A. “Carbonated” beverages get their name from dissolved carbon dioxide. The bottling process increases the pressure and amount of carbon dioxide in the liquid and air inside the can to levels much higher than in the air outside.
A. The most common way to define the start of winter is to appeal to the solstice, the day on which the noontime sun is positioned at its farthest southern point of the year. This is the astronomical start of winter ? Dec. 22 this year. On that day, the noontime sun will be directly overhead at 23.5 S latitude.
A US biosecurity committee is deciding whether crucial research on H5N1 bird flu is too dangerous to publish. The work shows a few mutations that might allow H5N1 bird flu to cause a lethal human pandemic.
A group of scientists is pushing to publish research about how they created a man-made flu virus that could potentially wipe out civilisation.
Hunched over their computers, scientists at the Space Science and Engineering Center have advanced meteorology to where we can now literally peer into the future and predict everything from the landfall of hurricanes to the formation of tornados.
Mentions that this year, about $1 million was programmed for genetic improvement research, conducted at University of Wisconsin-Madison and other institutions. Another approximately $300,000 is pegged for conservation programs.
At first glance, a program launched last week that will provide college scholarships for up to 2,600 current ninth-graders attending public schools in Milwaukee looks similar to a growing number of initiatives across the country designed to give students the boost they need to pursue a college degree. But The Degree Project is different in one significant way: It was built from the ground up as a research project to collect data and to examine whether these so-called promise programs are a wise use of funds in an era of limited resources.
“What we want to look at is if there is clear evidence that these programs work,” says Douglas Harris, a UW-Madison associate professor of educational policy studies who helped design the project and is its evaluator.
Psychopaths such as Hannibal Lecter – Anthony Hopkins? character in the film The Silence of the Lambs – are callous, anti-social and sometimes violent. They are incapable of feeling empathy or guilt.
Brains of Wisconsin prisoners diagnosed as psychopaths are different in structure and function from the brains of prisoners who committed similar crimes but were not diagnosed with the mental disorder, a new study led by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers indicates.
Differences in psychopaths? brains may help explain their anti-social behavior, according to new research.
The longer a child lives in an impoverished neighborhood, the greater the risk that they won?t graduate from high school, according to a recent study by the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have grown human embryonic stem cells into neurons that appear capable of adapting themselves to the brain?s machinery by sending and receiving messages from other cells, raising hopes that medicine may one day use this tool to treat patients with such disorders as Parkinson?s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig?s disease.
A UW-Eau Claire study has found that a popular website used to rate college professors is “providing useful feedback about instructor quality.” RateMyProfessors.com allows students to voluntarily rank their professors, but there is conflicting research on the validity of the website. Skeptics say students who use the site are not representative, tend to have extreme views, and give high ratings to easy instructors.
Researchers working on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus have shown that neurons derived from human embryonic stem cells and implanted into the brains of mice can connect with the brain?s circuitry to both transmit and receive signals. The findings, which were reported Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a team of scientists who work at the university?s Waisman Center, could help lead to new therapies for treating everything from strokes and traumatic brain injuries to Parkinson?s and Huntington?s disease.
A. There are a series of questions you can ask yourself to aid in predicting the formation of frost for your own backyard:
Rich Low of Madison served as an infantry officer in the Army in Iraq in 2005 and 2006, leading some 280 combat missions. When he came back from the service, he didn?t think his experience affected him in any major way. He had nightmares, and he startled easily, but he chalked that up to just something veterans live with. Then he enrolled in a study he initially wrote off as “just some hippie thing,” where he learned about yoga breathing and meditation. A year later, Low, 30, sums up his experience with two words: “It works.”
That?s the idea behind the study coming from The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center on the UW-Madison campus. Researchers there, including associate scientist Emma Seppala, believe something as simple as breathing can change the lives of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, even those who don’t think they have post-traumatic stress disorder.
