UW-Madison in the Media

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

• Startup Battles Botnets PC World Feb. 5, 2008 A startup with U.S. military backing will begin beta-testing a security appliance this month, which it argues could change the face of network security by automating and refining the generation of malware signatures. The startup, Nemean Networks, was co-founded by Paul Barford, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and is named after the first of Hercules' 12 tasks - to kill the Nemean lion, a beast with an impenetrable coat.
• Democrats Flood States With Ads as Tuesday Nears New York Times Feb. 4, 2008 Quoted: Ken Goldstein, a political science professor and the director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which just completed a study of campaign expenditures to date.
• Nature the tinkerer Guardian (UK) Feb. 4, 2008 Remember the old story about modern science: knowing more and more about less and less? It's not true any more. We are living in the age of the great biological synthesis. Both Neil Shubin and Sean B Carroll thrillingly show us how, in the last 10 years, work on fossils, on DNA sequencing and on embryological development have combined to piece together the story of how we got here.
• Little of candidates ad money shows in Feb. 5 states Los Angeles Times Feb. 4, 2008 Presidential contenders from both major parties spent a record $107 million through last Sunday to air more than 151,000 television ads -- but hardly any of the media dollars were used to buy air time in the more than 20 states holding nominating contests Tuesday. Reflecting the extraordinary focus placed on early primary and caucus states this election cycle, three times as much money was spent at New Hampshire television station WMUR -- about $10 million -- than had been spent in all of California. As of Sunday, ad buys in California totaled about $3 million, though that increased this week as some of the major candidates launched new TV spots in the state. At a similar point before the Iowa caucuses, $36 million had been spent there, said Kenneth Goldstein, director of the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project, which conducted the study. By the time the Jan. 3 caucuses were over, the candidates had spent $43 million on television ads in Iowa, or about $121 for every person who cast a ballot.
• Negative campaigning long a hallmark of American politics Providence Journal Jan. 29, 2008 Quoted: Kenneth Goldstein of the University of Wisconsin-Madison says negative campaigning informs voters
• Obama Makes `Defining Moment' With Rhetoric Evoking JFK, King Bloomberg News Jan. 29, 2008 Quoted: Stephen Lucas, professor of communication arts at University of Wisconsin at Madison and author of a soon-to-be- published anthology of the top 100 American speeches of the 20th century.
• Study Gives Key Role to Sleep in Helping Brain Learn Anew New York Times Jan. 29, 2008 Researchers who study the brain know that it’s far from an immutable object. “It’s much more plastic than most people think,” said Giulio Tononi, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin. “It’s changing all the time.” One area of change is the synapses, the connections between neurons, which are altered as the brain receives stimuli. “What happens when you’re awake is you produce an overall strengthening of synapses,” Dr. Tononi said. “That’s good, because that’s how you learn.”
• UW Vets Perform Surgery On Exotic Tortoise WISC-TV 3 Jan. 28, 2008 MADISON, Wis. -- Doctors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine performed a first-of-its-kind surgery on an exotic yellow-footed tortoise. The tortoise, named Baskin Robbins, lives at the Milwaukee County Zoo. His caretakers noticed that Baskin Robbins wasn't walking and appeared to be in pain, so they sent him to Madison for a checkup. "Baskin Robbins is here because he is lame, meaning he's not bearing weight on his front left leg, and we think it's because he had a problem with his humerus, which is the arm bone. Part of it has broken off, and that part needs to be removed so that he's not lame and in pain," said Dr. Gretchen Cole, a veterinarian at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.
• Giuliani falls far, fast Los Angeles Times Jan. 24, 2008 Quoted: Charles H. Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin.
• 'Safe Ebola' created for research BBC News Online Jan. 22, 2008 Scientists have made the lethal virus Ebola harmless in the lab, potentially aiding research into a vaccine or cure. Taking a single gene from the virus stops it replicating, US scientists wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Ebola, currently handled in highly secure labs, kills up to 80% of those it infects.
• Disarmed Ebola virus to aid quest for vaccine The Times, UK Jan. 22, 2008 Scientists disarmed the Ebola virus by removing a single gene, providing a new laboratory tool that will help the development of drugs and vaccines against the lethal tropical disease. Efforts to find ways of treating Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever that kills between 50-90 per cent of the people it infects, have so far been greatly held up by its extreme virulence. The extreme health hazard posed by the virus means that it can be studied only in highly specialised laboratories equipped to biosafety level four (BSL 4), the highest category of containment facility.
