The American Dictionary of Regional English has finally reached its final word – “zydeco” – as researchers wrap up almost 50 years of work charting the rich variety of American speech.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison earlier this year completed its long-in-the-making Dictionary of American Regional English, or DARE, and the fifth and final volume was released March 1 by Harvard University Press. The dictionary attempts to collect the colorful and varied words used in Americans? everyday lives, across the country, organized by region ? including Maine and New England. The regional variations go far beyond which places call it ?soda? and which places call it ?pop? ? and reveals much about our past and our present.
Neutrinos are devious little particles. Only in the late 1990s were they shown to have mass, after decades of head-scratching hints to that effect. They can oscillate between three neutrino types, or “flavors,” changing their identity on the fly. And, perhaps most famously, they were accused just last year of breaking cosmic law by traveling faster than light. (The jury is out, but an acquittal appears imminent.)
UW-Madison will launch a new office Friday to coordinate all campus efforts on sustainability. The Office of Sustainability kick-off will begin at 1 p.m. at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery with remarks by Provost Paul DeLuca and Vice Chancellor for Administration Darrell Bazzell.
A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but if you dont know what the locals call it, you may accidentally order a daisy.
Since the US government asked the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) last week to reconsider revised manuscripts of controversial H5N1 research, which contain ?new? and ?clarified older data? not evaluated previously by the NSABB, several members of the security board, as well as a senior US congressman, have spoken out about the unfolding events.
David Krakauer, the new director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, says a lot of interesting, challenging, borderline-radical things. Then again, he comes from a pretty interesting place, born of a borderline-radical approach to science and research ? one where ideas are free to grow in an interdisciplinary greenhouse in which odd hybrids are nurtured and appreciated rather than cut off at the roots.
Fully 30 percent of Wisconsin?s children now live in working but low-income households, which overall make up a quarter of the state?s working families and half of its non-white families, a new report from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) says. Wisconsin also is near the bottom of states for minority-family income, which is higher in 41 states, the study said. The COWS study argued that recent policy changes were making things even worse for low-income working residents, defined as those earning two times the poverty line.
Locked behind a set of double doors in a sparkling clean warehouse on the city?s far east side is a miniature refinery. The tangle of silver metal tubes and columns resembles the huge oil refineries along the Gulf Coast ? although at 20 feet tall and 40 feet long, it?s just a fraction of the size. But instead of using crude oil as the main ingredient, the refinery at Virent Inc. uses sugar water. Through a patented catalytic process called aqueous phase reforming, the sugar molecules are converted into a product with the same chemical makeup as gasoline. Science fiction? Not at all.
….”I think we’re at a point where these advanced biofuels are nearing commercialization and Virent is right in the front row,” says Gary Radloff, director of Midwest energy policy analysis for the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative at the UW-Madison. Virent officials remain cautious, however, about tooting their own horn.
A little over a year after opening, the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery has been named the 2012 Laboratory of the Year for its innovative architecture and laboratory design.
The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery is in the spotlight of international distinction after receiving a multi-national award as an exemplary laboratory on the University of Wisconsin campus Monday.
Only a year after opening, the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery has garnered one of the biggest plums in the research world. The state-of-the-art facility at UW-Madison was named the 2012 laboratory of the year by R&D Magazine, according to a UW-Madison news release.
Order a sloppy Joe in North or South Dakota, and the waiter may give you a blank stare. The popular beef-on-a-bun sandwich is known to some there as a slushburger. People from parts of the West and Midwest call theirs a Spanish hamburger. And in northwest Iowa? It?s a tavern.
If ordering lunch now seems unexpectedly complicated, you might want to take a look at the recently completed Dictionary of American Regional English, which explains more than 60,000 regional words and phrases.
Order a sloppy Joe in North or South Dakota, and the waiter may give you a blank stare. The popular beef-on-a-bun sandwich is known to some there as a slushburger. People from parts of the West and Midwest call theirs a Spanish hamburger. And in northwest Iowa? It?s a tavern.
