Author: jplucas

Kikkoman Foods Inc. said Friday it plans to open a research lab in Madison, expanding the Wisconsin presence of the maker of soy sauce and soy milk.

The Madison facility is expected to open in September staffed by a senior scientist from Japan and several other employees to be locally hired, chief executive Yuzaburo Mogi said.

A group of scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison says there is a new reason to toast to the benefits of red wine.

Scientists have long thought a natural compound called resveratrol, which is found in some red wines, could help slow the aging process by helping to protect tissues inside the body. The question has been whether just a glass or two of wine could really make a difference.

Anti-aging enthusiasts have been in a lather in recent years about the chemical resveratrol, present in red wine. For one thing, low levels of heart disease among French people (despite all the cheese and butter they eat) could be due to the red wine they also enjoy in liberal quantities, scientists say — maybe because of the resveratrol. Resveratrol may also mimic the life extension seen when animals are fed diets low in calories.

Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan, researchers say in a new report that is likely to give impetus to the rapidly growing search for longevity drugs.

The study is based on dosing mice with resveratrol, an ingredient of some red wines. Some scientists are already taking resveratrol in capsule form, but others believe it is far too early to take the drug, especially using wine as its source, until there is better data on its safety and effectiveness.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A natural compound found in red wine may protect the heart against the effects of the aging process, researchers said on Tuesday.

In their study, mice were given a diet supplemented with the compound known as resveratrol starting at their equivalent of middle age until old age.

The Atlantic hurricane season starts Saturday, and some scientists will try something new this year to unravel the extremely complex mosaic that creates storms of varying intensities. Is it possible, the scientists are asking, that dust storms in Africa might weaken those Atlantic storms before they reach the eastern seaboard?

For several years now, scientists have had evidence that dust from storms across the vast expanse of the Sahara Desert drifts out over the Atlantic where it reflects some solar radiation back into space, thus cooling the ocean waters that fuel hurricanes. Cooler waters should mean fewer, or less intense, storms, according to recent studies.

Amato Evan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies is hoping that this year could tell something about the effect of Africa’s dust storms on Atlantic hurricanes. His computer model indicates a moderate level of dust storm activity for Africa this year, thus a moderate impact on Atlantic storms. It may take more extreme years to answer the question, but at least this is a start.

Drug discovery is a cruel business. A hundred thousand people die every year because of adverse drug side effects. Millions die too young because drugs just aren’t good enough.

The problem is that scientists invent medicines to treat people, but they have to use animal or tumor cells to do it. Heart cells, brain cells and liver cells all die when you try to keep them in a petri dish. So over decades researchers have come up with jury-rigged tests. They use preserved kidney cells extracted from a human fetus 30 years ago to see if an experimental drug will disrupt the rhythm of the heart. They use cells from a rat’s digestive tract with human receptors stuck in. They force huge doses of every potential medicine down the throats of rodents. “The system is failing,” says Gabriela Cezar, who left Pfizer to study stem cells at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Presidential contenders spent nearly $201 million â?? easily a record â?? on TV ads during the primary season that ends today, researchers said Monday.

Equally impressive: Campaigns in both parties put ads on the air nearly 330,000 times, according to the Wisconsin Advertising Project and TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG. That averages about 2,100 times a day since the first of the year.

Red wine does indeed explain why the French get away with a relatively clean bill of heart health despite eating a diet loaded with saturated fats, concludes a new study.

People living in France have a much lower incidence of coronary heart disease than those in Britain, despite their similar intake of saturated fats – a phenomenon known as the “French paradox”.

Now two teams have pierced that veil with unprecedented clarity. One team used the Spitzer Space Telescope, which can see through dust, to chart the positions and orbital speeds of more than 110 million stars. They discovered a big surprise: Two of the galaxy’s four spiral arms are actually just small side-branches. On the other hand, the central bar of the galaxy turns out to be nearly twice as big as previously thought, Spitzer team member Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said at a teleconference today.

There is evidence that wine can have beneficial effects

A chemical derived from red wine could one day help keep the heart “genetically young”, claim researchers.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found that resveratrol appeared to halt age-related changes in the function of heart genes.

Red wine may be the next best thing to the fabled elixir of youth, new research suggests.

A compound in the skin of red grapes has been found to curb the effects of ageing, even when taken in tiny doses.

Professor Tomas Prolla, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, senior author of the research published this week in the online journal PLoS ONE, said: “Resveratrol is active in much lower doses than previously thought and mimics a significant fraction of the profile of calorific restriction at the gene expression level.”

Washington — The presidential candidates have spent almost $195 million on television ads so far in this extended primary season, with the Democratic contenders shelling out the bulk at about $136 million, an analysis of political advertising shows.

Democrat Barack Obama himself has outspent all the Republicans combined by more than $17 million. The GOP primary race ended in March when John McCain claimed his party’s nomination.

The University of Wisconsin’s Advertising Project analyzed data from the TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, a firm that tracks political advertising. The study looked at more than 327,000 ads that aired during the primary season.

The tongue display design used by Payan’s team was developed by Kurt Kaczmarek and colleagues at University of Wisconsin, Madison, US, as an alternative to vision.

Milwaukee, Wis. – In Wisconsin’s desire to compete in the technology-based â??knowledgeâ? economy, public officials know the state cannot bring to bear the resources of a California, a Texas, or a New York, but it can use collaboration to stretch the assets it has.

This collaboration can be driven by a number of mechanisms, including public-private partnerships. These partnerships are growing in number, especially as federal granting agencies emphasize collaboration as part of their decision-making process. But even if this incentive did not exist, Wisconsin would have another, more powerful reason to pursue such partnerships – economic vitality, which is a motivating factor behind several initiatives.