Stem cells derived from the skin and blood of blind people are morphing into retina-like balls in Dr. David Gamm?s lab at UW-Madison. WiCell Research Institute and the Waisman Center, both connected to the university, are growing stem cells to help researchers around the country prepare for clinical trials.
(This story first appeared in the Sunday edition of the Wisconsin State Journal)
Sioux County, North Dakota (USUSND), is the least healthy place in the U.S. for the second consecutive year, while Los Alamos County, New Mexico (USUSNM), is the healthiest, according to a study.
The rankings, produced by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, compare counties throughout the state ? and nation ? based on both physical and socioeconomic factors. The third annual report is being released today at http://www.countyhealthrankings.org.
The authors of the study are based at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. On a campus that size, they calculate, blackout-related emergency-room visits by students cost roughly a half-million dollars annually.
A U.S biosecurity panel?s recommendation that two controversial papers on bird flu be published in full is not a reversal of the stand it took last year out of concerns over terrorism, the head of the group said on Monday in London.
The U.S. government?s biosecurity advisers said Friday they support publishing research studies showing how scientists made new easy-to-spread forms of bird flu because the studies, now revised, don?t reveal details bioterrorists could use. The decision could end a debate that began in December when the government took the unprecedented step of asking the scientists not to publicize all the details of their work.
Last year, the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) ? an independent advisory board to the government ? recommended that both papers should be published with significant redactions. The full information would only be released to selected scientists. But on 30 March, after a two-day meeting, the NSABB announced that it had changed its mind.
“Research has found that individuals tend to drive drunk 80 to 100 times before they are caught,” according to Richard Brown, a UW-Madison physician and clinical director of the Wisconsin Initiative to Promote Healthy Lifestyles. “There just aren?t enough police officers around to catch most people most of the time.” Moreover, most of the people responsible for alcohol-related traffic deaths have never before been picked up for drunken driving, he said.
UW-Madison?s Richard Davidson, who remains on the cutting edge of brain research that sheds light on understanding our emotions, on Tuesday will be giving his first local talk about his latest book, ?The Emotional Life of Your Brain,? a work that?s co-authored by Sharon Begley, the former Newsweek science writer.
A:….If the nighttime temperatures are too warm, the sap will not flow. Our March weather has been terrible for harvesting sap for syrup. Minimum temperatures throughout Wisconsin were 10 to 15 degrees above normal, and maximum temperatures soared into the 70s and 80s.
I enjoy reading the “Ask the Weather Guys” column. Last Monday, however, I was disappointed that professors Jonathan Martin and Steven Ackerman inserted their opinion that the recent warm spell in the midwestern United States is indisputable evidence of man-made climate change and that skeptics (some of whom are presidential hopefuls of major political parties, they state), are unreasonable if they don?t agree.
There is a nationwide debate over strains of the deadly bird flu that were man-made by researchers here in Madison.
Cellular Dynamics International has expanded its distribution agreement with iPS Academia Japan. The Madison stem cell company will begin providing its iCell neurons and endothelial, or blood vessel, cells to the Japanese company in addition to its heart cells, distributed through an agreement reached last June.
Many words in American English, like honeyfuggle and pinkletink, don?t show up in standard dictionaries. But you can find them in the Dictionary of American Regional English. The fifth and final volume of the massive work has just been published.
One Monday morning in September last year, Ron Fouchier, a virologist at the Erasmus medical centre in Rotterdam, stood at the Intercontinental hotel in Malta and told an audience of scientists how he created one of the world?s most dangerous viruses.
Wisconsin kids enrolled in private school choice programs aren?t performing as well as their public school counterparts on standardized exams, according to data released Tuesday by the state?s Department of Public Instruction, sparking another round of partisan debate about whether taxpayers should be funding voucher programs. John Witte, a UW-Madison political science professor and a national expert on voucher programs, counters that some of his most recent research is suggesting that while math scores between public and voucher school students in Milwaukee are similar, kids attending the private schools are starting to make strides in reading.
One of Wisconsin?s leading exports offers an encouraging sign. It?s not cheese, motorcycles or football. It?s high-end medical equipment. Think MRI, CAT scan, colonoscopy and ultra-sound. Thanks in part to the presence of GE Medical and spinoffs from research at UW-Madison, Wisconsin is third in the nation in electromedical equipment manufacturing employment, with 6,100 jobs. Only California and Minnesota employ more in the field.
Fibs are common in online dating profiles. An inch taller, a few pounds lighter, and you might just get that first coffee date. But liars beware: Subconscious quirks in how you write a profile may give you away, according to a study published in February in the journal Communication.
A decade ago, three-quarters of the world?s solar panels were manufactured right here in the U.S. Today, China is making 75 percent of them and it didn?t happen via the free market. The Chinese government made a conscious decision to grab control of the clean energy industry, subsidizing production of photovoltaic technology even as its own coal-burning power plants pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere. That production shift, says former White House ?green jobs? czar Van Jones, should alarm anyone concerned about the direction of this country.
