Category: Research

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.?

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.

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.”

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.

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. 

Richard J. Davidson, author of the new book “The Emotional Life of Your Brain,” is a neuroscientist and director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published more than 275 articles and edited 13 books. He also is the founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds.

Talking to yourself might not mean you are crazy ? it can actually benefit thinking and perception, researchers say.

Three UW-Madison scholars have been selected for induction into the 2012 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation?s most prestigious honorary societies.

The failure of ghostly subatomic messengers called neutrinos to show up at an Antarctic telescope has knocked down a major astrophysical theory involving some of the most dramatic explosions in the universe.

The U.S. government will support publication of two controversial research papers, officials said Thursday. The studies report details of experiments in which the deadly H5N1 influenza virus was engineered to pass between mammals, officials said Thursday.

About 600 million years ago, life on Earth was pretty much just a homogeneous bunch of simple, soft-bodied species. But in an evolutionary blink of an eye, that all changed. A longstanding geological mystery could explain why our distant ancestors suddenly developed skeletons.

Cosmic rays generate the most energetic particles in the universe, utterly dwarfing anything we can generate in particle accelerators. Astrophysicists thought these cosmic rays were created in powerful gamma-ray bursts. Turns out they were completely, utterly wrong. So now what?

David Gagnon is talking to a group of educators about how to use mobile devices for learning. In his work as an instructional designer with the University of Wisconsin?s ENGAGE program, Gagnon has given this workshop many times. But these days, he says, things are starting to change.

Clinicians at the Chicago Zoological Society?s Brookfield Zoo in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s School of Veterinary Medicine are conducting an epizootiological study of malignant nasal tumors in Mexican grey wolves.

A former National Science Foundation director is set to speak at the University of Wisconsin-Madison about links between the weather and disease.

The mystery of the origin of the strongest cosmic rays has deepened as new clues into key suspects, the most powerful explosions in the universe, suggest they are likely not potential culprits, researchers say.

Publication of the controversial mutant avian flu papers have hit yet another roadblock. In March, a US advisory panel reversed its prior decision to take out experimental details from two reports about research that seemed to turn the H5N1 bird flu virus into a more virulent and deadly form. Under the original decision, some redacted information would have been available only to accredited researchers.

The U.S. biosecurity panel that recently lifted its objections to the publication of controversial bird flu studies has raised additional concerns about one of the papers, work conducted by a Dutch research team.

University of Wisconsin-Madison professors received four awards in chemistry from the American Chemical Society.

Noted: There are plenty of familiar non-Newtonian fluids, says Michael Graham, a chemical engineer not involved in the project who studies non-Newtonian fluid behavior at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Mayonnaise, ketchup, silly putty, and even blood are examples. Although these substances seem very different, Graham points out that they all contain some sort of particle?and the interaction of those particles explains their behavior.

A member of the U.S. biosecurity panel that recently lifted its objections to the publication of two controversial bird flu studies has slammed the way the decision was reached, saying the meeting held to reconsider the issue was “one-sided” and designed to produce the eventual outcome.

A closed meeting, convened last month by the US Government to decide the fate of two controversial unpublished papers on the H5N1 avian influenza virus was stacked in favour of their full publication, a participant now says.

Birders hear more than they see, but songs can be hard to identify. If there?s a killer birding app on the horizon, it may be one that identifies a species based on the song. University of Wisconsin ornithologist Mark Berres is applying for a patent for an app he calls WeBird, which could be available next year. You?d record a snatch of bird song on your iPhone and use the app to compare the snippet with thousands of recordings in a database.

Why some species died out and others didn?t during the Earth?s second largest mass extinction has been revealed in a new study. The work – performed by scientists at Caltech and the University of Wisconsin, Madison – is described in a paper currently online in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.