UW-Madison in the Media

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

• A small flame of hope burns in Burma San Francisco Chronicle Oct. 8, 2007 Quoted: Ingrid Jordt Applbaum, a former Buddhist nun in Burma and now a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, when I asked to speak to her.
• Heart disease diagnostic gaining popularity Associated Press Oct. 8, 2007 MADISON, Wis. -- What if your doctor could swipe a wand over your neck and reveal whether you have hidden heart disease? That is now possible in places other than the sickbay of the starship Enterprise. Miniature ultrasound machines are starting to make their way into ordinary doctors' offices, where they may someday be as common as stethoscopes and EKGs. A pocket-sized one weighing less than 2 pounds hit the market last week.
• Taking a closer look at psychopaths Scripps Howard News Service Oct. 3, 2007 Quoted: Joe Newman, chairman of the psychology department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Hitting the High Notes BusinessWeek Oct. 3, 2007 How this Wisconsin grad's specialized MBA from the Bolz Center helped him bring a competitive edge to a nonprofit performing arts organization
• Making learning look like child's play Wisconsin State Journal Sept. 24, 2007 Note: This is a new weekly profile series that will focus on UW-Madison's groundbreaking researchers. The early language transformation has intrigued UW-Madison psychologist Jenny Saffran for more than a decade.
• Pinch of sushi with a fruit twist Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sept. 24, 2007 They turned up their noses at raw fish. No frou-frou sauce or frilly shapes either. Ten University of Wisconsin-Madison students settled on fruit and rice as key ingredients. Their creation, sushi with a striking resemblance to a maki roll, nabbed second place in the biggest student product development competition this summer.
• Hospital flies in hygiene guru from the US - to tell doctors how to wash their hands Daily Mail (UK) Sept. 21, 2007 A top London hospital flew in an expert from America to explain to doctors the importance of washing their hands. It came after fears that senior medics at University College Hospital were not taking hygiene seriously. Specialist infection nurses invited Dennis Maki, from the University of Wisconsin, to try to force senior staff to pay more attention to superbugs.
• Bielema wants a sea of solid red Wisconsin State Journal Sept. 11, 2007 First, it was all-red uniforms. Now, University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema wants all red in the stands for the Badgers ' home games, too.
• Admissions Advice: Wisconsin MBA BusinessWeek Sept. 5, 2007 The University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Business is unique, say its administrators, for its specialized courses in the second year. Students can focus on disciplines from brand management to entrepreneurship. Some students who responded to the 2007 BusinessWeek survey praised the school for its practical, applied lessons and personalized touches.
• Dollar bounces back, but economists say slide will resume Chicago Tribune Aug. 27, 2007 Quoted: Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin and co-author of a much-cited academic report on the topic.
• How Viagra makes men loving as well as lusty Daily Mail (UK) Aug. 27, 2007 Anti-impotence drugs can turn men into more loving partners, new research suggests. As well as its original aim of improving sexual performance, Viagra boosts levels of a "cuddle chemical" in the brain that increases a man's love for his partner.
• The mechanical computer that is smaller than a grain of sand Daily Mail (UK) Aug. 13, 2007 Quoted: Robert Blick, a professor of electrical and computer engineering from the University of Wisconsin.
• Interview with Chancellor John Wiley People's Daily Online (China) Aug. 6, 2007 Chancellor Wiley of University of Wisconsin-Madison recently returned from an 11-day trip to China, South Korea and Japan, during which he visited Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Tokyo. As the chief executive officer of this distinguished public university in the United States, what is his vision of the future collaboration with Chinese institutions? How can UW distinguish itself from other top American universities? Recently, Ning Ma, a recent graduate from UW law school and Xing Zong, a rising fifth year Ph.D. student from Duke University took an exclusive interview with Chancellor Wiley.
• Suri: A 'China opening' to Iran? International Herald Tribune July 30, 2007 In July 1971, Henry Kissinger, acting as President Nixon's special representative, secretly traveled to Beijing. Kissinger's voyage provided the basis for a dramatic opening in relations between the United States and China - two nations estranged from one another for more than 20 years. Convulsed by internal upheavals and surrounded by regional threats, Chinese leaders viewed relations with Washington as a possible anchor for stability.
• Oh, Henry! Washington Post July 30, 2007 Perhaps because of the pungently Nixonian odor of the Bush White House -- the patriotism politics, the "l'état, c'est moi" declarations, the war -- this season has delivered a bounty of books about the men of Watergate. The current climate has vitalized anxieties about the imperial presidency, drawing fresh scrutiny to the Nixon years from such eminent writers as Robert Dallek, Elizabeth Drew, Margaret MacMillan, James Reston Jr., and Jules Witcover -- not to mention a Nixon biography from the scandal-plagued tycoon Conrad Black and the Broadway drama "Nixon/Frost." Joining this lengthening queue is Jeremi Suri, a historian at the University of Wisconsin, with a useful, idiosyncratic study, Henry Kissinger and the American Century.
