Jumping worms, consisting of various non-native species from multiple genera, have become established in a number of eastern and southeastern states. In 2013, species from the genus Amynthas were confirmed for the first time in the Upper Midwest, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum.
There have been developments in Miami and just this week the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control recently updates its guidelines. Dr. Katie Anthony, who is a Maternal Fetal Medicine Doctor at UW Health talks about the latest developments.
“Earthworms are the kind of organisms we call ecosystem engineers. They change the physical and chemical properties of the ecosystem as they dig and feed,” University of Wisconsin-Madison zoologist Monica Turner said in a statement. “But nobody really understood if these Asian worms would have the same effect as the European worms we have had here for many years.”
Jaime Martindale, librarian at UW–Madison’s Arthur H. Robinson Map Library, helped find the exact site in northern Wisconsin of the 1966 crash of an Air Force B-52 bomber.
In one study at University of Wisconsin-Madison, 90 people with knee osteoarthritis received either dextrose jabs, saline jabs or exercise therapy.
UW-Madison plans to study the academic effects of concussions in 200 Madison-area high school athletes.
Smokers may worry that trying to quit will alienate them from other smokers, said coauthor Megan E. Piper of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But in practice, people who quit actually gain nonsmoking friends, she told Reuters Health by phone.
Toddlers who spend a lot of time in a noisy environment may have a harder time learning to speak, a small study suggests. That’s because background noise – especially the kind that comes from voices on the television or radio – can make it tough for young children to learn new words, said study co-author Brianna McMillan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Rhesus macaque monkeys make a good model for studying how Zika infects people, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison concluded Tuesday in Nature Communications.
“A sustained [Zika] infection during pregnancy is completely different from a normal infection,” study senior author David O’Connor of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told BuzzFeed News. The monkey results make sense, he said, given that other research has shown that the virus prefers the fetal brain and placenta over other tissue types.
In another advance, researchers at the University of Wisconsin reported on Tuesday that they have successfully infected rhesus macaques with an Asian strain of the Zika virus that is currently circulating in the Americas. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that monkeys – which have immune responses similar to humans – can be used to study Zika.
Monkeys infected with Zika virus are protected from future infection, and pregnancy dramatically prolongs infection in monkeys, findings that could help in fighting the virus in people, UW-Madison researchers said Tuesday.
Scientists have developed a nonhuman primate model of Zika virus infection to better understand its course in humans, especially in pregnant women. David O’Connor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues injected eight rhesus macaques—two of them pregnant—with the Asian strain of the virus currently circulating in South and Central America.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Duke University found the virus persisted in the blood of pregnant monkeys for much longer — up to 70 days — compared to the 10 days it lasted in males and non-pregnant female monkeys.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers say this is good news for vaccine developers. Lead researcher Prof David O’Connor said: “It suggests the sort of immunity that occurs naturally is sufficient. If you can mimic that in a vaccine, you’ll likely have a very successful vaccine.”
A collaboration of NASA, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Snapshot Wisconsin aims to provide one of the richest and most comprehensive caches of wildlife data for any spot on our planet.
“We decided that the best thing for the community was that information be made available as widely as possible and freely available,” says David O’Connor, whose group at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is furthest along in studying Zika infection of pregnant monkeys.
But what if you could effectively enlarge antenna size by using the vehicle itself as an antenna? That’s what University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers are seeking to do as part of a project supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
One of the biggest mysteries: H. naledi’s age. Efforts are under way to date the fossils and sediment from which they were excavated with a variety of techniques, said paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
However, Dr. Scott Hebbring, an associate research scientist at Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation and a clinical adjunct Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, points out that the study findings are limited.
Craig Berridge, a neurobiologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, points out that this method only measures dopamine in real time, so wouldn’t help scientists track disorders linked to high or low levels of dopamine over a long period. “It’s probably going to be most useful in animal studies where we’re trying to understand the role of dopamine in various neural processes,” he says.
