Category: Research

Noted: And the carp are causing as much havoc underwater. Phil Moy studies Asian carp at the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been awarded $5.6 million for five research projects for nuclear reactor technology.

The research grants for the university come from the U.S. Department of Energy through its Nuclear Energy University program.

You can see them glimmering in gardens, nestled in rose blooms, whether at the Boerner Botanical Gardens or in your own backyard. It?s “the bug from hell,” as University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Phil Pellitteri calls it.

Larger dairy operations in Wisconsin tend to have better milk quality, according a UW-Madison study. But its lead researcher says there might be some confusion on how the study defines “quality.”

Twelve grants have been awarded to research groups as part of an initiative to foster cooperation between researchers at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. A total of $600,000 was divvied up between 12 groups Thursday, as the second batch of Intercampus Research Incentive Grants were allocated.

For decades, the power of computers has grown at a staggering rate as designers have managed to squeeze ever more and ever tinier transistors onto a silicon chip ? doubling the number every two years, on average, and leading the way to increasingly powerful and inexpensive personal computers, laptops and smartphones.

In the whodunit-style search for the culprit behind drastic sea level rise many thousands of years ago, new research may have cleared one falsely accused party  ?  but, like any good thriller, the story of the exoneration brings with it an ominous twist, and one that has implications for life on Earth today.

A quiet explosion of new research indicating that meditation can physically change the brain in astonishing ways has started to push into mainstream.

Recently, the Dalai Lama granted permission for his monks, who are master mediators, to have their brains studied at the University of Wisconsin, one of the most high-tech brain labs in the world.

Melting ice sheets of Greenland have been a cause of concern for researchers and climate change proponents, as previous studies on the ice sheet behavior projected Greenland?s ice less stable compared to Antarctica?s ice. But a recent study by scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggests that we may have got it all wrong.

A UW-Madison official praised the dismissal of a lawsuit Thursday that threatened to end federal funding for the university?s embryonic stem cell research.

A U.S. judge on Wednesday upheld the federal government?s rules that allow funding of human embryonic stem cell research, ruling for the Obama administration.

The federal government can continue to finance research into embryonic stem cells, after a judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop such grants from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled Wednesday that National Institutes of Health guidelines allowing funding of human embryonic stem cell research do not violate federal law, dismissing a legal challenge to the funding.

An increase in wildfires blamed on climate change could rapidly and profoundly alter the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, according to a study written by environmental engineering and geography professor Anthony Westerling of UC Merced.

Increasing waves of severe fires fed by climate change could shift much of the iconic forests of Yellowstone to scrub or grasslands by the end of this century, scientists say.

“Frankly, the results really surprised us,” says Monica Turner, a professor of landscape ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the authors of the paper. The researchers found “more fire and a more rapid rate of change than any of us had anticipated.”

Large fires in Yellowstone National Park could dramatically increase by mid-century due to climate change, which could create a very different park than the one people know today, a new study suggests.

Japanese beetles have invaded new parts of south-central Wisconsin, and residents have few ways to fight back. The beetles, which first came to Madison more than 10 years ago, have residents in Oregon and Stoughton complaining about their effects for the first time, said Phil Pellitteri, a University of Wisconsin Extension entomologist.

Noted: The team collected about eight tons of ice using a new drill designed and built by the Ice Drilling Design and Operations group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison . The Blue Ice Drill can extract cores with a diameter of 25 centimeters, versus about 10 centimeters for a typical vertical core.

The Japanese Beetle can be a major pain for gardeners–or even just anyone with plants in their yard.

University of Wisconsin-Madison materials science and engineering researchers have introduced innovations that could make possible a wide range of new crystalline materials.

Twenty top science students from rural Wisconsin high schools, including four from Ripon, earned the opportunity to hone their laboratory skills and work alongside top researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison at a summer science camp focused on stem cells. Ripon High School students J.J. Grinde, Andrea Lyke, Rachel Thorson and Lincoln Wurtz attended the event held last week.

Tired of merely reciting the temperature outside? Try underwater. Around 3 p.m. Wednesday, the temperature on the surface of Lake Mendota was 80.8 degrees, according to real-time statistics gathered by a UW-Madison buoy. Even five meters down, the water was 80.4 degrees. The data are available at metobs.ssec.wisc.edu.

We?ve been told that social networking can make us depressed, envious, and filled with self-doubt, not to mention mess with our marriages.

Whether our laptops, tablets and smartphones have made us smarter or dumber is a matter of endless debate and of scant but growing research. A new study grabs hold of an important corner of that question, finding that we have adapted the way we remember things to a world in which virtually everything is available on the Web.

Information has never been easier to find or record. Within seconds, the Internet lets us find answers to questions that would have remained elusive just a few decades ago. We don?t even have to remember the answers ? we can just look them up again.

The fungus causing late blight on potato crops has been found on farms in New York and Washington but not Wisconsin, according to Superintendent and Researcher Bryon Bowen of University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Agricultural Research Center in Rhinelander. 

Search engines may be changing the way our brains remember information, researchers said Thursday.

FAIRBANKS – Author and Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Deborah Blum grew up in a science-filled home and went to college wanting to be a chemist. She loved studying chemistry ? until one day she caught her hair on fire right after she?d spilled chemicals near a Bunsen burner, nearly causing an explosion potentially killing her fellow lab mates.

The widespread use of search engines and online databases has affected the way people remember information, researchers are reporting.

The ocean?s capacity to take up the carbon humans put in the atmosphere is waning, according to a new study reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Previous studies, with often contradictory results, show that the amount of atmospheric carbon absorbed by the oceans varies from year to year. University of Wisconsin oceanic sciences Professor Galen McKinley says her work – in collaboration with colleagues at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris – examines extended data analysis over time.

The ability of oceans to soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide is being hampered by climate change, according to a new scientific study.

A fresh analysis of existing observational data taken from locations across the North Atlantic Ocean recorded over a period of almost three decades (1981-2009) has revealed that global warming is having a negative impact on one of nature?s most important carbon sinks.

“Warming in the past four to five years has started to reduce the amount of carbon that large areas of the (North Atlantic) Ocean is picking up,” said Galen McKinley, lead author and assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers say indoor air pollution is linked to increased blood pressure among older women.

MADISON– As the shuttle shot into space for the final time Friday, some called it the end of an era. ” The space shuttle has not only been the mainstay of putting humans into orbit, but also has defined the type of things that we can put into orbit,” said Jim Lattis, the director of the U-W Space Place.