Category: Research

Why would scientists deliberately create a form of the H5N1 avian influenza virus that is probably highly transmissible in humans? In the growing debate about research that has done precisely that, a key question is whether the public-health benefits of the work outweigh the risks of a potential pandemic if the virus escaped from the lab.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist whose bird flu research has pulled him into the fray of an international controversy disclosed Wednesday in the journal Nature that the contagious virus created in his lab was not fatal and responded to available vaccines.

Fourteen years ago James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin isolated stem cells from human embryos. It was an exciting moment. The ability of such cells to morph into any other sort of cell suggested that worn-out or damaged tissues might be repaired, and diseases thus treated?a technique that has come to be known as regenerative medicine. Since then progress has been erratic and because of the cells? origins controversial. But, as two new papers prove, progress there has indeed been.

A couple of days ago, out of the blue, Eric Suomi got a call from NASA. The space agency wanted permission to name its newest Earth-observing satellite after his dad. “Of course I said yes,” said Suomi, an electrical engineer at Electronic Theatre Controls in Middleton. “My father would have been thrilled and honored.” The late Verner Suomi, a UW-Madison professor, was known as “the father of weather satellites.” So now the Suomi satellite orbits the Earth, predicting weather conditions, collecting climate change data and monitoring natural disasters.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka explains that research on transmissible avian flu viruses needs to continue if pandemics are to be prevented.

NASA?s “Blue Marble” image is one of the best-known high-resolution pictures of our planet. It?s even included as one of the default images for Apple?s iPhone. Now NASA has released a brand-new “Blue Marble 2012,” based on image data from the VIIRS instrument aboard Suomi NPP, the most recently launched Earth-observing satellite.

NASA today released a spectacular, high-resolution “Blue Marble” image of Earth that was taken by a recently launched satellite.The photo was compiled from several images taken Jan. 4 by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite aboard the Earth-observation satellite Suomi NPP. The satellite was renamed Tuesday for the late Verner E. Suomi, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin. He was considered “the father of satellite meteorology.”

An airborne strain of avian flu engineered in Wisconsin isn?t lethal and can be blocked with existing medicines, the study?s lead scientist said.

Why would scientists deliberately create a form of the H5N1 avian influenza virus that is probably highly transmissible in humans? In the growing debate about research that has done precisely that1, a key question is whether the public-health benefits of the work outweigh the risks of a potential pandemic if the virus escaped from the lab.

It was a public health nightmare: A deadly flu bug spread like wildfire around the world, killing tens of millions of people.

A Wisconsin virology team that created a more contagious form of bird flu did not produce a highly lethal superflu, as a Dutch team famously and controversially did last year, according to the leader of the Wisconsin team.

The Internet is becoming our main source of memory instead of our own brains, a study has concluded. In the age of Google, our minds are adapting so that we are experts at knowing where to find information even though we don?t recall what it is.

Are there some experiments that should never be carried out? Is there some knowledge that is too dangerous for humans to possess? Can the dissemination of knowledge, once it has been discovered, be limited to only a few people? These are some of the questions being raised by two papers from two virology groups [one of them UW?MAdison’s Yoshihiro Kawaoka] that created an avian H5N1 influenza virus that is easily transmissible from mammal to mammal through the air.

Researchers working on the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus have voluntarily agreed to stop their studies for 60 days over concerns that their data could provide a bioterror threat.

If you were paying attention to the flap over two recent flu experiments involving ferrets, you may have come away with the impression that scientists all but waved a red flag in front of terrorists and said, ?Here?s a perfect biological weapon ? help yourselves.?

The US funder of two projects that created a highly pathogenic flu virus mutation has welcomed a two-month moratorium on further research while defending the value and safety of the experiments.

“We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found. “This sentence comes from the findings of a new study conducted by psychology professors at Columbia University, the University Of Wisconsin-Madison, and Harvard University. 

A small — in relative terms — group of technical experts will be invited to Geneva in mid-February to begin the difficult task of trying to break an impasse arising from the proposed publication of controversial bird flu research, the World Health Organization revealed Saturday.

