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Category: Research

Report: Climate change could bring spring 3 weeks early

Channel3000.com

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin, U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say warmer weather earlier in the year might have consequences for farmers as well as wildlife.

“Our projections show that winter will be shorter—which sound great for those of us in Wisconsin,” Andrew Allstadt, a [postdoctoral] researcher [in forest and wildlife ecology] at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an author on the paper, said in a statement “But long distance migratory birds, for example, time their migration based on day length in their winter range. They may arrive in their breeding ground to find that the plant resources that they require are already gone.”

Spring coming earlier in US – scientists

The Guardian

“We know spring is getting earlier. But we provide actual evidence for how much earlier,” said Andrew Allstadt, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was part of the research team.

Unrefrigerated Caramel Apples Could Pose Listeria Risk

CBS News

Planning to indulge in a caramel apple this fall? You may want to eat it fresh or at least make sure it’s refrigerated, a new study suggests. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Food Research Institute found that caramel apples punctured with dipping sticks and left unrefrigerated over the course of a couple of weeks may harbor Listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium linked to a serious infection that can cause fever, headaches, gastrointestinal symptoms and sometimes death.

Hueth leads federal branch at UW

Wisconsin State Farmer

Interdisciplinary research with the potential to inform policymaking received a huge boost on Sept. 21 with the dedication of a new University of Wisconsin-Madison Federal Statistical Research Data Center, or FSRDC, on the UW campus.

UW researchers blaze a trail toward better breast cancer treatment

Channel3000.com

Chemotherapy drugs usually succeed at killing cancer cells, but some cancers have a tendency to develop a resistance to treatment, according to a University of Wisconsin Health release.

“If a patient will not be sensitive to a treatment, they should not be placed on that treatment. They should not be over-treated,” said Dr. Wei Xu, professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center and McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research and senior author of the study. “Also, we want to give timely treatments, because if you match the patient to the right treatment, you’re more likely to save someone’s life.”

UW’s Carbone Cancer Center to lead national study on breast cancer

Channel3000.com

A $3 million grant will allow the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center to coordinate research among six of the nation’s top research institutions, according to a UW Health release.

The Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Program is funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute, officials said. The project is looking to prevent cancer by pinpointing its environmental causes and factors.

Don’t politicize medical research

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

We all thought it was a miracle when the Wisconsin Badgers beat Kentucky in the Final Four. Legislators – both Republican and Democrat – couldn’t wait to honor the University of Wisconsin basketball team.

UW-Madison tunes in to ‘magic mushroom’ medicine

Wisconsin State Journal

Nearly 50 years after the late Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary told people to “turn on, tune in, drop out” with psilocybin, LSD and other psychedelic drugs — which became illegal in 1970 — researchers around the country are testing the substances’ ability to reduce anxiety and depression in people with terminal cancer.

Wisconsin artist is up to something fishy

Big Ten Network

Kandis Elliot has devoted her career to making science more beautiful — and accessible. As emerita senior artist at the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Botany, she spent decades illustrating plants and animals to educate and delight the public.

Cancer research gave woman the gift of one last summer

Channel3000.com

Noted: “If they did not have those trial drugs and didn’t do that extra work [at the Carbone Cancer Center], I don’t think she would have ever had that time. I actually don’t think she would have made it past that first summer.”

Because of that, Rich decided to honor Sherri by participating in the Carbone’s Race for Research, a 5K run and walk. Money from donations is used to continue the cancer research.

Eureka! UW is (finally) learning how to push its research to market

Isthmus

This could be big for UW-Madison. It’s exactly the sort of transformative discovery you would expect from a great research university. Like Harry Steenbock fortifying the vitamin D content of milk. Like James Thomson unlocking the mystery and promise of stem cells. In this case, two UW researchers have pioneered a breakthrough that could end of the flood of human antibiotics into animal feed.

Nobel Prize winner William Campbell says he had freedom to be ‘intuitive’ while at UW-Madison

Capital Times

William C. Campbell, who shared a Nobel Prize in medicine announced Monday, said that his time as a graduate student at UW-Madison helped shape his career. Arlie C. Todd and Chester A. Herrick, the professors who oversaw his research as a veterinary science and zoology student in the 1950s, gave him the freedom to be intuitive in his work, Campbell said in an interview from his home in Massachusetts. “That was very valuable,” Campbell said. He said he was allowed to develop his interests and to be imaginative in his approach, something not all professors of the day encouraged.

