Professors William Cox, Patricia Devine and Janet Hyde, and graduate student Alyssa Bischmann, conducted five studies that led them to conclude that gaydar does not exist. In fact, said Cox, the lead researcher, several of the studies show that “gaydar” actually is a form of stereotyping.
A proposed fetal tissue ban has been amended to allow continued work with widely used cells, but UW-Madison and biotech officials still oppose the measure, saying it threatens to shut down important medical research.
We’ve all heard people say they have a ’gaydar’. It is the alleged ability to know whether someone is gay or straight based on their appearance.
Noted: CDI was founded in 2004 by stem cell pioneer James Thomson, who is also a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor. The company went public in 2013.
A lab at the center of a longstanding controversy about dangerous virus research has engineered heartier influenza viruses that could streamline vaccine production. The researchers contend that their findings may help bring future pandemics under control faster—but the study also demonstrates the risk of curtailing so-called gain-of-function (GOF) studies, in which viruses are made more transmissible or more pathogenic, the researchers argue.
Noted: The lead sponsor for both bills in the Assembly is state Rep. Andre Jacque (R-De Pere), who is also sponsoring a separate bill to ban the use of aborted fetal tissue in research at University of Wisconsin System.
A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researcher in the School of Freshwater Sciences will use a portion of a new $20 million grant to study the effect that exposure to nanoparticles has on fish and animals.
Long-form recap of fetal tissue legislation debate.
A controversial technique to create flu viruses, now effectively banned, led to the discovery of a flu vaccine model that could be more reliable than today’s main method using chicken eggs, according to a study by UW-Madison scientist Yoshihiro Kawaoka.
One month ago, six Planned Parenthood clinics allowed women to donate aborted fetus tissue for medical research. Now, there are just two that do — a sign that the future of the programs could be in serious jeopardy.
Progress on cleaning up lakes Mendota, Monona, Wingra, Waubesa and Kegonsa has been slow, despite fifty years of settled science on what’s causing the problem and significant effort invested in trying to improve water quality. Freshwater ecologist Stephen Carpenter has long wondered why.
There are different ways to measure how well children with incontinence are doing in overcoming the condition.
A Madison-based research hub devoted to evaluating the environmental effect of nanotechnology has received $20 million in National Science Foundation funding over the next five years.
A center hosted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, is getting $20 million in National Science Foundation funding as it studies the effects of nanotechnology on the environment.
Opposition is growing to a bill that could effectively ban the use of fetal tissue in research in Wisconsin.
University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist Seth Pollak was one of the co-leaders of a study recently published in JAMA Pediatrics on how severe poverty affects the growth of children’s brains. The results show a biological link between poverty and how well children do academically.
I will never forget the day, now 65 years ago, when my teammate on the Appleton High School basketball team was allowed to dribble the ball down the court and make a scoring shot.
Katie Brenner, a biochemistry postdoctoral fellow in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, won the 5X5X5 pitch competition held Thursday by the Doyenne Group, a Madison organization that advises and encourages women entrepreneurs. It is the second contest that Brenner and her company, bluDiagnostics, have won in two days — both as part of the Forward Fest — and their third victory since June, when they won the 2015 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest.
Editor’s Note: The following is a letter that’s accompanied with the names of 700 University of Wisconsin faculty members who oppose a bill banning the use of fetal tissue and cells.
Pollinators will be the focus of the next “Science On Tap” presentation at Minocqua Brewing Company. The first Wednesday of most months the public gathers to hear the latest from UW researchers who also listen to questions from the public about specific topics.
Letter co-signed by 678 UW faculty members
Nearly 700 University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty members have signed a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel arguing that a bill being considered by the Legislature to ban the use of fetal tissue and cells would not only close off avenues of hope for patients, it would send a message to biomedical scientists and the biotechnology industry “that Wisconsin is no place to do business.”
Noted: In their experiments, Moreau (John R. Nevin professor of marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business) and Engeset (associate professor of marketing at Buskerud and Vestfold University College in Kongsberg, Norway) gave 136 undergraduates a variety of LEGO-related building tasks. Some of the undergrads followed the instructions of a LEGO kit. Others were given a random assortment of LEGO bricks and were simply told to build something.
Noted: The Institute for Personalized Learning, housed at Cooperative Educational Service Agency #1, has received the grant from the Joyce Foundation to partner with University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers for the study, according to an announcement Monday.
Buried deep in the Antarctic ice, an observatory has spotted ghostly, nearly massless particles coming from inside our galaxy and points beyond the Milky Way.
“We’re not sure that the roads have become safer,” the study’s lead author, UW professor Jason Vargo, told Bloomberg News. “We may be just putting people out on the same roads that are as dangerous as they were before.”
MADISON – One of the central issues in an ongoing heated legislative debate is whether modern medical research has moved beyond the need for using tissue from new abortions.
Should you take web development classes? Or poetry writing? Is it more important to think like an engineer, or an artist?
Antarctic scientists have confirmed the existence of cosmic neutrinos – ghostly particles that have traveled from the Milky Way and beyond. These particles carry messages from distant galaxies, and could potentially help solve several cosmic puzzles.
Buried deep in the Antarctic ice, an observatory has spotted ghostly, nearly massless particles coming from inside our galaxy and points beyond the Milky Way.
Near the end of Alice Goffman’s acclaimed 2014 book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, she interviews George Taylor, father of Linda, who is one of the central characters, and grandfather of Linda’s three sons, whose lives dominate the narrative. (George and Linda, like most of the names in the book, are pseudonyms.) Taylor’s parents had been Georgia sharecroppers, and like so many African-Americans of their generation, they had headed north in search of a better life. They settled in Philadelphia when George was 5.
