For some girls, stressful experiences in the first year of life seem to drive hormonal changes later in childhood. And these chemical changes, in turn, lead to abnormal brain connectivity and signs of anxiety and depression at age 18, suggests a study published today in Nature Neuroscience1.
The Morgridge Institute for Research and three subcontractors have received a $23.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate to be put toward improving software development to protect new technologies against potential threats.
Noted: “This research directly addresses the public health burden in the U.S. as far as rising rates of hypertension among young adults, especially with the growing rate of obesity,” said Dr. Heather Johnson, lead study author from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Torben Lutjen, a political scientist at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, is researching political polarization in the United States as a visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A recent report from the President?s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology projects a shortfall of one million college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) over the next decade. Approximately five to six of every 10 students that begin in a STEM major will switch majors to a non-STEM field before graduation. A team of researchers from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) and University of Colorado-Boulder are undertaking a study to examine the reasons why students are switching out of STEM majors at such a high rate.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security?s Science and Technology Directorate granted $19.6 million to the Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery Thursday for a Software Assurance Marketplace research center on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The five-year grant will help researchers work to improve security on the development of software used in technologies from medical devices to the national power grid.
Noted: The video was made by F. Governato and T. Quinn of the University of Washington, A. Brooks from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and J. Wadsley from McMaster University.
The promise of stem cell research has been protected by President Obama, but the election of Mitt Romney would send Wisconsin?s signature biotechnology field back into chaos, costing the state its national reputation as a good home forward-looking, job-creating business, to say nothing of dashing the hopes of thousands of patients waiting for new therapies to treat incurable diseases such as Parkinson?s, Alzheimers and diabetes.
Baby girls living in a stressed environment may be more prone to anxiety when they get older than those living in a less stressful environment. The University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have been following a group of families since the early 90s.
In 2005 Elizabeth Goodwin, PhD, a geneticist and professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, admitted to manipulating data on a research grant application in order to convince reviewers that her lab was worthy of the money it was requesting. She was turned in by graduate students working at her lab. Just this last week, Dr. Thomas Zdeblick, a surgeon at UW-Madison, was found to have received $34 million from a company called Medtronic because he allowed employees at that company to ghost-write papers with his name on them, which advocated the use of a controversial and ineffective spinal treatment the company was promoting. These papers failed to disclose that the spinal treatment being advocated for had been shown to cause sterility in men. These two cases exemplify a problem in modern scientific research funding: The incentive to cheat is incredibly high.
A: Colonial insects, including honeybees, bumblebees, paper wasps and yellow jackets, have one queen and many workers, said Phil Pellitteri, a distinguished faculty associate in the department of entomology at UW-Madison. ?Honeybees are the only species that overwinters as a colony; they don?t go dormant and have to generate enough heat to live, so they need a minimum population of bees and plenty of honey, their energy source.?
A: Nearly a week after Hurricane Sandy struck the Mid-Atlantic coast of the United States, the affected region is still reeling from the shock. This really was an unprecedented storm in the truest sense of that word. Among the amazing aspects of the event was the extraordinarily accurate and early forecasting of the storm. Numerical forecast models were latching on to the correct scenario, including the unusual and rapid leftward turn off the Mid-Atlantic coast, as early as five to seven days before the event (depending on the particular model in question).
Neuroscientist Richard Davidson wired up Ricard?s skull with 256 sensors at the University of Wisconsin four years ago as part of research on hundreds of advanced practitioners of meditation.
Torben Lutjen, a political scientist at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, is researching political polarization in the United States as a visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison….After returning to Germany for the summer, Lutjen, 37, is back in Wisconsin yet again. This time he?s researching conservative Waukesha County. Lutjen believes the two counties ? Dane and Waukesha ? offer a special glimpse into a trend of political polarization that is gripping the United States and puzzling observers in the rest of the western world.
Scientists at the Morgridge Institute for Research at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and three other institutions have received a five-year, $23.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to bolster the nation?s cybersecurity.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemistry professor has developed a simple bacterial test that could be used to save infants? lives in developing countries, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation granted him $100,000 for the project, according to a UW-Madison news release. UW-Madison biochemistry professor Douglas Weibel?s laboratory created a cartridge test to determine if the type of bacteria in a newborn?s stomach must be treated to prevent a common, often deadly, bacterial infection that kills intestinal tissue.
