Author: jplucas

It’s called the dead zone. Agricultural fertilizer byproducts like nitrogen are running off farms and into the Mississippi River, which then spills out into the Gulf of Mexico.

MADISON, Wis. — Hundreds of the world’s top players in the field of stem cell research will gather in Madison for a summit in September.

Up to 1,000 researchers, philanthropists and business representatives are expected to attend the World Stem Cell Summit at the Alliant Energy Center on Sept. 22 and 23.

If you thought you saw a lot of television ads for the Democratic presidential primary, you weren’t imagining it.

You did. And most of them were for Barack Obama.

The candidates together spent $1.5 million to air 3,383 ads in Cincinnati from Feb. 1 through March 4, according to a report out Wednesday. That’s more than 102 ads a day.

The report was issued Wednesday by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project, which analyzed data obtained from the TNS Media Intelligence Campaign Media Analysis Group.

Television advertising for Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama cost about $8 million in Ohio leading up to the hotly contested March 4 primary.

Obama, who lost to Clinton in Ohio for the first time in 11 consecutive contests, outspent Clinton by nearly two to one and also benefited from $1 million in special ads bought by two labor unions.

Data compiled by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project also suggests that Clinton shifted political strategy for Ohio after Obama defeated her in Wisconsin on Feb. 19.

Just a day after the University of Wisconsin’s patent licensing arm won a government ruling upholding a pair of key stem cell patents, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced Wednesday that Madison will host a world gathering of stem cell researchers, advocates and investors later this year.

The World Stem Cell Summit on Sept. 22-23 willk bring together preeminent researchers, advocates, investors, and other industry leaders to advance human embryonic stem cell research and the resultant technologies.

About 1,000 great minds from around the world will converge in Madison this fall.

“The University of Wisconsin has won the honor of hosting the 2008 World Stem Cell Summit.”

Governor Jim Doyle says he’s honored this big event will take place in Madison — the birth place of stem cell research. The governor says embryonic stem cell research holds the potential to not only save lives, but to create economic opportunity for innovation and job growth.

Two embryonic-stem-cell patents controlled by the patenting arm of the University of Wisconsin at Madison â?? and challenged by two public-interest groups â?? have been upheld by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The news comes just two weeks after the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the universityâ??s patenting organization, announced that the first of its three key stem-cell patents had been upheld.

MADISON, Wis. – The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has upheld a second and a third University of Wisconsin-Madison patent covering embryonic stem cell research at the school.

In rulings made public Tuesday, Federal examiners confirmed two patents for scientist James Thomson’s work on isolating embryonic stem cells of primates and humans. The patent office last month upheld another patent stemming from the work, but that ruling can be appealed.

Madison, Wis. – In a decision that cannot be appealed, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has upheld the modified claims of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation on two of the foundation’s most important human embryonic stem cell patents.

The ruling, which affects two patents for primate and human embryonic stem cells known as â??780â? and â??806,â? follows a favorable determination on patent â??913,â? which relates to the discovery and culture of human embryonic stem cells by researcher Jamie Thomson.

Ramping up ethanol production for alternative fuels will worsen the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, a stretch of water unable to support aquatic life, according to a report co-written by the University of British Columbia.

The U.S. Senate’s recently announced plan to triple production of ethanol made from corn starch by 2022 will increase the zone by 10 to 19 per cent from the 20,000-square-kilometres â?? an area roughly the size of New Jersey â?? it has recently occupied, the report said.

A PLANNED increase in US ethanol production from corn would spell environmental “disaster” for marine species in the Gulf of Mexico, said a co-author of a science study.

A boost in corn production will worsen the Gulf’s so-called “dead zone”, an area with so little oxygen that sealife suffocates, said Simon Donner, a geographer at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Dr Donner and Chris Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin used computer models to conclude that growing enough corn to meet US biofuel goals set for 2022 would cause a boost of 10 to 34 per cent in nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, which run into the Gulf of Mexico.