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Category: Research

Ask Well: The Health Benefits of Meditation

New York Times

Meditation has long been used to induce calm and physical relaxation. But research on its potential uses for treating medical problems “is still in its very early stages,” and designing trials can be challenging, said Richard J. Davidson, a neuroscientist who founded the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So it’s not surprising the scientific literature is filled with mixed findings at this point in time.”

John Hawks, guest on “Whad’ya Know?”

Wisocnsin Public Radio and Public Radio International

John Hawks is the Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. He talks about his role in the recent discovery of Homo Naledi in the caves of South Africa!

Craig Schuff, paralyzed researcher, UW-Madison engineering graduate student, dies

Wisconsin State Journal

Craig Schuff’s heart and academic journey carried on more than four years after he was paralyzed in a Lake Monona diving accident that damaged his spinal cord. Schuff, 30, a quadriplegic since 2011, died Oct. 24.His advisers at UW-Madison said he was less than a year from finishing his doctorate in engineering, focusing on innovative nuclear research that deserves to be continued.

Group raising funds to open monkey sanctuary

WISC-TV 3

Noted: The Portage Daily Register reported that Amy Kerwin founded Primates Inc. after seeing the need for monkey sanctuaries more than a decade ago in her work in the primate lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She got to know 97 research monkeys and learned there were no plans to retire them.

Exact Sciences’ Judge Doyle Square decision is right response to bad timing

Channel3000.com

There are sounds reasons to believe Exact Sciences’ non-invasive test for colon cancer will one day be a widely-recommended preventive procedure. But there is no doubt the announcement last month that a federal health task force gave the test an initial designation of “alternative test,” just as company officials were wrapping up plans for an ambitious expansion at Judge Doyle Square was about the worst timing possible. Very simply the implications for the company’s financial performance, short term as they might be, made the move downtown too risky. It’s too bad, but company CEO Kevin Conroy’s decision to grow the company at its current UW Research Park location is the right thing to do.

Exact Sciences expansion to change Research Park culture

Channel3000.com

Quoted: “We need to evolve as well and create an environment where companies can interact easily and where they can spill over into these third spaces and have casual encounters and lunch meetings and coffee meetings,” Research Park Managing Director Aaron Olver said.

Research Park has already brought in food carts to the heart of its campus on a daily basis, but Olver said they hope to bring in restaurants and coffee shops to help facilitate a more collaborative atmosphere, which is an idea Exact Sciences is on board with.

City officials optimistic Judge Doyle Square redevelopment will still happen

WKOW TV

Business leaders and city officials Monday remained upbeat about the prospect of a large development at Judge Doyle Square, despite the decision of Madison-based Exact Sciences to opt against moving its headquarters downtown as part of a proposed redevelopment there.

Exact Sciences announced Monday it will instead seek to expand at the UW Research Park on the West Side.

Tracking chicken

Chronicle of Higher Education

What is the environmental cost of a meal eaten at a student union? Thomas W. Bryan, a graduate student in environment and resources at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, sought to answer that question by tracing food-supply chains to determine the carbon footprint of each menu item.

Preserve fetal tissue research: Our view

USA Today

What began as an uproar over undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials callously discussing how to collect fetal tissue is now threatening research vital to finding treatments for devastating conditions from Alzheimer’s to blindness.

Grant program initiates overwhelming response and support

Badger Herald

The UW2020 Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Discovery Initiative has received an overwhelming number of responses to their new grant research program.

The UW2020 program, which began in 2014, has received an array of responses from faculty and academic staff. All staff with permanent principle investigator status are eligible to apply, and some 150 applications have already been received.

UW study shows concussions dropped with new tackling rules

Channel3000.com

Quoted: “This study confirms what athletic trainers in high-school football have long believed about the association of full-contact drills or practices and the likelihood of concussion,” said Tim McGuine, senior scientist in the department of orthopedics and rehabilitation at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “This is probably also true for other football injuries such as sprains, fractures and dislocations.”

Simulator helps UW surgeon improve medical training, patient care

Channel3000.com

A University of Wisconsin-Madison surgeon is on a mission to change testing standards for board-certified providers that would include testing touch techniques.

After more than 500 experienced physicians completed Dr. Carla Pugh’s breast exam simulation, her research published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine showed 10 to 15 percent of them were not using enough force during the exam.

High School Football Tackling Rule Significantly Knocks Down Concussion Rates

Associated Press (NBC15)

Noted: Findings show that the rate of sports-related concussions sustained during high school football practice was more than twice as high in the two seasons prior to the rule change as compared to the 2014 season, said University of Wisconsin–Madison senior scientist Timothy A. McGuine, PhD, ATC.

