Stress can make the world around us smell unpleasant, the results of a new study are suggesting. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison used powerful brain imaging technologies to examine how stress and anxiety “re-wire” the brain.
Earlier this week Popular Science made news by stating this it will no longer allow comments on its articles. This decision was based in large part on a study earlier this year by UW-Madison Prof. Dominique Brossard and her team of researchers.
“People experiencing an increase in anxiety show a decrease in the perceived pleasantness of odors,” study co-author Dr. Wen Li, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a written statement. “It becomes more negative as anxiety increases … We encounter anxiety and as a result we experience the world more negatively.”
Wen Li, professor of psychology at University of Wisconsin-Madison, has found that human brains processing stressful situations — induced in subjects viewing disturbing images such as car crashes — transformed ?neutral? odors into unpleasant ones.
Popular Science is closing comments on its articles. Citing “trolls and spambots”, the 141-year-old American magazine has decided that an open forum at the bottom of articles “can be bad for science”.
Predicting when and how much to water fields is especially difficult when weather conditions trend to the extreme. UW-Madison research is yielding technologies that help farmers fine-tune irrigation to save water and the energy needed to pump it. An online tool called WISP 2012, developed by UW-Madison soil and water conservation specialists, makes it easier to make better decisions about when and how much to water.
High levels of stress makes can make the world stink ? literally. In an effort to map the human sense of smell, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that anxiety and stress may temporarily rewire the brain by linking olfaction to emotion. As a result, neutral scents begin to take on malodorous characteristics.
Comments can be bad for science. That?s why, here at PopularScience.com, we?re shutting them off.
This is a story about four women. It spans more than 100 years, but the setting?s a little trickier to pin down. It could be said it takes place on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, but it might be more accurate to say it leapt from the worn pages of century-old scrapbooks to a boundless network of social media connections.
Of course, water tech isn?t confined to the Milwaukee area. Water research programs exist at UW-Madison, with its Sea Grant Institute and Center for Limnology, and UW campuses in Stevens Point, Superior and Whitewater.
UW-Madison researchers provides an in-depth guide to the wide world of Wisconsin fish from minnows ? there are 11 types listed ? to muskies.
The third annual Wisconsin Science Festival is set to start next week.
Neil Heinen talks to the directors of the Waisman Center, the UW research center celebrating its 40th anniversary.
It has always been a challenge to describe the Waisman Center on the University of Wisconsin?Madison campus.
If you cook the bacon, they will come. That?s what a team of food science researchers at UW-Madison learned Tuesday, when their bacon tasting drew more samplers in a matter of hours than similar events usually draw in days.
PRAIRIE DU SAC, Wis. – Cows stand patiently in a tent-like chamber at a research farm in western Wisconsin, waiting for their breath to be tested. Outside, corrals have been set up with equipment to measure gas wafting from the ground. A nearby corn field contains tools that allow researchers to assess the effects of manure spread as fertilizer.
Noted: Depending on our personalities, and how we?re raised, the ability to reframe may or may not come easily. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, notes that while one child may stay rattled by an event for days or weeks, another child may rebound within hours. (Neurotic people tend to recover more slowly.)
Scientists based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have started a slew of studies to determine how dairy farms can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite last year?s successful hunt and plans for another this year limited to 251 wolves, a UW-Madison survey found public opinion remains entrenched.
Call it a telescope, call it a detector, or call it an observatory — it?s all the same to the University of Wisconsin scientists at the IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory, which is now the world?s largest neutrino research array. Constructed between 2005 and 2010, the IceCube array consists of 86 identical holes, drilled 1.5 miles deep, scattered throughout the ice and filled with extremely sensitive particle physics monitoring equipment.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Shanan Peters says the only way we can have any hope of determining what the future holds is by questioning past changes that have taken place on Earth.
A new study conducted by UW researchers demonstrates the effects of sleep deprivation on hedonic, or reward-seeking, eating behaviors. The study is the first to show how overactive brain chemistry can lead to hedonic eating when people are sleep deprived.
Madison Catholic school children will not have any more field trips to the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. The center conducts embryonic stem cell research.
In a move that deepens its research and innovation team, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has named a former top executive with Dow Chemical Co. to staff positions with its department of chemical and biological engineering and the Wisconsin Energy Institute.
Despite strong improvements in manufacturing hiring, Wisconsin still lags the nation as a whole in recovering from the 2007 recession, says a new report from a UW-Madison economic think tank.
A new study sheds light on the role sleep plays in the the ability of the brain?s cells to grow and repair themselves.
The U.S. space agency NASA says a super storm on Saturn offered a rare glimpse into the planet?s thick inner atmosphere, revealing ?the first detection at Saturn of water ice.?
Once every 30 years or so, a massive storm rages on Saturn, mixing up the atmosphere and revealing some of the ringed planets hidden secrets.
A UW-Madison professor?s work tracking how muriquis ? a species of monkeys found in the coastal forests of Brazil ? are adapting to population growth is featured in the current issue of Smithsonian magazine.
Scientists believe they have discovered a new reason why we need to sleep – it replenishes a type of brain cell.
It?s hard to dispute that teachers are some of the hardest workers out there. They wake up at the crack of dawn and work long after their students have left for the day. And now, a small new study has identified a possible tool that could help prevent burnout among educators: Mindfulness.