Habitat loss as humans reshape landscapes has loomed for decades as the main conservation problem for a lot of wildlife. It’s still important, says climate change ecologist Benjamin Zuckerberg of the University of Wisconsin?Madison. But along the southern boundary of the snowshoe hares’ range, climate change bringing skimpy snow covers has surpassed direct habitat loss as a threat, Zuckerberg and his colleagues say March 30 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Freelancers get flexibility in their schedules, the freedom to travel when necessary and the ability to choose projects they care about. But they also face a constant hustle, all-too-frequent low pay and countless business decisions — from setting prices to filing taxes. Freelance is now a commonly chosen path for journalism students (like freelance photographer Jake Naughton, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s undergraduate journalism program). Unfortunately, it’s not as commonly a part of teaching in journalism schools.
Anyone can follow the pregnancy of a monkey infected with Zika virus in real time, thanks to a University of Wisconsin–Madison experiment in data sharing that’s unusual for biology.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is about to take a closer look at the use of nonhuman primates in all federally funded U.S. research labs. ScienceInsider has learned that, in response to a congressional mandate, the agency will convene a workshop this summer to review the ethical policies and procedures surrounding work on monkeys, baboons, and related animals.
A new study from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Minnesota found lithium ion batteries used to power laptops and cell phones can be harmful to important microorganisms in soil.
For over four years, scientists have been arguing over whether or not to do experiments that could make more dangerous forms of certain viruses — influenza, SARS, or MERS — that could potentially start a pandemic in people if those creations got out of the lab.
Science has learned that the letters, sent by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), targeted U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins and NIH researcher Stephen Suomi, revealing their home addresses and phone numbers and urging their neighbors to call and visit them. The tactic is the latest attempt by the animal rights group to shut down monkey behavioral experiments at Suomi’s Poolesville, Maryland, laboratory, and critics say it crosses the line.
John Hawks is the Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. He talks about his role in the recent discovery of Homo Naledi in the caves of South Africa!
NIH Director Francis Collins, writing about the difficulty of screening new drugs for toxicity: “As an important step in this direction, NIH-funded researchers at the Morgridge Institute for Research and University of Wisconsin-Madison have produced neural tissue chips with many features of a developing human brain.”
(UW–Madison) Professor John Hawks described the creature’s features and explained where the Homo naledi species fitted into the Homo family tree.
John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: “Overall, Homo naledi looks like one of the most primitive members of our genus, but it also has some surprisingly human-like features, enough to warrant placing it in the genus Homo.”
Ian Sample speaks to Professor Lee Berger, who led the Wits University expeditions which discovered and recovered the fossils; to Professor John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a senior author on the paper describing the new species; and to Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London to assess how significant Homo naledi might be in shedding light on our origins and on the diversity our the human genus.
John Hawks (UW–Madison anthropology professor), a researcher on the team, said that despite some of its modern features, Homo naledi probably belonged at the origins of our genus, Homo. “It’s telling us that evolutionary history was probably different to what we had imagined,” he said.
“Homo naledi had a tiny brain, about the size of an average orange, perched atop a very slender body,” said John Hawks, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a senior author on the academic paper detailing the new species.
Professor John Hawks said the biology of the fossils showed signs of very early man and simultaneously were close to modern humans. “It looks like no other hominid we have ever found before,” said Hawks.
There was no damage to the bones, no predator bite marks or broken bones and there are no other fossils other than those from a few mice and bird remains. “Such a situation is unprecedented in the fossil hominin record,” said Prof John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a senior author.
One of the largest misconceptions about anxiety is that the disorder is something people “bring upon themselves,” a concept that is as malignant as it is incorrect. Adding to the evidence against this isolating stereotype, a new study from the University of Wisconsin, Madison found that the brain function that underlies anxiety and depression may be inherited.
Dr. William Murphy, co-director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told VICE News that regenerative technologies capable of healing battlefield injuries are already undergoing clinical trials.
“It’s really hard to get accurate distance measurements in astronomy and we only have a handful of methods,” says Sebastian Heinz of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who led the study. “But just as bats use sonar to triangulate their location, we can use the X-rays from Circinus X-1 to figure out exactly where it is.”
UW–Madison faculty members Allyson J. Bennett, Marina E. Emborg, Jon E. Levine and Robert Shapiro, in a letter to the editor addressing criticism of animal research: “Animal research is an issue that requires thoughtful, serious consideration based on accurate information and an understanding of what is at stake for the public that benefits from scientific and medical progress.”
UW–Madison chemistry professor Samuel H. Gellman, engineering professor William L. Murphy and bacteriology professor Katrina T. Forest have created and tested amino acids that could serve as cheaper, longer-lasting substitutes for antibodies in drugs (like some cancer treatments) that target large proteins in the body.
