A standing wheelchair. It?s not the first of its kind, but it will go where no others have. It?s a project five University of Wisconsin at Madison students embraced — more than a thousand hours in the making and a chance to change the life of a surgeon no longer physically able to do his job.
A live feed camera capturing real time views of a red-tailed hawk?s nest on a ledge of Weeks Hall by members of the Space Science and Engineering Center has gained viral popularity over the past weeks.
The Morgridge Institute for Research and the U.S. Department of Energy have reached a multimillion-dollar agreement to help open a medical isotope plant in Janesville – a development that Morgridge?s director says could spark a manufacturing cluster that could ultimately bring as many as 1,000 jobs to economically beleaguered Rock County.
As a conservative and a liberal, policy wonk and professor, Washingtonian and Midwesterner — there isn?t much we can agree on. Where we do see eye to eye is that most aid programs are less cost-effective than they could be. With money scarce and demand for college graduates high, now is the time to fix financial aid. In the Lone Star State, that means thinking smarter about Texas Grants.
Three baby red-tailed hawks are resting in their nest on a ledge below the roof of the four-story Geosciences building on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded UW-Madison grants Tuesday totaling more than a $22 million for the Morgridge Institute for Research and for nuclear engineering research.
A private campus research institute was recently awarded funding for a project that will focus on nuclear engineering research.
UW-Madison is reaping the benefits of President Barack Obama?s commitment to restart the country?s nuclear industry. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced in a news release Tuesday that UW-Madison will receive $2.7 million in graduate fellowships and research grants to train and educate the next generation of leaders in America?s nuclear industry.
The Morgridge Institute for Research located on the UW-Madison campus has landed a $20.6 million cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Energy?s National Nuclear Security Administration, the university announced in a news release. The funds will be used by the Morgridge Institute and local partner SHINE Medical Technologies to help support the development of a new process and manufacturing plant for molybdenum-99, a medical isotope used by thousands of patients daily in this country.
At the anthropology meeting in Portland, I sat down with John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, who chaired the open lab session, to learn more about how it came to be. Hawks explained that the impetus came in 2011, when Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, donated casts of the recently discovered remains of A. sediba to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. The move inspired the association?s vice president and program committee chair, Karen Rosenberg of the University of Delaware, to propose inviting other researchers and curators to bring casts of other fossil hominins (humans and their extinct relatives) to the meeting and make an event of it. Rosenberg then asked Hawks to organize the event, which became the plenary session of the meeting.
In the rushing streams and clear cool waters found from Minnesota to the Hudson Bay, the prized smallmouth bass feeds on crayfish, insects and the occasional bait launched into the water by a hopeful angler. They can be greedy, as freshwater scientist Gretchen Anderson Hansen found while collecting crayfish in a lake in Vilas County, Wis., when she found herself being observed by a handful of hungry smallmouth bass. Anderson Hansen, who does her research work with the UW-Madison Center for Limnology, was able to protect her samples this time around, but she?s not always so lucky. She says “opportunistic” bass “often grab her ?samples? before she gets a handle on them.”
As the flagship college in the state, the University of Wisconsin-Madison holds a special place in education. Well, at least it?s supposed to. And it does, to some extent, but not in the same way that it used to.
The Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison has been awarded a $20.6 million project from the U.S. Department of Energy to support the institute?s work with SHINE Medical Technologies in developing a new process and manufacturing plant for a medical isotope needed by tens of thousands of U.S. patients daily.
This summer, University of Wisconsin researchers and engineers will use a unique NASA drone to conduct hurricane research.
The genetics comparison was made possible by tissue that had been collected by a postdoctoral geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Stacie Robinson has taken data sets of deer from the north and two areas in southern Wisconsin.
Unless you have several hundred dollars to spare, and a foot of shelf space for five 8¾-by-11¼-inch volumes of a close to a thousand pages each, you aren?t likely to own a copy of the Dictionary of American Regional English. But you might find it worth your while to visit your local public or university library to take a look at the 60,000 rare and unusual words inside.