It?s 9 o?clock on a June morning in a muggy tropical forest not far from Brazil?s Atlantic coast and brown howler monkeys have been roaring for an hour. But the muriquis?the largest primates in the Americas after human beings, and the animals that the anthropologist Karen Strier and I have huffed uphill to see?are still curled high in the crooks of trees, waiting for the morning sun to warm them.
The light bulb could get a brand new power source: genetically engineered E. Coli bacteria.The Biobulb project is the brainchild of AnaElise Beckman, Alexandra Cohn and Michael Zaiken, three juniors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The futuristic concept aims to create light from tiny microbes.
The Veterans Administration has given a $1.9 million grant to the UW-Madison integrative medicine program to work with doctors to improve the whole health of America?s veterans.
Hector DeLuca, Rock Mackie and Richard Davidson have the kind of academic credentials admired by their academic colleagues at UW-Madison and far beyond.
Last year?s first managed wolf hunt in Wisconsin history did not increase tolerance toward the animals among people who live in wolf country, a new survey by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers shows.
A leaked early version of a major forthcoming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations-affiliated panel of scientists that is often cited as the world?s top authority on global warming, is grabbing headlines this week. [Includes comment from Jim Kossin, one of the report’s authors and research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.]
Buried deep in the ice below the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, IceCube is the world?s largest and most remote neutrino observatory.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has received a nearly $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop new cybersecurity solutions to ensure the protection of the nation?s vast digital infrastructure. UW-Madison will collaborate with research teams at four other universities through this five-year award, which is entitled ?Rethinking Security in the Era of Cloud Computing.?
A new study by University of Wisconsin researchers shows that children who are exposed to lead are three times more likely to be suspended from school in fourth grade than those who are not exposed.
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, congratulated the University of Wisconsin-Madison yesterday on receiving a nearly $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation NSF to develop new cybersecurity solutions to ensure the protection of the nation?s vast digital infrastructure.
Bacteria is experiencing a boon as of late. Just recently, microorganisms have been used to make a better sunscreen. Another bright idea comes from scientists who are using bacteria as the key ingredient in a biological light bulb that requires no electricity. Quoted: Biochemistry major Michael Zaiken.
Scientists have long known that children with high levels of toxic lead in their bloodstream are more likely than others to behave impulsively, have shorter attention spans and lower IQs and do poorly in school.
U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin met with medical researchers today at the University of Wisconsin?s Milwaukee and Madison campuses.
Kayakers venturing out on a thrilling but potentially dangerous paddle to the Apostle Islands sea caves on Lake Superior can now check conditions from shore on a kiosk developed by UW-Madison researchers with the Sea Grant Institute.
Vision simply isn?t as objective a view of reality as we think it is, according to researchers at Yale University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Just saying a word can alter that reality.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are convinced the tests of the future will look like Crystals of Kaydor, a role-playing video game about aliens.
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institutes (NHLBI), in collaboration with the FDA, has awarded the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention a $368,000 grant to study the use of menthol cigarettes at UW-Madison.
Tammy Baldwin readily admits she has a soft spot for academic researchers and the federal dollars that often help to support them. Her grandfather was a UW-Madison biochemist who worked at the Institute for Enzyme Research for decades.
The serene peacefulness of Crystal Lake in Vilas County, Wisconsin is somewhat misleading. That?s because just below the water?s surface a war is being waged against an invasive fish species foreign to the state called Rainbow Smelt.
First, two teams of virologists created more dangerous versions of the deadly H5N1 flu. Now they want to give the H7N9 virus, which has already sickened at least 134 people and killed 43 people in Asia, a few new capabilities: drug resistance, faster transmission between people and the ability to sneak past the immune system.
Two years ago a pair of scientists sparked fears of a devastating virus. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Centre, in Rotterdam, separately found ways to make a strain of bird flu called H5N1 more contagious.
Fake web traffic has long plagued the online publishing world, but Dr. Paul Barford, computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin, is claiming the problem might be worse than suspected. And it?s costing some of the top online advertisers millions in wasted ad impressions.
Aeromedical evacuation is one of the world?s riskiest professions and accident rates are going up. But, the UW College of Engineering Flight Simulation Lab is working to reverse that trend.
People who suffer sudden cardiac arrest at a fitness center are more likely to survive than those stricken at other indoor locations such as restaurants or malls, according to a new study by Dr. Richard Page, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
More than 45,000 dogs and 68,000 monkeys have been killed in Madison at UW-Madison and Covance over the past 10 years, according to reports submitted to the U.S. Department of Agriculture by each facility. Many of these animals have endured multiple experimental procedures and profound environmental and social deprivation.
Gov. Scott Walker announced plans Wednesday for new University of Wisconsin buildings for dairy and meat science, according to a release.
The nations largest dairy research center is getting a big makeover.
World-renowned flu researchers, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Yoshihiro Kawaoka, are proposing the same kinds of experiments on China?s deadly bird flu virus that scientists voluntarily agreed to halt last year on a different, potentially deadly strain of bird flu.
Forget No. 2 pencils, or even the new computer-based common-core exams that have schools across the country scrambling. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are convinced the tests of the future will look like Crystals of Kaydor, a role-playing video game about aliens. (Registration required.)
