If only for a moment Thursday, Milwaukee was the center of the universe.
Using a program developed and run by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee physicists, a team of international researchers announced the first astronomical discovery made using volunteer computing power, according to a report published online in the journal Science.
Quoted: Phil Pellitteri, distinguished faculty associate at the UW-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, saying the volume of mosquitoes can differ at different sites.
Scientists are calling on Harvard University to make public details about the findings of its three-year internal investigation of psychology professor Marc Hauser?s laboratory, which found evidence of scientific misconduct.
The article quotes Jenny Saffran, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who published a paper with Hauser in Cognition in 2008 looking at grammar-learning in infants and in cotton-top tamarin monkeys. In an e-mail, Saffran said she tested the infants in her lab, but the monkeys were tested in Hauser?s lab.
?I am fully confident in the infant results,?? Saffran wrote. ?I don?t have access to the raw data for the monkey studies. I hope Harvard will share any pertinent results of their investigation with me. At this point, they know more than I do about whether concern is warranted about the monkey results in our paper.??
Scientists have identified two parts of the brain linked with severe anxiety in young monkeys, and they suspect these same areas may also play a role in children who develop anxiety disorders, offering new promise for treatment.
Nervous monkeys in the study showed heightened brain activity in the amygdala and anterior hippocampus, a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Brain regions that may play a role in the development of childhood anxiety have been pinpointed by U.S. researchers. The findings could lead to new methods of early detection and treatment for at-risk children, according to study leader Ned. H. Kalin, chair of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
In children, an anxious temperament can be a warning sign. Kids who are painfully shy and nervous are more prone to anxiety disorders and depression later in life, and they?re more likely to self-medicate with alcohol and other drugs. But what causes a child to have an anxious temperament in the first place? A new study with monkeys finds that an anxious temperament is partly heritable and that it?s tied to a particular brain region involved in emotion.
Children with an anxious temperament often freeze up when they meet a stranger or encounter a social situation they perceive as threatening, says Ned Kalin, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Quotes research by Thomas DeLeire, an associate professor of public affairs, population, health and economics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
More than half of black U.S. children with a low-education parent will experience having a parent behind bars by age 14, researchers found.Julie Poehlmann of the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues estimated that at any one time, 1.7 million, or 2.3 percent, of all U.S. children have a parent in prison.
According to a survey of more than 200 medical students at the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin at Madison, 77 percent say they would participate in a multiplayer online health care simulator if said simulator helped them accomplish an important goal.
Medical students would embrace using video games to help them train, a new survey shows. Students at the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison were surveyed and 98% said they liked the idea of using technology to enhance their medical education, a study published online Tuesday in BMC Medical Education.
Sleeping for four hours a night for 5 days in a row can affect the brain just like acute total sleep deprivation, says a new study.”Instead of going to bed when they are tired, like they should, people watch TV and want to have an active social life,” said Dr. Chiara Cirelli from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
New research shows that gender imbalance, when men outnumber women, affects male longevity by an average of about three months. Although the link between gender ratio and longevity has been shown in animals, the study published in the journal Demography is thought to be the first to show the impact in humans. UW-Madison contributed to the research.
While catheters cannot technically have a yeast infection, yeast often grows on them and can lead to a potentially dangerous infection in patients. The yeast Candida albicans can live in a drug-resistant aggregate of microorganisms, or biofilm, forming an often unnoticeable coating on medical devices that may enter patients? bloodstreams and can be fatal.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a novel coating for those instruments that greatly diminishes fungal growth and may lead to far fewer infections. Their work was reported online in late July in the journal Biomacromolecules.
Medicine isn?t a game. But more medical students think video games and virtual environments could help them become better doctors, a University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin-Madison survey found.
For decades, pollution spewed from factories and power plants across Wisconsin. As a result, air and water became polluted. Now it seems, so did the trees.
At a time when state-owned power plants are ditching coal and going green by including biomass such as switch grass, compost, and wood chips into the fuel mix, it is becoming evident that even trees may release harmful chemicals when burned for energy.
Quoted: Katherine Curtis, whose new study finds that a disproportionate number of U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq war came from small towns in the Great Plains and the upper Midwest.
Quoted: Steven Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, who say a record-sized hailstone fell on July, 23, 2010, near Vivian, S.D. It was 8 inches in diameter and weighed 1.9375 pounds. And it melted a bit before it was officially measured.