A: The chicks (which can be viewed at go.madison.com/hawkcam) may leave the nest by the end of May, according to Mark Berres, a UW?Madison ornithologist. “About 45 days is all it takes for them to fledge ? to leave the nest for good,” said Berres, who has been glued to the streaming video.
Dear Editor: Whenever and wherever highways, streets, railways and subdivisions are expanded and rebuilt, let?s conserve the soils and water natural resources. Every place that we humans build, the flood hydrograph must be FLATTER afterward, not more spiked. If $715 million is budgeted for I-39-90, then at least $15 million should go to reduce flash floods, like the one that damaged UW-Madison in July 2006.
A: The white condensation trails left behind jet aircraft are called contrails (condensation trails). Contrails usually form higher than 26,000 feet above the ground. Contrails form when hot, humid air from jet exhaust mixes with surrounding air of low water vapor content and low temperature. The clouds that form are similar to the cloud you see when you exhale in cold air and “see your breath.”
Al Gore has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. So has Wisconsin?s Larry Landweber.
I?m betting you know all about Gore, the former vice president and U.S. senator who is occasionally the butt of jokes on late-night comedy shows. While Gore didn?t “invent the Internet,” as he once claimed in a weak moment, he made essential political contributions during its formative years.
I?m also guessing you know next to nothing about Landweber, who along with Gore and 31 others made up the inaugural class of the Internet Society?s Hall of Fame, announced in late April in Geneva, Switzerland.
Noted: “I?ve also been involved in a study called the Wisconsin Project by researchers at the University of Wisconsin. It?s a device that was made for traumatic brain injury that electrically stimulates the brain through the tongue to help the brain reorganize and create different pathways. It has changed my ability to exercise, and I?ve learned that exercise and diet can affect everything for physical and emotional well being. I don?t care if you?re in a wheelchair or bedridden.”
A poll released Wednesday by the Marquette Law School offers a glimpse of just how divisive politics has become in the state. According to the poll, nearly one-third, or 29 percent of respondents, say they have stopped talking to someone about politics due to disagreements over the recall of the governor. There?s no baseline for that figure — pollster Charles Franklin says the question has never been asked before on a survey — but he argues the 29 percent figure is probably ?up from the norm.?
Watching storm waves crash ashore, it?s obvious these monsters are taller than the waves that lap the beach on a calm, sunny day.This seemingly clear dichotomy led geologists to assume that there were two types of waves stirring up the shallow seafloor: small fair-weather waves and big storm waves. Now, this decades-old theory has been turned on its head by two geologists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who, in the process of studying waves, discovered a large size discrepancy between waves in different oceans.
After a five-month-long debate, a study that shows how mutations in the H5N1 influenza virus, known as the avian flu, can be transmitted in the air was published Wednesday.
A paper on controversial avian H5N1 influenza research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison finally is being published in full this week in the journal Nature after touching off a months-long international debate over the value of preparedness vs. the risk of key details falling into the hands of terrorists.
After months of handwringing and heated debate between scientists and biosecurity experts, UW-Madison bird flu expert Yoshihiro Kawaoka finally had his controversial H5N1 influenza virus research published in full Tuesday by the journal Nature.
Four mutations in a bird flu virus enabled the virus to spread among ferrets in a lab, UW-Madison researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. The study, which identifies the mutations, was published after months of international controversy
After a five-month-long debate, a study that shows how mutations in the H5N1 influenza virus, known as the avian flu, can be transmitted in the air was published Wednesday. The study shows mutations to the natural avian flu virus spreads easily among ferrets, which suggests the virus is could also be airborne-transmissible among humans since both react similarly to flu viruses.
On Tuesday, Salon reported that the Federal Aviation Administration has approved 25 universities to fly drones in U.S. airspace.Included on the list is the University of Wisconsin. But this isn?t something well known, even among campus administrators.
