Author: jplucas

Guri Sohi, chairman of the Computer Science Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has talked candidly about the declining numbers of his department since the height of the dotcom era in 2000. At that point, the UW Computer Science Department granted about 170 bachelor’s degrees annually, and now is down below 80 per year. It also once granted 100 master’s degrees annually, but that has declined to about 50 per year.

Meanwhile, PhDs have remained stable at roughly 20 per year, but there are some ominous national trends. Roughly 75 percent of all doctorate degrees granted nationally in electrical engineering are going to non-U.S. citizens.

UW-Madison’s experience mirrors the national trends, and several efforts are underway to reverse it. One Wisconsin effort is Powered Up, a consortium of businesses and schools in Dane County working to increase awareness in information technology careers. The group was formed in 1999, and is now engaged in talks with the Information Technology Association of Wisconsin to expand statewide.

Carlos Santiago’s enterprise on Milwaukee’s east side looks a lot like a business start-up: The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has a great idea and big ambitions, but it is strapped for cash and hears plenty of people saying, “Show me.”

Edible antifreeze developed by a US researcher could keep ice cream tasty and smooth, and prevent other frozen foods from being ruined. The antifreeze contains proteins similar to those that help “snow flea” insects survive winter without freezing solid.

The taste of good ice cream depends on a blend of flavour, temperature, and texture â?? what food scientists call “mouth feel”.

Food chemist Srinivasan Damodaran at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, thinks he has a better solution. He is experimenting with edible antifreeze made from gelatin, which is much more effective at preventing ice crystals from ruining ice cream, he says.

Two of the biggest experiments at the South Pole relate to astrophysics and would rank as major projects anywhere in the world. One is a $19.2 million telescope, run by the University of Chicago, that is looking into dark energy by locating the biggest structures in the universe, distant clusters of galaxies formed billions of years ago.

The other, called Ice Cube, involves freezing thousands of delicate sensors into the ancient, crystal-clear ice thousands of feet beneath the pole in a cube configuration 1 kilometer long on each side. The goal of the $280 million project, led by the University of Wisconsin, is to capture one of the smallest and most elusive things in the universe, subatomic neutrino particles.

Fox Valley Career Center game programming technology teacher Anna Schwein had her students focus on â??entertainmentâ? video games at the beginning of the fall semester in order for them to keep an interest in the topic.

However, there is more to the video game market than shoot ’em ups and sports games, and there is more to her class. A growing aspect of the industry falls under the â??edutainmentâ? genre, or games designed to help children learn while entertaining at the same time. Schwein plans to focus about one-third of the semester on this growing aspect of the industry, she said.

David Williamson Shaffer, assistant professor of learning science at the University of Wisconsin Madison, has devoted a significant amount of time to studying it, having written a book called â??How video games help children learn.â?

In the latest feat of stem cell wizardry, researchers have been able to create viable new lines of embryonic stem cells from human embryos that were not destroyed in the process.

The accomplishment is the newest wrinkle in a rapidly evolving effort to find ways to develop prized human embryonic stem cells without the ethical baggage that has plagued the field since its inception nearly a decade ago. Already, the new method is generating controversy.

This new method differs from a breakthrough late last year by University of Wisconsin-Madison and Japanese researchers in that it uses embryos, not genetically engineered skin cells. In the UW work, those skin cells appear to act like embryonic stem cells, but more research is needed before embryonic stem cell work could be abandoned

What exactly is happening inside the brains of people experiencing joy and happiness?

“It’s a very complicated chemical soup,” explained Dr. Richard Davidson, who has made a life’s work out of studying “happy brains.” His lab at the University of Wisconsin is devoted to understanding how much of our joy level is set at birth, and how much we can control.

MADISON, Wis. – A California company has signed a deal to license stem cell technology patents held by a nonprofit that supports the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The licenses cover some of the work of UW-Madison scientist James Thomson, who was the first to grow and isolate human embryonic stem cells in 1998.

Embryome Sciences Inc., hopes to use the technology to make new medical and research products. The company is a subsidiary of BioTime Inc., based in Emeryville, Calif.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has licensed 173 patents and patent applications filed internationally relating to human embryonic stem cell technology to BioTime Inc., a California company that’s entering the embryonic stem cell field.

TOKYO (AFP) â?? Stem cell technologies could be used to cure diseases and heal injuries within 10 years, a Japanese scientist who recently broke new ground in the field said Wednesday.

Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, whose team reported in November they reprogrammed human skin cells to be indistinguishable from stem cells taken from human embryos, said the new technology is so simple that many laboratories are competing to make further breakthroughs.

APPLETON â?? As many parents discover, the minds of young children absorb information like sponges and their brain development seems to occur at incredible speed.

Yet there is so much more for families, educators and child care providers to know about early childhood learning, from the ramifications for school success to the economic impact down the road.

That’s the driving force behind the Appleton Education Foundation’s “Brain to Five” community education series that launches Feb. 6 with a presentation by Richie Davidson, a renowned researcher on early brain development.