Category: Research

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.?  

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.

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.

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?”