Wisconsin is home to largest number of organic dairy farms in the country and cows on each of those farms get part of their diet from grazing grass and other plants. Now, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are trying to find ways to improve those pastures.
To honor the centennial of the Boaz mastodon, which went on display in 1915, Carrie Eaton, curator of collections at the museum, began researching the elephant-like creature, looking for more information about one of Wisconsin’s most famous fossils.
In August 2003, hundreds of Parisians returned from their summer holidays to an unholy smell. Ascending the stairs in their apartment buildings, they found the source: dead bodies. Between August 1st and 20th, a heat wave baked Europe, and nearly 15,000 people died in France alone. Richard Keller’s intrepid new book, Fatal Isolation, is a social autopsy of those deaths. (Subscription required.)
Bill Eisch has spent the past two decades scouring Department of Defense reports and other historical documents trying to find answers. A new project at UW-Madison aims to help reunite people like Eisch with the remains of those declared missing in action. The effort is inspired by the case of PFC Lawrence Gordon, a man who fought for the United States, died in France, and never made it back home.
A year after using cutting-edge DNA analysis to identify the remains of an American soldier mistakenly buried with the enemy after World War II, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced Wednesday it will put its expertise in history, archaeology and forensic and genetic analysis behind the U.S. government’s tedious efforts to identify and recover other missing service members.
It was America’s first metropolis.Cahokia, the largest prehistoric settlement in the Americas north of Mexico, flourished in the 1200s, with a population of 20,000 people at its peak – but was mysterious abandoned by 1400. Now researchers think they know why – a megaflood that raised the Mississippi River by 10m.
Alcohol consumption questions have become commonplace in the repertoire of a doctor’s assessment of a patient in Wisconsin, but the brief dialog isn’t prompting those most in need to seek treatment, a study shows. The study, performed by UW-Madison assistant professor of social work Joseph Glass, said the process known as screening and brief intervention helps people with milder drinking problems but not those who need counseling or treatment.
More than 100 people in Door County spent their Saturday thinking about how exactly the world is going to be affected by climate change during the second annual Door County Climate Change Forum at Stone Harbor. Attendants were first introduced to Professor Molly Jahn of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who leads research in creating modern knowledge systems for sustainability.
Noted: As part of the special event, Professor Sissel Schroeder of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Anthropology will provide a brief presentation at the park shelter at 2 p.m. She will discuss her archaeological field school excavations, which will be under way at the time and focus on the residential homes of the prehistoric people who populated Aztalan.
Researchers have long debated the reasons behind the rapid rise and swift disappearance of Cahokia, a sprawling, ancient city-state near the modern city of St. Louis. Now an analysis of sediment cores reveals that the city’s ups and downs correspond to the timing of Mississippi River megafloods, according to a recent study from University of Wisconsin geographers Sam Munoz and Jack Williams.
People with short-term debt, such as overdue bills or credit card debt, are more likely to be depressed than those who carry long-term debt through mortgages and other big loans, a new study suggests. “A 10 percent increase in short-term debt was associated with a 24 percent increase in depression symptoms,” said the study’s lead author, J. Michael Collins, faculty director of the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: The company bought Cellular Dynamics International Inc. in Madison for $307 million this month. Cellular Dynamics International, known as CDI, employs about 150 people and was co-founded in 2004 by James Thomson, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the most influential scientists in stem cell research.
The American Innovation Act co-sponsored by Senator Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin will provide more money to a variety of research agencies to incentivize innovation across the country. UW–Madison is the fourth largest research institution in the nation, and would be a part of this funding bill.
Peter Levi, stream ecologist and post-doctoral research associate at the UW Center for Limnology, is playing a role in drawing more neighbors to the changing Kinnickinnic. Last summer, Levi studied six restoration projects on all three of Milwaukee’s rivers – the Milwaukee, Menomonee and this spot on the Kinnickinnic.
Research by University of Wisconsin professor Holly Gibbs found that the Brazilian soy industry’s moratorium significantly decreased deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, but that rates of deforestation in the Cerrado and other eco regions not covered by the moratorium, as well as in the Amazon biome outside of Brazil, increased.
Psychologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cardiff University have found that people from different countries can be grouped into ’cultures of smiling’.
