Category: Research

One of the working research papers being presented at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Denver this weekend deals with the disproportionate share of student debt that falls on students from families earning  between $40,000 and $59,000. Here is the official release on the paper by Jason N. Houle of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It?s hard to prevent bullying if you don?t know it?s happening. That?s why researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a program that they say is capable of detecting evidence of bullying from among the hundreds of millions of tweets sent each day.

The University of Wisconsin Marshfield Agricultural Research Station celebrated its 100th anniversary Thursday with an all-day open house along with a re-dedication program that featured speakers from all levels of government.

Scientists like Shelley Jansky need access to genetic diversity to develop varieties that are resistant to pests and extreme weather. She?s working on solving the problem of verticillium wilt, a common fungus in the soil.Through the potato gene bank, Jansky has found a wild species of potato from South America that?s mostly immune to verticillium wilt.”It?s a tremendous resource that?s right at my fingertips. I call them and say, ?Can you send me this, this and this?? and they send me seeds in the mail,” said Jansky, a U.S. Department of Agriculture research scientist and associate professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

One of the most pressing — and downright frightening — public-policy questions of our time received a healthy but under-the-radar airing this week at an elite scientific gathering in New York City.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently reviewed dozens of studies of the money saved by improvements in air quality. The average benefit was about $46 for every tonne of carbon dioxide avoided. This makes Australia?s starting carbon price of $23 a tonne look a bargain.

Deciphering the different dialects of the United States has been the delicate work of Joan Houston Hall 76PhD, chief editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), since she finished graduate school at Emory and joined the project in 1975. Nearly a half-century in the making, DARE published its much-heralded fifth volume early this year, which reached the end of the alphabet?the final word being zydeco, a style of Cajun music common to Louisiana.

Inspired by nature, Hongrui Jiang?s group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have developed a nanocomposite that twists and moves in direct response to the sun?s light and warmth and used that to make a device that significantly increases the output of solar cells.

Four UW-Madison professors will receive a $1 million dollar grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to study genome production, according to a release from the university Wednesday.

Wisconsin is home to many things, but it?s safe to say few know the globe?s largest collection of wild and cultivated potato species are located here.

Posts from the social media service Twitter are providing researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison a new way to study bullying among kids. UW-Madison researchers Amy Bellmore and Jerry Zhu, along with graduate students Junming Sui and Kwang-Sung Jun, have been able to teach a computer to identify tweets about bullying among Twitter?s 250 million daily posts.

A group of researchers has developed a machine learning model that can detect tweets relating to bullying, and even identify bullies, victims and witnesses. Next, it wants to add sentiment analysis to determine individuals? emotional states. But if they see trouble, how do they intervene?

Researchers have long known that heat waves kill more people than other weather-related disasters do. And amid the hottest year on record and a scorching summer in the United States comes new research warning just how deadly heat waves can be.

?Science, for various reasons, has become more politicized,? says Terry Devitt, director of research communications at the University of Wisconsin?Madison. ?Science, twenty years ago, used to have more cachet with the public, and that trust has been seriously eroded by coordinated attacks on science.? Devitt helped organize ?Science Writing in the Age of Denial Conference,? one of the first conferences focusing exclusively on science denial, which was held at the university 23?24 April 2012.

Men and women who are “just friends” have very different answers when posed with the usually unasked question: “Do you fancy me?” Young men: “More than you realize.” And young women? “Not as much as you think.” The answers come to us thanks to research published by psychology professor April Bleske-Rechek and other authors, all students, at UW-Eau Claire.

A voluntary moratorium on certain experiments involving forms of bird flu altered in laboratories should continue until there can be more public discussion of safety concerns, a prominent government official told flu researchers at a meeting in New York City Tuesday.

A voluntary moratorium on potentially dangerous experiments aimed at understanding highly virulent strains of the H5N1 influenza virus should continue for the time being, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci told a meeting of flu scientists here. But, he added, scientists should redouble their efforts to engage with the larger public to gain support for the vital but risky work.

It has been four months since the U.S. government issued a hastily released policy for monitoring what is called dual-use research of concern (DURC), research that could pose significant risks to the public if misapplied. At a meeting in Times Square New York Monday, representatives of leading institutions that perform such research discussed their experiences fitting the new policy into their current procedures for managing research projects. Some were frustrated at the lack of definition in the policy and some expressed concern about what would be contained in an expansion of the policy that is soon to be released for public comment.

In the summer of 1920, a 29-year-old son of Minnesota farmers docked his boat (acquired with stolen money) at a small island in New York City?s East River. One by one he hired out-of-work sailors to crew for him. And one by one, he shot them in the head with a Colt .45 and dumped their bodies in the water.

It might not be the most fast-paced, frenetic love-making of the animal kingdom, but at least they do seem to put in a bit of effort – and even indulge in some swinging. In fact, if a male sloth spots another sloth moving in on his partner, he will even raise a lazy toe to two in anger.

The hidden sexual habits of Hoffmann?s two-toed sloths have been revealed by scientists. Mating activity of the “lazy” mammals was analysed in Costa Rica to assess the effect of a sedentary lifestyle.

Both the UW-System and high-tech manufacturing companies in Southern Wisconsin need to do a better job at promoting themselves. That was a common theme at recent panel at a UW-Madison conference on university-business partnerships.

The University of Wisconsin used time lapse cameras to capture amazing video of Wednesdays storm as it rolled into campus from the west.

There are music camps and soccer camps and computer camps. Why not a stem cell camp?

Federal research dollars coming into Wisconsin flow overwhelmingly into academia rather than industry, a National Science Foundation report shows.Just 8% of the $882.6 million of federal research funding that came into Wisconsin in fiscal 2009 went to industry, the report says. A whopping 79% – or $700.8 million – of Wisconsin?s federal research funding went to academic institutions, the report says.