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.
NEW YORK (WKOW) — Researchers at NYU Medical Center try to save years of research into heart disease, cancer and other diseases as well as priceless lab specimens that were put in jeopardy by Hurricane Sandy. NYU Medical Center lost power shortly after Sandy hit Monday night. Back-up generators failed and the Manhattan hospital evacuated 300 patients on Monday. Cells, tissues and animals used for medical research were left to die in failing refrigerators, freezers and incubators.
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.
Images compiled at UW-Madison are helping track Hurricane Sandy, in almost real-time.
Plenty of research suggests the political views of a city?s adult population will be reflected in its student population, said Kathy Cramer Walsh, an associate professor of political science at UW-Madison. “There tends to be a pretty strong transmission between parents and kids in political leanings,” she said. “It may not be as specific as a candidate or a policy, but it influences who they pay attention to and what news they listen to.”
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.
One of the world?s leading education scholars has had his invitation to speak to Victorian principals revoked amid fears that his views on performance pay ??may be too controversial??. Professor Michael Apple, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was due to address principals and senior staff from state schools on November 9.
UW-Madison surgeon Thomas Zdeblick told some doctors that a type of spinal surgery using a bone-growth substance carried a risk of sterility in men, according to documents released Thursday from a U.S. Senate investigation.
Over the course of 15 years, Medtronic paid $210 million to a group of 13 doctors and two corporations linked to doctors, including more than $34 million to University of Wisconsin orthopedic surgeon Thomas Zdeblick, who co-authored a series of papers about the product.
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.
Hyrax Energy has reached a licensing agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to move ahead with technology aimed at reducing the cost of processing waste agricultural products to turn them into biofuel or chemicals.
Millions of post-menopausal women were taking hormones to protect their hearts, bones and minds a decade ago when a major study revealed shocking findings: hormone replacement therapy increased the risk of heart disease, strokes and memory loss, along with breast cancer and blood clots. Now a new study, involving UW-Madison, reinforces advice that emerged after the troubling discoveries: hormone therapy makes sense for women with severe symptoms of menopause, but only for a few years and not for other reasons.
Quoted: Dr. Sanjay Asthana, a UW-Madison geriatrician who led the cognitive arm of the study
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.
Why are Wisconsin voters so changeable? Polling results reinforce our independent streak. The Capital Times asked UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin, who is conducting polls this election season as a visiting professor at Marquette University Law School, to review recent survey results and pull out data on how Wisconsinites say they will vote based on their beliefs on several social issues: the Affordable Care Act “Obamacare”, Medicare, immigration, gay marriage and abortion.
Researchers from the UW-Madison and University of Colorado-Boulder will use a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to try to figure out why students shy away from math or science.
A researcher at UW-Madison hopes the evidence from the brain scans of convicted psychopaths at a Wisconsin prison may someday lead to effective treatment for a disorder that often leads to violent crimes.
Federal health agencies in the United States have acted to tighten security surrounding research on two deadly pathogens. The move is intended to enhance public safety, but some fear that it may hamper research in the United States and abroad.
The University of Wisconsin welcomed Mario Capecchi, a Nobel Prize winner in Physiology and Medicine, to campus Monday to deliver a series of lectures.
Nobel Prize-winning scientist and University of Utah professor Mario Capecchi shared stories and advice from his career as a molecular biologist with students and faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Monday.
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.
In 2011, the foundation?s top beneficiaries included the University of Pennsylvania, which received $539,607 for its ?care plan study and survivorship center,” and the University of Wisconsin, which got $450,000 from Livestrong via a ?corporate agreement? and for its ?international pain policy fellowship,? the 990 document
Noted: One of the leaders in the field is the University of Wisconsin?s Steve Carpenter. He and several fellow scientists from around the world authored a paper just out in the journal Science, called ?Anticipating Critical Transitions.? Carpenter, who heads the Center for Limnology ? or the study of inland waters, joins us by phone from Madison.