There’s a significant relationship between depressive symptoms and short-term debt, according to a new study of 8500 consumers
Narrow provider networks are often considered synonymous with a lower quality of health care, but a new study challenges that conventional wisdom.
Enologist Nick Smith and the 2015 vintage are both getting started in Wisconsin.
The people who built and lived among the tall, sculpted mounds now preserved at Cahokia Mounds Historic Site have long presented a mystery to archeologists.
MADISON, WISCONSIN—Sediment cores from Horseshoe Lake, located in the Mississippi floodplain near the center of Cahokia, and Grassy Lake, roughly 120 miles downstream, provide clues to the rise and fall of the ancient city, according to geographers Samuel Munoz and Jack Williams of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The people who built and lived among the tall, sculpted mounds now preserved at Cahokia Mounds Historic Site have long presented a mystery to archeologists.One of the biggest mysteries: Why did they leave? A team of UW-Madison geographers studying pollen deposits buried in the sediment under Horseshoe Lake may have stumbled upon new evidence that helps explain Cahokia’s decline.
Cahokia was a pretty big deal in the 1100s. Founded by a complex cultural group that built tall mounds and sweeping plazas, the city near present-day St Louis, Missouri, was home to tens of thousands of people. But its population began declining around 1200, and by 1350, Cahokia was a ghost town.
If you come from a country of immigrants, you’re more likely to crack a friendly smile on the street. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which may explain why Americans beam more than their Chinese and Russian counterparts. Scientists have known for decades that societies have their own unwritten rules about when it’s appropriate to smile, frown, or get angry. These rules are part of a country’s “emotion culture,” the norms that influence how and when people express whether they’re pleased or upset. Researchers often study these differences geographically, finding that the United States and the West tend to be more expressive than China and the East. But those geographical studies overlook the important role migration played in shaping emotion culture, says Paula Niedenthal, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
No one truly knows what led the Mississippians of Cahokia to abandon their city in the early 1300s. Ideas range from over-hunting and deforestation to drought and even political strife.
Long before Europeans arrived to settle St. Louis, an impressive human construction stood on the eastern side of the Mississippi River. It was the Native American city of Cahokia. At its height, tens of thousands lived in and around Cahokia, leaving behind great earthen mounds as testament. The largest still stands about a hundred feet tall today, minus what was likely a temple that once adorned its crest.
Credit cards can carry more than high interest rates—they actually might increase your chances of depression.
“Our results suggest that taking on unsecured debt may adversely influence psychological well-being,” said Lawrence Berger, the study’s lead author and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty.
A study involving the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health says students who post more on social media about drinking before college actually did more binge drinking their freshman year.
A study involving the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health says students who post more on social media about drinking before college actually did more binge drinking their freshman year. The study, which was conducted with the University of Washington, involved 338 incoming college freshmen between 18-19 years old, recruited during the summer at both campuses.
Jim Berbee, founder of Madison-based Berbee Information Networks Corp., will receive the 12th annual Ken Hendricks Memorial “Seize the Day” award at the 2015 Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Conference, organizers said Wednesday.
Tom Neeson, a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Limnology and lead author of the study, said important fish, such as walleye and lake sturgeon, migrate back and forth between the Great Lakes and rivers that drain into them. The problem is there are hundreds of thousands of dams and road crossings that disrupt breeding migrations, he said.
Noted: The drug Co-D is developing, called Triolimus, was developed by professor Glen Kwon at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It contains three proven anti-cancer agents in a nontoxic, nanoparticle carrier, the company said. Patients with the blood vessel cancer, called angiosarcoma, have an average survival rate of less than a year.
The study from the Water Sustainability and Climate Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says a 14-year effort to clean up Lake Mendota failed because of changes in farming, land development and climate change.
For 45 minutes, an infant is swaddled and snoozed into a cozy fMRI machine. That’s all it takes for researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds to observe how structures inside the child’s brain communicate with each other.
Veronica Berns lives for biology, chemistry and all those other subjects the rest of us actively avoid – and that’s why she decided to become a scientist.
When Jay Gallagher saw the first fuzzy image, he figured the camera simply needed focusing.
VIDEO: The famed Hubble Telescope marks its 25th anniversary in space Friday. The first telescope was built in a clean room at the UW Space Science and Engineering Center on Dayton Street. Jim Lattis runs the Space Place and talks about the telescope’s anniversary.