“This study confirms what athletic trainers who work with high school football programs have long believed regarding the association of full contact drills or practices and the likelihood a player will sustain a concussion,” Dr. McGuine said. “This is probably also true for other football injuries such as sprains, fractures and dislocations.”

How fetal tissue is used in medical research

The Week

It’s used to find potential treatments for a wide range of common diseases and afflictions, including cancer, diabetes, birth defects, HIV, multiple sclerosis, ALS, and Alzheimer’s. Unlike adult tissue cells, fetal tissue cells can be manipulated into almost any kind of tissue, are less likely to be rejected by a host, and have the capacity to replicate rapidly — making them perfect for analysis into how diseases work. They are also being tried as actual treatments for Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries, and diabetes, with researchers injecting fetal cells directly into organs in hopes of regenerating them. Fetal tissue was also a vital component in the development of vaccines for polio, chicken pox, rubella, and shingles. The polio vaccine alone saves 550,000 lives a year. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says fetal tissue research has benefited “virtually every person in this country.”

New museum celebrates local science

Daily Cardinal

The city’s longstanding ties with historical scientific achievements have a new home in the Madison Science Museum, which opened Thursday.The process of putting together the museum, the brainchild of Dave Nelson, emeritus professor of biochemistry at UW-Madison, began long before its recent grand opening.

How the Deceptive Videos Attacking Planned Parenthood Are Hindering Cures for Deadly Diseases

Mother Jones

Since July, an anti-abortion group’s deceptively edited videos targeting Planned Parenthood for allegedly profiting off sales of fetal tissue appear to have prompted at least four arson attacks on Planned Parenthood clinics. And even though the allegations were bogus, the vilification of the women’s health organization has done additional damage: Violent threats and a political chill in the wake of the videos have begun to undermine potentially life-saving research on diseases including diabetes, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s. Fetal-tissue donation programs essential to such research have been shut down, supplies of the tissue to labs have dwindled, and legislation is brewing in multiple states that could hinder cutting-edge scientific studies.

UW’s dairy mobile app helps farmers worldwide

WKOW TV

At the University of Wisconsin’s Arlington Farm Research Station, they’re using modern technology to track herd health. In the past, that took a lot of time and paperwork. “We had lots of paper records and we wanted to turn that into something more functional,” says Prof. Nigel Cook, of the UW School of Veterinary Medicine.

With the help of the “DoIT” center on campus, the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine developed a series of digital teaching tools, which continue to play a role in preparing the next generation of food animal veterinarians. “We now have an app with pictures, with a scoring system, with just a touch screen system to be able to screen for a lot of cows very quickly,” says Cook.

Wisconsin Science Festival can inspire the next generation

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Genome editing, 3-D printing and robotics — these sound like subjects for doctoral students or headlines for a conference of tech savvy entrepreneurs. And they often are. They also are a slice of the activities planned for the fifth annual Wisconsin Science Festival, taking place in 36 communities across Wisconsin on Oct. 22-25, for people of every age and background.

Mapping the Internet’s secret cables

The Boston Globe

By painstakingly pulling public records, however, Paul Barford has done it. Barford, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin, has created the first public map of the Internet as it exists today, making a hard-to-place form of infrastructure as tangible as the railroad network.

Wisconsin Legislators Consider Legalizing Blaze Pink as Orange Alternative

Field & Stream

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say studies show blaze pink is easier for humans to see and harder for animals to spot—but Wisconsin hunters (and hunters across the U.S.) currently face a penalty if they’re not wearing blaze orange. The blaze pink bill, discussed in a public hearing last week, could change that.

Urban Coyote Attacks Rising In Parts Of Wisconsin

Wisconsin Public Radio

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin Urban Canid Project said recent reports of the conflicts — and in some cases, attacks — have come from Madison, Milwaukee, Neenah and Mequon. Some coyotes have attacked and killed dogs, or even followed residents who were walking their dog.

Wisconsin jury says Apple owes $234 million in patent case

WKOW (AP)

A jury has awarded the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation more than $234 million in a patent infringement lawsuit against computer maker Apple Inc.

Noted: The patent dispute involved chip technology that was co-invented by University of Wisconsin-Madison computer sciences professor Gurindar Sohi, who was in the courtroom for the decision. U.S. District Judge William Conley told Sohi he hoped he felt his work was vindicated.

Apple ordered to pay University of Wisconsin $234 million for patent infringement

Channel3000.com

Apple is being required to pay the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation $234.2 million for illegally using microchip technology developed by the university in both iPhones and iPads, according to a WARF release.

The jury deliberated for almost four hours Friday before determining that Apple’s A7, A8 and A8X processors violated UW’s patent, officials said.

The federal trial, in which the WARF was asking for $400 million in damages, began Oct. 5 in Madison.