Bill Nelson now has the space to crush a 20-foot-long section of a bridge and test the strength of a two-story wall, complete with windows and doors. Down the hall, engineer C.R. Boardman can create, with a few keystrokes, Seattle-like rain or the blistering heat found in Arizona. The Forest Products Laboratory in Madison is ready for the next 100 years of research with the recent opening of the $38 million Centennial Research Facility. The 87,000-square-foot center, nestled on the west side of the UW-Madison campus, is owned and operated by the USDA Forest Service and is a gleaming but functional tribute and improvement to the previous 100 years of research at the FPL.
The 2009 H1N1 swine flu virus used a new biochemical trick to hijack host cells, a feat that triggered the recent pandemic, according to an international team of scientists.
“We have found why the pandemic H1N1 virus replicated so well in humans,” Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a leading influenza expert and a professor of pathobiological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s School of Veterinary Medicine, said in a university news release.
Eboni Turner, a high school student from Chicago, will never forget the six weeks she spent in Madison for the Summer Science Institute. She was doing field research in Lake Wingra when she got stuck in the decomposing material at the bottom. Turner was one of 16 students who participated in the recent Summer Science Institute, a six-week residential program through the Center for Biology Education at UW-Madison. The program gives high school students an understanding of biological and physical research while learning about college life.
Henry Lardy, a highly regarded emeritus professor of biochemistry at UW-Madison, died of complications due to cancer on Wednesday. He was 92.
“He was really one of the most outstanding people to ever work in our department,” says Hector DeLuca, a longtime UW-Madison biochemistry professor who is a former student of Lardy?s. “He was a very in-demand researcher and yet was so down-to-earth.”
Until just a few months ago, Henry Lardy could still be found almost every day in his biochemistry lab on the UW-Madison campus, where for more than 60 years he sought solutions to vexing problems from AIDS to sudden infant death syndrome.
His work led to widespread acclaim ? membership in the National Academy of Sciences, winner of the prestigious Wolf Foundation Award in Agriculture ? and a long record of scientific insights.
Sigan Hartley, assistant professor of human development and family studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Waisman Centre, said, ?There seems to be a prolonged vulnerability for divorce in parents of children with autism?Typically, if couples can survive the early child-rearing years, parenting demands decrease and there is often less strain on the marriage?However, parents of children with autism often continue to live with and experience high parenting demands into their child?s adulthood, and thus marital strain may remain high in these later years.?
The daily casualty lists of U.S. troops killed in Iraq mention a hometown for each person – places large and small, urban and rural, where flag-draped coffins return to grieving communities. According to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologists, rural communities across America have paid a proportionately more costly price in the Iraq war with higher death rates of American military members compared with metropolitan areas.
The H1N1 swine flu virus underwent a mutation and used a new trick to spread efficiently in people, another signal to help experts predict whether a flu virus can cause a pandemic, researchers said Friday.
The H1N1 swine flu virus was first identified in people in April 2009 but genetic research later suggested it had in fact been circulating for at least a decade and probably longer in pigs. “This pandemic H1N1 (virus) has this mutation and is why it can replicate so well in humans,” wrote Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s School of Veterinary Medicine and the University of Tokyo, who co-authored the paper.
According to a study by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Waisman Center, parents of grown children with autism are more likely to divorce than couples with typically developing children, according to new data from a large longitudinal study of families of adolescents and adults with autism.
MADISON, Wis. — It sounds like science fiction: storms on the Sun?s surface having a ripple effect on Earth with far-reaching plasma interfering with all sorts of human technology. Some solar activity can be significant and cause widespread problems with satellites and other technology, but the latest activity isn?t thought to be a cause of concern. In fact, the activity was expected to produce some spectacular Northern Lights that were to be visible in Wisconsin on Wednesday night.
Quoted: UW-Madison astronomy professor Alex Lazarian
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to collaborate with Milwaukee academics to improve water-treatment technologies. EPA head Lisa Jackson is scheduled to meet with Wisconsin officials Thursday afternoon. She?s expected to sign a research agreement with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The Human Services Board is next in line to discuss the merits of a resolution which asks the chair of the Dane County Board to appoint a citizens advisory panel to examine whether or not experimenting on monkeys at UW-Madison is humane and ethical.
This topic is listed on the agenda for Thursday?s (today’s) Human Services Board meeting, which begins at 5 p.m. in room 357 of the City-County Building, 210 MLK Blvd.
The researchers, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Georgia State University and Boston University, said they weren?t surprised that parents of ASD children were nearly twice as likely to divorce. Their results were in line with another study that found couples raising a child with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder were about twice as likely to split up compared to other couples.