• Algae could be key to computer chip breakthrough CBC News Jan. 22, 2008 A type of algae found in oceans, lakes and wet soil could be used to create a new, faster generation of computer chips, U.S. researchers suggest in a study released Monday. Marine diatoms, a unicellular algae, build their hard, patterned cell walls with microscopic lines of silica — a compound related to silicon, which is a key material for constructing computer chips and semiconductors. "If we can genetically control that process, we would have a whole new way of performing the nanofabrication used to make computer chips," lead researcher Michael Sussman, a University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemistry professor, said in a release.
• The man making the case for steroids Chicago Tribune Jan. 16, 2008 MADISON, Wis. -- How can the accomplishments of Bonds, McGwire, Sosa and others of the "steroid era" of baseball be compared to those of Aaron or Ruth? Can Major League Baseball and the National Football League and the others ever get drugs out of their systems? Will the athletes named as users in the Mitchell report face futures threatened by cancer, heart attack, stroke? What will come of the House committee hearings, now postponed until February? Is there any tarnish remover strong enough to put the shine back on sports in America? As the controversy over use of anabolic steroids by athletes swirls like a wind-whipped snowstorm, Norman Fost, professor of pediatric medicine and director of the Program in Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, is a center of calm and certainty. He says, as he has for many years and virtually alone, that the maelstrom is nothing more than "the hypocrisy, bad facts, inconsistency and moral incoherence of anti-drug hysteria."
• Wisconsin students take a drive for environmental justice Brownsville Herald Jan. 14, 2008 Last week, a group of nine students from the University of Wisconsin — Madison drove 1,500 miles from the stiff 25-degree chill of the Midwest to Brownsville — but they didn’t come for the weather. “We came on a service learning trip,” said Cathy Collentine, a 21-year-old political science and Spanish double major at the university. “But we’re really down here for personal learning. Education is the only way to create change.” The group of students is part of an organization called Action Environmental Justice, which aims to create more equitable conditions for people living in areas under environmental distress.
• Davis: Explaining Rent-Home Price Ratios Wall Street Journal Jan. 8, 2008 Morris Davis, economist in the department of real estate and urban-land economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and until 2006 a staff economist at the Fed, is one of the authors of a study that finds homes overvalued compared to rents. He addressed questions about the study in this article. Let me start by providing some other background information on why the rent-price ratio for housing – which is like the dividend yield for housing as an asset – is a useful metric. (Subscription required.) In a world without uncertainty and with constant growth, the dividend yield of an asset has the simple expression of r-g, where r is the discount rate on future dividends and g is the growth rate of dividends. Thus, if the dividend yield falls, either the discount rate r has fallen or the expected growth rate of dividends g has increased or both.
• Turning Hope Into a Home: Wisconsin students make 9th trip to build Habitat house Palatka Daily News Jan. 8, 2008 On Monday morning, the hands of 20 University of Wisconsin students pushed up one wall of a house that will be nearly completed by week’s end. The ninth annual Putnam Habitat for Humanity Blitz build is on, said Jim Melfi, Putnam Habitat’s executive director. Student volunteers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Milwaukee are escaping subfreezing temperatures to help one Palatka family realize their dream of home ownership, he said.
• 2008 Best Value in Public Colleges Kiplinger's Personal Finance Jan. 7, 2008 It could just be the best public college you've never heard of, with prices so low that it's a steal even for out-of-state students. SUNY Geneseo, a small liberal arts college in western New York, boasts top students, a scenic campus, strong programs in both arts and sciences, and new dorms with -- drumroll, please -- washers and dryers on every floor. It adjoins a historic village with killer quaintness and puts students within 30 miles of Rochester, a major college town. UW-Madison is ranked 19 for in-state and 23rd for out of state.
• How old is too old to father a child? Chicago Daily Herald Jan. 7, 2008 Quoted: "In short, the biggest genetic threat to society may not be infertility but fertile old men," says University of Wisconsin in Madison geneticist James F. Crow.
• Study suggests lengthy home price decline Reuters Jan. 4, 2008 CHICAGO (Reuters) - Home prices could fall "considerably" over a number of years as a benchmark ratio of rents to prices slowly returns to its long-run average, according to a new study. "If the rent-price ratio were to rise from its level at the end of 2006 up to about its historical average value of 5 percent by mid-2012, house prices might fall by 3 percent per year," two Federal Reserve Board economists and a University of Wisconsin professor said.
