Category: Research

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.

A: A degree day is a measure of heating or cooling. A degree day is defined as a departure of the mean daily temperature from a given standard: one degree day for each degree of departure above (or below) the base temperature during one day. The degree day is related to the outside temperature and is not related to time.

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.

University of Wisconsin-Madison hydrogeologist and professor of geology Jean Bahr was recently appointed to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board by President Obama. Bahr was sworn in Sept. 27 along with seven other new members of the board. She will serve a four-year term with the possibility of a single-term renewal. Bahr was nominated by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences and was approved by the president.

The National Science Foundation awarded a grant to a University of Wisconsin sustainability project through the Sustainable Energy Pathways program.

A. Currently, the ozone hole is not as large as it was in 2011, but it is larger than it was in 2010. The ozone hole refers to the rapid depletion of stratospheric ozone over Antarctica. This ozone is located in a layer about 15 miles above the surface. Human activity has contributed to the deterioration of the ozone layer by adding chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, to the atmosphere.

A. It?s simple: No rocks formed during the dinosaur epoch still remain, said Phil Brown, professor of geoscience at the UW-Madison. “If you could fire-hose off all the glacial deposits, the rocks beneath would be between 2,800 and 350 million years old, and the dinosaurs only arose about 230 million years ago and went extinct 65 million years ago.”

Whenever a new building opens on a college campus these days, it?s common for the institution to trumpet the facility?s many ?green? or ?sustainable? attributes. It?s not uncommon to read about new projects that take advantage of natural sources of light, use geothermal heating and cooling systems, implement high-tech, energy-efficiency controls and so on.

And while such ideas and technological advances are no doubt important, an interdisciplinary team of UW-Madison researchers earlier this month was awarded a federal grant to, in part, examine an oftentimes overlooked aspect of operating a green building — the folks who occupy the facility.

A principal adviser to President Barack Obama joined a roundtable discussion on national energy policy Wednesday on the University of Wisconsin campus to speak on the policies, technologies and incentives influencing the future of energy.