Category: Research

A team of Wisconsin scientists recently came closer to uncovering the elusive process by which nacre, more commonly known as mother-of-pearl, is created in nature.

A UW-Madison ecologist who has made a career out of studying an ecosystem’s resilience to disaster has been named president of the Ecological Society of America.

On April 13, a pregnant ewe involved in a research program at UW-Madison died from respiratory issues while being moved back to her pen following surgery.

The subatomic particle known as a neutrino is nicknamed the ghost particle. Every day trillions of them stream through the Earth without ever interacting with the matter around them. But scientists can detect neutrinos using specialized sensors deep underground.

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.

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.

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.

On April 13, a pregnant ewe involved in a research program at UW-Madison died from respiratory issues while being moved back to her pen following surgery.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined the variations and trends in the onset of spring across the Northern Hemisphere’s temperate regions and calculated that the onset of spring plant growth will shift by a median of three weeks earlier over the next century. Their findings were published in the journal Environmental Research Letters yesterday.

Deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, sensors buried in a billion tons of ice—a cubic kilometer of frozen H2O—are searching for neutrinos. Not just any kind of neutrino, though. The IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory wants to discover the sources of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays and thus solve one of science’s oldest mysteries.

Two India-born engineers are part of a team that won a big case against Apple Inc. in the U.S. this week.

“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.

The state Senate’s health committee has approved a bill that would outlaw research using tissue obtained from aborted fetuses.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The mysterious human ancestor called Homo naledi was primed for success in a prehistoric triathlon, new research shows—if the challenges were walking upright, climbing trees, and handily wielding tools.

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.