Category: Research

“Dear colleagues — I need the help of the whole community,” palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger posted on social media on 6 October 2013.

Lee Berger put his ad up on Facebook on October 7th, 2013. He needed diggers for an exciting expedition. They had to have experience in palaeontology or archaeology, and they had to be willing to drop everything and fly to South Africa within the month. “The catch is this—the person must be skinny and preferably small,” he wrote. “They must not be claustrophobic, they must be fit, they should have some caving experience, climbing experience would be a bonus.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor John Hawks was recently one of the leaders of an expedition to South Africa that uncovered a new species of hominin called Homo naledi.

A newly discovered early human ancestor could have used tools and may have even figured out how to bury its dead, scientists said Thursday — a find they said was “unlike anything that we have seen” in the fossil record.

Years before he was thrust into the spotlight for his controversial proposal to ban research using tissue from new abortions, Andre Jacque walked away from a career in medical research over concerns that later prompted his bill.

You know your friend who knows, just KNOWS with absolute certainty, that the fit guy in your office is 100% gay, just by looking at him and analysing his *vibe*? They are wrong. Well, maybe. The fit guy in your office might be gay. But your friend is wrong about her always spot-on sensor for homosexuality, aka the gaydar. Because science has just proved that gaydar is not a thing.

A new study suggests that ’gaydar’ — the sixth sense by which many insist they can just tell that someone they meet isn’t heterosexual — is bad in two big ways. For starters, it doesn’t work. But more importantly, the concept of gaydar may be pretty harmful. It may — big surprise here, guys — just be an excuse to revel in harmful stereotypes about LGBTQ people.

Francis Halzen, the lead researcher at IceCube Neutrino Observatory, was announced as a winner of the $770,000 Balzan Prize for astroparticle physics on Monday in Milan, Italy.

UW-Madison researchers traced the origins of lager back to 15th century Bavaria. Scientists found the mysterious hybrid strain of yeast that creates the lagers we enjoy today. Thanks to recent yeast DNA testing, we now know how this favorite libation evolved.

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.

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.

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.

Long-form recap of fetal tissue legislation debate.

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.

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.”

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.

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 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.