UW-Madison in the Media

A selection of media coverage about the university and its people.

• Scientific Fraud May Be More Widespread Than Thought, Poll Says Bloomberg News June 19, 2008 About 1,000 potential incidents of fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in scientific research go unreported every year, according to a survey that suggests such misconduct is far more prevalent than suspected. On average, the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity receives only 24 reports of suspected misconduct from academic and other research institutions yearly, according to a report in the journal Nature. The authors called for scientists and institutions to implement more safeguards against research fraud. Research fraud happens even though the scientific community uses measures such as replicating original research, and evaluating it through a peer review system, said James Wells, a study author and director of research policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Science Fraud at Universities Is Common -- and Commonly Ignored Chronicle of Higher Education June 19, 2008 Acts of scientific fraud, such as fabricating or manipulating data, appear to be surprisingly common but are underreported to university officials, says a report published today in the journal Nature. And the institutions may have investigated them far too seldom, the report's authors write. The authors are Sandra L. Titus, an official in the research-integrity office, Lawrence J. Rhoades, the emeritus director of its education division, and James A. Wells, director of research policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Mr. Wells previously worked for Gallup, where he directed the survey on research misconduct.
• Why flooding worsens Christian Science Monitor June 18, 2008 Quoted: Kenneth Potter, a civil and environmental engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says many scientists agree that climate change is likely to increase the occurrence and severity of storms as well as droughts, and thus increase the likelihood of flooding.
• Flood raises public health risks USA Today June 18, 2008 Quoted: Environmental health professor Jonathan Patz at the University of Wisconsin.
• Zircons can help determine a rock's age United Press International June 18, 2008 MADISON, Wis., June 17 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists studying minerals called zircons say a harsh climate might have scoured or even destroyed the surface of the Earth's earliest continents. University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist Professor John Valley said Zircons, the oldest known materials on Earth, offer a window in time back as far as 4.4 billion years ago. Because the crystals are exceptionally resistant to chemical changes, Valley said they are now used to determine the age of ancient rocks.
• Full court press: UW senior serves as translator for Bucks' Yi Jianlian Capital Times June 11, 2008 Matt Beyer is the first to admit he's catching his breath just a bit as he wraps up a whirlwind senior year at UW-Madison. "I'm not going to lie, it was really intense," said Beyer, who is taking two courses this summer to complete his undergraduate degree. "When the year was over, I felt a little burned out." A little burned out? Not only was Beyer putting the finishing touches on a triple major of Chinese, East Asian studies and journalism, but from October through April he served as the interpreter for Milwaukee Bucks 7-footer Yi Jianlian, a rookie from China.
• Obama visits as poll shows double-digit lead in state Milwaukee Journal Sentinel June 12, 2008 At the outset of a fierce campaign debate over jobs and taxes, Barack Obama returns today to Wisconsin, a blue-collar swing state that gave him one of his broadest victories in the Democratic primaries and where the political climate now tilts markedly in his favor, according to a new poll. Likely voters in Wisconsin are overwhelmingly sour about President Bush, the Iraq war and where the country is headed, according to the poll, conducted Sunday to Tuesday by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's political science department and Wispolitics.com.
• WI Poll: Obama + 13 Atlantic Monthly June 12, 2008 Two political scientists with top-notch reputations -- Charles Franklin of Pollster.com and Political Arithmetik fame, and Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project -- have teamed together to conduct a series of polls for the Wispolitics.com empire, and their first effort has a surprising result: Barack Obama is up by double digits in the state.
• Sunshine may be nature's disease fighter Los Angeles Times June 10, 2008 Medical researchers are homing in on a wonder drug that may significantly reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and many other diseases -- sunshine. A study released today found that men who are deficient in the so-called sunshine vitamin -- vitamin D -- have more than double the normal risk of suffering a heart attack. "We don't have a cause and effect relationship here yet" proving that higher doses of vitamin D prevent such diseases, said biochemist Hector DeLuca of the University of Wisconsin, who was the first to demonstrate how the vitamin interacts with the endocrine system, which manages the body's hormonal balance.
