Category: Research

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison are studying enzymes found in leaf-cutter ant colonies that may be used in biofuel production.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) ? Wisconsin?s potato growers have helped create a new professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison which is expected to lead to promising advances in potato breeding. DNA sequencing and other biotechnology have helped speed plant breeding in many food crops. But the potato is a different story.

“Sesame Street” has created its first Muppet whose parent is in jail. And some people aren?t happy.

In his lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Hongrui Jiang has designed a new kind of solar panel that incorporates energy storage right in the panel.

Video games have had their fair share of controversies over the past few decades. Games like Manhunt, Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 have all caused some measure of public outrage for their depictions of violence. However all three games had two things in common ? they do not suggest they are anything but pure fiction, and the violence means the games have a mature rating, suitable only to those 17 or more years old,

A research team at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has demonstrated the viability of a design for solar panels that can simultaneously generate and store electrons harvested from sunlight in a single device.

It?s brought to you by the letter P ? for prison. PBS?s ?Sesame Street? is moving from ABCs and counting numbers to offering its young viewers a bigger lesson in life: how to cope when Mommy or Daddy lands behind bars.

A snowy winter and a rainy spring have helped breed more mosquitoes in Wisconsin.University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Phil Pelliterri said standing water in flooded ditches and other spots is just what mosquitoes like. Green Bay has seen more than three-quarters of an inch of rain in June after having about three-quarters of an inch above normal rainfall in May and April.

Mosquitos are expected to thrive in Wisconsin this summer in a return to a normal season. ?If they haven?t received their first mosquito bite, it?s coming,? says University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Phil Pellitteri of fellow Wisconsinites.

What has more consciousness: a puppy or a baby? An iPhone 5 or an octopus? For a long time, the question seemed impossible to address. But recently, Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, argued that consciousness can be measured?captured in a single value that he calls ?, the Greek letter phi.

Spending just a few minutes looking through your own Facebook page can lead to a boost in self-esteem, but it can also cause users to become unmotivated.

Cellular Dynamics International, created by UW-Madison stem cell pioneer James Thomson in 2004, plans to sell its stock on the public market, the first Madison company to go public in si

Cellular Dynamics International, created by UW-Madison stem cell pioneer James Thomson in 2004, plans to sell its stock on the public market, the first Madison company to go public in six years.

A new study from the UW-Madison?s Wisconsin Energy Institute calls for the state to take a new approach to energy policy as costs continue to climb and alternatives aren?t being pursued fast enough to replace the state?s dependence on coal.

Even if you?re not living your best life you can make it look like you are on Facebook, and just glimpsing this idealized version of yourself can provide a rush of self-esteem, a new study shows.

When you think of things to do to improve your self-esteem or self-image, you probably don?t think about heading to Facebook. It might actually be the last place you think of, given that a percentage of people leave Facebook because of the negativity on the social network.

Forget a cup of coffee or power nap – the fastest way to boost your mood is to look at Facebook.

Certain linguistic manners can be used to help identify deception in business, experimental research has concluded. The use of complex and long-winded language and even swearing, could point to dishonesty by the person across the negotiating table.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have carried out an experiment in which human stem cells were used to help rats engineered to model amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known Lou Gehrig?s disease.

Researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison have reprogrammed cells from people with Down syndrome and used them to seek greater understanding of what goes wrong in the disorder.

It?s not easy being the Dalai Lama. Not only are you handpicked for the job at age 2, with no real choice to become a firefighter, artist or cowboy, but you spend much of the rest of your life ? at least, this reincarnation ? answering the unanswerable.

Can people be taught to act more altruistically? Newly published research, measuring both brain activity and behavior, suggests the answer just may be yes.

Two thousand years after the Kizilburun shipwreck, excavating archaeologists have figured out exactly where it came from, where it was headed, and why. Sometime between 100 B.C.E and 25 B.C.E., a wooden ship carrying almost 60 tonnes of stone foundered in Aegean waters just off the coast of Turkey. It went down bearing its entire cargo, including eight massive drum-shaped blocks of white marble. Those blocks fit together to form part of a tapering column that likely stood more than 11 meters tall, plus a square uppermost piece: a Doric column.

