In 2004, scientists at the National Eye Institute predicted that as the population aged, the rate of macular degeneration, an incurable eye disease with no known cause, would increase substantially. They appear to have been wrong.
UW-Madison researcher James Thomson has been named co-winner of the King Faisal International Prize for Medicine for his continuing work to advance stem-cell research.
Morgridge Institute and University of Wisconsin researcher Jamie Thomson recently received the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine for his groundbreaking stem cell research, a prize that often marks a stepping-stone on the road to a Nobel Prize.
Putting out cigarettes in Wisconsin bars and restaurants did not have a detrimental effect on the hospitality industry, according to a study released Monday. The study, conducted by the Carbone Cancer Center at UW-Madison, looked at five Wisconsin cities, including Madison, where smoking bans went into effect before the statewide ban took hold last summer.
Results showed bars and restaurants in the smoke-free cities continued to do well under no-smoking ordinances, and the number of class B alcohol licenses increased after the ordinances took effect.
James Thomson, a pioneer in stem cell research at UW-Madison, has been awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine.The prestigious award was established in 1977 by the King Faisal Foundation to recognize outstanding contributions to medical research. Award winners receive $200,000 and a 24-carat, 200-gram gold medal.
Quoted: Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
Thanks to the efforts of chief executive officer Trevor Twose and Venture Investors, Mithridion survived the potentially game-ending development and is now moving forward, with 12 employees and a total of $8.4 million in financing since 2005. Twose did post-doctoral research at UW-Madison in the early 1970s and, 30 years later, returned as a biotech consultant and helped UW-Madison professor Fred Blattner start Scarab Genomics, a Madison company that makes drug development tools, before creating Mithridion.
Quoted: Mark Levenstein, an associate scientist in the department of chemistry at UW-Madison.
University of Wisconsin-Madison?s James Thomson and Kyoto University?s Shinya Yamanaka are co-winners of the 2011 King Faisal International Prize in Medicine.
UW-Madison stem cell pioneer Jamie Thomson is a co-winner of the prestigious King Faisal International Prize in Medicine.A university news release notes Thomson now is one of 57 scientists who have been awarded the Faisal Prize in Medicine over the past three decades. Among all Faisal Prize winners, nine later were honored with Nobel prizes for work first recognized by the award.
A team of UW-Madison researchers landed a grant worth nearly $4.7 million to teach students in rural parts of Wisconsin how renewable biofuels such as wood or switchgrass can be used to produce energy and thereby reduce the country?s dependence on fossil fuels and imported oil.
“Merging science education with the realm of energy is very important for our students and for our future,” says UW-Madison biochemistry professor Rick Amasino, one of the principal investigators who helped secure the funding along with UW-Madison?s Hedi Baxter Lauffer, the director of the Wisconsin Fast Plants Program, and John Greenler, the education outreach program director with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.
Ironically, just two days after this grant was announced, Gov. Scott Walker’s administration killed plans to spend $100 million on a boiler that would burn plant-based fuels at UW-Madison’s Charter Street power plant.
Spencer Klein is holding a thick glass ball the size of a watermelon and it is stuffed with electronics. For 10 minutes or so, he turns it over in his hands and talks through what it does, how it works and the brutal environment it can withstand. This last point turns out to be key. Over the past half-decade, more than 5,000 of these objects have been shipped to the south pole, strung together like beads, and buried deep in the Antarctic ice sheet.
Saul Richman?s prospects were not good. In November 2009, after what he thought was the flu turned out to be leukemia, he underwent a week of 24-hour chemo. When that didn?t work, more chemo sent the cancer into remission, but with an 80% chance that it would return. Richman needed a bone-marrow transplant and, even then, his prospects were grim.
The body?s reaction to stress or danger can interfere with the brain?s ability to think clearly and perform some complex tasks, U.S. researchers suggest.
Dairy producers talk ?cow comfort.? The non-farm public worries about ?animal welfare.? From the cow?s perspective, those issues are one and the same. Not so with people, warns Nigel Cook, UW-Madison veterinarian, who recently spoke very bluntly about the animal welfare threat to the dairy industry to producers attending a dairy modernization meeting in Abbotsford.
James A. ?Jamie? Thomson, co-director of regenerative biology for UC Santa Barbara?s Center for Stem Cell Biology and Engineering, has been named a co-winner of the 2011 King Faisal International Prize for Medicine. The announcement was made today in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, by Prince Khalid Alfaisal, director of The King Faisal Foundation.
The nation?s dairy farmers can expect 2011 to be a second straight year of modest growth, according to a report released Wednesday that offers a small dose of optimism to an industry still recovering from a devastating 2009.
Dairy experts are expecting some gains for America?s dairyland.
Chemists George Whitesides, of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Richard Zare, of Stanford University in California, have been announced as winners of this year?s King Faisal International Prize for Science. James Thomson, of the University of Wisconsin, and Shinya Yamanaka, of the University of California, San Francisco, and Kyoto University, Japan, took the prize for medicine for their work on stem cells. Winners receive a medal and share US$200,000 in each category.
