Category: Research

Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan hopes a new bill will improve opportunities for young scientists.

Noted: As the applications and their value multiplies, efforts have increased to develop alternative tests, rather than rely on harvesting the crabs. One approach uses an electronic chip that provides an alert when in contact with contaminants. Another system using liquid crystals, developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, could offer similar detection ability at lower cost.

America is at risk of losing an entire generation of scientists according to the National Institutes of Health. They say current U.S. policies are putting the brakes on research.

There?s a good chance that many of the suddenly trendy vegetables that foodies latch on to in the next decade will benefit from research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Doug Reinemann, Professor, Biological Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin?Madison, suggests the following ten do?s and don?ts when planning a milking parlor?especially for ?retrofit? and ?low-cost? alternatives.

Three-quarters of the phosphorus run-off that enters Lake Mendota arrives during 29 days each year, on average, according to a study published recently by UW-Madison researchers. The finding could have major implications in area efforts to clean up Madison-area lakes.

When a 15-year-old boy drowned in a rip current off a Port Washington beach two years ago, University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Chin Wu happened to be doing erosion research on a nearby bluff.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been awarded $3 million for nuclear power research projects from the U.S. Energy Department.

Noted: For while the open door of online mapmaking has produced a lot of maps, it?s also brought about a standardization of aesthetics. ?To make it easy for people to make a map,? says Daniel Huffman, a cartographer at the University of Wisconsin, ?you need to simplify the process down and make things very uniform.? Riffs on Google Maps look for the most part like Google Maps, with its top-down view, muted color scheme, choice of line weights, and approach to terrain. Even original maps created on Mapbox or other, more powerful geographic information system-based software can lead, at the very least, to design that is ?sterile,? according to cartographer Kenneth Field. Certainly, the style is ubiquitous.

A new Wisconsin study has modeled what the effects of climate change and evolving land use will mean for various species in the future.

Noted: The NIH will also study reviewers? work in finer detail, by analysing successful applications for R01 grants, the NIH?s largest funding programme for individual investigators. The goal is to see whether researchers can spot trends in the language used by reviewers to describe proposals put forward by applicants of different races. There is precedent for detectable differences: in a paper to be published in Academic Medicine, a team led by Molly Carnes, a physician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, used automated text analysis to show that reviewers? critiques of R01 grant applications by women tended to include more words denoting praise, as though the writer is surprised at the quality of the work. And numerous other studies show that different standards exist for men and women in a variety of fields. ?Women do, indeed, have to be twice as good to get the same competence rating as a man,? says Carnes.

Ebola is not the virus that keeps Marc Lipsitch up at night.

An interactive map posted online last week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms what you probably already knew about Wisconsin?s economy: Manufacturing and the jobs it produces are vital to the state.

Climate scientists have long been building models and analyzing available data to determine the effect of human activity on the global environment, but what about the time before humans? Was Earth in a warming or cooling period before human activity became a factor?

Noted: The University of Wisconsin-Madison and a private lab on the East Coast both were involved in verifying the remains as belonging to Gordon.

University of Wisconsin-Madison plant scientists intend to employ some highly sophisticated instruments to evaluate new varieties of organic vegetables: the palates of the people who produce or prepare them for discerning customers.

Quoted: The research was undertaken by University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Professor Zhengyu Liu.

Quoted: We spoke to one of the preeminent researchers in this area, Dr. Mark Berres, assistant professor of avian biology with the Department of Animal Sciences at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, about the Shazam-like app he?s been developing for a few years, called WeBIRD.

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently requested a figure for its annual report, to show global temperature trends over the last 10,000 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Zhengyu Liu knew that was going to be a problem. ?We have been building models and there are now robust contradictions,? says Liu, a professor in the UW-Madison Center for Climatic Research. ?Data from observation says global cooling. The physical model says it has to be warming.?

UW-Madison field crops pathologist Damon Smith has been getting calls, photos and plant samples of soybeans showing abnormal growth and leaves with varying degrees of interwoven green and yellow areas, symptoms indicative of alfalfa mosaic virus (AMV).

A multi-institutional team has resolved a long-unanswered question about how two of the world?s most common substances interact. In a paper published recently in the journal Nature Communications, Manos Mavrikakis, professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his collaborators report fundamental discoveries about how water reacts with metal oxides.

The DNA Sequencing Facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Biotechnology Center analyzed the DNA, along with a private lab on the East Coast, and concluded it belonged to Gordon.

DNA research, done at the UW-Madison identified the remains of Private First Class Lawrence Gordon back in February.

Noted: The DNA Sequencing Facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Biotechnology Center analyzed the DNA, along with a private lab on the east coast, and concluded it belonged to Gordon. Forensic scientists in Madison in June examined the skeletal remains of the soldier for further forensic evidence when Gordon was brought back by his family from the German ossuary in France to U.S soil.

he DNA lab at the University of Wisconsin may help bring the final member of a World War II unit home.

Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, counseled us to be expecting such proportional reporting. In his recent book ?How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking,? Ellenberg includes a chapter titled ?How Much Is That in Dead Americans?? It debunks precisely the calculation that Barnard unfurls in her New York Times article.

Hydraulic fracturing has increased seven-fold across the United States since 2007. Over that time period, scientists? knowledge of the environmental impacts of fracking has not progressed nearly this much. Startlingly little research has looked at biological effects of this process on the environment and wildlife. But what we do know is alarming enough that more research is urgently needed, according to a new study, and the lack of knowledge quite stunning.

Barley research is being conducted by UW-Madison in collaboration with UW Extension and the University of Minnesota at the Peninsular Agriculture Research Station just north of Sturgeon Bay. Work there has been ongoing for 10 years, but this year?s crop of more than 30 varieties on three acres was wiped out, along with other crops, during a July 14 hail storm.

?The reason we proposed the concept of dark matter is because we cannot explain the total mass of the universe,? says Swagato Banerjee, a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin. ?And the only way we know how fundamental particles acquire mass is through the Higgs mechanism. So if dark matter is fundamental, it has to interact with the Higgs to acquire mass, at least in our known framework.?

It?s about a whole lot more than free pizza, casual Fridays and the boss?s open-door policy. That?s the main message of Engaging Government Employees, a book by Robert Lavigna, and it?s one that leaders of government organizations large and small should pay attention to.

Amid new concerns about lab safety lapses and in a counterpoint to recent calls for restrictions on research that may render pathogens more dangerous, 36 scientists from several countries have issued a formal statement asserting that research on potentially dangerous pathogens can be done safely and is necessary for a full understanding of infectious diseases.

Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair of Urban Education at University of Wisconsin-Madison, discussed racial disparity in school suspensions with HuffPost Live?s Marc Lamont-Hill on Tuesday.

A new University of Wisconsin-Madison report shows the number of divorces among couples with different levels of education is falling.

The Trout Lake Research Station is inviting the public to step inside a limnologist?s world for an afternoon.

Raising teens can be a challenge, and a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and graduate student are recruiting participants for a study exploring the role of wisdom in parenting and raising teens.

Imbed Biosciences Inc. has received a federal research grant of $1.5 million to continue developing biologic dressings that could be used to prevent wound infections and promote cell growth and healing.