Future work on mutated bird flu viruses should only take place in laboratories with the highest level of biosafety, suggests a new commentary on the controversy over two studies that led to the creation of these viruses.
A. There are four basic shapes of ice crystals: the hexagonal plate, the needle, the column and the dendrite. The dendrites are hexagonal with elongated branches, or fingers, of ice; they most closely resemble what we think of as snowflakes. The temperature at which the crystal grows determines the particular shape. A snowflake is an individual ice crystal or an aggregate of ice crystals. Large snowflakes are aggregates of ice crystals. Aggregation is the process by which ice crystals collide and form a single larger ice particle.
As a 15-year-old volunteer at a sleep laboratory in a Brooklyn, N.Y., hospital, Richard Davidson watched a room of sleeping participants, heads pasted with electrodes, experience dreams or nightmares that registered as brain waves on a gigantic machine. His time in the sleep lab, Davidson writes in his new book, taught him ?virtually every dream contained significant emotion ? terror or joy, anger, sadness, jealousy, or hatred.?
Last week I shared thoughts about some Appalachian localisms, and, not having grown up in these mountains, I have a lot to learn.A reader gave me a tip on the Dictionary of American Regional English ? often referred to as DARE ? which published its fifth volume last week. There are six volumes in all, the last one being printed as we speak; and an online version of the whole thing is due out next year.
Two teams of scientists, led by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have created mutant strains of H5N1 avian influenza. These laboratory strains could be passed between mammals more easily than wild strains of the virus.
Two months ago we warned that a new bird flu virus ? modified in a laboratory to make it transmissible through the air among mammals ? could kill millions of people if it escaped confinement or was stolen by terrorists. Now Ron Fouchier, the Dutch scientist who led the key research team, is saying that his findings, which remain confidential, were misconstrued by the press.
The Dictionary of American Regional English, the recently completed landmark project we profiled recently, is based largely on research by a team of fieldworkers who fanned out across the country some 50 years ago in vans called Word Wagons, querying Americans about their ways of talking about kitchen implements, farm animals, bodily ailments, misbehaving children, stupid neighbors and more.
The linguists of the future, however, may not have to go to such literal lengths to find geographical variations in speech.
DARE is a project underwritten by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the oldest project of the endowment, representing half a century of work. The next time you hear someone railing against government expenditure, keep in mind that your tax dollars could, and do, go for worse things than preserving the marks of our distinctive national voice.
They?re the words you didn?t learn in English class. Honeyfuggle. Pinkwink. Schnickelfritz.
They might sound like gibberish, but you can find them all in the Dictionary of American Regional English, a comprehensive guide to America?s regional and folk speech.
Researchers who created a so-called superstrain of H5N1 bird flu say the virus may not be as lethal or as virulent as has been widely suggested.
The city of Eau Claire could eventually restrict the number of new liquor licenses it gives to bars and restaurants in an effort to curb drinking problems.It?s an idea a UW-Madison alcohol researcher suggested Thursday during UW-Eau Claire?s Bridge Summit, a yearly meeting on campus to discuss drinking-related problems in the area.
After just three months of operation, the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has far surpassed expectations, recording tens of thousands of particle interactions and paving the way to a better understanding of neutrinos and why the universe is built of matter rather than antimatter.
Two controversial studies on bird flu will once again be reviewed by an expert committee that advises the government on what to do with biological research that could pose potential dangers.
“Dictionary of American Regional English” highlights local ways of speaking.
Our experiences in life dont just affect how we learn and behave, they can also mark our genes and influence our children, a growing body of research suggests. “We want to know how experiences really influence the brain,” says Marilyn Essex, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin’s school of medicine and public health in Madison. “What are some of the underlying biological mechanisms that can help us understand how we get from the early stress to the later health outcomes?”
Its accents and vocabulary are as different as its vast and varied landscapes.And the diversity of dialects in the U.S. are showcased in all their glory in the Dictionary of American Regional English (Dare).