This week sees the online publication of the paper ?Experimental adaptation of an influenza H5 HA confers respiratory droplet transmission to a reassortant H5 HA/H1N1 virus in ferrets? by the Japanese?US team headed by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
You might not have noticed, but the influenza world has been in a bit of an uproar since late last year, when news leaked out that two teams of researchers had purposefully tweaked H5N1 bird flu in the lab to potentially make it more transmissible among human beings. (H5N1 spreads like wildfire among birds ? and usually kills them ? but the virus only rarely seems to jump to human beings, though when it does the infections are often fatal.)
After months of controversy, the journal Nature has published the details of an experiment describing how the avian flu can be modified into a human-contagious form.
The journal Nature has published the first of two controversial papers about laboratory-enhanced versions of the deadly bird flu virus that initially sparked fears among U.S. biosecurity experts that it could be used as a recipe for a bioterrorism weapon.
It?s finally out. After months of will-they-won?t they and should-they-shouldn?t-they deliberations, Nature has finally published a paper about a mutant strain of bird flu that can spread between mammals.
Only a handful of genetic mutations can make bird flu infectious among mammals, serving as a warning sign for the deadly virus possibly spreading to people, biologists report.
Today, a scientific journal published a study that some people thought might never be made public at all.
A contested bird flu study was finally published Wednesday.
The science journal Nature has published the first of two controversial papers about laboratory-enhanced versions of the deadly bird flu virus – described by some as a ?recipe? for a bioterror attack.
Four mutations in a bird flu virus enabled the virus to spread among ferrets in a lab, UW-Madison researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. The study, which identifies the mutations, was published after months of international controversy that delayed public release of the findings.
After months of handwringing and heated debate between scientists and biosecurity experts, UW-Madison bird flu expert Yoshihiro Kawaoka finally had his controversial H5N1 influenza virus research published in full Tuesday by the journal Nature.
Foremost Farms CEO Dave Fuhrmann is leading a $32 million campaign to renovate a Wisconsin research and training facility essential to the state?s dairy industry. The dairy plant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus is also home to the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research. The campaign has raised $6 million of the $32-million goal and Fuhrmann expects to reach the halfway mark by July or August.
So what is the secret of Promega?s success? How has it blossomed from its beginnings as a small enzyme business in 1978 to become “the granddaddy of biotechnology” in the Madison area, as Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, has termed it? Good timing “Bill Linton had the idea of starting a research products company in the right place at the right time,” said Richard Burgess, emeritus professor of oncology at UW-Madison. “He?s done a marvelous job of guiding this company through the ups and downs of the economy and everything else.”
Noted: More recently, she and her colleagues have begun identifying some of the baseline settings of infant social intelligence. Katherine D. Kinzler, now of the University of Chicago, and Kristin Shutts, now at the University of Wisconsin, have found that infants just a few weeks old show a clear liking for people who use speech patterns the babies have already been exposed to, and that includes the regional accents, twangs, and R?s or lack thereof. A baby from Boston not only gazes longer at somebody speaking English than at somebody speaking French; the baby gazes longest at a person who sounds like Click and Clack of the radio show ?Car Talk.?
A: Many times after a rain, there is a distinctive odor in the air ? a sort of musky smell. This pleasant fragrance is most common in rains that follow a dry spell. If you are a gardener, you may find this smell similar to the smell you sense when you turn over your soil.
When you see someone walking down the street yammering to himself, with no Bluetooth in sight, he?s not necessarily out of his mind. He might just be trying to bring something to mind — and saying it out loud helps, found a study by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Pennsylvania.
So if it seemed quiet in the blogosphere this week, it may be because most of science-writing?s all-stars (plus me) were in the same room at the University of Wisconsin, talking about subjects that make many people uncomfortable: vaccination, climate change, evolution. The occasion was a conference, ?Science Writing in the Age of Denial,? and the point was to get accomplished people talking about hard questions of verification, communication and belief.
Catching up on a couple higher education-related items:
** A months-long battle between UW-Madison student government and the Multicultural Student Coalition over whether or not the organization should receive funding for the 2012-13 fiscal year was finally resolved Wednesday night, the Badger Herald and Daily Cardinal reported.
** President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats continue to push efforts to keep interest rates low on student loans.
