Ethicists have been working overtime to figure out how to handle CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing technique that could potentially prevent congenital diseases but could also be used for cosmetic enhancements and lead to permanent, heritable changes in the human species.
Noted: “It is not ready now, but it might be safe enough to try in the future,” R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who co-chaired the committee, told NPR. “And if certain conditions are met, it might be permissible to try it.”
Quoted: “Better to err on the long end,” said Matthew Aliota, an assistant scientist who studies viruses at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Veterinary Medicine.
Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Chistine Whelan, who teaches consumer science in the university’s School of Human Ecology, said the change is part of a trend toward making toys more gender-neutral, which she said is welcome news.
Noted: Trials on genes in the lab, and on mice, have been successful, but editing the human genome is a further step that bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-chair of the committee, Alta Charo, says “is not ready.” But, “if certain conditions are met, it might be permissible to try it.”
Noted: “The data on stress reduction is pretty good,” said Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published hundreds of scientific papers about the impact of emotion on the brain and did some of the first MRIs of meditating Buddhist monks.
Last week, President Trump pleased conservatives when he nominated Neil Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court. He looks to have made good on his promise to appoint a conservative justice to the Court. Court watchers are now left to wonder: how conservative will Gorsuch be? Our analysis suggests that if confirmed, Gorsuch might be the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court.
Noted: “It is essential for public discussions to precede any decisions about whether or how to pursue clinical trials of such applications,” said R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leader of the panel that wrote the report. “And we need to have them now.”
Seventeen leading universities, including all eight of those in the Ivy League, have added their support to a legal challenge to President Trump’s executive order on immigration, arguing that the order hinders their global mission and harms some individuals directly.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is slowly unveiling details about his funding plans for University of Wisconsin System schools.
Noted: But in 2010, Abigail Rajala from the University of Wisconsin-Madison noticed that some of her lab monkeys, which had been fitted with head implants as part of an unrelated experiment, were checking themselves out in a mirror. Those same monkeys had previously failed a mark test, but now, they were investigating their weird skull adornments. Later, they even started examining unseen parts of their bodies, like their genitals (as in the video below). “We cannot objectively claim that these animals are self-aware, all the pieces are there to suggest that, in some form, they are,” Rajala and her colleagues wrote.
Larry was employed for 35 years by the State of Wisconsin, where he was a maintenance mechanic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Just a bit of radio interference can throw off the calculations used to make accurate weather predictions that are “extremely sensitive” to even small temperature differences, said Jordan Gerth, a researcher at the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: “I think he probably prefers the most impressive-sounding version of his name, which is Donald J. Trump, as opposed to Don John Drumpf, which sounds I think a little less imperious,” mused another Donald—Donald Moynihan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank recently released the Badger First-Generation Transfer Promise Program, which would offer one or two years of free tuition at the university for first-generation college students who meet academic requirements and transfer in with an associate’s degree from UW Colleges or Wisconsin Technical College System school. However, the program is contingent upon additional state funding for the UW System in the 2017-19 biennial state budget.
Quoted: “I’m very, very careful with the word lie, because it does imply intent, and sometimes when people share a falsehood they’re not necessarily intending to lie,” says Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin. “What concerns me most right now is whether we’ve come to a point where people don’t necessarily believe there is a truth anymore.”
A top U.S. toxicologist is questioning Canada’s response to a tainted-cannabis problem in the medical-marijuana sector, saying patients aren’t being given accurate information on the risks associated with a banned pesticide thousands of people may have consumed. Warren Porter, a specialist in molecular and environmental toxicology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says company phone calls and e-mails, approved by Health Canada, to patients after a series of recent product recalls are misleading, and appear to be based on faulty science.
Noted: Adding to the debate is a new study that claims to show that the state of Wisconsin is underreporting the number of wolves poached, undermining arguments by lawmakers and government agencies.Adrian Teves, an environmental studies professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and several co-authors studied 33 years of gray wolf mortality in Wisconsin. Their key finding, published Monday in the Journal of Mammalogy, is that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources didn’t accurately track the number of wolves killed by poaching, and that the true number is significantly higher.
