Newsmakers

(Every week faculty and staff from across campus are featured or cited in newspapers, magazines, broadcasts and other media from around the country. The listings that follow represent a small selection of the many stories that spotlight UW–Madison and its people. More newsmaker listings)

Mapping bug genes
Reuters reports (Nov. 4) that a team of scientists, led by UW–Madison geneticist and chemist David Schwartz, has created a gene map of the bug that causes malaria, a breakthrough that may help researchers find and design drugs to combat the deadly disease. No one knows very much about the parasite that causes malaria, which is often carried by mosquitoes, but Schwartz’s team used optical mapping methods to craft the most-complete blueprint yet of its genetic makeup. “Our maps have provided reliable landmarks for sequence assembly, where traditional maps are somewhat sparse,” the team reports in the journal Nature Medicine.

Sesame opens minds
Seeking to explain how television might help to dispel prejudice, a Palestinian author cites studies by Nathan Fox of the University of Maryland and UW–Madison pediatrics professor Lewis Leavitt. The professors studied the reactions of Israeli and Palestinian children to television programming, finding that each group had developed strong negative images of the other by as early as four years of age. However, when the researchers asked their questions four months later, after the debut of a new children’s program modeled after “Sesame Street,” they found a notable change in attitudes. The Jerusalem Post (Nov. 4) says they reported that “viewing the series played an important role in promoting small positive changes in Palestinian and Israeli children’s attitude toward each other, and in improving their social reasoning about conflict and cultural identification.”

Stamping out sects?
The Chinese government is enacting a series of laws banning “superstitious sects and secret societies or use of superstition to violate laws or administrative regulations.” Violators will be subject to prison terms of from three to seven years, harsh terms that many believe are targeted at the Falun Gong movement, a seemingly apolitical practice of exercise and spiritual reflection. In the San Jose Mercury News (Nov. 4), Edward Friedman, professor of political science who specializes in the study of China, says the laws demonstrate not only the intense fear Communists have of the Falun Gong, but of any organized threat to their authority. Friedman says that those threats also include Tibetan Buddhists, rebel Muslims and those pushing for Taiwanese independence.

Campus crime details
A few parts of campus – including the Camp Randall stadium area and Picnic Point – received ‘modestly high risk’ designation in national crime statistics posted Nov. 10 to the web site, APBnews.com. APBnews claims it has compiled the first national crime risk survey of all four-year colleges in the U.S.

On a 1-10 scale, with 10 as the most dangerous, UW–Madison is given a 7 for overall crime risk. UW police say campus crime is at a 23-year low. “It is a safe campus and it is a safe city,” Capt. Dale Burke says. “There is absolutely nothing on the horizon that indicates that we should expect an increase in crime.”

We’ve got it all
The Arts and Entertainment Network (A & E) broadcast a one-hour program Nov. 14 that featured UW–Madison campus in its Madison segment of the “Top Ten Cities To Have It All.” On the segment, Mayor Sue Bauman credited the university with shaping much of the city’s culture. The Office of News and Public Affairs furnished A & E with footage from the university’s “Video Viewbook,” to help round out the segment on Madison, which ranked fifth.