** From 1975 until 1988, William Proxmire — the Democratic senator from Wisconsin — made headlines by promoting his ?Golden Fleece Award,? which ripped scientists who used federal funding to produce what he viewed as wasteful research. Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee told the Chronicle of Higher Education he ?pleaded with universities to fight back with their own award to celebrate the widespread societal benefits of research.? Although those efforts fell flat, the Democrat earlier this week announced a new “Golden Goose Award” that?s designed to ?honor research that turns out to have been an especially productive use of federal money.?
Who could have predicted at this time last year that Wisconsin would experience the nation?s largest percentage decrease in employment over this 12-month period? Um … actually, UW-Madison economist Steven Deller could have. And did. Last March, Deller, a professor of applied economics, studied the ripple effects of Gov. Scott Walker?s budget-repair bill and two-year budget proposal.
Wisconsin is doing a good job of providing a safety net for the state?s most vulnerable people, according to the fourth annual Wisconsin Poverty Report released this week. The study, conducted by UW-Madison?s Institute for Research on Poverty, is designed to measure poverty rates more accurately than the official federal numbers that are compiled using only pretax cash income figures.
?There?s no doubt we?d all like to see more people working and less dependent on government to help them not be poor,? says Tim Smeeding, the lead investigator for the study and the director of the Institute for Research on Poverty. ?And if the economy recovers and employment picks up, that is what we?ll see. But for now we?re doing a real good job of holding the line at the bottom end and Wisconsinites should be very proud about these results. These programs work. Government works.?
Steve Barnet is hiring, but not for an ordinary IT job. His ideal candidate “will be willing to travel to Polar and high altitude sites.”
Have an idea for a software program that will make life easier or an online business you?ve dreamed of? Tech types and their supporters will gather on Friday for Startup Weekend Madison, a marathon, 54-hour collaboration aimed at turning digital ideas into reality. A program similar to Startup Weekend, 3 Day Startup Madison, will be held the following weekend of May 4-6, and is aimed at commercializing technology by UW-Madison students.
Despite a recession that caused an economic slump in the state from 2009 to 2010, Wisconsin?s poverty rate actually dropped, according to a new UW-Madison study. A report released Wednesday by the Institute for Research on Poverty notes that Wisconsin?s poverty rate fell from 11.1 percent to 10.3 percent, a drop made possible by safety-net public benefits programs including food stamps, tax credits and subsidized child care.
Poverty in Wisconsin actually dropped during the recession and its aftermath, surprising University of Wisconsin researchers who credit safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits.
The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found salmonella in samples that matched the DNA fingerprint of the outbreak.
Lab testing in Wisconsin has confirmed salmonella contamination in recalled yellowfin tuna and in a spicy tuna roll. The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene at UW-Madison found salmonella in samples that matched the DNA fingerprint of the outbreak.
When UW-Madison?s James Thomson in 1998 became the first scientist to grow human embryonic stem cells in a lab, it generated tremendous excitement about the medical possibilities. Thomson tried to downplay the breakthrough but talk spread about cures for Alzheimer?s or Parkinson?s disease, growing livers for cirrhosis suffers or producing healthy heart cells for cardiac patients. The miracle cures have been slow in coming, however.
Ron Fouchier, a researcher at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, whose work on the H5N1 avian flu virus has been embroiled in controversy, told Nature this afternoon that he has now reluctantly agreed to apply for an export permit to submit his work to the journal Science.
After an international meeting of scientists and security experts on Monday, the Dutch government says it may decide very soon whether virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam is eligible for an export license that would allow him to resubmit his controversial H5N1 transmissibility study for publication by Science.
The arc of science has faced roadblocks for centuries, but the pattern of denying the weight of evidence has taken on new virulence recently. Highly motivated people openly cast doubt on well-established evidence ? the theory of evolution, the human effects on climate change, the value of vaccines and other findings that have achieved an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community.
It?s meant to be the first sign that you?re losing your mind, but new research has found that talking to yourself can actually boost brain power.