The H1N1 “swine” flu virus used a biochemical trick to spread efficiently in humans, according to a new study released on Thursday.The virus caused a worldwide epidemic in 2009-10 that sickened up to 34 million Americans alone and caused up to an estimated 6,000 deaths in the U.S.
The report in the current issue of Public Library of Science Pathogens said H1N1 used a different way to jump from an animal host to humans than what was previously discovered by scientists.
Yoshihiro Kawaoka, professor of pathobiological sciences at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and one of the world’s leading influenza experts, said the discovery of the mutation in the H1N1 virus helps explain how the virus replicated so well in humans.
Wearing hard hats, T-shirts and shorts, drillers practiced their work skills Monday afternoon with one big exception.There was no ice.Training for a trip to the South Pole, the group practiced lowering equipment into a concrete hole at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Physical Sciences Laboratory and wiped the sweat from their faces in the 85-degree heat.
Detectors buried thousands of feet under the Antarctic ice recently confirmed a mysterious cosmic lopsidedness. Though it might seem reasonable for our planet to receive energetic particles, called cosmic rays, on average from all directions equally, more cosmic rays? seem to approach Earth from certain preferred directions. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which is still under construction, confirmed these odd cosmic ray preferences, previously detected in the northern hemisphere.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison doctor who was the subject of Journal Sentinel report in November about researchers who failed to disclose conflicts of interest in published research has resigned from the university amid an investigation of a clinical trial that he headed.
Stoughton ? Wearing hard hats, T-shirts and shorts, drillers practiced their work skills Monday afternoon with one big exception. There was no ice.
Training for a trip to the South Pole, the group practiced lowering equipment into a concrete hole at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Physical Sciences Laboratory and wiped the sweat from their faces in the 85-degree heat.
Most have already spent several seasons working during the Antarctic?s austral summer and know that soon, most of their skin will be covered to prevent frostbite. They?re part of the crew installing the IceCube Neutrino Observatory scheduled to finish in December.
STOUGHTON ? Here in the cornfields, Nathan Bowker wears a blue T-shirt that reads, ?Hello from South Pole, Antarctica.?
On an 80-degree day that?s muggy enough to make straight hair curl, it doesn?t seem like Bowker could get much further from the South Pole. But he?s part of a team that spent Monday preparing for a trip there in November ? summer in Antarctica ? where he and others are expected to complete the IceCube neutrino detector. When it is finished, it will be the world?s largest such device.
A prominent UW-Madison cancer researcher has abruptly resigned after university officials began investigating a potential conflict of interest involving his outside business interests.
The case involving Dr. Minesh Mehta, an internationally recognized expert on human clinical cancer trials, comes amid heightened national scrutiny of doctors? ties to industry and the university?s own attempts to better monitor such relationships.
An inspection conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture July 17 revealed further breaches of the Animal Welfare Act by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It may be 80 degrees and muggy enough to make straight hair curl, but scientists are gathering in Stoughton today to prepare for a far different climate.They are getting ready for the annual work season in Antarctica, where the IceCube neutrino detector has been under construction since 2004. The world?s largest such detector, it is expected to be completed this winter.
Talandra Jennings and Infinity Gamble couldn?t contain their excitement as the 11-year-olds showed off the zucchini picked from the East High Youth Farm on a recent morning.
It was the first vegetable harvested from their section of the farm, which consists of a number of gardens in an area next to Kennedy Elementary School. The two girls, who will be sixth graders at O?Keeffe Middle School, are working at the East High Youth Farm, which is a hands-on science and vocational program focused on sustainable agriculture and service learning.
An internationally renowned cancer researcher at UW-Madison abruptly resigned this spring after university officials began investigating a potential conflict of interest involving his outside business interests. The State Journal looks at the case of this prominent doctor and how a 22-year career at UW-Madison came to a surprising end.
Wisconsin ranks fifth nationally in childhood exposure to secondhand smoke, according to a study published in the July Pediatrics. More than one in 10 children in the state regularly breathed in secondhand smoke, compared with about one in 100 in Utah.
In the households of smokers, 39% of children regularly breathe in secondhand smoke. Only West Virginia outranks Wisconsin on that measure. The study surveyed 2,000 households across the state in 2007.
Secondhand smoke is tied to heart disease, asthma and premature birth, said Nathan Jones, a University of Wisconsin-Madison statistician who analyzed the state data.
