One of the world?s leading vaccine experts has questioned the scientific rationale behind controversial research on the 2009 strain of pandemic flu virus undertaken by Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Category: Research
Electric fish give up their secrets
Scientists theorize that catfish used to communicate by making bubbles. Other catfish would see messages in the bubbles and react accordingly.?
UW Influenza Research Institute reassures safety of work
The UW-Madison Influenza Research Institute says its work is both necessary and safe.
UW-Madison faculty leading higher ed coalition to promote importance of video games
The Higher Education Video Game Alliance was launched Tuesday at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colo. It is comprised of video game design programs at 13 universities that will act as a forum to align efforts and information in a “drastically growing sector,” says Constance Steinkuehler, the alliance?s first executive director.
Susan West and Timothy Yoshino: UW flu research is important and safe
At UW-Madison, we do not take lightly our responsibility for its safe and secure conduct. The Influenza Research Institute is a high-level biosafety facility designated Biosafety Level 3 Agriculture, the highest in the Level 3 category. It operates under conditions very different from most other Biosafety Level 3 labs and was constructed expressly for the influenza work performed there.
Controversial American scientist slammed for irresponsible flu research
Senior scientists have criticised an American university for allowing controversial research on enhancing a pandemic strain of flu virus to be undertaken in a laboratory with a relatively low level of biosecurity.
Are we mad to let Yoshihiro Kawaoka create a virus that could wipe out 400m people?
What was extraordinary about the great flu pandemic of 2018 was not only that it came exactly 100 years after the Spanish flu of 1918, but that it also killed 5 per cent of the world?s population.
How scared should we be of lab-created flu outbreaks?
According to articles in the UK press, Yoshi Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has “deliberately created a pandemic strain of flu that can evade the human immune system”. Some reports even allege the work recreates the deadly 1918 pandemic flu virus in a form that resists vaccines.
Susan West and Timothy Yoshino: UW flu research is important and safe
There is no such thing as zero risk when it comes to the study of pathogenic agents such as influenza. But the research, which has been deemed a priority by both the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization, is critical to our ability to forecast, combat and potentially prevent the outbreak of deadly pandemic disease.
‘How Not To Be Wrong’ In Math Class? Add A Dose Of Skepticism
In How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, University of Wisconsin professor Jordan Ellenberg celebrates the virtues of mathematics, especially when they?re taught well. He writes that a math teacher has to be a guide to good reasoning, and “a math course that fails do so is essentially teaching the student to be a very slow, buggy version of Microsoft Excel. And, let?s be frank, that really is what many of our math courses are doing.”
Exclusive: Controversial US scientist creates deadly new flu strain for pandemic research
A controversial scientist who carried out provocative research on making influenza viruses more infectious has completed his most dangerous experiment to date by deliberately creating a pandemic strain of flu that can evade the human immune system.
Scientist creates deadly new flu strain for pandemic research
A scientist who carried out research on making influenza viruses more infectious has deliberately created a potentially lethal strain of flu that can evade the human immune system.
Response to dictionary survey surges after report
APPLETON ? From Milwaukee to Menasha, dozens have dished on their local wordology for the Dictionary of American Regional English re-haul, but researchers are hoping for more.
UW-Madison’s The Why Files honored as one of best teaching sites online
The online science magazine The Why Files from UW-Madison has been named one of the 25 best teaching and learning websites.
Flu virus research resembles a horror movie — Randi Huntsman
Reading Sunday?s article “Biosafety expert: Work ?scary,?” about UW-Madison?s Yoshihiro Kawaoka?s research with deadly flu viruses, reminds me of old-fashioned vampire movies.
Can You Read This? Wine May Help Reduce Vision Loss
Wine lovers can feel a bit more confident that the small print on back labels won?t grow too blurry as they age. Research from the University of Wisconsin suggests that moderate wine consumption can lower the risk of long-term visual impairment.
Study finds half of young adults with full-time jobs continue to rely on family for financial help
About half of all young adults are struggling to achieve financial security in their transition from college to adulthood and are continuing to rely on family for financial support, despite being employed full-time, according to the latest report from a longitudinal study.
Early childhood stresses can have lifelong impact, UW study shows
Dipesh Navsaria, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said that in order to address the achievement gap, the focus must be on the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. Research shows that significant development occurs in the brain during the first three years of a child’s life, and being read to daily can build and stimulate a base for cognitive and emotional development.
Mallory O’Brien tackles city’s homicides by digging deep into data
Noted: O?Brien is an academic, an epidemiologist with a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
John R. Thurston: Harry Harlow a gifted researcher, understood need to verify findings
The writer, professor emeritus at UW-Eau Claire and a protege of the late UW primate researcher Harry Harlow, defends Harlow’s research techniques.