Integrating a complex, single-crystal material with “giant” piezoelectric properties onto silicon, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers and physicists can fabricate low-voltage, near-nanoscale electromechanical devices that could lead to improvements in high-resolution 3D imaging, signal processing, communications, energy harvesting, sensing, and actuators for nanopositioning devices, among others.
A. “Dark muscles, because they?re locomotive, are a different fiber type than light muscles, and the fibers contain different amounts of oxygen-carrying proteins,” said poultry expert Mark Richards, a professor of animal sciences at UW?Madison.
Mentions a 2011 study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Applied Population Laboratory of declining participation among male deer hunters
Religion is said to be the driving influence behind Americans? low moral opinion of nanotechnology, according to a researcher who surveyed public opinion on science and technology. Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences, and a colleague found in their study that only 29.5 percent of respondents from a sample of 1,015 adult Americans agreed that nanotechnology was morally acceptable.
When the monthly jobs numbers come out these days, the Internet comment boards heat up fast over whether Gov. Walker has the state on course — or not. Unfortunately for the governor, the numbers announced Thursday showed the state losing nearly 10,000 more non-farm positions in October, the fourth straight month of declines….Over the past year the state has lost 5,200 professional and business services positions, including nearly 3,800 science and tech jobs.
Following testimony at the Capitol earlier this week against further budget cuts, the University of Wisconsin System issued a report Wednesday to a legislative committee requesting the continuation of a program it said will provide more grant money for research projects.
If you?re a fan of clean air and water, it?s time to make your voice heard. That was the message delivered Tuesday afternoon by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to a crowd of about 400 people on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Thirteen years ago, in a small closet-like laboratory, a University of Wisconsin scientist named James Thomson used funding from a Menlo Park, Calif.-based biotechnology company called Geron to create the first human embryonic stem cells, cells derived from human embryos that should have the potential to develop into any type of human tissue.
Geron Corp. is exiting the field it pioneered in a calculated business move that underscores the long, costly path embryonic stem cells face to become real-world products.
The Madison area pretty much stinks compared to several peers when it comes to creating private sector jobs and generating new companies, according to a $140,000 study. It found the Madison region lagging in income growth, ethic diversity and the number of young people putting down roots here. Other black marks include the high cost of living, lack of broadband access and limited access to investment capital. But the report lauded the area for its high quality of life, the easy availability of health care and the large amount of research and development at UW-Madison.
The muriqui monkeys of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, a highly endangered species numbering only about 1,000, live in an egalitarian society.
The company conducting the world?s first clinical trial of a therapy using human embryonic stem cells said on Monday that it was halting that trial and leaving the stem cell business entirely.
[VIDEO clip] — UW?Madison psychology and psychiatry professor Richard Davidson and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds are studying whether yoga and meditation can help veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
While it is still a year until the race for Wisconsin?s soon-to-be open Senate seat takes place, stem cell research is already being brought to the forefront as a potential hot-button issue in the election.
The University of Wisconsin lost one of its most storied researchers when professor Har Gobind Khorana, former director at the UW Department of Biochemistry and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, died last Wednesday at the age of 89.
A: The massive storm that struck the west coast of Alaska last Tuesday and Wednesday was truly an amazing meteorological event. The entire Bering Sea coast was under the threat of hurricane-force winds, with many areas facing heavy snow and zero visibility. Importantly, this storm is able to exert hurricane force winds over a much larger area than the typical tropical storm.
A: These boulders are a legacy of the ice age, when the climate in southwestern Wisconsin resembled that of present-day northern Alaska, said James Knox, Evjue-Bascom professor emeritus of geography at UW-Madison.
UW-Madison sent four official delegations to China over the last two years, accelerated research connections with the country and aggressively recruited Chinese students to study here. Now, UW-Madison leaders are laying the groundwork for a physical foothold in China in what would be the school?s first foreign office.