Quoted, in a story on the importance of engineering jobs and education, John Archambault, assistant dean for engineering student development at the UW-Madison College of Engineering: “It’s really about wanting to help people. It’s a helping profession.”
From the outside, [UW–Madison Biological Safety Officer] Jim Turk looks like a regular guy, but he’s fighting the autoimmune disease that he describes as invisible.
The Internet of Things will connect everyone and everything like never before. Through an innovative new education lab in America’s heartland, the University of Wisconsin is preparing the next generation of engineers to harness it.
“What’s interesting are the age gaps,” says public communications expert Dominique Brossard, of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, by email. “It might be that relative to other age groups, higher proportions of millennials have no problem accepting science in some areas especially if it fits their life choices but rejecting it in others, such as vaccinations.”
Dominique Brossard, a professor in the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Department of Life Sciences Communication, said she is beginning to see some junior faculty include outreach activities in their tenure packages, and while the response to these efforts can vary depending on factors including discipline, the makeup of the committee, and the institution, “it’s regarded in a more positive light than it was a number of years ago. … Things are changing more slowly in some disciplines than others, but overall I think there is a trend.”
Dominique Brossard, a professor of life sciences communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied commenting, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions about sexism from Dr. Moss-Racusin’s study.
Quoted, University of Wisconsin–Madison psychologist Janet Hyde: “I don’t think [the authors] give sufficient credence” to the experimental results about implicit bias and stereotype threat, Hyde says. “I think they just didn’t take it seriously enough. … They too readily dismiss evidence of sexism in academic science.”
Justin Vandenbroucke, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Levi Simons, director of citizen science at the LA Makerspace in Los Angeles, lead one group, which for the past four years has been working to build an app that teachers and students can use to create their own cosmic ray experiments. It’s called DECO, Distributed Electronic Cosmic-ray Observatory.
One of the most prominent laboratories conducting gain-of-function studies is run by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a flu researcher at the University of Wisconsin?Madison.
[T]here?s a big difference between a 40-bed community hospital and a 900-bed hospital like Texas Presbyterian or a big medical center affiliated with a university, said Dr. Dennis Maki, a University of Wisconsin-Madison infectious disease specialist and former head of hospital infection control.
Several UW-Madison researchers are studying ALS, including four whose work has been supported by the ALS Association in recent years: pharmacist Jeffrey Johnson, comparative bioscientist Masatoshi Suzuki, microbiologist Randal Tibbetts and neuroscientist Su-Chun Zhang.
The real challenge right now, says Alta Charo, professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is stopping the current outbreak using available methods.
?The reason we proposed the concept of dark matter is because we cannot explain the total mass of the universe,? says Swagato Banerjee, a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin. ?And the only way we know how fundamental particles acquire mass is through the Higgs mechanism. So if dark matter is fundamental, it has to interact with the Higgs to acquire mass, at least in our known framework.?
Jake Vander Zanden knows how tricky it can be to discover a new invasive species ? not just in the Great Lakes but in relatively tiny inland lakes as well. The professor at the University of Wisconsin’s renowned Center for Limnology has an office on the shore of Lake Mendota. Limnology is the study of inland lakes, and that makes Mendota one of the most exhaustively studied water bodies on the globe.
An isolated hail storm late Monday and early Tuesday forced snow plows onto the roads of Door County and caused significant crop damage.
Matt Stasiak, superintendent of the [UW-Madison] Peninsular Agriculture Research Station three miles north of Sturgeon Bay, said the hail storm destroyed virtually every crop at the facility and likely caused over $1 million in damage.
Two years ago, after returning home to the University of Wisconsin?Madison from a research trip in the forests of equatorial Africa, Tony Goldberg discovered an unwanted souvenir. There was a tick, the size of a pencil eraser, nestled inside his right nostril.
Bill Murphy, co-director of the Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where the first human embryonic stem cells were isolated, agreed.
?The advances in human iPS cells are really quite exciting,? he said. ?But I would say there?s remaining value in human embryonic stem cell research.?
In a letter to the editor of The Cap Times, Ron Kalil, UW?Madison professor of neuroscience, questions the newspaper’s judgment in publishing a guest opinion piece by a Virginia psychologist critical of a pair of UW?Madison researchers.