The scene is a mysterious one, beguiling, thrilling, and, if you didn?t know better, perhaps even a bit menacing. According to the time-enhanced version of the story, it opens on an afternoon in the late fall of 1965, when without warning, a number of identical dark-green vans suddenly appear and sweep out from a parking lot in downtown Madison, Wisconsin.
Everybody knows by now that spring has sprung early this year. But nobody expected summer to be coming along right behind. From blooming magnolias ablaze in the UW Arboretum to maples and oaks unfurling their leaves everywhere, the changes on the landscape and the activities of everything from birds to bees suggest we?ve missed a month or more from the calendar. The UW Arboretum looks more like May than March, said Molly Fifield-Murray, outreach and education manager. Insects are buzzing earlier than normal, too, said Phil Pelletteri, a UW-Madison entomologist.
One can see why Laurel Rice does not follow politics closely, considering that what she calls her ?day job? is performing gynecological cancer surgery. Dr. Rice is chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Who better, I thought, to ask about the bill that majority Republicans in the Legislature recently passed requiring that doctors take unnecessary steps and abide by new restrictions before performing an abortion.
A. What an amazing warm spell! March 14 was the first day of five consecutive days in which record-high temperatures were set in Madison. This matches the longest consecutive-day streak for setting record highs in our city?s history (the other two times were in the 1950s).
People can ?sniff out danger? because the brain responds to threatening smells, scientists claim.
Today we talk about words like honeyfuggle and pinkletink, puckerbrush and swop. These are words not found in most dictionaries. But you can find them in the Dictionary of American Regional English. Joan Houston Hall is the chief editor.
In June of 2009, a committee met at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to do a routine safety review of proposed research projects.One of those projects involved genetically modifying flu viruses. And during the review, the committee brought up the idea of “dual-use” research. “Dual use” means legitimate scientific work that?s intended to advance science or medicine, but that also might be misused with the intent to do harm.
The University of Wisconsin Hospital has begun participating in a national initiative requiring all doctors, nurses and visitors to the intensive care unit to wear gloves and gowns while in the wing.
The recent publication of the fifth, and final, volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) marks the culmination of nearly five decades of work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. DARE is a landmark of American scholarship, recording the words, phrases, pronunciations, and pieces of grammar and syntax that vary from one part of the country to another. And the attendant hoopla and coverage from media and DARE admirers around the world is fitting and deserved.
Zoning out while trying to read this? No offense taken, since all of us do it at least a third of the time that we?re awake. In recent years a number of academicians have ventured into this previously unexplored territory, trying to figure out why our minds wander while we?re supposed to be paying attention. They were probably spurred on by the blank faces of their students during their stimulating lectures.
Depending on where you live in this great big country, a submarine sandwich might be known as a Dagwood (Colorado), a wedge (parts of New York) or a poor boy (in the Gulf States, where, we once discovered, a banh mi sandwich is known as a “Vietnamese poor boy”). This is but one of the fascinating entries in D.A.R.E. — no, not the attempt to war on drugs, but the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Dictionary of American Regional English, a multivolume dictionary that shows that there are many, many ways of looking at a sandwich, among other foods. The fifth volume, from Sl to Z, was just published last month.
What unique words do they use in Maryland, Virginia and Washington? Or, for that matter, why do the same things have so many different meanings, depending on whether you are on the Jersey Shore, the Upper Peninsula or Fisherman?s Wharf?
When your former governor and your favorite Sudanese embassy-protesting movie star head to the clink the same week, it?s time to rethink how you talk about prison.
The emergency room costs of treating college students with injuries associated with alcohol-induced blackouts can be more than half a million dollars a year at a university with 40,000 or more students, a new study found.
The record-tying streak of record high temperatures ended on Monday in Madison, but record warmth is forecast to return for three more days this week.
“This is to me the most unusual weather event I’ve witnessed in my lifetime,” Jonathan Martin, chairman of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW-Madison, said in an interview.
Many pet owners leave their home radios playing all day for the listening pleasure of their dogs and cats. Station choices vary. “We have a very human tendency to project onto our pets and assume that they will like what we like,” said Charles Snowdon, an authority on the musical preferences of animals. “People assume that if they like Mozart, their dog will like Mozart. If they like rock music, they say their dog prefers rock.”
At high school, it?s invariably the kids that day dream who get told off. But a new study suggests that it?s those of us whose minds wander that have the best working memory?and working memory is itself directly associated to intelligence. A new study, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, suggests that a person?s working memory capacity relates to the tendency of their mind to wander during routine tasks. Working memory is the capacity to remember information for short periods of time?say, remembering a number while you dig out your phone.
A research report published earlier this week suggests a possible connection between the use of stem cells and a treatment for Huntington?s disease.
Despite frustrations on campus over higher education funding cuts and faculty pay woes, UW-Madison still has a reputation as one of the top universities in the world. UW-Madison is ranked 27th in the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings. This list is based on reputation alone and uses an international survey of nearly 18,000 academics who ranked institutions on their teaching and research.