After years under siege by activists who harassed him with violent threats and protests outside his home, the university scientist J. David Jentsch might be a chief beneficiary of the government’s decision to shut down a federal website listing animals used in research.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Police at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say an 18-year-old man is in custody after he allegedly attacked and groped people near a residence hall.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican state lawmakers are renewing their push to ban research on aborted fetal tissue in Wisconsin, with one proposal circulated this week branded as ineffective by the staunchest anti-abortion forces.
Noted: David Vanness, an associate professor of health population sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who vocally opposed changes to tenure policies there, said he thought Iowa’s “version of Act 10” — as Wisconsin’s blow to collective bargaining was known — is that limiting bargaining to “small” increases in wages “would drastically limit faculty union power, and together with recertification could certainly harm membership.”
Noted: John Witte, UW-Madison professor emeritus of public affairs and political science, says while the post is meant to be nonpartisan, it has always toed the political line.
Walleyes have given way to largemouth bass and an array of smaller fish in many northern Wisconsin lakes the past 30 years, maybe because ol’ marble-eyes can’t compete with all those hungry mouths during its first few months of life.
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday to keep in place a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from enforcing an executive order banning entry into the U.S. for nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Noted: But although the march has garnered the endorsement of many prominent scientists and some scientific societies, others have so far remained on the sidelines, cautioning in part that the march could paint scientists as just another partisan special interest in an already highly polarized political climate. If the event is “interpreted as ‘These people who like science are marching against Trump,’ it could politicize science even more and potentially hurt public trust in science as an institution,” says communications researcher Dominique Brossard, who specializes in public attitudes on scientific issues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
NORTHFIELD, Minn. — The days begin and end the same. First thing in the morning, Mike Eaves pours himself a cup of coffee and looks out the picture window of his cabin overlooking Circle Lake and the large island it surrounds. At night, Eaves puts aside his cellphone and enjoys a glass of merlot with his wife, Beth, a tradition they call “wine at 9,” with the gas fireplace flickering and a starry lake view in the background.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a conservative Republican, put forward a surprisingly liberal budget Wednesday that includes a huge boost in funding for schools, sizable tuition cuts for college students and increased tax breaks for the working poor.
Noted: Sure enough, Goebel and her husband found what appears to be a piece of the meteor on their property. They sent it to UW-Madison to be examined further. “I always approach these things pretty cautiously, but the footage showing something striking the ground immediately after the flash of the fireball is very persuasive,” John Valley, geoscience professor at UW said.
Noted: Separate research published in 2015 by Johnson, C. Kirabo Jackson, an economist at Northwestern, and Claudia Persico, an economist at the University of Wisconsin, found that
While majority Republicans in the state Legislature offered praise for much of Governor’s Scott Walker’s proposed state budget, many also said they do have concerns about some of the key initiatives he wants to pursue.
The state’s Group Insurance Board voted Wednesday to adopt a self-insurance model for state and local government employees, sending the controversial plan on to the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee for final approval.
Gov. Scott Walker unveiled a two-year $76 billion budget Wednesday that laid the blueprint for his likely 2018 re-election campaign, calling for a new round of tax cuts and a tuition cut, along with increased spending on public schools and the University of Wisconsin System.
Interviewed: Toby Campbel, chief of palliative care.
Noted: Dietram Scheufele, a professor who studies science communication at the University of Wisconsin, says the concern is not unfounded. If the public gets the impression that scientists are liberal crusaders, it will be a hard mental image to break. “My mind as a social scientist tells me that [the march] won’t work, but my heart tells me hopefully it will,” he says.
Oliver Smithies had a habit of inventing ways to do the experiments he wanted to do, and crafted tools that are now used widely in biology. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007 for developing methods to genetically modify individual mammalian genes.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Scott Walker proposed Tuesday cutting the University of Wisconsin System’s resident undergraduate tuition by 5 percent, allowing students to opt out of paying some fees and handing the system $42.5 million in new state aid contingent upon meeting certain performance standards. Other UW proposals Walker unveiled include:
Noted: The owner of the possible meteorite did not want to go on camera, but she did tell Local 5 that she had to shut off her phone because so many people were calling with questions, and wanting to buy it. She did collect the fragments from the snow and will be donating them for research at the University of Wisconsin. “We can can learn huge amounts from small pieces of rock like this,” said Professor John Valley, a faculty member and Geoscience Researcher at UW-Madison.