• Science said ignored in stem cell debate United Press International June 10, 2008 MADISON, Wis., June 9 (UPI) -- When forming attitudes on embryonic stem cell research, people are influenced by a number of factors, but science is not one of them, U.S. researchers say. A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison communications researchers say that scientific knowledge -- for many citizens -- has an almost negligible effect on how people regard the field.
• Obama Quandary: Why He Wins, Loses With Different White Voters Bloomberg News June 6, 2008 Quoted: Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
• How Hillary Clinton turned an air of certainty into a losing run Guardian (UK) June 4, 2008 Quoted: Ken Goldstein, an expert in campaign advertising at the University of Wisconsin.
• John McCain, Barack Obama trade charges on Iran, Iraq Los Angeles Times June 2, 2008 Quoted: Ken Goldstein, a University of Wisconsin political scientist, whose Wisconsin Advertising Project analyzes candidates' ad spending.
• Changes in Antarctic ice come as warning Anchorage Daily News May 27, 2008 Fifty years ago, Charles Bentley and five other young men chugged across the ice of Antarctica in three tracked vehicles, exploring the mysterious white continent. In those days when frontiers existed on the planet, Bentley -- a UW-Madison emeritus professor -- and his comrades saw a mountain range ahead of them that had Rocky-Mountain-size peaks with no names.
• New Into Africa: Holmen grad embarks on medical journey to test skills and help Onalaska Community Life May 23, 2008 Natalie Ammerman, a 2004 graduate of Holmen High School, has been accepted as part of a group of professional students to tour Uganda and help in hospitals, medical clinics and pharmacies. Ammerman, 22, is a doctor of pharmacy candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy. The university has an ongoing project in Uganda for pharmacy, medical and nursing students and sends students for three weeks each summer. Ammerman and 15 other UW students will travel to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, on May 24.
• How safe are nanoparticles? Christian Science Monitor May 21, 2008 Quoted: Dietram Scheufele, a professor of life sciences communication and journalism at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, says public awareness of nanotech hasn’t changed at all since 2004, when he began his surveys. Scientists are more apt to be concerned about health and safety issues than the public is, he says.
• Running scared no more Milwaukee Journal Sentinel May 20, 2008 The last thing Chris Solinsky sees before he closes his eyes at night is his summer to-do list, posted on the ceiling above his bed.
• Move Over, Depp; Bucky's Coming To Big Screen Wisconsin State Journal May 19, 2008 For the last year, a movie filmed in Madison stars someone more recognizable here than Johnny Depp. That's Bucky Badger, sporting the permanent grin and silenting spreading goodwill, who ranks as Madison's most famous figure. Now a Chicago film company will present the tentatively titled "Being Bucky" in 2009 after editing 100 hours of footage for the independent documentary.
• Rescue Can Bring Quake Victims New Danger Washington Post May 19, 2008 Quoted: Marvin L. Birnbaum, a critical-care physician at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and president of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine.
• Microbes Could Build 'Iron Man' Circuits Yahoo! News May 16, 2008 How is the Iron Man suit made? We admire the result in the movie (still number one this week at the box office); the comic book version states that the Iron Man suit circuits were created using a process called biological circuit fabrication: "Micro-Scale suit tiles fabricated by genetically engineered metal affinity bacteria which assemble themselves in specific orderly arrays, then expire, leaving behind various metallic deposits which form all the metal shapes and microscopic circuits." Now, a group of scientists led by Michael Sussman, director of University of Wisconsin, Madison's Biotechnology Center, and oceanography professor Virginia Armbrust of the University of Washington, are seeing if diatoms will help make even smaller integrated circuit chips by a similar process of biological fabrication.