A particle observatory at the South Pole has produced a scientific result about a phenomenon the telescope was not even designed to study, researchers say. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, designed to capture evidence of elusive but scientifically important subatomic particles called neutrinos, offered up some unexpected new science about cosmic rays, a University of Wisconsin-Madison release said Tuesday.
On a Sunday afternoon last year Larry Studesville received the most important phone call of his life. A young man had died in a tragic accident; did Studesville want his kidney?
Studesville, then 62, was at UW Hospital within two hours. “It was another chance at life,” he recalls. A grieving family?s gift helped Studesville, whose own kidneys were failing due to hypertension and diabetes, beat grim odds. But other African-Americans have not been so fortunate.
U.S. troops from rural parts of the country are dying at higher rates than urban soldiers in the Iraq War, according to a study by a UW-Madison sociologist.
People from rural areas enlist in the military at higher rates, said Katherine Curtis, assistant professor of sociology, and once there, are killed in disproportionate numbers.
U.S. troops from rural parts of the country are dying at higher rates than urban soldiers in the Iraq War, according to a study by a UW-Madison sociologist. People from rural areas enlist in the military at higher rates, said Katherine Curtis, assistant professor of sociology, and once there, are killed in disproportionate numbers.
A diet rich in all the things that are known to be good for your health also can protect against vision-stealing cataracts, according to new research by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists.
Noted: Can all this be backed up by science? Professor Richard Weindruch, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, started researching the effects of CR on primates 20 years ago. Last year he published a report in Science that revealed that while 37 per cent of control-fed animals had died from old age, only 13 per cent of those fed a calorie-restricted diet had. CR seemed to slow the onset of age-associated pathologies.
Wisconsin?s unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level since February of 2009. But, the number of jobs lost last month was actually up.
The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery ? the public/private interdisciplinary research center set to open in December in the heart of the UW-Madison campus ? will be more than a warren of laboratories. Much more, says WARF programming director Laura Heisler, who spoke Tuesday at a Wisconsin Technology Council luncheon.
The findings show that altruism blossoms in cultures that divvy up child-care duties, and hint that the human instinct to help others stems from our communal child-care system, said primatologist Charles Snowdon of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, co-author of the study.
A diet rich in all the things that are known to be good for your health also can protect against vision-stealing cataracts, according to new research by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists.
Noted: To find out I speak to Professor Richard Weindruch at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who 20 years ago began to research the effects of CR on primates.In 2009 ? ?an exciting breakthrough year?, he tells me ? he published an interim report in Science that revealed that, while 37 per cent of their control-fed animals had died from old age, only 13 per cent of the ones fed a calorie-restricted diet had.
Quoted: The wind is air in motion, say Steven Ackerman and Jonathan Martin. The atmosphere is made up of gas molecules, mostly nitrogen and oxygen. These gas molecules are constantly in motion and exert a force when they strike an object, like our bodies. The force exerted by the molecules hitting you is a function of the speed, number and mass of the molecules.
Quoted: John Young has been Wisconsin?s state climatologist for eight years. He is an emeritus professor in UW-Madison?s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and stills gets excited about the weather.
Quoted: Allen Clauss, a UW-Madison chemistry lecturer who previously worked at consumer products company Procter & Gamble Co., saying the main differences are in the pH, presence or absence of bleach, and the types of surfactants – long molecules that are water-loving at one end and oil-loving at the other. “Surfactants are active ingredients we put in cleaning products that bridge the gap between water and greasy dirt and help wash it away,” he says.
Upper class parents are likelier to have children with autism, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study. The findings suggest either the genetics or the lifestyles of wealthier people predispose their children to autism.
Researchers have spent decades trying to untangle the factors that cause autism. Since the 1940s, scientists noticed wealthier and more educated families had children with the disorder, said Maureen Durkin, a UW-Madison epidemiologist and lead author of the study.
With the Gulf oil spill nearly under control, a UW professor assesses the damage.We first talked to Dr. Anders Andren in early June, not long after the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank. At the time of the accident the Coast Guard and BP thought about 1,000 barrels a day was leaking into the Gulf.
The two dozen middle school students were tired and hungry at the end of a long day, but still fully engaged, raising their hands to ask such questions as, ?How do you spell cryopreservation?? and ?What, exactly, is a stem cell?? Renowned UW scientist Jeff Jones, a pioneer in stem cell research, had these kids under his spell.
One crucial lesson from the BP oil spill is that measures to speed licensing, cut corners on safety and undermine regulation can lead to tragic consequences. Yet Congress appears on the verge of repeating mistakes that led to the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf.