Helen Weng, like thousands of other Madison residents, is reaching the end of that long crawl toward a Ph.D. Unlike many of the University of Wisconsin?s underpaid grad students, Weng already has had a taste of the limelight that is usually reserved for full-fledged professors.

Brain cells have been grown from skin cells of adults with Down?s syndrome in research that could shed new light on the condition.

If you?re kind of a jerk, but at least concerned about your jerk-ness, take heart: researchers say they?ve shown it?s possible to increase compassion in adults. The University of Wisconsin-Madison actually has a whole department dedicated to this kind of thing, the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, and researchers there set up an experiment recently to see if they could get a group of people to be more excellent to each other.

An elementary school principal has inspired the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create a new wheelchair lift that could help make more places wheelchair accessible.

Adult kids? relationships with their parents can be complicated, to say the least. And according to a new study out of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a father?s divorce and remarriage can make those relationships even more complex.

 Wisconsin?s Tobacco Quit Line has seen a surge of calls since March, when a national campaign called Tips from Former Smokers started.A University of Wisconsin (UW) Madison tobacco researcher calls the campaign ?hard hitting? and personal. 

A recent MSN Money article noted that the shadow economy is “?estimated to have reached as much as $2 trillion last year, according to a study (.pdf file) co-written by Edgar Feige, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Richard Cebula, a finance professor at Jacksonville University.”

Newly published research has found that Lake Superior?s warming water probably is affecting its most abundant big fish.

New research indicates that Lake Superior?s warming water is probably already affecting its most abundant big fish: the cold water-loving siscowet lake trout. Increasing water temperatures over the last three decades have made conditions more favorable for chinook salmon, walleye and lean lake trout but less favorable for siscowet lake trout.The study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates that fatty siscowets have lost about 20 percent of their historic habitat because of the temperature changes that have already occurred.

The unexpected death of Mahal, the wild-haired young orangutan and star Milwaukee County Zoo attraction, was the result of a severe tapeworm infection, the zoo announced Monday. The finding came after months of work and was the result of DNA sequencing by Tony L. Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.

A practiced liar can be extremely difficult to detect, which can have a big impact on negotiations that goes unnoticed until it?s too late. In a recent paper written up at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, the University of Wisconsin?s Lyn M. Van Swol and Michael T. Braun, and Harvard Business School?s Deepak Malhotra took a look at whether there were any telltale language clues that can help detect a liar. 

A UW-Madison adjunct engineering professor and a physics professor from Princeton have teamed up to pen an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal defending carbon dioxide, that much maligned greenhouse gas blamed by the vast majority of the world?s climatologists for global warming.

For plants and animals forced to tough out harsh winter weather, the coverlet of snow that blankets the north country is a refuge, a stable beneath-the-snow habitat that gives essential respite from biting winds and subzero temperatures.

MADISON (WKOW) — The Dalai Lama shares his wisdom for making the world a better place. Thousands of people filled in the Overture Center in Madison Wednesday to hear what he had to say.

Fancy seeing the sky in neutrino? Supermassive black holes and enormous stellar explosions may give up their secrets now that neutrinos from space can be detected.

Madison – Ethics education that stresses altruism and compassion, taught from an early age, is one key to addressing the world?s greatest problems, from environmental degradation to the nuclear arms race, the 14th Dalai Lama told a sold-out crowd at Madison?s Overture Center for the Arts on Wednesday.

An experiment buried beneath the ice of the South Pole has for the first time seen the particles called neutrinos originating outside our Solar System.

A UW-Madison adjunct engineering professor and a physics professor from Princeton have teamed up to pen an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal defending carbon dioxide, that much maligned greenhouse gas blamed by the vast majority of the world?s climatologists for global warming.

On his trip to Wisconsin last week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a prime example of the kind of smart investment the federal government should make to confront climate change and support the economy.

As we finalize our preparations to receive His Holiness the Dalai Lama for a dialogue on Global Health and Well-being, an event co-sponsored by the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the Global Health Institute, both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it is appropriate to reflect on what science is teaching us about well-being. There are four things we can now say that science has taught us about well-being.

On his trip to Wisconsin last week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a prime example of the kind of smart investment the federal government should make to confront climate change and support the economy.

Of all of the world?s chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That?s simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.