Category: Research

Scientists have identified a yeast that led to the discovery of lager.

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.

We have to confess we didn?t know that for decades, scientists have been trying to find the “parent yeast” that makes lager beer possible.

Geneticists have discovered the wild yeast that is believed made possible cold-temperature fermentation — and the creation of the first lager beers.

A study conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says that climate change is threatening a native fish found in the state?s deepest and coldest bodies of water, and researchers warn the population may drop by up to 70 percent within the century and affect fishing in the state.

As a pink gooey substance oozed between her fingers, 12-year-old Sydney Fry said that making the concoction was the best part of the Fun with Chemistry camp she attended on the UW-Madison campus. “It?s fun to play with,” Sydney said about the glue-based mixture. “I?m trying to get it under control.” The white glue-based mixture – tinted red so it came out pink – was one of the activities to learn about polymers at the recent camp, which is one of the Institute for Chemical Education Summer Chemistry Camps.

A new study likely to be controversial in some quarters suggests that hunters are not especially good wildlife stewards when the wildlife in question are wolves.

Making computers behave like humans has taken another step forward.

Dr. Fritz H. Bach, a former University of Wisconsin-Madison physician and medical researcher who helped develop techniques to improve people?s chances of surviving organ and bone marrow transplants, died Sunday at his home in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass. He was 76.

Since the early days in the 1940s, computers have routinely been described as ?brains? ? giant brains or mathematical brains or electronic brains. Scientists and engineers often cringed at the distorting simplification, but the popular label stuck.

The challenge in training a computer to behave like a human brain is technological and physiological, testing the limits of computer and brain science. But researchers from IBM Corp. say they?ve made a key step toward combining the two worlds.

But what’s important is not what the chips are doing, but how they’re doing it, says Giulio Tononi, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who worked with IBM on the project.

The number of scientific experts testifying in court for both the prosecution and the defense has been increasing at a rapid pace. That means lawyers often have to become experts in bio chemistry or genetics just to do their job. That?s one of the reasons the UW-Madison law school is launching a dual degree this year in law and neuroscience.

The Madison research involves the Engine Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as Caterpillar Inc. and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, said Rolf Reitz, a partner in the consulting firm and UW professor of mechanical engineering.

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.