The paper was co-authored by Michael Cacciatore, a University of Wisconsin Ph.D. student; Drs. Dietram Scheufele and Bret Shaw, professors at the University of Wisconsin; and Dr. Elizabeth Corley, a professor at Arizona State University.
Noted: Dr. Maher is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison likes to trumpet the fact it?s one of the top research institutions on the planet — and has been for the past two decades. This past fall, the university announced its annual research expenditures topped $1 billion for the first time.For a range of reasons, this is good news for the university, the city and state.
But is it possible places like UW-Madison are focusing too much attention on research — and not enough on educating students?
The Wildlife Health Event Reporter website was recently developed by researchers at the Wildlife Health Center and UW-Madison.
Quoted: James Ver Hoeve, a vision scientist at UW-Madison.
Quoted: Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
A disabling eye condition that typically strikes in older age may be less common than in the past, suggests a large new study.Researchers estimate that macular degeneration — which involves damage to the center of the retina, making it difficult to see fine details — affects less than seven percent of the U.S. population aged 40 and older.
The U.S. real estate market now offers a better investment opportunity for foreign real estate investors than it has in the last decade, UW-Madison researchers have found. The university?s James A. Graaskamp Center for Real Estate just released its 19th annual survey of foreign investors, who have some deep pockets, according to survey authors.
Quoted: Professor Francois Ortalo-Magne, who led the survey conducted in the fourth quarter of 2010 on behalf of the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE), with help from first-year real estate MBA students at UW-Madison?s School of Business.
It could be difficult for some believers to let go, but a UW-Madison expert hopes a new report further discrediting research linking vaccines to autism will convince parents to stop avoiding the treatments for their children.
Noted: A study completed in September by Dr. Randall Brown, director of the Center for Addictive Disorders at UW Hospital, which found hope that people with more serious criminal backgrounds could benefit from drug treatment court.
Quoted: Michael Shank, a professor of the history of science at UW-Madison.
Quoted: Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
Glenn Beck talks about UW-Madison research on his Thursday show. (Video.)
The National Science Foundation awarded $5 million to five faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study water usage from an unusually broad perspective – examining links between human activity, commercial growth, ecosystems, algae blooms, agriculture, flooding, climate change and how all those affect what flows from the faucet.
It turns out Williams had come to Wisconsin in search of healing, and the drug paraphernalia ticket was a crummy parting gift. Since September, he has been participating in experimental treatment at the University of Wisconsin medical school in Madison. The research involves stimulating the tongue with electrical impulses that then flow into the brain stem and enable the brain to more effectively process information in patients with MS, stroke, brain injury or Parkinson?s disease.
Virent last year opened a pilot-scale refinery in Madison to develop “green” gasoline in conjunction with a key funder and partner, Shell, to create gasoline from plant sugars. The company was formed in 2002 to deploy technological innovations developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Individual human brain cells can be savvy shoppers, tuning their behavior to precisely reflect the worth of a candy bar, finds a study published January 5 in The Journal of Neuroscience. Evaluating objects is ?something we all do on a moment-to-moment basis,? says study coauthor Rick Jenison of the University of Wisconsin?Madison, but just how the human brain tallies up value isn?t clear.
Noted: The UW-Madison Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.
According to a recent article, UW-Madison wants to add housing space for up to 360 macaque monkeys. Donna Paulnock, associate dean for biological sciences, is quoted: “We just have many more grants and funding…. than we can bring in animals in a timely manner.” This makes me wonder if we are doing primate research just to get funding from the federal National Institutes of Health.
2010 was a relatively normal year weather-wise in Wisconsin, although there were a few stand out events — including an unusually muggy summer and a rare October cyclone.
Jonathan Martin, University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor and Chair of the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, says overall it was pretty average year. But he notes that the Wisconsin summer was quite muggy, there were more tornadoes than usual, and there was a pretty remarkable cyclone- or low pressure system– in late October that scientists will be studying for quite awhile.
On the day that researchers lowered the final detector of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory into a 2.5-kilometre-deep hole, the Antarctic sun was nearly as high as it gets and the temperature a balmy ?23?°C. “It is quite warm,” reported team member Albrecht Karle, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Just a week before the 18 December event, he adds, temperatures had averaged about 10?°C colder.
Sea urchins are perhaps best known for their armor of spines. But their mouths may be even more daunting?urchin teeth can literally chew through stone without getting dull. (Related: “Eyeless Urchins ?See? With Spines.”)
In 1960, the University of Wisconsin played and lost in their second-ever Rose Bowl. A member of that historic team is now a professor at UW. 71-year-old Jerry Kulcinski was a hard-hitting linebacker for the Badgers in the late 1950?s and early 1960?s. He?s one of only a few people to ever experience what it?s like to play in the granddaddy of them all.