• UW men's basketball: For Flowers, game-winning shot pales to inspiration from cancer survivor Capital Times Jan. 2, 2008 ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Michael Flowers was sitting on the edge of the couch telling the story to a visitor Tuesday night when he stuck out his left arm and watched hundreds of goose bumps pop up from his elbow to his wrist. "Every time I think about it I get chills," said Flowers, whose gentle smile as he stared at his arm provided the perfect punctuation to the special story that took place in Austin, Texas, this past Saturday.
• Women play greater role in running farms Chicago Daily Herald Jan. 2, 2008 Quoted: Michael Bell, a rural sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences said there were 1,311 women enrolled last fall and 1,005 men, compared with 796 men and only 353 women during the 1977-1978 school year.
• Huckabee Shows Negative Spot After Pulling It From Television New York Times Jan. 2, 2008 Quoted: Ken Goldstein, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, said the episode might backfire on Mr. Huckabee because it showed him as not ready for prime time. He has been falling in the polls since he stumbled a few days ago in talking about Pakistan, and he began unleashing a torrent of harsh words against Mr. Romney, whose once-sagging candidacy has appeared revived.
• Bhutto Killing Threatens Security, Vote ABCNEWS.com Dec. 28, 2007 The assassination of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is likely to call into question the future of democracy in Pakistan as well as the country's role in fighting terrorism in the region, several international policy experts told ABC News. "The fact that the election could be delayed and a major candidate has been killed makes it very difficult to go ahead with establishing the impression that Pakistan has at last returned to a democratic process," said Joe Elder, professor of sociology and a specialist on Pakistan at the University of Wisconsin. "This is a very serious blow to the democratic process in Pakistan."
• Study Quantifies Orphanage Link to I.Q. New York Times Dec. 27, 2007 Quoted: Seth Pollak, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the research.
• A Groovy Pad Full of Gods and Gurus New York Times Dec. 26, 2007 Families can be so embarrassing. Imagine the agonies of an adolescent girl whose house has become infested with India-besotted hippies from all over the globe, whose sarcastic father stumbles around in an alcoholic haze and whose mother kneels at the feet of every swami she meets. And let us not forget grandma, who holds long conversations with her cow and once met a 1,000-year-old cobra with a ruby in its forehead and a mustache on its albino face. Gods, gurus and eccentric relatives compete for primacy in Kirin Narayan’s enchanting memoir of her childhood in Bombay (present-day Mumbai). The title, which alludes to Gerald Durrell’s “My Family and Other Animals,” originated as an act of revenge. Ms. Narayan, fed up with the family penchant for ashrams and spiritual quests, turned to her mother and warned, “When I grow up I’m going to write a book called ‘My Family and Other Saints’ and put you in it.” And so she did. The adolescent anger is gone, but the child’s sense of wonder remains. Ms. Narayan, now a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, grew up in extraordinary circumstances, the daughter of a bohemian American mother and a deeply unhappy Indian father, an engineer by profession but an aesthete at heart.
• People Who Mattered: Junying Yu, James Thomson and Shinya Yamanaka Time Dec. 19, 2007 A fierce moral debate—whether the therapeutic potential of stem cells could justify destroying embryos to get them—appeared to vanish when scientists in Wisconsin and Japan announced that they had figured out how to convert adult skin cells into near-perfect copies of the wonder cells. More research remains to be done, but this might be the most delightful discovery since common bread mold birthed the age of antibiotics.
• Evolution getting faster by the millennium Sydney Morning Herald Dec. 12, 2007 NATURE'S race to create the perfect person has shifted into top gear, with humans evolving 100 times faster than at any time since the rise of man some 6 million years ago. That is the finding of researchers who have sifted through data collected by the international effort to map our genetic blueprint. The pace of human evolution in the past 5000 years was "immense … something nobody expected", John Hawks, a University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist, said yesterday.
• Study finds humans still evolving, and quickly Los Angeles Times Dec. 12, 2007 The pace of human evolution has been increasing at a stunning rate since our ancestors began spreading through Europe, Asia and Africa 40,000 years ago, quickening to 100 times historical levels after agriculture became widespread, according to a study published today. The advantage of all but about 100 of the genes remains a mystery, said University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks, who led the study. But the research team was able to conclude that infectious diseases and the introduction of new foods were the primary reasons that some genes swept through populations with such speed.
• 40 years later, fans still love Otis Redding MSNBC.com Dec. 11, 2007 Quoted: Craig Werner, chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Researchers: Human evolution speeding up USA Today Dec. 11, 2007 By tracking the footprints of evolution along the human genome, a team of researchers on Monday reported for the first time that the pace of evolution is quickening with the passing generations. Lead author is John Hawks, Depts. of Anthropology and Zoology