• Stalin still a hero to Russia's youth The Scotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland) July 26, 2007 Russia's youth admire the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin - who presided over the deaths of millions of people - and want to kick immigrants out of Russia, according to a poll released yesterday. When asked if Stalin was a wise leader, half of the 1,802 respondents, aged from 16 to 19, agreed he was. "Fifty-four per cent agreed that Stalin did more good than bad," said Theodore Gerber, a sociologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who presented the poll.
• The Story of Our Lives ABCNEWS.com July 25, 2007 UW-Madison study Follows 10,000 Wisconsin High School Grads From Happy Days to the War on Terror.
• Tracing Kissinger's world view Montreal Gazette July 23, 2007 Author Jeremi Suri looks at the influences that shaped the former U.S. Secretary of State, and then examines the pivotal moments of his career.
• Study stirs up debate over human origins MSNBC.com July 19, 2007 Quoted: John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• High Triglyceride Levels Linked to Cardiac Risk Washington Post July 18, 2007 Quoted: Dr. Patrick E. McBride, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
• Precious pearls to be used in durable materials? MSNBC.com July 18, 2007 University of Wisconsin-Madison physicist Pupa Gilbert, who co-authored a nacre study published in the June 29 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. "We don't know how to synthesize materials that are better than the sum of their parts."
• Let's Play Two: Singular Piano (features associate professor of music, Christopher Taylor) New York Times July 16, 2007 The instrument could stump contestants on “Jeopardy!”: It has 164 keys and four pedals. Oh, and two keyboards. The correct response is neither “What is an organ?” nor “What is a harpsichord?” No, the answer involves an almost one-of-a-kind piano from the late 1920’s, which Christopher Taylor will play this afternoon at the Caramoor International Music Festival in Katonah, N.Y. It is the only two-keyboard instrument Steinway ever made, and Mr. Taylor considers it the perfect piano for the piece he will perform there, Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations.
• Things Not Seen: Science for the Blind Newsweek July 13, 2007 If nanoscience is the field of stuff so tiny it can never be seen, does it matter if the scientist can see at all? At the University of Wisconsin's nanoscience center, Andrew Greenberg is in charge of education and outreach—and it occurred to him that blindness, often thought of as a handicap in the sciences, becomes irrelevant when the subject matter is invisible anyway.
• Madison's a 'fast city' in magazine rankings Capital Times July 2, 2007 Madison is one fast city. So says Fast Company magazine in its article examining worldwide centers that offer the best in economic innovation and opportunity. Madison is named a Startup Hub in the listing of Fast Cities 2007. ....According to the magazine, "Fast Cities" are considered worldwide centers of creativity where the most important ideas and organizations of the future are located. They attract the best and brightest. They are great places to work and live. The main reason Madison was chosen for the ranking, to be published in the magazine's July-August issue, is research and development spending. The article reports that the University of Wisconsin-Madison spends more in research and development than Stanford, MIT or Harvard.
• New Books Explore Henry Kissinger's German Jewish Roots Deutsche Welle June 29, 2007 For the first time Henry and Walter Kissinger, whose German Jewish family fled the Nazis in 1938, talk about their odyssey from the small Bavarian town of Fürth to America, and their confrontation with anti-Semitism. "I never give interviews about my personal life," said Henry Kissinger in response to a letter from Germany in 2003. But Evi Kurz, the author of the recently released "The Kissinger Saga: Two Brothers from Fürth," persisted. The book is based on Kurz's film documentary, which was aired earlier this year on German television.
• Scientists Find Earliest Sign of Cultivated Crops in Americas New York Times June 29, 2007 In an accompanying article on early agriculture, Eve Emshwiller, an ethnobotanist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, was quoted as saying the reports of early dates for plant domestication in the New World were remarkable because the activity appeared to have occurred not long after humans first colonized the Americas, which is now thought to be at least 13,000 years ago.
• How to Reconstruct the Neandertal Genome Scientific American June 27, 2007 Quoted: John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• Evo-Devo - Evolutionary Science - From a Few Genes, Life's Myriad Shapes New York Times June 26, 2007 Quoted: Dr. Sean B. Carroll, biologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
• U.S. Is Creating 3 Centers for Research on Biofuels New York Times June 26, 2007 WASHINGTON, June 25 — The Energy Department is creating three bioenergy research centers to find new ways to turn plants into fuel. The three centers, which the department described as three start-up companies with $125 million each in capital, will be in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Madison, Wis.; and near Berkeley, Calif. They will involve numerous universities, national laboratories and private companies. The goal of the centers, which are to be announced on Tuesday, is to bring new technologies to market within five years. The new approach supports President Bush’s goal of reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years.
• Geographer maps terrain of the soul Milwaukee Journal Sentinel June 25, 2007 The young geographer would tell strangers he was hunting uranium. In 1952, that explanation seemed more understandable than the truth about what he was doing in the desert. Who would believe the broad, flat rocks called pediments had led this slender man, 98 pounds, into Arizona's San Pedro River Valleyto map remote country under a blazing sun? At night, he camped out in a beat-up Ford coupe, and read by Coleman lamp until, tired, he pulled down the seats and slept with his head by the steering wheel, his feet stretched back into the trunk.