Category: Research

Multiple studies have revealed that the life expectancy of women in the United States has declined in recent decades, leaving experts searching for the cause. Research published in March by University of Wisconsin researchers David Kindig and Erika Cheng found that female mortality rates went up in nearly half of U.S. counties between 1992 and 2006. For men, only 3% of counties witnessed increases in male mortality over the same period.

After returning from an African research expedition, pathobiology professor Tony Goldberg found an unexpected stowaway: a tick hiding up his right nostril. ?When you first realize you have a tick up your nose, it takes a lot of willpower not to claw your face off,” Goldberg, a University of Wisconsin?Madison researcher, says in a statement. But Goldberg managed to retrieve the tick from his nostril and send it off for analysis, leading him to not just discover a potentially new species of tick, but what could also be a new explanation for how diseases spread between chimps and humans.

Most climate projection models show Wisconsin winters becoming warmer and shorter with more rain and less snow, with the exception of some big snowstorms. Michael Notaro, the associate director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, predicts that winter will be warmer by several degrees by mid-century, reducing the severity of the season.

Move over, Lucy: Researchers say Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus may also be in the sky, with diamonds. The atmospheres of these gas-ball planets have the perfect temperature and pressure conditions to host carbon in the form of diamond, say Mona Delitsky of California Specialty Engineering in Pasadena, California, and Kevin Baines of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison have been studying insects that affect cranberries for years, and have found that the flea beetle is becoming more and more problematic.

Just because the government shutdown is pressing on in Washington, doesn?t mean there aren?t other important issues out there to focus on ? like cats.That?s Bill Maher?s focus as the HBO ?Real Time? host is partnering up with PETA to campaign against ?cruel cat experiments.?

Move over, Lucy: Researchers say Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus may also be in the sky, with diamonds.The atmospheres of these gas-ball planets have the perfect temperature and pressure conditions to host carbon in the form of diamond, say Mona Delitsky of California Specialty Engineering in Pasadena, California, and Kevin Baines of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Tony Goldberg had been back from Uganda for only about a day when he felt a distressingly familiar itch in his nose. A veterinary epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he had just spent a few weeks in Kibale National Park studying chimpanzees and how the diseases they carry might make the jump to humans. Now, he realized, he might have brought one of their parasites home with him.

By the end of the work day, an estimated 100,000 phone numbers in Madison will be auto-dialed with a recorded message from comedian Bill Maher, talking about “the terrible things done to cats” during medical experiments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been cleared to continue a research study involving cats after complaints that the animals were mistreated.

Unlike a clinic or hospital setting, school nurses aren?t surrounded by their peers. In addition, some may not have had a lot of course work on kids with chronic health conditions, said Lori S. Anderson, assistant professor at the UW-Madison School of Nursing.

Tony Goldberg, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found that he had an unwelcome stowaway from his trip to a national park in Uganda: a tick up his nose. Being a professional, Goldberg extracted the tick, and found that it doesnt match any other kind of tick on record. It looks as though hes found an entirely new species, next to his boogers.

I really don?t want to make a bad joke here about it being right under his nose this whole time!, but the fact remains that Tony Goldberg, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is pretty sure that the tick he picked out of his nostril after a trip to Uganda is an entirely new species.

Noted: To justify its ban, Popular Science turned to science, citing a recent study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggesting that people?s perceptions of the riskiness of a scientific advance can become more entrenched and polarized after reading comments written in an uncivil tone.

A tick that hitched a ride in a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher?s nostril when he returned from Uganda last year may be a disease-carrying species that someday could pose a threat in the U.S.

The first two times Tony Goldberg found a tick in his nose, he was in rural Uganda and responded like the rest of us. ?I was grossed out enough that I wanted them away from me,? he said. The third time, the symptoms were the same ? slight irritation and pain as if he?d blown the schnoz a few too many times ? but the scene shifted to his laboratory at UW-Madison.

This is the third post in our gender gap symposium (see here and here for the first two.) We are delighted to welcome Daniel Maliniak, a PhD candidate in Political Science at University of California, San Diego, and Ryan Powers, a graduate student in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Daniel and Ryan are co-authors of the citations paper.

A tick that hitched a ride in the nose of a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher when he returned from Uganda last year may be a disease-carrying species that someday could pose a threat in the U.S.

A new book debuting Tuesday aims to  help parents navigate the dangers and benefits of the Internet and social media, based on research at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.

Well, this stinks: Some scents could screw up your mood, says a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

We?re living in the epoch some scientists call the ?Anthropocene??an age in which human influence touches nearly everything on the planet. Forty years after the signing of the Endangered Species Act, and nearly 50 years after the Wilderness Act, do we need to rethink how we protect nature? Environmental historian William Cronon and environmental geographer Paul Robbins discuss protecting wild places in the age of climate change.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

Neil Heinen talks to the directors of the Waisman Center, the UW research center celebrating its 40th anniversary.

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.

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.

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.