Author: jplucas

University of Wisconsin-Madison professors received four awards in chemistry from the American Chemical Society.

Noted: There are plenty of familiar non-Newtonian fluids, says Michael Graham, a chemical engineer not involved in the project who studies non-Newtonian fluid behavior at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Mayonnaise, ketchup, silly putty, and even blood are examples. Although these substances seem very different, Graham points out that they all contain some sort of particle?and the interaction of those particles explains their behavior.

A member of the U.S. biosecurity panel that recently lifted its objections to the publication of two controversial bird flu studies has slammed the way the decision was reached, saying the meeting held to reconsider the issue was “one-sided” and designed to produce the eventual outcome.

A closed meeting, convened last month by the US Government to decide the fate of two controversial unpublished papers on the H5N1 avian influenza virus was stacked in favour of their full publication, a participant now says.

Birders hear more than they see, but songs can be hard to identify. If there?s a killer birding app on the horizon, it may be one that identifies a species based on the song. University of Wisconsin ornithologist Mark Berres is applying for a patent for an app he calls WeBird, which could be available next year. You?d record a snatch of bird song on your iPhone and use the app to compare the snippet with thousands of recordings in a database.

Why some species died out and others didn?t during the Earth?s second largest mass extinction has been revealed in a new study. The work – performed by scientists at Caltech and the University of Wisconsin, Madison – is described in a paper currently online in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As a kid, Ahna Skop ruled the science fair. ?Every year I was in at least the top three, and I know I won grand prize once or twice,? she says. Not that her experiments always yielded the predicted results. ?One time I was trying to figure out whether mice would go in a particular direction based on color,? says Skop.

A story about cutting-edge medicine for pets includes Lisa Forrest, a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin?Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, and UW Veterinary Care’s use of TomoTherapy for cancer treatment.

James P. Hurley has been named director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Aquatic Sciences Center.

Publish and be damned. That, in a nutshell, was the prevailing mood at a meeting held on April 3rd-4th at the Royal Society in London to discuss the controversy over two papers which lay out how deadly H5N1 avian influenza, or bird flu, can be made deadlier still by engineering it to pass directly from ferret to ferret. The gaggle of virologists, ethicists, security wonks, government types and representatives of funding agencies from around the world gathered at Britain?s pre-eminent scientific academy was more split when it came to the broader question about where research into dangerous pathogens was headed.

This week on our program, we have music from Drake. We also look at the history of the world?s best-known American word. But first we tell you about some terms in American English that not even all Americans would know.

The end of an impassioned and often strident global debate over the proper balance between scientific openness and security began with 2 hours of mandatory, studious silence in a room protected by an armed guard.

Speaking at a meeting of the Royal Society in London on Tuesday (April 3), one of the scientists whose research resulted in an H5N1 virus that could spread easily between ferrets has revealed the details of how he did it. University of Wisconsin, Madison, virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka told about 150 attendees of the 2-day meeting that 4 mutations and genes from the H1N1 virus appeared to make the bird flu virus strain readily transmissible between ferrets in his lab.

He?s a Springsteen guy, not an Adele fan. So John Lee had no choice but to scroll through the song list to get past his wife?s pop favorites. Oops. Forgot about that driving thing. ?I took my eyes away from the road much, much too long. Three, four, five seconds,? Lee said with regret. We?ve all been there. But here?s the thing: Lee?s a mechanical engineer. A PhD. Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Co-editor of ?Driver Distraction: Theory, Effect and Mitigation.?

After 50 years, the Dictionary of Regional American English is finally complete. The University of Wisconsin-Madison project has been called “one of the glories of contemporary American scholarship” by The New York Times.