Researchers trace genetic origins of electric organ in fish
The South American electric eel and hundreds of other electric fish evolved in six distinct lines over a period of 400 million years, developing an electric organ from what had once been muscle and providing a fascinating laboratory for the study of evolution.
Trice: Author takes on mass incarceration
Sociologist Alice Goffman is a 5-foot-2-inch white woman who grew up in privilege in Philadelphia?s historic and affluent neighborhood of Center City.
Biosafety in the balance
The news last week of an accident involving live anthrax bacteria at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, is troubling. Some 84 workers were potentially exposed to the deadly Ames strain at three CDC labs. But the incident will cause much wider ripples: it highlights the risks of the current proliferation of biocontainment labs and work on dangerous pathogens. If an accident can happen at the CDC, then it can happen anywhere.
UW-Madison flu studies raise risk more than prevent it, biosafety panelist says
UW-Madison scientist Yoshihiro Kawaoka says he?s creating potentially deadly flu viruses to help prevent a pandemic, but a campus biosafety panel member says the research could cause more harm than good because the viruses could escape from the lab.
Max Rosenbaum: Beware of risky flu virus research
I strongly concur with the epidemiologists from Harvard and Yale who warned about the potential release of a possible virulent virus in the June 12 article about UW-Madison flu research.
New UW Fund To Help Alzheimer’s Research
Alzheimer?s disease research is one of the first projects supported by a fund created to commercialize medical technology developed by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Researchers To Set Up ‘Critter Cams’ To Snap Photos Of Elusive Animals
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore will take snap shots of otherwise elusive predator mammals later this summer.
Anthrax? That?s Not the Real Worry
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently discovered that at least 75 workers there had been exposed to possible anthrax infection.
What turns on electric fish? UW-Madison research offers new clues
?This is the first complete genome sequence for an electric fish, in particular a strong electric fish,? said Michael Sussman, a biochemistry professor at UW-Madison who?s also director of the UW Biotechnology Center. Along with graduate students Lindsay Traeger and Jeremy Volkening, Sussman helped lead the 16 researchers from throughout the country who were part of the study.
That’s shocking! Genes reveal electric eels evolved their supercharged muscles separately 200 million years ago
For the first time, the genome of the electric eel has been sequenced.
How Evolution Gave Some Fish Their Electric Powers
The electric eel is one of the many creatures Charles Darwin sliced up and examined in his years aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. When he cut it open, he found that 80 percent of the fish?s body was taken up by three organs made of what looked like muscle tissue, but not quite. This is where the animal makes electricity.
How Electric Eels Evolved to Shock
Electric fish evolved the ability to shock by converting a simple muscle into an organ capable of generating an electric field, scientists have discovered.
A Shocking Fish Tale Surprises Evolutionary Biologists
The electric eel?s powerful ability to deliver deadly shocks ? up to 600 volts ? makes it the most famous electric fish, but hundreds of other species produce weaker electric fields. Now, a new genetic study of electric fish has revealed the surprising way they got electrified.
Greenland Ice Sheet may face tipping point, Oregon State study indicates
Using sediment core evidence taken from the sea floor off Greenland?s coast, the team of researchers from Oregon State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison were able to estimate the extent of the Greenland Ice Sheet during an interglacial period 400,000 years ago, when global sea levels were much higher than today.
Weather center at UW-Madison getting more computer power
The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) system will get a performance upgrade as UW-Madison becomes one of the few institutions in the world to have an Intel Parallel Computing Center.
Hoops and Holsteins: UW-Madison student savors some big wins
Like many UW students, Jordan Ebert found himself in Dallas this March, cheering on the Wisconsin Badgers for their Final Four match-up with the Kentucky Wildcats, adding to a list of memorable moments in his young undergraduate career.
A new sustainability certificate will use the UW-Madison campus as a laboratory
For Cathy Middlecamp, placing academic disciplines in the context of sustainability comes naturally.
Cosmic dust may get in way of new evidence of “Big Bang”
In March, BICEP2, a collaboration of physicists, announced that it had found evidence of primordial gravitational waves, ripples in space and time that are considered a “smoking gun” for a period of inflation in the early universe. Quoted: Daniel Chung, associate professor of physics (not in Experts Guide) and Peter Timbie, professor of physics (in Experts Guide).
Are High Energy Neutrinos from Outer Space Really a Big Deal?
It may seem as though every new day brings an announcement of a scientific breakthrough of the highest order. Should you freak out about every new record-breaking neutrino? In this week?s “Ask a Physicist,” we?ll find out.
The Gray Market: An invisible $2 trillion economy
According to Edgar Feige, economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, unreported income totals $2 trillion in the U.S. That includes illegal activities like drug dealing, but it also includes side jobs like nannies and eBay sellers.