Governor Scott Walker’s proposed state budget will include a tuition cut for University of Wisconsin resident undergraduate students, while also increasing funding for the UW System
While Governor Scott Walker has been previewing parts of his two year spending plan for the past several weeks, lawmakers and the rest of the state will get their first full look at the proposal later today.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s proposal to offer first-generation transfer students free tuition has potential, but it faces some more hurdles, an analyst said.
Gov. Scott Walker wants to allow University of Wisconsin System students to opt out of some student fees, but opponents are warning of dire potential effects for campus services.
Soon after Donald Trump’s election in November, Jason Ruiz helped launch a petition at the University of Notre Dame calling on the president of the nation’s most prominent Catholic school to declare itself a sanctuary campus and offer protections for undocumented students, staff and family members facing the threat of deportation. Ruiz, an associate professor of American studies and grandson of an undocumented immigrant, hoped to collect a thousand signatures. A day later, more than 4,600 members of the Notre Dame community had signed on.
Noted: And whom else might this ban keep out? Remember Steve Jobs? His biological father was Abdulfattah “John” Jandali. He came to America as a student in the 1950s and studied at the University of Wisconsin. He was from … Homs, Syria.
Quoted: Katherine Cramer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, coined a name for what’s happened in her state’s rural pockets: the politics of resentment.
MILWAUKEE — The state Department of Natural Resources apparently underreported wolf poaching over the last three decades, according to a UW-Madison study.
A new plan unveiled last week would give one free year of tuition at U-W Madison to some of the first students in their families to seek college degrees.
MADISON — Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald says he doesn’t see a “lot of excitement” for Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed tuition cut at the University of Wisconsin.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A University of Wisconsin student trying to form a pro-white group has abandoned his efforts after intense backlash from other students and university officials.
Michael Eisen, an evolutionary biologist, is among the elite of American scientists, with a tenured position at the University of California, Berkeley, and generous funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for his research on fruit flies.
On the night of Thursday, Jan. 26, I was in Flagstaff, Ariz., with my training group, sifting through my Twitter feed.
Quoted: “I think that Trump has been unusually aggressive in the scope of what he is trying to do and also I think remarkably casual in issuing orders and other actions that don’t appear to have gone through what would be a typical process of reviewing and vetting and consideration,” said Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin professor who has studied executive actions by presidents.
Noted: “In a number of cases, the very same genes from non-carnivorous ancestors have been recruited for carnivorous purposes,” says Thomas Givnish, who studies plant evolution at the University of Wisconsin.
Noted: “These are gene families that have other functions in non-carnivorous relatives or ancestors. In these carnivorous species, they’ve become recruited as part of the system of digestive enzymes and nutrient transporters,” says Tom Givnish of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As the meltdown on the Berkeley campus reminds us, free speech seems to have a fragile beachhead on university campuses. While “safe spaces” have multiplied across academia, the idea that campuses should be zones that respect free speech seems to have withered.
MADISON — Gov. Scott Walker has revealed some of the high points of the state budget he will release on Wednesday. But many of the details await, as do almost certainly a few surprises. Here is a look at what’s known and unknown about the two-year spending plan he will deliver to the state Legislature on Wednesday.
Noted: It’s also unclear how much of the lost continent actually lies beneath the island of Mauritius. “They’ve found ancient crystals surrounded by younger rocks,” explains John Valley, who studies geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison but didn’t participate in the recent study. “But they haven’t yet found any of the older rocks.” Although the crystals provide valuable evidence for the existence of this submerged land, how much of it lies down there remains a mystery. “It could be a massive buried continent, or just trace amounts of zircon crystals,” says Valley.
Noted: Of course, given all the grave potential flaws in Trump’s executive order, contravening Executive Order 11030 is the least of it. Kenneth Mayer, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an academic expert on executive orders, says, “What’s the remedy for a violation? There probably isn’t one,” although he does believe “This could go into a claim that the government didn’t follow its own rules, and that makes it capricious.”
New England Patriots running back James White said his quarterback, Tom Brady, did not have to say much Sunday night as he huddled the offense in overtime of Super Bowl 51.
A trove of information about animal welfare in university and government research laboratories, in zoos and circuses, and elsewhere disappeared from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website on Friday, worrying animal-rights activists and others who have been concerned that the Trump administration will stop making available a range of data collected by the government.
