Author: jplucas

Can people be taught to act more altruistically? Newly published research, measuring both brain activity and behavior, suggests the answer just may be yes.

Two thousand years after the Kizilburun shipwreck, excavating archaeologists have figured out exactly where it came from, where it was headed, and why. Sometime between 100 B.C.E and 25 B.C.E., a wooden ship carrying almost 60 tonnes of stone foundered in Aegean waters just off the coast of Turkey. It went down bearing its entire cargo, including eight massive drum-shaped blocks of white marble. Those blocks fit together to form part of a tapering column that likely stood more than 11 meters tall, plus a square uppermost piece: a Doric column.

Brain cells have been grown from skin cells of adults with Down?s syndrome in research that could shed new light on the condition.

If you?re kind of a jerk, but at least concerned about your jerk-ness, take heart: researchers say they?ve shown it?s possible to increase compassion in adults. The University of Wisconsin-Madison actually has a whole department dedicated to this kind of thing, the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, and researchers there set up an experiment recently to see if they could get a group of people to be more excellent to each other.

An elementary school principal has inspired the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create a new wheelchair lift that could help make more places wheelchair accessible.

Adult kids? relationships with their parents can be complicated, to say the least. And according to a new study out of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a father?s divorce and remarriage can make those relationships even more complex.

 Wisconsin?s Tobacco Quit Line has seen a surge of calls since March, when a national campaign called Tips from Former Smokers started.A University of Wisconsin (UW) Madison tobacco researcher calls the campaign ?hard hitting? and personal. 

A recent MSN Money article noted that the shadow economy is “?estimated to have reached as much as $2 trillion last year, according to a study (.pdf file) co-written by Edgar Feige, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Richard Cebula, a finance professor at Jacksonville University.”

Newly published research has found that Lake Superior?s warming water probably is affecting its most abundant big fish.

New research indicates that Lake Superior?s warming water is probably already affecting its most abundant big fish: the cold water-loving siscowet lake trout. Increasing water temperatures over the last three decades have made conditions more favorable for chinook salmon, walleye and lean lake trout but less favorable for siscowet lake trout.The study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates that fatty siscowets have lost about 20 percent of their historic habitat because of the temperature changes that have already occurred.

The unexpected death of Mahal, the wild-haired young orangutan and star Milwaukee County Zoo attraction, was the result of a severe tapeworm infection, the zoo announced Monday. The finding came after months of work and was the result of DNA sequencing by Tony L. Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.

A practiced liar can be extremely difficult to detect, which can have a big impact on negotiations that goes unnoticed until it?s too late. In a recent paper written up at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, the University of Wisconsin?s Lyn M. Van Swol and Michael T. Braun, and Harvard Business School?s Deepak Malhotra took a look at whether there were any telltale language clues that can help detect a liar.