Student Debt Is Hurting Homeownership For Blacks More than Whites
Is student loan debt causing young adults to retreat from the housing market en masse? No, but it?s having some impact, and the debt burden appears to be hitting black borrowers harder than whites, says a recent paper from researchers Jason Houle of Dartmouth College and Lawrence Berger of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Sweltering Summer Is Unlikely For Wisconsin, UW Professor Says
Wisconsin?s summer could be cooler than normal this year, according to a Wisconsin meteorologist, leaving it in uncertain territory when it comes to severe weather.
Math: The Ultimate BS Detector
Chances are that when you think about math?which, for most of us, happens pretty infrequently?you don?t think of it in anything like the way that Jordan Ellenberg does. Ellenberg is a rare scholar who is both a math professor (at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and a novelist.
UW-Madison College of Engineering receives $25 million grant
A $25 million grant will allow the UW-Madison College of Engineering to hire 25 new faculty members with the goals of creating a more interdisciplinary teaching approach and focusing on manufacturing advances to boost the nation?s economic competitiveness.
On Campus: UW-Madison scientists prepare dairy curriculum in China
Wisconsin?s reputation as America?s Dairyland was further solidified globally with last week?s announcement that UW-Madison has been selected to develop the curriculum for a new $400 million dairy training center in China.
UW-Madison College Of Engineering Gets Funds For New Institute
The College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is receiving $25 million to go towards a new research institute in its largest single gift ever.
US university creates curriculum for Nestlé training center in China
The University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, will develop the curriculum for a $400m Nestlé dairy training center in China.
Tom Still: UW-Madison professor’s project draws fire in Internet age
The engineering of a flu virus similar to one that killed 40 million people in 1918 has some scientists sharply criticizing the work of University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka, who generated a virus that differed from its pandemic ancestor by only 3% of the amino acids that make up virus proteins.
Anneliese Emerson: Don’t fall for UW’s indoctrination on
The writer believes that “Madison media remain silent while the public is indoctrinated by UW with deceptive promises of breakthroughs for human diseases and false claims that medical progress requires using animals.”
Riddiough: Why Commercial Real Estate Bubbles May Belong to the Past
Houston in the 1980s was a city of vacant office towers. Even as the oil boom turned to glut and the economy sank, real estate developers doubled the size of the office market from 1980 to 1986, according to commercial real estate performance tracker Reis.
Is It “Madness” to Rebuild a Flu Virus That Wiped Out 50 Million People?
Remember the Spanish Flu of 1918? Of course you don?t. That?s the freakishly deadly influenza strain that swept the globe in 1918 and 1919, wiping out 30 million to 50 million people. It infected about one in four Americans and killed about 675,000. It didn?t just kill little kids and the elderly, either, like most flu strains. This one was unusually devastating in young, healthy people?although why the “mother of all pandemics” behaved as it did is not fully understood.
Commercial Real Estate Didn’t Boom and Bust. Is This Why?
When the U.S. housing market boomed and busted in the past decade, commercial real estate was comparatively placid.
Learn to Love Math
Students have been taught that math is about right and wrong, rather than trial and error. Over the three years Jordan Ellenberg was writing his book, he repeatedly encountered the same reaction to its subject. ?I?d be at a party, and I?d tell someone what my book was about, and then I?d be like ? ?Hey, where?d you go??? What topic was so awful and off-putting as to make people flee at its mere mention? Math.
The treatment and cost of autism
Waisman Center experts discuss the cost and treatment of autism in this Wisconsin Public Radio talk show segment.
UW-Madison scientist creates new flu virus in lab
Yoshihiro Kawaoka, whose bird flu research sparked international controversy and a moratorium two years ago, has created another potentially deadly flu virus in his lab at University Research Park. Kawaoka used genes from several bird flu viruses to construct a virus similar to the 1918 pandemic flu virus that killed up to 50 million people worldwide. He tweaked the new virus so it spread efficiently in ferrets, an animal model for human flu.
Compound could improve cancer detection, treatment
An experimental compound being developed by a Madison company could help doctors better detect and treat many types of cancer, a new UW-Madison study says. The compound, which is thought not to accumulate in healthy cells, ?is essentially a cancer-homing agent to which we can attach many different payloads,? Dr. John Kuo, a UW-Madison brain surgeon and an author of the study, said.
FDA backs off claims that wooden boards are unsanitary
Cited: Center for Dairy Research.
Half of college grads still rely on parents for money
Students who graduated college in the throes of the recession are still struggling to make it on their own.
The Truth Behind Gen Y?s Financial Optimism
On the surface, Gen Y, those ebullient 20-somethings smiling into their phones as they snap selfies, can seem glowingly optimistic about their futures. Despite the major recession they?ve already faced and seen their parents struggle with, they often tell researchers that they think they will eventually find their footing and establish a standard of living at least as good as the one they enjoyed growing up with their parents.
UW researchers identify agents that can target tumors
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say they have found a group of agents that can seek out and find dozens of kinds of solid tumors, a finding that may lead to new treatments.