Shell has been a partner of Virent for the past five years, working to develop the Eagle pilot biorefinery that has been operating in Madison for several years. Shell also is an investor in Virent, which spun off from the chemistry labs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Recently restored murals by John Steuart Curry will be the subject of a UW-Madison talk at 7 p.m. Wednesday, as part of the regular Wednesday Night @ the Lab series. The public is invited to come to Room 1125 of the Biochemistry Building, 420 Henry Mall, to see the murals, hear about Curry?s work and learn about the science depicted in the murals.
If you?ve never put your lips to a bubbler, you?re probably not from Wisconsin. Ask for a pickle in Nebraska and you might get a lottery ticket. And what you call a carbonated soft drink, whether soda, pop or coke, provides a clue about where you grew up.
A: Sand from Wisconsin and other parts of the country is now in high demand as it is essential to the process of hydraulic fracturing or ?fracking,? a technique that splits rock so it is easier to access certain natural gas deposits.
Madison stem cell company, Stemina Biomarker Discovery, is getting a $150,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health aimed at expanding the use of its drug testing technology for harmful side effects. Co-founded by UW-Madison stem cell researcher Gabriela Cezar, Stemina has been using its technology with heart cells provided by Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), the Madison company founded by UW stem cell pioneer James Thomson, to see if drug compounds could cause cardiomyopathy, a condition that weakens the heart and can lead to heart failure.
A. We have continued to enjoy temperatures well above normal through most of February 2012, making this year?s Dec. 1?Feb. 20 the fifth-warmest on record with an average temperature of 28.3F in Madison. Barring an exceptionally warm last week of the month (which does not appear likely), that is where we will end up ? the fifth-warmest winter (defined as December, January, February) of all time in Madison.
The relationship status feature of Facebook appears to be central to the happiness ? or not ? of many romantic relationships among young people, according to new research.
At the end of his second year of Harvard graduate school, neuroscientist and bestselling author Richard Davidson did something his colleagues suspected would mark the end of his academic career: He skipped town and went to India and Sri Lanka for three months to ?study meditation.?
Joan Houston Hall, chief editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English, still remembers the day back in the late 1990s when she typed ?scrid? into Google.
Last year, researchers examined Facebook profiles of 200 students at the University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Some 30 percent posted updates that met the American Psychiatric Association?s criteria for a symptom of depression, reporting feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness, insomnia or sleeping too much, and difficulty concentrating.
That we can identify these words today is largely a testament to the vision of one man: Frederic Cassidy, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who conceived the Dictionary of American Regional English known as DARE in a 1962 speech to the American Dialect Society.
The University of Wisconsin?s renowned Polymer Engineering Center is collaborating with the University of Massachusetts-Lowell to design the curriculum for a new plastics institution in India, expected to break ground later this year.
The one-word bit of career advice, “plastics,” made to Benjamin Braddock in the 1967 movie “The Graduate,” has been followed for years at UW-Madison, and will soon be the credo of students at a new university in India. The Polymer Engineering Center at UW-Madison is joining with the University of Massachusetts-Lowell to develop the curriculum at the new PlastIndia International University in Vapi, India. Plastics expert Tim Osswald, a professor in mechanical engineering at UW-Madison, said the agreement with the PlastIndia Foundation includes an exchange program for faculty and students.
“A really important aspect of our education here is to create graduates who can think globally,” Osswald said in the release. “That’s going to be beneficial to our industry and our economy.”
Bitters helped establish the women?s studies program at UW-Madison while a graduate student from 1972 to 1975. That led to a job at DPI helping the state figure out the implications of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law that prohibits gender discrimination in schools. In December, the White House honored Bitters as one of 12 “Champions of Change” for leading the effort to recruit and retain girls and women in what are referred to as the STEM fields.
UW-Madison?s Richard Davidson remains on the cutting edge of brain research that sheds light on understanding our emotions. The Feb. 27 issue of Newsweek features excerpts of Davidson?s new book, “The Emotional Life of Your Brain.” The work is co-authored by Sharon Begley, the former Newsweek science writer.