….Not everyone believes UW-Madison should be establishing close ties with China. Tom Loftus, who until recently served on the UW Board of Regents, has called for the university to be more cautious.
?China isn?t Iowa ? there is censorship, human rights abuse, jailing of artists, defense lawyers and dissidents of all types,? Loftus wrote in an email to the State Journal. ?And, the Communist Party government has no compunction about punishing those countries and institutions that offend.?
China may be 7,000 miles away, but it?s one of UW-Madison?s closest research partners. There are hundreds of collaborations as university faculty regularly beat a path back and forth to China, working on such areas as blindness, the milk yield of dairy cows and the impact of climate change on deserts. As UW-Madison considers opening an office in Shanghai ? its first foreign outpost ? the potential for developing even more research partnerships is at the forefront of administrators? minds.
“Although we are there every six months, it’s not a continuing presence,” said Gilles Bousquet, dean of the Division of International Studies and vice provost of globalization. “If we had somebody on the ground, they could take advantage of those relationships.”
H. Gobind Khorana, who rose from poverty in rural India to become one of the world?s foremost biochemists and who shared the Nobel Prize for helping unravel how genetic information in a cell is used to make proteins vital for human life, died Nov. 9 at a rehabilitation facility in Concord, Mass. He was believed to be 89.
H. Gobind Khorana, who rose from a childhood of poverty in India to become a biochemist and share in a Nobel Prize for his role in deciphering the genetic code, died on Wednesday in Concord, Mass. He was 89.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, one of Newsweek?s “Most Important People in 2010,” will speak at Union South Nov. 15. Jackson will discuss challenges facing environmental laws as well as the EPA?s efforts to respond to President Barack Obama?s request that federal agencies work with American businesses to help create jobs.
Look at any university ranking table, and the overwhelming majority of top universities are American. The Shanghai Rankings list 35 American universities among the top 50 universities with the world. The UK is next, with three among the top 50.
A decade after he helped persuade a president to allow funding of some embryonic stem cell research, Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and presumptive U.S. Senate candidate, paid a visit to the Vatican on Wednesday to deliver a very different message.
In Rome, Thompson, who is Roman Catholic, portrayed himself as a strong proponent of adult stem cells – cells that aren?t culled from embryos – while appearing to brush aside the embryonic stem cell research he once defended.
Having mom accompany you on club night or to a dance isn?t a notion most young men think of fondly. But new research by a University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist Karen B. Strier suggests that the arrangement works well for the male northern muriqui monkey. In fact, taking mom with you in search of mates appears to keep activity on the up and up. No inbreeding allowed.
Why do we need sleep? Some researchers think it gives our bodies a chance to repair themselves. Others think it gives our brains time to organize our thoughts. Neuroscientist Chiara Cirelli at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and others believe that a good night?s sleep helps us learn more the next day.
There?s nothing quite like having mum around when you?re trying to get it on with a lady. That is if you are a male northern muriqui monkey, according to a study by anthropologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson on Wednesday urged President Obama to take the lead in promoting adult stem cell research and give the divisive debate over embryonic stem cells a rest.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson on Wednesday urged President Obama to take the lead in promoting adult stem cell research and give the divisive debate over embryonic stem cells a rest. [Mentioned: UW?Madison’s leadership in stem cell research.]
Milwaukee is developing a reputation as a leader in freshwater research and technology. The Chronicle of Higher Education is the latest publication to take note. An article posted over the weekend states Lake Michigan is not “just a pretty backdrop and source of recreation here but a strong economic driver, with more than 130 water-technology-related businesses in the region bringing in $10.5-billion annually in revenue.” That number is huge. UW-Madison, for example, is one of the leading research institutions on the planet, and it brings in only a fraction of that — approximately $1 billion per year — in research dollars.
The earth?s population hit the 7 billion mark last week. Perhaps just as eye opening is the fact that the planet is adding more than 200,000 people to that total every 24 hours. That?s nearly another Madison each day.
