Category: Research

Scientists on the UW-Madison campus had little time to celebrate the history-making collision of subatomic particles at a massive collider near Geneva, Switzerland, this morning, moving quickly from running the experiment to combing through early data from the particle smash-up. Physicist Wesley Smith, one of more than 30 UW-Madison researchers working on the project, said data from the first collisions in the Large Hadron Collider were already flowing to computer banks in Chamberlin Hall and elsewhere on campus. Smith, who is now in Madison but will return to Switzerland in a few days, is part of a team that built one of the colliderâ??s main particle detectors. “It looks quite good,” Smith said of the data.

The linked computer systems that will handle data from the LHC were developed in part by Miron Livny, a UW-Madison professor who specializes in distributed computing.

Scientists from around the world, including several from UW-Madison, on Monday were anxiously awaiting what could be a historic period of discovery about the nature of our universe at the 17-mile-long particle collider in Europe. Early Tuesday, the researchers who have been speeding particles around the Large Hadron Collider LHC, a $10 billion underground loop of steel and magnets near the Swiss-French border, were to take their next step toward answering crucial and puzzling questions about the nature of our physical world.

Dear Editor: I agree with Rick Marolt that the UW-Madison has not properly evaluated ongoing experiments using monkeys. My interests, however, concern the living conditions that are forced on all the monkeys kept by the university.

Several years ago I was allowed to visit the UW-Madison monkey colony after proving I was free from tuberculosis. I still recall the horrendous smell of monkey urine, but mostly I remember looking carefully at individual monkeys and deciding they were very sad and probably

Madisonâ??s bid for a $97 million high-speed Google fiber network is stuffed with facts and figures about underground conduit and utility poles, but itâ??s also complemented by digital video clips, snapshots, blog entries and tweets. The Babcock Hall Dairy on the UW-Madison campus still plans to make its mark with Google-themed ice cream.

Dear Editor: Having taught environmental management at the University of Wisconsin for 30 years, I was concerned to see comments from Greg Hull and other County Board candidates opposing the concept of shoreland zoning. Critical claims that property values and tax base are reduced completely miss the point.

(Felstehausen is a UW-Madison professor emeritus of urban and environmental planning)

When a “day” gets noted in day planner organizers, such as Christmas Day, Memorial Day, etc., itâ??s definitely a big deal. Such is the case with Earth Day, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary on April 22 with one of the bigger gatherings in the country happening in Madison two days before the anniversary.

“Earth Day at 40: Valuing Wisconsinâ??s Environmental Traditions, Past, Present and Future” will be a two-day conference hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies on April 20-21 at Monona Terrace.

The project, which took 20 years to complete, is said to describe a dynamic three-dimensional puzzle of planetary proportions. The model was created by University of Wisconsin-Madison geophysicist Chuck DeMets, Richard Gordon of Rice University and Donald Argus of NASAâ??s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Ultraviolet portion of sunlight plays a bigger role than vitamin D in controlling multiple sclerosis (MS), according to researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Bill Lueders, the news editor for the weekly Isthmus newspaper, has received a â??Genesis Awardâ? from the Humane Society of the United States, presented in Beverly Hills this past weekend, for his writing and reporting on animal issues. Lueders was honored for his reporting on animal research at UW-Madison.

Animal rights activists have protested on this issue in front of UW employeesâ?? houses, harassing neighbors and children alike. I should know â?? my family was one of the targets.

U.S. scientists say they have created a simple and cost-effective technology that uses small amounts of waste energy to turn water into usable hydrogen fuel. University of Wisconsin-Madison Assistant Professor Huifang Xu, who led the study, said his team grew nanocrystals of two common crystals — zinc oxide and barium titanate — and placed them into water. When pulsed with ultrasonic vibrations, the nanofibers flexed and catalyzed a chemical reaction to split the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Madison-based Alliance for Animals petitioned Tuesday to bring criminal animal cruelty charges against the University of Wisconsin for allegedly illegally performing decompression experiments on sheep.

Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard said he wouldnâ??t prosecute UW-Madison for violating state law in sheep experiments, so two animal rights groups are attempting to file the criminal charges themselves. The groups – Madison-based Alliance for Animals and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – are allowed to do so under a little-used state statute. They filed a petition Tuesday asking a judge to allow them to prosecute five UW-Madison officials and several researchers.

Two animal rights groups, one national and one local, jointly petitioned a state circuit court on Tuesday to bring criminal animal cruelty charges against the UW-Madison for what the district attorney of Dane County determined were violations of state law involving decompression experiments on sheep.

Itâ??s unlikely anyone had an epiphany during Monday nightâ??s Primate Research Debate at the Memorial Union on the UW-Madison campus.

Although the event — which was sponsored by the Society and Politics Committee — got the mind churning, was well run and surprisingly civil, little new ground was covered for those who have been paying close attention to this topic over the past several months.

Primate research is not new — the first primate dissection dates back to 1699.And yet, its the modern medical research using monkeys at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that routinely makes headlines. That research and the question of whether animals should be used was the focus of a debate on campus on Monday night.

The Racine Unified School Board on Monday approved a new partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison that will allow the district to identify which specific schools and teachers advance student achievement.

Materials scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have designed a way to harvest small amounts of waste energy and harness them to turn water into usable hydrogen fuel.

President Obamaâ??s stem cell policy, announced a year ago this month, opened up federal funding for more stem cell lines created from human embryos. But now, scientists are facing a bitter irony – a few popular stem cell lines that could be studied with federal money under President Bush are suddenly off-limits.

Noted: WiCell Research Institute is a private nonprofit group linked to stem cell science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Its executive director, Erik Forsberg, says the only Bush-era line on the new registry, H1, is one of their lines. This popular cell line was made with an embryo from the University of Wisconsin, making it relatively easy to get documents for a new NIH application.

UW-Madison played host to a major debate over an ethical dilemma in primate research and testing Monday night.The school had to defend its stance on testing for different human ailments and illnesses.One particular UW researcher participating focuses his research on developing therapies for eye diseases like glaucoma.

A new study by the UW will review whether giving poor, struggling families a leg-up can reduce cases of child abuse or neglect.

UW-Madison researchers are working with La Crosse child care advocates on the year-long study. Kristen Slack, an associate professor of Social Work at UW-Madison, says their findings may help design more effective strategies to prevent abuse and neglect. She says despite research showing that poverty is highly correlated with maltreatment, thereâ??s never been a study to try to test whether thereâ??s a causal role of poverty and maltreatment.

Dear Editor: In March, the Bay Creek Neighborhood Association passed a resolution asking Madisonâ??s City Council and the Dane County Board to create a task force of experts to determine if the continued use of nonhuman primates in basic biomedical research is ethically justified. The resolution also asked that the proposed expansion of primate laboratories at the UW-Madison be postponed until the task force issues its final report.

This is big news. It means that more citizens are expressing their concern about this issue at a grass-roots level and asking their elected representatives to take it seriously. Might other neighborhood associations be interested in joining the call?

So Bay Creek now joins WISC-TV, Progressive Dane, the Badger Herald and many hundreds of petition signers in calling for a study. Will alders, supervisors — or even state legislators — listen?

Although an Asian carp hasnâ??t been caught in Lake Michigan, new DNA evidence suggests the invasive species could be present, a fisheries and nonindigenous species specialist said during a lecture at University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc.

More than 40 people attended Phil Moyâ??s lecture, “Asian Carp on the Doorstep,” on Tuesday evening, which focused on the significance of the DNA found in Lake Michigan and the potential of the fish establishing themselves in the Great Lakes. Moy has been with the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute since 1999, working with commercial, sport and charter anglers and inland lake groups to address concerns and provide research information.

Research assistants at the University of Wisconsin will be able to voice their opinions Thursday on tentative rules for unionization during a Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission hearing.