Thanks to new funding at UW, doctors will be able to have some everyday wishes granted. Engineers and students are working on prototypes for medical innovations that doctors have said they are lacking in their practice. The UW Department of Emergency Medicine is teaming up with UW’s Morgridge Advanced Fabrication Lab or “Fab Lab” to improve these medical tools, which could improve your time in the hospital.
Kayakers drawn to the legendary sea caves along the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore can explore them without being caught off-guard by potentially deadly waves, thanks to a real-time wave observation system developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The release of videos about Planned Parenthood is spurring state legislative efforts to ban or restrict use of fetal tissue for medical studies and treatments. (Subscription required.)
The recent controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood has long been burdened with a serious flaw: the group is donating fetal tissue to scientists for medical research, which is perfectly legal. Indeed, the practice was specifically authorized by Congress, with broad and bipartisan support, decades ago.
Quoted: A little over a $100 per helmet, [Riddells are] just as good as those newer models that cost sometimes over $500, according to Tim McGuine at University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there that if we just have these athletes wear these helmets, that are designed differently or something, they’re gonna have fewer concussions. And from a simplistic model that makes sense, but concussions are multi-factorial,” said McGuine.
The chickens weren’t getting sick like they were supposed to.
A network of mysterious caves spotted on the surface of the Moon could be explored using camera technology that is capable of seeing around corners.
If you don’t know Koko the gorilla… you probably know her friends. She’s great buddies with William Shatner, and the late Robin Williams. Now a UW researcher who spent two years with her says there are things Koko can teach us about ourselves.
The political reflex to the creepy possibility that people are illegally selling organs and tissue from aborted fetuses is understandable. The rush to pass overly broad legislation that would outlaw and even criminalize legitimate, longstanding medical research is not.
Quoted: UW Medical School Dean Robert Golden said that researchers hope that someday they can discontinue the use of fetal tissue altogether. “I hope that we can eventually move away from this, but we are not close to that point yet,” he said during the hearing. UW researchers follow federal law and their own strict ethical standards, he said.
Guinness stout and Bud Lite differ in, to be conservative, several ways, but one is that they’re brewed with very different types of yeast. Lager isn’t just a beer style, it’s a yeast lifestyle. Humans have been brewing with ale yeast—Saccharomyces cerevisiae—for thousands of years. But it was less than 600 years ago that European brewers stumbled on lager yeast, which behaves very differently and produces that distinctive lager flavor.
Koko has been called the “World’s Most Intelligent Gorilla.”
Koko the gorilla is already famous for her ability communicate with her keepers using sign language, but now she is showing signs that she may be able to learn to talk.
An ape, directly socialized with humans, has learned the vocal and breathing control found in human speech, according to new research.
Helmet technology is similar among all brands, and a helmet’s brand, age and reconditioned status has no impact on how many concussions a football player sustains, say UW-Madison researchers who have studied Wisconsin high school football players.
In the last week, a state legislator in Wisconsin suggested that professors defending the use of fetal tissue in research should think about the work of the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Also in the last week, Ben Carson, formerly a professor at Johns Hopkins University known for his path-breaking research and now an anti-abortion candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, found himself questioned on his use of fetal tissue for research in 1992.
The bill, spearheaded by Reps. André Jacque, R-De Pere, and Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc, and Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, would ban selling, donating and experimenting with fetal body parts resulting from abortions in Wisconsin.
Noted: For example, at a legislative hearing on banning the practice in Wisconsin, Dr. Robert Golden, dean of the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and the university’s vice chancellor of medical affairs, explained that “There is incredibly important, potentially lifesaving research that goes on in Wisconsin that relies on fetal material received from federally regulated tissue banks.” Banning use of it, he added, “would have a substantial negative impact on our capacity to do the lifesaving research we are doing.”
For years, scientists have believed that apes do not have the capacity for speech – but one gorilla might be changing that. Koko – known for her abilities in sign language – has learnt simple sounds, as well as signs, from imitating humans.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about declining bee populations. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, beekeepers are seeing average yearly declines of about 33 percent. One UW-Madison student (Jeremy Hemberger) is taking a unique approach to stopping the trend, by using some tiny technology.
A key Senate Republican told 27 News Wednesday that she cannot support the current version of an Assembly bill designed to ban the sale and use of aborted fetal tissue, because it would stop major medical research being conducted at UW-Madison.
Sen. Alberta Darling (R-RIver Hills) made those comments just one day after the Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety held a public hearing on the bill.
Gov. Scott Walker isn’t saying whether he supports the current version of a bill in the Legislature that would ban research involving aborted fetal body parts. Walker was asked Wednesday about the measure, which drew opposition from University of Wisconsin and private researchers at a public hearing Tuesday.
UW-Madison, which says it gets fetal tissue for research from four licensed tissue banks, is reviewing whether the banks meet federal regulations and university requirements.
A bill to ban some research on aborted fetal tissues at Wisconsin universities could face challenges in federal courts, which have struck down similar laws around the nation for failing to spell out what’s a crime and whats not.
Governor Scott Walker is not offering much support for a bill that would restrict research in the state that uses tissue from aborted fetuses.
This week, beekeepers, farmers, pesticide operators and state agriculture officials met at the Agricultural Research Station in Arlington. It’s the first of several meetings to come up with a plan protecting bees and other pollinators.
Interviewed: Richard Davidson, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists for a look at how the practice of mindfulness affects the brain.
MADISON — Republican lawmakers sponsoring a bill to ban research on aborted fetal tissue in Wisconsin — a proposal medical groups oppose — said Tuesday they were working on changes to protect work at the University of Wisconsin that uses existing cell lines.
A new UW Health study shows older women do not need to take high levels of vitamin D to increase their bone density. Lead Study Investigator Dr. Karen Hansen, associate professor of medicine, says up until now guidelines for Vitamin D usage were all over the map.
