Category: Research

Once again, as a huge storm churned across the Atlantic Ocean, UW-Madison researchers were right in the middle of it ? sort of. As Hurricane Sandy barreled its way toward the East Coast Sunday and an appointment with the history books, about 20 scientists toiled in front of computer screens on the UW-Madison campus at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies. Their behind-the-scenes work ? providing startling satellite images as well as detailed analysis of what those images were telling us ? helped the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service provide forecasts that proved remarkably accurate.

?This is evidence of a revolution that?s been going on quietly here for 20 years,? said Jonathan Martin, a professor and chairman of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

With Superstorm Sandy?s effects still being seen across the east coast, the University of Wisconsin has put forth an effort to help predict Sandy?s effects as well as offer assistance to any UW students needing help in dealing with the situation.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison played a key role in helping forecasters accurately predict superstorm Sandy’s landfall in New Jersey on Monday, likely saving countless lives by providing adequate early warning.

A: The answer resides in the interaction between the giant “tectonic plates” that form Earth?s crust, said Phil Brown, a professor of geoscience at the UW-Madison. “The east coast of North (and South) America are passive plate margins, which have subdued topography on land and broad shallow continental shelves that may extend 200 miles off shore, before diving to the Atlantic abyssal plain.”

A: While a single wind turbine is unlikely to confuse a radar return signal, a wind farm, particularly one 20 square miles or larger, will pose a problem. For example, the radar returns from the weather radar in Sullivan continually measures what looks to be a rain cloud to the north. This signal is always there and is the location of a wind farm.

Freshwater fish migrate, but we do not know where and why.According to Brenda Pracheil, a University of Wisconsin-Madison post-doctorate research fellow in the Limnology Department, scientists lack comprehensive knowledge on the habits of migratory fish species.

Fracking, the controversial technology using sand and pressure to open natural gas deposits, will be the focus of a three-part forum at UW-Madison.

You could be forgiven for thinking it?s summer again on Wednesday, when temperatures are predicted to climb into the upper 70s. By Thursday night, however, Madison will be back into the fall, with overnight lows in the 30s. The 40-degree fluctuation is the result of a storm that?s going to pass well to our north, but will bring warm air up from the south before pulling down cold winds from the north as it passes through, said Jonathan Martin, a UW-Madison professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

A: Though we have been relatively dry for much of the autumn, on the weekend of Oct. 13-14 we received a soaking rain of 0.86 inches on Saturday followed by 1.74 inches on Sunday. Two aspects of this heavy rain event are noteworthy to us. First, though Madison averages an inch of rain in a single day about six times each year, the 1.74 inches that fell on Sunday was the most in a single calendar day in Madison since 3.61 inches of rain fell on July 22, 2010. That long stretch includes two full summers (2011 and 2012) in which we never received such a rain. Second, the rainy weekend was clearly in the forecast for almost seven days in advance. In other words, at the end of the prior weekend, it was clear that next weekend was going to be a washout.

Scientists now can see Uranus in sharper focus, thanks to a new technique developed by two UW-Madison scientists and other scientists using the world?s largest telescopes. High-resolution infrared images of the seventh planet from the sun, taken at the Keck Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, were shown at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society?s Division of Planetary Sciences in Reno on Wednesday.The images are being called the best look ever at Uranus? complex and enigmatic weather patterns. The UW-Madison scientists working on the project were Larry Sromovsky and Pat Fry.

A University of Wisconsin archaeologist will lead a new round of excavations at ancient Troy.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison archaeologist will lead a new round of excavations at ancient Troy.

The federal government awarded University of Wisconsin researchers $2.1 million to fund a project intended to promote sustainable vegetable production on behalf of producers and processors.

Among the books and binders in her office in the Mechanical Engineering building, associate professor Heidi-Lynn Ploeg?s shelves are filled with bones. She pulls out a thin cardboard sleeve, and inside are dozens of mouse femurs. Each one of these leg bones is shorter than the length of a fingernail. ?It?s amazing how we can compare these to the human body,? Ploeg said. Ploeg is the director of a Bone and Joint Biomechanics laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A: Metal sources are determined by finding some attribute that is unique to a given source, explained UW-Madison chemist James Burton, who directs the T. Douglas Price Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry. “For example copper from Europe has gold in it, while North American copper does not. We are mainly interested in bronze, an alloy of copper and other metals such as tin and lead.”

A. An air mass is a large body of air whose properties of temperature and humidity are similar in any horizontal direction. Air masses can cover hundreds of thousands of square miles. Air masses are formed when air stagnates for long periods of time over a uniform surface. The characteristic temperature and moisture of air masses are determined by the surface over which they form. An air mass acquires these attributes through heat and moisture exchanges with the surface.

A former University of Wisconsin-Madison veterinarian who resigned due to frustration with how the university handled his concerns about maltreatment of research animals has become another voice siding with an animal rights group that recently made similar allegations.

Of all the astronomical events that open eyes here on Earth, few generate more excitement ? and sometimes, as history has proven, strangeness ? than the arrival of a comet in our neighborhood. So, get out your calendars. Astronomers tell us that the year 2013 will see the passage of a comet that could be historic.

Ken Nordsieck, a UW-Madison astronomer who has studied his share of comets, used a wonderful phrase to describe these bright comets as Hale-Bopp passed in 1997, bright enough to glimpsed with the naked eye. He called it “a great driveway comet.” And Nordsieck, studying the data on 2012 S1, said the approaching comet has the potential to be “quite spectacular” from Madison and other North American locations.

When it comes to debating the merits of animal research taking place on the UW-Madison campus, there may well be middle ground on which the masses can agree. But like so many political issues these days, it?s the folks who are most heavily invested in a topic that tend to dominate the discussion.

A: They are broomcorn, a plant still used to make straw brooms, says Mohammad Fayyaz, head of the botany garden at UW-Madison. The plant was reportedly imported to the American colonies by Benjamin Franklin after 1700. Scientifically known as Sorghum vulgaris var technicum, broomcorn is closely related to sorghum, a grain crop grown in drier parts of the Midwest. Sorghum and corn are closely related.