Author: jplucas

Two UW-Madison computer science professors, Paul Barford and Lawrence Landweber, have been named to the National LambdaRail�s Networking Researching Council (NNRC), which will make key policy decisions regarding the high-speed fiber optic network�s research goals.

Scientists have found startling differences in a hormone linked to social bonding in children who spent their first years in foreign orphanages. These changes remain two years after they have gone from an environment of neglect to one of love and attention.

Children who were seriously neglected in infancy can carry a physiological burden for years, even after moving to a loving environment. A study of their hormonal responses shows that their brains are less equipped to trust and form social bonds than other children.

“We don’t want to reach the conclusion that this difference is permanent,” says Seth Pollak, a developmental psychopathologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who led the study. But he adds that the take-home message is that “children really need to be in families”.

STANFORD, California (AP) — Two government biologists heavily recruited by Stanford University have decided to work in Singapore instead, saying they will face fewer restrictions on stem cell research overseas.

Demonstrators discovered this week that targeting researchers at their homes has potential pitfalls.
A group protested for 45 minutes Tuesday night outside what they thought was the home of UW Medical School assistant professor Michele Basso.

Add one more item to the list of things that can be affected by climate change and global warming: human health.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the World Health Organization have compiled a series of studies showing that people have been adversely affected by regional and global climate change. The WHO suspects 150,000 people per year, for the past 30 years, have died as a result of a gradually warming planet. The WHO says that annually, 5 million cases of illness can be attributed to it, too.

Health and climate scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who conducted one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to measure the impact of global warming on health, said the WHO data also show that rising temperatures disproportionately affect poor countries that have done little to create the problem. They reached their conclusions after entering data on climate-sensitive diseases into mapping software.

LONDON (Reuters) – Global warming poses an enormous ethical challenge because countries that produce the least amount of greenhouse gases will suffer the most from climate change, scientists said on Wednesday.

Whether it is an increase in poor health from diseases such as malaria or shrinking water supplies, nations in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and South America are vulnerable to the consequences of changes in global temperatures.