Category: Research

The number of women faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has steadily risen over the past few decades, due in part to efforts by the university to reduce biases in hiring, according to a university news release. Women accounted for only 18 percent of the faculty at UW-Madison in 1990, but constituted 31 percent of professors and instructors last year.

Researchers say new findings could be the start of a new way to study and treat diseases.

If you told people you wanted to talk with them for 50 minutes about the crystallization of polymorphs, you probably wouldn?t get too many takers. Good thing professor Richard Hartel has found a sweeter way to sneak that message into his demonstration at the Wisconsin Science Festival: Chocolate.

A University of Wisconsin research center will receive one million dollars over the next two years in funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce for their proposed projects.

A. Though it isn?t unprecedented to get another day above 90 degrees this late in the year (the all-time latest such day in Madison?s history is Oct. 14, 1975), it is very likely our run at the record of 90-degree days in a season will end at 39 ? agonizingly one day shy of the record 40 set in 1955.

– So popular is the discovery of the “God particle”, that an extra lecture by one of the researchers has been added at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Physics professor Sau Lan Wu — who heads up a UW-Madison research team based at the Large Hadron Collider and who has spent more than two decades searching for experimental evidence of the Higgs boson — is giving a second free public talk on Friday that?ll provide an inside look at the Higgs search and the excitement surrounding the discovery.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison welcomed one of its own professors to campus Thursday to speak about her role in the discovery of the Higgs boson, also referred to as ?the God particle.? Sau Lan Wu, a physics professor at UW-Madison since 1977, told a crowd of over 100 people how researchers detected the particle and how the university played a star role in the discovery.

Bring up the subject of pacifiers among new parents, and you?ll probably spark a spirited conversation that will wake up every sleeping baby within a block or so. Now, a UW-Madison study is likely to fuel even more debate about the trusty old nuk. Or nuki. Or binky. Or na-na. Or whatever you have chosen to call the device that serves as a remarkably effective volume control for most babies. Paula Niedenthal, a psychology professor and lead author of the study, found that boys who used pacifiers as babies scored lower on tests that measured their emotional development.

She helped discover the “God particle” and she?s going to talk about it this week. UW-Madison physics professor Sau Lan Wu will give a free public lecture Thursday about the two decades she spent searching for the Higgs boson particle, which scientists believe they found in July. It was hailed as one of the most important scientific discoveries in a century and had a team of UW-Madison researchers, led by Wu, playing leading roles figuring out the physics of, and building and operating, the $10 billion machine used to discover the particle.

More than a few people in politics and media have expressed frustration that many reporters instinctively seek out the same ?expert? sources when writing political stories. One of the most ubiquitous sources is Charles Franklin, a UW-Madison political science professor. For reporters on deadline, the gregarious Alabama native is a great source because he?s always happy to talk. However, for those of us who seek deep analysis of the nitty gritty of political data, few in Wisconsin are more qualified than Franklin, a nationally renowned pollster who is currently on leave from UW to conduct a public opinion poll at Marquette University Law School.

Nearly 30,000 public school teachers and support staff went on strike in Chicago this past week in a move that left some 350,000 students without classes to attend. And while this contentious battle between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union blew up due to a range of issues — including compensation, health care benefits and job security concerns — one of the key sticking points reportedly was over the implementation of a new teacher evaluation system.

Quoted: Rob Meyer, director of the Value Added Research Center in the UW-Madison School of Education.

A: Treatment with ionizing radiation can be used to sterilize foods as well as sensitive materials like medical supplies and equipment. And ionizing radiation can indeed alter the nutritional content of food to some extent, said Franco X. Milani, an assistant professor of food science and extension specialist at the UW-Madison.

A: The Beaufort scale is a method of estimating wind speed based on the general condition of the surface of a large body of water with respect to wind waves and swell. This scale allows sailors to estimate the wind speed just by observing the state of the sea surface. The scale has a long history, but was finalized in 1805 by Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, an Irish hydrographer in the British Royal Navy.

Most of us spent our summers doing the standard things, from yard work to browsing farmers? markets, maybe a camping trip or two. Ask UW-Madison botanist Don Waller how he spent his summer, however, and you?ll likely feel your summer was somewhat lacking in excitement. Waller spent a good part of his summer staring down feral camels in Australia. It seems they are a problem there, much as we have problems with feral cats. Only these are camels. And there are lots of them.

The University of Wisconsin denied a series of claims filed by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Wednesday morning that accuse two UW federal institutions of animal cruelty.

One of the nation?s few extension poultry specialists for small flocks, Kean also writes the Answer Man column for Backyard Poultry magazine. Most of the problems he deals with have to do with chickens who are too fat, he says. Along with his work for the UW Extension, Kean has spent nearly two decades on the academic staff at UW-Madison, where he teaches poultry courses in breeder flock and hatchery management, plus a companion animal biology class for non-biology majors.

An animal rights group is calling on federal officials to investigate potential animal welfare violations related to the treatment and use of cats in invasive brain experiments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison….Eric Sandgren, who oversees animal research at UW-Madison as director of the university?s Research Animal Resources Center, was adamant that UW-Madison did not violate any federal regulations and says he welcomes an investigation.