Category: Research

In 2011, Yoshihiro Kawaoka reported that his team had engineered a pandemic form of the bird flu virus. Bird flu, also known as H5N1, has infected infected nearly 700 people worldwide and killed more than 400. But it hasn’t yet gained the ability to jump easily from human to human. Kawaoka’s research suggested that capability might be closer than anyone had imagined. His team showed that their virus could successfully hop from ferret to ferret via airborne droplets. In addition to scaring the bejesus out of many, Kawaoka’s controversial study, and a similar study by Ron Fouchier in the Netherlands, also sparked a debate about the wisdom of engineering novel and potentially deadly pathogens in the lab.

Today we debut a new series of natural history commentaries, featuring scientists from two Northwoods field stations: UW-Madison’s Trout Lake and Kemp Research Stations.

A technology in development at the University of Wisconsin that mimics human tissue in scientific research is showing promising results and could replace animal testing.

With more than $1 billion spent in 2013 on research at UW-Madison, the university has maintained its ranking as one of the top U.S. universities in research expenditures.

Theres no shortage of foot traffic on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

When scientists studied Albert Einstein’s brain they discovered he had more astrocytes, star-shaped cells, in his brain than other people. But our understanding of what these cells do is poor.

January and February are part of the mating season for coyotes and foxes, which is good news for UW-Madison professor David Drake and his research team.

Dr. Stephen Carpenter, of UW-Madison, is one of 18 international authors sharing the message that humans are impacting the world’s ecosystems and changes must be made to ensure life on Earth continues.

Noted: David O’Connor, a pathology professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, realized that digital treasure trove might also include information about GBV-C. And sure enough, he found the genetic fingerprints of that virus in the records of 13 samples of blood plasma from the Ebola study. Though six of the 13 people who were co-infected with Ebola and GBV-C died, seven survived.

With portions of the population leaning either “red” or “blue,” it seems both sides are growing ever further apart in Wisconsin, and the 2014 midterm election results seem to back that up. According to Kathy Cramer, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, that polarization is making us a lot less willing to talk about politics.

Here is a nice thought: What if kids were taught kindness and empathy along with traditional academic skills? For 12 weeks, a Wisconsin public school district tried it out on a group of preschool kids, reports University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist Lisa Flook in Developmental Psychology. At the end of the course, the children who’d taken the “kindness curriculum” scored better on tests designed to measure both social skills and attention; these kids also received higher grades on their report cards than their peers who hadn’t taken part in the curriculum.

A University of Wisconsin research laboratory that attracted controversy for using live cats in experiments is closing this year, the school said.

Though criticized by PETA and other animal rights groups for it use of cats in its research into how the brain localizes sound, UW-Madison said such criticism had no bearing on its decision to close the lab, saying that the retirement of neuroscience professor Tom Yin is the driving force.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have identified two new fluorescent agents that target tumors, lighting up brain cancer cells, a feature that could prove useful in surgery.

The national animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is claiming credit for closing a University of Wisconsin lab that conducted research on cats.

The retirement of a highly respected senior neuroscientist at the center of a sustained recent publicity campaign by an animal rights group generated a victory claim on Friday when PETA realized that their target had retired.

Richard Davidson, professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, touted the importance of being mindful, especially in the workplace.

Since its founding in 1980, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals PETA has sought to end animal research. Its tactics have changed over the years, as have its targets, which have broadened to include fast food, factory farms, and the cosmetics industry. As PETA shifts gears yet again—launching a new campaign to target animal research by publishing in peer-reviewed scientific literature—Science looks back at its 4-decade crusade.

Whenever 11-year-old Meg Heinzen plays piano, she can anticipate the notes. Yet as a young child, her family could never have anticipated her habit of rolling her eyes at them could mean something more serious.

When groups of people come together and pool their resources, great things can be accomplished flinging humans onto the Moon comes to mind. In the US, the National Science Foundation is a factory of great things. It guides billions of tax dollars into university research projects each year in 2015, $7.344 billion to be exact. And since science costs money, one unhappy necessity of the academic lifestyle is securing funding to keep the lights on and the lab running. Give a kid a grant-writing kit to go with their chemistry set for Christmas. See if they play with it. NSF grants are the lifeblood of many fields of science.

It should be a wake-up call to policymakers that “we’re running up to and beyond the biophysical boundaries that enable human civilization as we know it to exist,” Steve Carpenter, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology, said in a statement.

Noted: For instance, one study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared children who talked and instant-messaged with their mothers after a stressful situation. The researchers measured cortisol, known as the stress hormone, and oxytocin, a hormone noticed in positive relationships. The children who talked to their mothers showed decreased stress and increased positive feelings, while those who instant-messaged remained stressed.

It’s increasingly apparent that schools can do exceptional things when you give them 3D printers. Need proof? The University of Wisconsin’s Mechanical Engineering department is using its advanced selective laser sintering printer to make a wide range of intricate projects, including 3D music scores for the blind.

Dr Angela Dassow and Professor Michael Coen explain how white- handed Gibbons make themselves understood.