Category: Research

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.

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.

While debate continues over the nature of climate change, the public next Tuesday can hear from a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who says human health risks pose the largest of threats.

Matthew Desmond’s “genius grant” was made in Madison and Milwaukee. Desmond, 35, is a sociologist who earned his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and whose groundbreaking work on the impact of eviction on the urban poor came from his granular research in Milwaukee.

An unprecedented avian influenza epidemic struck the poultry industry in the U.S. over the spring and early summer of 2015.

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., joined three other members of Congress Tuesday in a letter questioning the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ policies regarding the sale of fetal tissue.

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.”

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Associated Press synopsis of the bill forwarded by Wisconsin Republicans that would outlaw research on tissue from aborted fetuses. A public hearing on the measure was held Tuesday.

A bill that would make it a felony to use or sell aborted fetal tissue in Wisconsin had its first state Senate hearing Tuesday, with public comments becoming heated at times.

Perhaps its stem cell advances are one reason Reuters News Service lists the UW System among the top 10 in its first Top 100 ranking of the most innovative universities in the world. UW came in at No. 8. Stanford University was No. 1.

University of Wisconsin College of Engineering announced Thursday, Sept. 17, a $22 million commitment from the Grainger Foundation for engineering undergraduates.

Aggressive state efforts to ban the use of fetal tissue in research are alarming some scientists who say such measures will set back efforts to cure the world’s deadliest diseases, including cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

A new study says that more first or second homes are being built in rural areas, raising concerns about fire and loss of animal habitat.

Noted: BioForward honored two of the state’s successful life sciences leaders: Hector F. DeLuca, a University of Wisconsin-Madison vitamin D researcher who has received more than 1,000 patents and developed 12 pharmaceutical products, received the inaugural Hector F. DeLuca Scientific Achievement Award. Through his work, DeLuca has touched the lives of virtually everyone at UW-Madison, and of millions of people around the world, said Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which does patenting and licensing for UW-Madison.

The slang term “gaydar” is the alleged ability to discern if someone is straight or gay. But a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and published in the Journal of Sex Research shows gaydar is fueled by stereotypes, and not a sixth sense.

Wisconsin scientists are reporting a cheaper way to create hydrogen to be used in fuel.

Sherlock Holmes’s creator might have called it “The Case of the Precocious Pinheads.”

When it comes to determining the sexual orientation of someone we don’t know, many people subscribe to the idea of ‘gaydar’ – that supposed intuitive ability to identify gay people by sight and sight alone. But a UW scientist says the idea of gaydar is a myth, and contributes to the stereotyping of LGBT people. He explains his latest research into the subject.