“I kept doing the body scan to feel calm,” a fifth grade student explained to my colleagues as he recollected coping with a stressful situation at home. A “body scan” involves checking in with your body and noticing how it feels in the present moment. There’s no action required other than observing experiences as they unfold.
As a neuroscientist applying the insights of my center’s research to the real world, including in classrooms, I hear similar stories from people of all ages expressing a desire to calm their minds, to take baby steps to reduce negative emotions, improve well-being and respond with resilience to factors outside of our control.
The solution for an Ebola vaccine could come from someone doing research in Madison. A University of Wisconsin virologist is working on a whole-virus vaccine.
Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka presented his Ebola research at the State Capitol Tuesday. He is conducting it with other international infectious disease specialists who are using funding provided by the Japanese government.
An economic recovery dominated by the creation of low-wage jobs means that the percentage of Wisconsin residents living in poverty rose in 2013 despite increases in employment, says a new report by the Institute for Research on Poverty at UW-Madison.
Veronica Berns digs science. She gets it. She speaks its language. Veronica Berns. But not everyone is like that. There are people who don’t know how to talk about quasicrystals in casual conversation. People like … oh I don’t know, the person writing this blog post, for instance. Just one example!
An astronomy project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made inroads on two questions: how to track neutral hydrogen in the “distant” universe and how to scale up the capacity to maintain and manage the data generated through such work.
A new study shows poverty rose slightly in Wisconsin from 2012 to 2013, despite some job gains. The report released Tuesday by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers said the Wisconsin Poverty Measure rose to 10.9 percent in 2013, up from 10.2 percent in 2012. That measure was roughly 2.5 percentage points lower than the official Wisconsin poverty rate from the federal government.
A leading researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates that he is two years away from formal testing of his Ebola vaccine, and he is now hoping to get a drug company’s financial support for clinical trials.
The current outbreak of bird flu is a different strain from the one that caused an uproar in the scientific community in 2012, but a University of Wisconsin researcher at the center of a debate over biosecurity said it underscores the need for more experiments that some critics consider risky.
Albee Messing, interim director of the center since May 2014, was named director on April 14, said Robert Golden, dean of the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
Despite modest improvement in employment, poverty rose slightly in Wisconsin between 2012 and 2013, according to a study released Tuesday by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.
Researchers led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found people who live in countries that have benefited from migrants from a wide range of countries over time, are more emotionally expressive.
MADISON, Wis. AP – Late last spring, a doctoral student worked late into the night. As she doodled, her chemistry thesis took on a life of its own, transforming into a comic book.
Dairy researchers at UW’s Center for Dairy Research are figuring out how acid whey could be beneficial in some other items you consume, as the production of Greek yogurt has taken off in the past several years. Quoted: John Lucey, professor of food science and director of the Center for Dairy Research.
Carl Gulbrandsen, who since 2000 has led the organization that commercializes the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s research, will retire early next year, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation said Thursday.
Gulbrandsen, 68, plans to retire early next year from WARF, where he has served since 1997 and been managing director since 2000. He said his retirement plans have been in the works for years and he is confident that WARF will remain a vital force long after his departure.
A leader in the U.S. business world visited Madison on Wednesday in hopes of fostering more innovation. Michelle K. Lee, the director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, toured the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
The state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee is nixing a provision in Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal that would’ve exempted some research at the University of Wisconsin System from open records laws.
A leader in the U.S. business world visited Madison on Wednesday in hopes of fostering more innovation.
Michelle K. Lee, the director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, toured the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
Lee said she wants to identify ways that her office can better serve the innovators and entrepreneurs in the Madison area.
A proposal that would have hid University of Wisconsin research from public view has been removed from Gov. Scott Walker’s budget, making it more difficult to pass the Legislature this session.
A University of Wisconsin professor of astronomy was one of the original developers of the Hubble Space Telescope, which changed the way people think about astronomy. Prior to his talk at the Space Place in Madison Tuesday, John Gallagher spoke to The Badger Herald about his involvement in the Hubble Space Telescope project.
A canine flu outbreak that has sickened hundreds of dogs in the Midwest over the past couple of weeks is caused by a different strain of the virus than was earlier assumed, researchers have now concluded.
About 100 university scientists and their advocates gathered here on Tuesday as part of an annual ritual to convince lawmakers of the value of federal spending on medical research.
