Author: jplucas

Oil giant British Petroleum – Amoco wants to pour half a billion dollars into researching alternative fuel sources over the next decade…and they may do it in our own backyard.Ã?  27 News has uncovered that a BP-Amoco executive visited UW’s campus Monday, as part of a fact-finding mission.Ã?  That representative visited the Engineering and Ag and Life Sciences departments, to evaluate the potential for the university to partner with BP-Amoco for what will be called the “Energy Bioscience Institute.”Ã?  It’s a research facility that will focus on alternative and renewable transportation fuels.

Q: Why is there such variation in the sound of thunder, from the sharp crack to long rumblings?
A: The energy released by lightning — which can get as hot as 50,000 degrees — rapidly heats up surrounding air molecules, which expand faster than the speed of sound and create a shock wave that sounds like an explosion, said Thomas Achtor, a researcher with the Space Science and Engineering Center.

Researchers are exploring whether vitamin D might prevent pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest malignancies. The study’s main author is Halcyon Skinner of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Madison, Wis. – While a decision by the United States Patent and Trademark Office might not come for another month, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation expects the office to review its controversial stem cell patents.

The WiCell Research Institute in Madison has agreed to distribute stem cells created through a new technique that might spare embryos, if such cells are approved by the federal government, WiCell said Tuesday.
The move could help WiCell, a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, have more of a hand in the technique announced last month by Advanced Cell Technology of California if it turns out to be promising.

Sept. 13, 2006 â��� Worrying too much about an unpleasant task you will face an hour down the road will burn that experience more deeply into your brain, making it much more difficult for you to forget how badly you blundered, according to new research.

And that memory of your failure could make it more difficult for you to face the same task later, thus sending you into a downward spiral of self-fulfilling prophecies.

The research, conducted by psychologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shows that simple anticipation of an emotional event, whether good or bad, will reinforce the memory of that event.

The WiCell Research Institute in Madison is collaborating with the firm that said in August it generated human embryonic stem cells without harming embryos to distribute stem cell lines under the new process, provided the federal government approves.