UW graduate William Campbell awarded Nobel Prize

Wisconsin Radio Network

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin is one of three scientists who’ve been awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine. William Campbell and Satoshi Omura of Japan were honored for discovering the drug Avermectin. Two derivatives of that drug helped reduce the presence of diseases caused by parasitic worms, mostly in Asia and Africa. The other Nobel Prize winner is Tu Youyou, China’s first medicine laureate. He created a drug that sharply dropped mortality rates for malaria.

Field day showcased benefits of organic practices

Agri-View

Successful organic farmers use agricultural practices that maximize crop production and benefit the environment. These organic management strategies were highlighted at the University of Wisconsin Organic Agriculture Field Day, held at the Arlington Agricultural Research Station Sept. 2.

Fetal tissue bills like Wisconsin’s are targeting research in at least five states

Capital Times

UW-Madison isn’t the only university to find the fetal tissue research battle on its doorstep as legislators seek to prohibit the use of tissue from aborted fetuses for research in light of the fallout from the Planned Parenthood sting videos. Since the release of the videos this summer, five states – including Wisconsin – have introduced legislation around fetal tissue donation and research, Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health advocacy group, told ThinkProgress. Arizona is looking at an administrative rules approach.

Work On Parasite Diseases Earns Nobel Prize For Medicine

National Public Radio

The medicines they helped develop are credited with improving the lives of millions. And now three researchers working in the U.S., Japan, and China have won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Among the winners: William C. Campbell of Drew University in Madison N.J., for his work on the roundworm parasite. Campbell is a UW alum.

30-Foot Fingernails: The Curious Science of World’s Longest Nails

Live Science

Sure, nails look pretty all trimmed and polished, and they make opening a can of soda a lot easier, but these are not the reasons that humans have fingernails. So what is the reason? It’s because humans are primates, said John Hawks, a biological anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Unlike most mammals, which have claws for digging and climbing, humans and other primates have fingertips that are perfect for grasping tools and other objects, Hawks told Live Science in 2013.

Rep. Chris Taylor: The real miracle at the UW-Madison

Capital Times

We all thought it was a miracle when the Badgers beat Kentucky in the Final Four. Legislators — both Republicans and Democrats — couldn’t wait to honor the University of Wisconsin basketball team. But the real miracles are happening in the labs at UW, at the Waisman Center, at Research Park, and across Wisconsin.

If I Only Had a Brain? Tissue Chips Predict Neurotoxicity

NIH Director's Blog

NIH Director Francis Collins, writing about the difficulty of screening new drugs for toxicity: “As an important step in this direction, NIH-funded researchers at the Morgridge Institute for Research and University of Wisconsin-Madison have produced neural tissue chips with many features of a developing human brain.”

Quad-City native helps scientists study particles in Antarctica

Quad-City Times

Davenport native David Glowacki, 56, is part of a project that’s preoccupied with minutiae. Through the software Glowacki develops, scientists observe minutiae — specifically, nearly mass-less particles called neutrinos — at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a powerful telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.

Piscatory portraits

Isthmus

Artists find their muses in different places. For example, Kandis Elliot recently finished rendering every single kind of fish in Wisconsin.

“Brain in a Dish” Could Replace Toxic Animal Tests

Scientific American

Scientists in Wisconsin have succeeded in growing three-dimensional brainlike tissue structures derived from human embryonic stem cells. Unlike previous miniature model brains, the new structures can be easily reproduced and they contain vascular cells and microglia, a type of immune cell.

Vos optimistic about prospects for fetal body parts bill

Wisconsin Radio Network

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is optimistic he’ll be able to muster the votes needed to pass a bill banning research on tissue from aborted fetuses. Opponents of the measure – including some Republicans and the state’s largest business lobby – have expressed concerns that the bill will harm biomedical research in Wisconsin.

Senate committee to hold hearing on fetal research ban

Associated Press

Wisconsin legislators are set to hold another public hearing on a bill that would outlaw research on tissue taken from aborted fetuses.

The Senate’s health committee was scheduled to hold a hearing on the Republican-authored measure Tuesday morning in the state Capitol. The Assembly’s criminal justice already has held a hearing and approved the bill, clearing the way for a full vote that chamber but it’s unclear how much support the proposal has among Senate Republicans, who are concerned the measure’s effect on research.

Fetal research ban authors try to persuade Senate committee

Associated Press

The authors of a bill that would outlaw research on tissue from fetuses aborted are trying to persuade the state Senate’s health committee to approve the proposal.

Sen. Duey Stroebel and Rep. Andre Jacque, both Republicans, told the committee during a public hearing Tuesday that the bill will stop atrocities and aborted children should be treated like humans, not specimens.

UW physicist awarded Balzan Prize

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and leader of the giant neutrino telescope known as IceCube, has won the 2015 Balzan Prize, an award worth about $775,000.