“We need to start thinking proactively about energy use and other sustainability issues, or we?ll be forced to face the consequences of having to be reactive,” says Craig Benson, who this summer was named UW-Madison?s first director for sustainability research and education. “Resources are no longer plentiful, so it behooves us to think much more strategically about our energy resources.”
Having your mother constantly watching your back may not be a sexy trait in human males, but in some primate species, mom rules the roost and her presence may help her sons hook up with eligible females, a new study suggests.
A Brazilian monkey species that lives in egalitarian groups shares paternity among more of its males than most other primates do, a new study has found.
Compared to driving, bicycling is clearly better for the environment and your health. But how much better is it?
Residents in 11 Midwestern cities would generate $7 billion in improved air quality, reduced health care costs and increased physical fitness by biking rather than driving for roughly half their trips of five miles or less, according to the work of researchers at the University of Wisconsin ? Madison.
(MADISON)- Some law students at the University of Wisconsin?s Law school have begun taking a closer look at how new brain scan research might change the way criminal sentences are handed down. The UW-Madison Law school?s new double major in law and neuroscience is challenging future lawyers to use new discoveries on how the brain works to make punishment more effectively fit the crime. They?re looking at new research from the Macarthur Foundation Research Network on law and neuroscience.
In the nation?s Northeast, millions of brown bats are dying off.
It?s estimated that the bat population there has declined by 80 percent since 2007, but a breakthrough discovery at a Madison lab could help researchers understand why and battle back against the disease causing the deaths.
Bats, already maligned enough in movie and myth, are facing a tough time in real life these days. The state?s cave bat populations are being closely monitored for signs of white-nose syndrome, the fungal disease that has already wiped out untold numbers of bats in the east. And now, researchers at the UW-Madison have learned more about how bats are dying on wind farms. David Drake, a UW-Madison wildlife ecology professor, and former masters student Steven Grodsky, teamed with the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine to study the carcasses of bats found near wind turbines.
It isn?t hard to find skilled scientists and engineers in Madison or to bring them here from other parts of the country. It isn?t even much of a problem to land $1 million or so to start a company here. But what is very difficult is bringing in enough money to take a company beyond the startup stage, and that?s where the state needs to step in. That was the message from executives of several of the Madison area?s most successful tech companies at a panel discussion Wednesday at the Early Stage Symposium at Monona Terrace.
For years researchers have been puzzled by the number of bats killed by wind turbines. Birds, yes. But bats, in theory, should be able to avoid the towers because of their innate sonar systems that orient them in space. Nonetheless, they die in the thousands, in far greater numbers than birds. Some research found that they died because the enormous changes in pressure as the blades sweep through the air ruptured their delicate ear drums, causing a hemorrhage known as barotrauma. Now, a new study based on bat autopsies from the University of Wisconsin found that the problem is far more complicated.
What would you say to a cheap, easy way to stay slim, one that would help avoid serious illness and early death? How about if it made your neighbors healthier, too? It could be as simple as biking to the store.
The weed-killer Roundup gets used for everything from killing dandelions to painting the stumps of invasive species such as buckthorn. As pervasive as its use, however, may be the growing presence of the herbicide in our environment, according to recent studies, including some by UW-Madison professor Warren Porter, who specializes in environmental toxicity and zoology.
Madison-based Stratatech Corp. is getting a $4.6 million grant to help fund the start of clinical trials of ExpressGraft, a skin substitute designed to heal diabetes-related foot ulcers. Founded in 2000 based on discoveries at UW-Madison, Stratatech makes tissue products described on the company’s website as “nearly identical” to human skin. The company has 32 employees and will likely add more staff in 2012, Allen-Hoffmann said, but she could not yet estimate how many.
When bats in northeastern America began dying off in alarming numbers a few years ago, wildlife ecologists were perplexed. They named the disease white-nose syndrome, but until now authorities had no idea what caused the fatal ailment.