Battles continue over whether or not to publish research in which H5N1 bird flu transmitted readily among mammals.
A new treatment program for post-traumatic stress disorder is under way at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that doesn?t involve drugs or traditional therapy.
State Journal reporter Ron Seely?s coverage of the Joint Finance Committee hearings on the mining bill has been outstanding. The proposed iron mine is near the triple-divide between the watersheds of Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and the Mississippi. It will use a great deal of water and will be deep enough to be far below the lake level of Lake Superior. This can not help but affect Lake Superior.
– Martin David, Middleton, emeritus professor, UW-Madison and Nelson Institute
Legislation outlining a proposed state wolf hunt is likely to hurt wolf populations while failing to resolve existing conflicts with humans, says a University of Wisconsin-Madison wolf expert.
After weeks of debate, two controversial papers describing forms of the H5N1 avian influenza virus capable of transmitting between mammals should be published in full. That was the unexpected outcome of a meeting convened last week in Geneva, Switzerland, by the World Health Organization (WHO), which also promised to create a more rigorous oversight system for such research.
Facebook may seem like an infinite dumping ground for weekend plans, baby photos and the habits of domesticated wildlife, but the computers behind the scenes processing all that information are rapidly being overwhelmed. Enter UW-Madison graduate student Tyler Harter, whose proposed research project to improve the storage systems of social networking websites has landed him among elite company as one of this year?s 15 Facebook Fellowship winners.
UW-Madison has strengthened its once lacking oversight of biological research, such as the bird flu study by Yoshihiro Kawaoka entangled in an international debate over biosafety and bioterrorism. But the university could face more rules recommended nationally for experiments such as Kawaoka?s that are deemed to have potential for good or bad. Campus officials already are guarding information about biological research more closely.
GENEVA ? Two studies showing how scientists mutated the H5N1 bird flu virus into a form that could cause a deadly human pandemic will be published only after experts fully assess the risks, the World Health Organization said Friday.
This June in Brazil, delegates will mark the twentieth anniversary of what is commonly known as the Earth Summit. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development took place in Rio de Janeiro in nineteen ninety-two. One of the issues that the delegates plan to discuss in June at Rio+20 is the role of agriculture in climate change. VOA interviewed UW’s Molly Jahn on the subject.
Mother of pearl — produced by molluscs — is largely used in jewellery and art. However, a new report suggests that it could be used to reveal both the temperature and the ocean depth at which the material formed.
Prescriptions for narcotic painkillers soared so much over the last decade that by 2010 enough were being dispensed to medicate every adult in the United States around-the-clock for a month.
Behind that surge was a network of pain organizations, doctors and researchers that pushed for expanded use of the drugs while taking in millions of dollars from the companies that made them, a Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today investigation found.
Last year, the newspaper found that a University of Wisconsin-based organization in Madison had been a national force in helping liberalize the way opioids are prescribed and viewed. While pushing a pharmaceutical industry agenda that critics say was not supported by rigorous science, the UW Pain & Policy Studies Group took in $2.5 million over a decade from opioid companies. [Related stories can be found here and here.]
The National Security Council is moving to exert greater federal control over scientific studies of highly lethal diseases and toxins in the face of mounting fears that the research could be used by terrorists and rogue states, according to people with knowledge of the process.
There may be ways, however, to spot a liar before you find yourself across from him or her at a candlelit table. Researchers from Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared the actual heights, weights, and ages of 78 online daters to their dating profiles on four matchmaking websites.
Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist, is probably the first scientist to propose that burning of fossil fuels could modify our global temperatures. In 1896, Arrhenius recognized that carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning carbon substances such as natural gas, gasoline and oil, would act like a greenhouse gas.
A: It depends on the plants, but probably not, said Laura Jull, associate professor of horticulture at UW?Madison.”I?m confident that trees and shrubs will be OK,” Jull said. “But I?m seeing in my own yard daffodils and tulips coming up, and that?s not good.”