The scientists who altered a deadly flu virus to make it more contagious have agreed to suspend their research for 60 days to give other international experts time to discuss the work and determine how it can proceed without putting the world at risk of a potentially catastrophic pandemic.

Two scientists who independently concocted potentially dangerous strains of bird flu viruses?and have had the bioweapons community in a tizzy for the past month with the pending publication of their work?today said that they would suspend their research for 60 days.  The announcement is intended to be a kind of time out, a chance for everyone to catch up with the realization that influenza is no longer solely a matter of public health, but is now a potential bioweapon.

Scientists who created a potentially more deadly bird flu strain have temporarily stopped their research amid fears it could be used by terrorists.

An international debate over whether to censor new research on bird flu may soon prove academic, as other laboratories close in on similar findings showing how one of the most deadly viruses could mutate to be transmitted from one person to another.

Research on the H5N1 virus is critical to public health. But it must be done safely – and it must be done within an internationally monitored system that has clear rules for how the results of the research can be distributed. The experiments in Madison and Rotterdam offer an opportunity to put such a regime in place.

In nature, bird flu kills more than half of the humans it infects — but it?s very hard to catch. 

A different sort of countdown was under way on New Year?s Eve at a remote field camp in West Antarctica.

The World Health Organization says it will take a role in helping sort through an international scientific controversy over two bird flu studies that the U.S. government says are too dangerous to publish in full.

At a conference in Malta last fall, a virologist announced that by infecting a ferret with a mutated strain of bird flu, then infecting another ferret with nose swabs from the first, and repeating this 10 times, he created a strain of virus that could pass from ferret to ferret without the swab, simply through the air.

Moms feed us, read to us, clap the loudest, cry the hardest, sit front row at recorder recitals, write notes in our lunchboxes and promise that the hole in our hearts after a break-up won?t stay there forever.

In the wake of news last month that researchers had created a version of the deadly bird flu that was easily transmissible by air, a heated debate has arisen in the scientific community about whether or not the research should be published. But some experts are taking the discussion a step further back, and wondering why the research was conducted at all.

Dear Editor: Two articles in the Jan. 4-10 Cap Times were noteworthy because of the similar topic of their omissions. The first, ?A brighter year ahead,? looked back on UW-Madison?s past year but made no mention of the university?s successful lobbying of lawmakers to exempt its staff from Wisconsin?s crimes against animals statutes. The second article, a retrospective look at the retiring UW-Madison library director?s tenure, made no mention of the library?s role in or silence about the 2005 shredding of a cataloged 628-piece collection of 15 years of video records from the UW Primate Center, after it refused to provide a copy of one record that was requested as part of a public records request.

Researchers suspect that one reason middle-aged people are more resilient is that their brains have learned to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Using brain imaging to peek inside that 3 lb. of gray and white matter, researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that in younger adults, the amygdala, the brain?s emotional nut, was activated when they looked at upsetting as well as uplifting images.

While the New York Times is calling for an influenza virus created in an academic research lab in the Netherlands to either be destroyed or moved to government-controlled laboratories with the highest containment rating because of the danger the virus poses, little is known publicly about another contagious virus engineered in a University of Wisconsin-Madison lab.

The professor who oversees biosafety for the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s controversial avian influenza research responded Monday to mounting criticism about the necessity and safety of the research, saying “ongoing research with H5N1 remains salient.”

Does all this constitute a beet renaissance? Irwin Goldman says, absolutely, yes. He breeds beets at the University of Wisconsin, where he?s a professor of horticulture. He has been waiting for this renaissance for years.

Scientists could better understand how solar flares disrupt cellphone calls, wipe out power grids and knock out satellites, thanks to an aluminum sphere at UW-Madison that resembles the Death Star from “Star Wars.” The 11,000-pound hollow vessel, built to stir gas at 500,000 degrees Fahrenheit and replicate the process that creates the sun?s magnetic field, was installed this week in Sterling Hall.