Category: Research

As many people know, wireless networks are rife with RF (Radio Frequency) interference. This is not only an issue with large-scale business Wi-Fi, but within homes as well. Non-Wi-Fi devices such as cordless phones, Bluetooth headsets, some audio and video transmitters, various ZigBee devices and more, can all interfere with the performance of Wi-Fi.

After receiving over $2 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, UW-Madison engineering physics researchers will collaborate with other universities to develop future nuclear energy technology.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin are planning to take nuclear research to the next level with the help of a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Respect for human dignity is essential in the authorization and conduct of scientific research, a point underscored by numerous and horrific past failures to establish or follow such protocols. As a UW-Madison graduate with substantial coursework in the biological sciences, I heard the declaration from more than one of my professors that the ethical questions surrounding pushing the boundaries of scientific inquiry should be ?set aside and dealt with later? if there was ?great potential? for medical breakthroughs ? a philosophy that can also reduce human life in its various parts and stages to the status of mere research tools and manufactured products. We can do better. I have introduced Assembly Bill 214 to establish reasonable standards for human tissue research and prohibit the sale or use of aborted fetal body parts for experimentation or other purposes.

A University of Wisconsin engineer recently received a grant from the US Marine Corps providing funds to continue work on a new ?green? diesel engine with another Wisconsin entrepreneur.

UW-Madison is trying to help the public understand science this weekend not just through experiments and lectures but by linking the scientists at the Institutes for Discovery with their arts and humanities colleagues across campus. More than 85 public events, including performances, demonstrations, lectures and screenings, will be held as part of the first Wisconsin Science Festival starting Thursday and running through Sunday.

The National Institutes of Health awarded its Director?s New Innovator Award to two University of Wisconsin researchers Tuesday morning, recognizing their research and awarding each researcher a $1.5 million grant.

Noted: Justin Williams, a biomedical engineer at the University of Wisconsin, has already transformed the ECoG implant into a microdevice that can be installed with a minimum of fuss. It has been tested in animals for long periods of time ? the micro ECoG stays in place and doesn?t seem to negatively affect the immune system. Williams said he hopes to try it in humans soon. ?Our goal is to make devices that would require only an outpatient procedure,? he says. ?Even if we could make it an overnight stay in the hospital, that would be good.? The implant, in humans, would be about the size of a quarter and sit like a plug in the skull, with a tiny antenna for wireless hookup between machine and brain.

The new study shows that childhood experiences that fall well short of abuse, or even of having a mother who is depressed, leave their marks on our DNA. Led by Marilyn Essex, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and director of the Life Stress & Human Development Lab of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, scientists gave questionnaires to hundreds of parents, who were part of a years-long study, when their kids were infants and again when they were 3½ and 4½ years old.

The interim chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has sent a letter to Wisconsin lawmakers urging them to oppose a bill that would ban the use of fetal tissue in research.

In 2008, Tyler Mills went to court on a charge of child enticement. The charge stemmed from an online conversation with a cop posing as a 14-year-old girl, during which Mills asked her to ?de-virginize? him.

One of the University of Wisconsin?s renowned centers for interdisciplinary research will be able to fund new collaborative projects with the renewal of an $18 million funding stream from the National Science Foundation.

A UW-Madison engineering center won a six year, $18 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The funding will allow the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center on Nanostructured Interfaces to expand its mission.

Will you be able to charge your next mobile phone simply by walking around? A group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hope so.

Perhaps the Northwoods? most abundant crop is potatoes.To keep business sprouting, UW-Madison has planted a research facility in Rhinelander to keep moving forward.

Lawmakers and political groups like to point to government spending that seems wasteful ? especially in tough economic times. And one popular target has been scientific studies that either sound silly or involve foreign countries or have to do with sex. Looking at past examples, however, shows that there seems to be a pattern to how research gets singled out ? and what happens after it?s put under the spotlight.

Millions of people up and down the East Coast were rocked by Tuesday afternoon?s 5.8-magnitude earthquake, and, believe it or not, the ground rumbled here in Madison as well, 700 miles away from the quake?s epicenter.

“The windows shook, kind of rattled a little bit,” said James Lustig, who works at the Carbone Cancer Center on the sixth floor at UW Hospital. “I thought, ?That?s kind of weird, my window doesn?t open.?”

How did lager beer come to be? After pondering the question for decades, scientists have found that an elusive species of yeast isolated in the forests of Argentina was key to the invention of the crisp-tasting German beer 600 years ago, according to Chris Todd Hittinger, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW-Madison has a new director of its Environment, Health and Safety Department. Paul F. Umbeck, who founded a University Research Park-based consulting firm on biosafety and biosecurity issues, will be in charge of general campus safety.

A stowaway strain of yeast, crossing the Atlantic centuries ago, may be responsible for a cool quarter-trillion-dollar beverage industry today.

The long-missing parent yeast of lager beer was newly discovered, and is believed to have sailed 7,000 miles from Patagonia in South America to Bavaria, to make a fortuitous microbial match at the birth place of the most popular alcoholic beverage of today, which underpins the $250 billion-a-year industry.

Numerous residents in south-central Wisconsin said they felt a magnitude 5.8 earthquake centered roughly 700 miles away, near Mineral, Va. The U.S. Geological Survey says the earthquake struck at 12:51 p.m. CST. It took 2.5 to 3 minutes to reach the Madison area, according to UW-Madison geoscience professor Charles DeMets.

If you like lager beer, you have Christopher Columbus to thank for it. The long-standing mystery of where the yeast that makes cold-temperature lager beer fermentation possible has been solved, in the beech forests of Patagonia in Argentina.

Ice cold beer: In these dog days of summer, few things are better. So, let?s raise a glass and toast Saccharomyces eubayanus, newly discovered yeast that helped make cold-fermented lager a runaway success.