University of Utah professor Mario Capecchi, co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, will give free public talks on the UW-Madison campus both Monday and Tuesday. Capecchi?s first lecture is Monday at 1 p.m. in room 1325 of the Health Sciences Learning Center, 750 Highland Ave. This event is geared toward students and the general public, and is titled, “The Making of a Scientist — An Unlikely Journey.”
A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor won a 2012 American Book Award on Oct. 7 for his book on environmental issues. Robert Nixon, a professor of English, won the award for his book ?Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor.? The book centers on the impacts of destruction of ecosystems, radiation contamination and communities lost to dams or mines.
The title of the article in last Friday?s paper, “USDA clears UW-Madison of cruelty in cat research,” was misleading. The USDA reported that there were “no non-compliant items identified” during their inspections. “No non-compliant items” does not mean no cruelty, not by a long shot.
Armed with shovels, trowels and new biotechnology tools, archaeologists plan to march into Troy next year for excavations at the famed ancient city.”Our goal is to add a new layer of information to what we already know about Troy,” said William Aylward, a classics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who will lead the expedition. “The archaeological record is rich. If we take a closer look with new scientific tools for study of ancient biological and cultural environments, there is much to be found for telling the story of this world heritage site.”
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals filed a complaint over University of Wisconsin animal research, which they believe violates the Animal Welfare Act. The allegations specifically cited veterinary care without adequate anesthesia, which allegedly caused significant suffering to a cat creatively nicknamed ?Double Trouble.?
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.
Just a few months ago, Greg Barrett-Wilt found himself beneath an awning on the dry and dusty site of ancient Troy in Turkey on the Aegean Sea. The UW-Madison scientist held in his hand a broken piece of pottery, an invaluable piece of antiquity. And he was about to do something unthinkable: deface it with a scraping tool. Barrett-Wilt, who specializes in using sophisticated instruments to study proteins, is a partner in a collaboration that will use cutting-edge science to bring to life a very old and storied place. He was recruited by William Aylward, a UW-Madison archaeologist, who will lead new excavations of Troy, the setting for Homer?s legendary tale of love, betrayal and war, and a real and bustling city that was continually occupied for 4,500 years.
In 1986, when Voyager swept past Uranus, the probes portraits of the planet were notoriously bland, disappointing scientists, yielding few new details of the planet and its atmosphere, and giving it a reputation as a bore of the solar system.
Sean M. Carroll — the California Institute of Technology physicist and Discover magazine Cosmic Variance blogger who has appeared on a range of TV programs ?- will be giving a talk Thursday on the UW-Madison campus about the scale of life and evolution of the universe.
A nationwide study, conducted in part by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, has begun work analyzing the nation?s decrease in science, technology, engineering and math undergraduate degrees, despite a relatively opposite trend seen at the University of Wisconsin.
A University of Wisconsin archaeologist will lead a new round of excavations at ancient Troy.
UW-Madison has been ranked in the top 25 of universities worldwide when it comes to the quantity and quality of research studies published. The 2012 Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities puts UW-Madison at No. 22 out of 500 research universities included in the study produced by National Taiwan University.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison archaeologist will lead a new round of excavations at ancient Troy.
Armed with shovels, trowels and new biotechnology tools, archaeologists plan to march into Troy next year for excavations at the famed ancient city.
It took 50 years for the Nobel committee to acknowledge one of the key developments in biology. A nucleus from a tadpole?s somatic cell transferred into a frog?s egg resulted in development of a normal tadpole (1); this was the first clone ever made in a laboratory, way back in 1962, and Professor Sir John Gurdon was the visionary scientist behind it.
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.
As the state prepares for its first wolf hunt, scientists say they don?t know what effect the five-month hunt beginning Monday will have on Wisconsin wolves. One hunt won?t put wolves ? removed from the federal endangered species list last year ? back on the list but research hints at possible longer-term harm to the wolf population and even an increase in wolves killing livestock, researchers say.
Quoted: Tim Van Deelen, a wildlife biologist at UW-Madison who has studied the state’s wolves extensively.
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.”
