Elena Bennett.
Quoted: Erwin Montgomery, a professor of neurology at the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison, said there has been a great deal of interest in the role of inflammation in Parkinson’s.
Quoted: Larry Rittenberg, 58, co-author of the survey and an accounting professor at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison
Quoted: Deborah Lowe Vandell of the department of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin.
Quoted: Andrew Reschovsky, professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, an expert on state and local government public finance.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin at Madison clinical instructor Joseph Foerner
Mentions a 1990s study by Stanley Temple, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, that estimated that outdoor cats kill millions of birds each year.
Quoted: Ann Kelley, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison
If a front-row seat at a human science fair won’t soften our skepticism, maybe a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor’s research will. To get a better read on Tasers, John Webster is ready to study how current enters the body, flows through it and affects muscles and the nervous system.
From the dawn of life, it has tugged our oceans to create the tides. It has shone like a beacon for wanderers in the night. It has inspired the hearts of poets and stirred the souls of romantics. It is a metaphor for something unattainable, yet something that can be attained nonetheless with human ingenuity and desire.
It is the moon, on average a quarter of a million miles away from us. Yet between 1969 and 1972, 12 men spanned that unimaginable distance to set foot on its dusty surface. One of those men is now a UW-Madison professor who, in 1972, was one of three astronauts who piloted Apollo 17 into space and one of two to walk on the moon.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin bioethicist Alta Charo.
Quoted: Donald Ferree, a public opinion researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Quoted: An economist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Robert Haveman.
Quoted: Stanley A. Temple, a scientist whose research has reported that stray cats in Wisconsin are a problem for grassland birds.
Amid controversy on the University’s tazer tests on pigs, a head honcho assures everyone there’s nothing to worry about. (Audio.)
The earliest feminist bookstores opened in 1969, and though A Room of One’s Own, named for the book by Virginia Woolf, began a little later than that, it was a groundbreaker, said Anne Enke, a UW- Madison women’s studies professor.
The 1970s saw a boom in feminist bookstores, but many have folded due to competition from large booksellers like Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, Enke said.
Kenneth Mayer, a UW- Madison political science professor, said it’s uncertain what effect his divorce and bachelor status will have on Feingold’s presidential aspirations and political future.
“It’s hard to predict when these kinds of things will have an effect and when they won’t,” Mayer said. “Obviously politicians who are divorced are pretty common. In fact, divorced people are pretty common.”
Supporters of the proposal say such a law is necessary to control the population of wild, unvaccinated cats that eat songbirds and other wildlife and transmit diseases to animals and people. A study by UW-Madison wildlife ecology professor Stan Temple estimates that feral cats kill 7.8 million to 219 million birds in Wisconsin each year.
The major chemical companies would like you to believe that UW-Madison Professor Warren Porter is one of those kooky alarmists who are out to make your life miserable. Indeed, to say they view him as a pest would be a colossal understatement, acknowledges Porter, a scientist in the department of zoology.
“They’ve gone to the highest officials of this university to try to get me to pull my papers after they’ve been published,” he says. “Or to get me to retract things I’ve written.”
From manipulating objects several atoms thick to using physics to find a cure for brain cancer, some of the most revolutionary research on campus is being conducted by women. As part of the “Celebrating Women of Science” program, five female UW-Madison scientists summarized their research in a public discussion Saturday.
When students get to college, some continue to attend church, some become non-religious, and others find a new faith altogether. Ultimately, the experiences students have in college affect their faith for the rest of their lives.
Consumers still spending
So far, consumers appear only a little worried about rising prices and interest rates. The Consumer Confidence Index dipped slightly for March. It’s published monthly by The Conference Board, a private business-research center.
“We haven’t seen much of a drawback on spending. It would really depend on how high and how long; I think duration is important here,” said Lynn Franco, a Conference Board economist. “So far, we’ve seen consumers at least weathering the hikes well.”
But Laura Dresser, research director at the Center on Wisconsin Strategies, a think tank at UW-Madison, added, “Inflation is obviously a problem for people. It stretches already stretched paychecks and high gasoline prices are hard for very many families to deal with on a budget. . . . Gas prices take a real toll on lower and moderate income families.”
Quoted: Stanley Temple, professor, wildlife ecology.
‘Country is watching’ Hunters generally support the feral cat proposal, citing a 1996 study by UW-Madison wildlife ecology professor Stanley Temple that from 7.8 million to 219 million birds are killed by rural cats in Wisconsin each year.
Despite a fevered controversy over the reliability of the study that led to worldwide use of the AIDS drug nevirapine to protect newborns, doctors have begun testing a strategy for boosting the drug’s proven benefits.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin bioethicist Alta Charo.
Call it much ado about almost nothing. To build excitement about an otherwise arcane subject, the University of Wisconsin-Madison showed off a tiny speck of zircon crystal believed to be the oldest known piece of Earth, about 4.4 billion years old.
Quoted: Chad Dorgan, who also serves on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus, one of the leading universities providing formal training for building commissioning
Quoted: John Karl Scholz and Ananth Seshadri of the University of Wisconsin
Trees in Wisconsin and around the nation might one day be the raw materials for everything from car bodies to wiring, a new report on forest industries found.
The report argues that the wood and paper industries – key but stagnant parts of the state and national economy – might be rejuvenated by nanotechnology, the science of the very small.
Quoted: Dr. Michael Fiore, director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin Medical School.
A drug used in organ-transplant patients could double as an effective cancer fighter, scientists announced last week.
Tim Moermond, who teaches ornithology at UW- Madison, said the owls are susceptible because they normally don’t have to deal with much traffic and also because they are so intent on hunting they pay little attention to vehicles that get in their way.
Quoted: Andrew Reschovsky, professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, an expert on state and local government public finance.
Quoted: Allan Odden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor is a leading expert in revamping teacher compensation. He also is the co-director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Drinking beer and paying taxes are two things Wisconsinites do in high quantities. So it should come as little surprise that a proposal to increase taxes on beer has tapped strong feelings over the best way to fund alcohol abuse treatment programs in the state.
UW-Madison Professor Richard Anderson in the news regarding Cross Plains village issues.
Children with autism generally avoid social contact, but scientists were never sure why until now. A recent UW-Madison brain study suggests that autistic individuals feel uncomfortable and threatened by looking another person in the eye.
It was a paleontologist’s dream find: a three-and-a-half foot thigh bone from a Tyrannosaurus rex, preserved wonderfully in the Montana ground. But when the scientists tried to load the femur onto their tiny helicopter, they realized to their dismay it would not fit. Tragically, they would have to break the precious bone to fit it on board.
Quoted: Barbra Wolfe, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Column compiled by Megan Schliesman, a librarian at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, a noncirculating library of the School of Education at UW-Madison. The CCBC is a library for adults with an academic, professional or career interest in children’s or young adult literature.
Michael Scott, a policing expert at the UW-Madison Law School, said departments nationwide are looking at revamping their Taser policies.
“There are other departments around the country that have abandoned use of Tasers altogether,” he said, adding that Madison’s changes were more restrictive than those of many departments.
For those who want to enhance their sense of kinship with butterflies, zebras, apes, and even ancient dinosaurs, Sean B. Carroll offers a treasure trove in “Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo.
Carroll is a genetics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
With its chance detours and forks in the road, cultural history is full of what-ifs. Tonight, folklorist Jim Leary explores one of the most tantalizing – at least for Wisconsinphiles and folk music fiends:
What if … the great ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax had spent two months wending his way through Wisconsin in 1938 instead of just a day?