“In scientific controversies, fights that challenge existing knowledge take several years to settle, at least,” says scientific communication expert Dominique Brossard of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
A sitting president visits the UW-Madison campus for the first time in 60 years, Chancellor Biddy Martin proposes a new business model to help sustain Wisconsin?s flagship institution during a period of dwindling state support, and the football Badgers are heading to the Rose Bowl for the first time in more than a decade.Before ringing in the New Year, Campus Connection takes a look back at some 2010 highlights.
U.S. researchers say the trick sea urchins use to keep their teeth razor-sharp could lead to tools for humans that never need sharpening or honing.
Sea urchins can use their teeth to eat into stone, creating pockets where they can hide from predators and protect themselves from crashing waves. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say despite constant scraping and grinding into rock, urchin teeth never get dull, a university release said Wednesday.
Married parents bankrolled 77 percent of their children?s college costs, while remarried and divorced parents footed only 53 percent and 42 percent of the bill, respectively, according to a joint study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
AN extraordinary underground observatory for subatomic particles has been completed in a huge cube of ice measuring 1km on each side deep under the South Pole, researchers said.
Here in her lab on the University of Wisconsin campus, chemist Helen Blackwell and her colleagues are eavesdropping on the chatter among single-celled organisms. For a long time they just listened. Now they actively interrupt the rumble of bacterial communication for a variety of practical purposes?such as augmenting the good works of friendly bacteria and thwarting the designs of dangerous ones.
Late last week construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory wrapped up at the National Science Foundation?s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. The team of international scientists behind the effort have come up with something truly remarkable in building the world?s largest neutrino observatory. The massive telescope, which is the size of a cubic kilometer and located 1400 meters underground, took a decade to build and cost approximately $271 million. Oh, and if you lined up the world?s three tallest skyscrapers, their collective height would be shorter than this telescope.
So I?m behind the wheel of the Ford Fusion, testing out the new UW-Madison driving simulator. Really, I could do anything I want behind the wheel of this thing. I could text my son and get the latest on our fantasy football team. I could unwrap a burrito and wolf it down while trying to find my favorite Grateful Dead song on a CD. Heck, I could take a nap. But, though I?m tempted, I don?t do any of those things.
“Hi, I?m Kathy. I?m from UW-Madison. Do you mind if I join you?”
Those words, or some variation, provided an introduction at gas stations, coffee shops, cafes and churches across small-town Wisconsin.
While those of us ensconced in Madison scratch our heads about why so many in Wisconsin appear to dislike or distrust us, associate professor Katherine Cramer Walsh ventured out to hear it first-hand. So how did people respond?
It?s easily the most expensive Ford Fusion on the highway today.Except it?s not on the highway. It?s parked in a carpeted room in the Mechanical Engineering building on the UW-Madison campus in front of a 24-foot wrap-around screen. The vehicle is part of the university?s new $500,000 driving simulator and will allow researchers to study everything from driver distractions such as cell phones to the safety of highway exit and entrance ramps.
The largest study of the popular herbal remedy echinacea finds it won?t help you get better any sooner. The study of more than 700 adults and children suggests the tiniest possible benefit ? about a half-day shaved off a week-long cold and slightly milder symptoms. But that could have occurred by chance.
(The study was led by Bruce Barrett, School of Medicine and Public Health.)
Got the sniffles? The largest study of the popular herbal remedy echinacea finds it won?t help you get better any sooner. The study of more than 700 adults and children suggests the tiniest possible benefit _ about a half-day shaved off a weeklong cold and slightly milder symptoms. But that could have occurred by chance. With government funding, Dr. Bruce Barrett and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin tackled the question again, using newspaper ads and posters to find volunteers with colds in the Madison, Wis., area.
The herb echinacea might trim half a day off a typical cold and reduce symptoms by about 10 percent, but the slight help found in a UW-Madison study could have occurred by chance. “It suggests some minor benefit but does not prove it by any means,” said Dr. Bruce Barrett, a UW-Madison family physician who led the study and published the results Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, built over a decade at a cost of $271 million, is buried under the South Pole… and longer than the world?s tallest skyscrapers combined.
The herbal remedy echinacea is no better than a placebo at stifling the sneezes, sore throat and fever of common cold sufferers, a study suggests.
In the UW-Madison study of 719 people aged 12 to 80 with early cold symptoms, participants were randomly assigned to receive either no pill, a pill that they knew contained echinacea, or a pill that could be either echinacea or a sugar pill.
Got the sniffles? The largest study of the popular herbal remedy echinacea finds it won?t help you get better any sooner. The study of more than 700 adults and children suggests the tiniest possible benefit ? about a half-day shaved off a weeklong cold and slightly milder symptoms. But that could have occurred by chance.
Echinacea has been used as a common cold remedy for years, but does it really work? In a recent study, researchers from the University of Wisconsin at Madison tested 719 patients who were coming down with a cold to see whether echinacea was effective in curing their symptoms.
The Social Psychology Quarterly earlier this month published a new study, ?How Does Prayer Help Manage Emotions?? by Shane Sharp, a University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist.