• Summer in Antarctica -- a balmy -30 workday Morton Grove (Ill.) Champion May 15, 2008 The sun is constantly shining, the expanse of ice and snow stretching for miles in all directions is amazing -- but the walk to work through minus 30 degree temperatures at an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet is no picnic. In other words, it's just another summer day at the South Pole. For two Park Ridge natives, the icy, barren terrain of Antarctica doubled as home and office this past January during what is the Southern Hemisphere's summer season. Michelangelo D'Agostino, a physics Ph.D. student at the University of California at Berkeley, and Paul McGuire, an information technology specialist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, spent five weeks at the South Pole working on a scientific experiment called the IceCube Project. The project involves the construction of a telescope at the South Pole that will detect invisible subatomic particles from space called neutrinos. The data that is collected will be useful for astronomers in understanding more about the galaxy, D'Agostino said.
• UW Students Send Help To China WKOW-TV 27 May 15, 2008 Monday UW graduate student He Chang was in a panic. His family lives in Sichuan Province. 16 miles away from the earthquake's center. "I started to call my family, and I couldn't get to them. So I was worried," Chang says. After hours of frantic calls, he talked to his family who was scared, but safe. They described the chaos to him over the phone.
• UW grad on her way to food fame Milwaukee Journal Sentinel May 15, 2008 Dont envy Mary Nolan because shes articulate, assertive, athletic, attractive and had a job lined up at Gourmet magazine not quite a month after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Envy her because, at 26, she just got her own series on the Food Network.
• Brilliant Issue: Game Changers Conde Nast Portfolio May 12, 2008 Skin game: First James Thomson created a controversy; then he resolved it. In 1998, Thomson became the first scientist to isolate human stem cells, which can develop into any tissue in the body and thus have tremendous medical potential. Researchers are currently working to figure out how to "instruct" these cells to replace damaged tissues. But the science has been bogged down in controversy, because until recently the cells could be harvested only from embryos. Last fall, Thomson, 49, announced that he had caused a human skin cell to revert to a stem cell that was virtually identical to those found in embryos. The achievement could open the floodgates of investment. How soon might this bear fruit? "In my lifetime," Thomson says.
• Sky Vegetables proposal by UW-Madison students imagines fresh produce from the supermarket roof Wisconsin State Journal May 8, 2008 Imagine a grocery store in Wisconsin that doesn't get its produce from warmer states hundreds of miles away. Instead, fruits and vegetables are grown right on the supermarket's rooftop, making the produce as fresh as possible for consumers.
• How Wisconsin Student Investors Run $62 Million TheStreet.com May 2, 2008 Weighing in at $62 million, you would think that being the one of the world's largest student-run portfolios sets the University of Wisconsin's Applied Security Analysis Program (ASAP) apart from its peers. But ask its student managers what makes their program worth talking about, and size isn't the first thing that springs to mind. Here's a look at what does.
• A Too-Good-to-Be-True Nutrient? Washington Post April 29, 2008 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.
• UW textiles professor guides green carpet choice Wisconsin State Journal April 25, 2008 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.
• Tempest in a Hobbit Tooth ScienceNOW April 25, 2008 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.
• Can Climate Change Make Us Sicker? Time April 7, 2008 What do we talk about when we talk about global warming? It'll get hotter, that's a safe bet, polar ice caps will be melting and wildlife that can't adapt to warmer temperatures could be on the way out. But what does it really mean for the health of us, the human race? It's a question that remains surprisingly difficult to answer — research into climate change's impacts on human health have lagged behind other areas of climate science. But what we do know has scientists and doctors increasingly worried — a rising risk of death from heat waves, the spread of tropical diseases like malaria into previously untouched areas, worsened water-borne diseases. "When we think about climate change, we think about ice caps and biodiversity, but we forget about human health," says Dr. Jonathan Patz, a professor of environmental studies and population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There are a huge number of health outcomes that are climate sensitive."