A: Our high temperature of 78 degrees Farenheit on March 14 set the all-time record for the date and established a new record for the first 78-degree F temperature of the year, breaking the standing record of March 23, 1910 ? over a century ago.
If you?ve been puzzled by what your Texan (or Oklahoman) friends mean by a tin horn, or baffled by whether strubbly hair is a new style popular in Pennsylvania, or left wondering if you should be offended when a Mainer calls you a tunklehead, the fifth and final volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) is here to set you straight. From it you?ll learn that a tin horn is a metal culvert, that strubbly hair is untidy or straggly, and that tunklehead is not a term of endearment.
If you?re having trouble reading the entirety of this article without your mind wandering off, it might actually be a good thing. Just stay with us for a moment. According to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science, people whose minds wander during minor tasks have a greater amount of working memory.
It feels like summer, and, yes, that itch you feel is the mosquito bite you just got. Right along with the weather, the bugs are back. “We have some mosquitoes that winter over in caves and the like, and those have woken up,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension entomologist Phil Pellitteri.”I hear so many people concerned that it?s going to be a terrible insect year, and I don?t see anything to suggest that right now.”
Dane County officials announced on Thursday a plan to buy and preserve the land along the southern shore of Lake Waubesa for public use….Cal DeWitt, a professor of wetland ecology at UW-Madison, has lived near the marsh since he moved to Madison in 1972. DeWitt teaches a course on the wetland for graduate students and has been working with neighbors to preserve the wetlands south of Waubesa since the mid-1970s.
Researchers working on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus have found a way to use neurons derived from human embryonic stem cells to restore muscle coordination in mice inflicted with a Huntington?s disease-like condition….?This is very exciting, and next we?ll try to move onto different models, particularly in primates, to see whether this actually works in a larger brain,? says Su-Chun Zhang, a UW-Madison neuroscientist and the senior author of the study.
Eighty percent of college students drink, and schools have had little success reducing those numbers, or the problems caused by excessive alcohol.
Gnarly! Hella! Wicked! No matter where you?re from there are always certain words or phrases used solely by people in your region. Sure, some colloquialisms spread nationwide (like radical, perhaps), but there are some that never make it across state lines.
Could synthetic stem cells mean the end of certain forms of blindness? Scientists at the University of Wisconsin have created basic retina structures, giving hope to many with eye damage that their vision could be repaired someday.
Among college students who drink heavily, those who black out are more likely to seek emergency care, costing about $500,000 a year at a campus the size of UW-Madison, a new study says. Prevention efforts should be targeted at students whose drinking leads to memory loss, not only at students who drink the most, said Marlon Mundt, a UW-Madison researcher who led the study published Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs.
If you?re heading to the store you might want to grab your bike instead of your car. A study out of UW-Madison says if everyone ditched their cars, health care costs could be reduced by billions of dollars.
“That jook, a real scaper that one, took the bonnet walker out back by the strand.”If that means nothing to you, you probably weren?t born in Florida, or at least weren?t living here in 1965.
If you?ve spent much time in Virginia, you might be aware a “jimmy” is a mature, male blue crab, “bluebird weather” is an Indian summer and “Sally Lunn” is a rich, sweet yeast bread.
An international particle physics collaboration has announced its first results toward answering a longstanding question – how the elusive particles called neutrinos can appear to vanish as they travel through space.
?If you?re headed to a carry-in, don?t forget to bring dope for the dessert. ?That?s apparently how we talk in Ohio, where, if kids have ?energy to burn,? we can push them out to play ?go-sheep-go.?
A new discovery provides a crucial key to understanding how neutrinos ? ghostly particles with multiple personalities ? change identity and may help shed light on why matter exists in the universe.
It was 1967. August Rubrecht, 26, had just finished his course work for his graduate degree in Medieval English at the University of Florida. He was casting about for a thesis topic when Fred Cassidy, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, offered him a chance to become a field worker for a project, then in its infancy, to create a dictionary of dialects of American English.
A: Solar storms are a particularly important manifestation of the solar dynamo, the physical process that generates the sun?s magnetic field, said UW-Madison physics professor Cary Forest.
Neutrinos produced by a nuclear reactor in China are changing from one flavour to another more rapidly than expected. The result means physicists could soon explain why the universe is filled with matter instead of featureless radiation.
Noted: The report recommends a more “risk-informed approach” to emergency planning so that evacuation zone distances wouldn?t be preassigned, says Michael Corradini, professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin.
A retired English teacher and former Tulsa World columnist, Sally Bright used to ask her students what they call a big metal container that people use for cooking.
The unseasonably warm weather prompted some insects to come ?back to life? this week. “People are finding wasps and all kinds of other bugs,” UW-Madison Entomologist Phil Pellitteri told WTMJ?s ?Wisconsin?s Afternoon News.?
