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.
Experts argued the ethics of primate research at a debate held at Memorial Union Monday.
Approximately 250 University of Wisconsin students, faculty, researchers, Madison citizens and animal rights activists did anything but monkey around when they gathered to debate the rights of non-human primate research subjects Monday.
Despite gaining an average of nine pounds, a large group of smokers from Wisconsin who quit had a significant improvement in the health of their arteries within a year of their last cigarette. The benefit was the equivalent of a 14% reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison study that was presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.
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.
UW-Madison neuroscientists are looking for ways to find “silent strokes,” a condition that is virtually unnoticed by those afflicted but can lead to mental decline.
A team of scientists at UW-Madison has received a $1.57 million federal grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke to see if people with unstable plaque in arteries can be identified early on, so therapy can begin sooner rather than later.
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.
This eight-part series concludes appropriately with the biggest idea of all eight opportunities: to advance the region as a knowledge and convening center connecting, translating and integrating ideas to help regional and state businesses advance and compete globally. If you are thinking that this is already happening, you are right. The big idea here is to recognize this knowledge and convening role as an export product in itself and to take it to the next level. We are recognized around the world as an R&D center led not only by UW-Madison and WARF, but also by the expanded UW System that includes the two-year campuses and the county-based UW Extension, our outstanding technical colleges and private colleges, and many leading private sector technology businesses.
A new study shows that smokers who quit have healthier arteries a year later and probably will have less risk of heart disease as a result. Doctors say the improvement came even though people who kicked the habit gained an average of 9 pounds. The study at the University of Wisconsin in Madison involved 1,500 smokers who were given one of five methods, such as nicotine patches or lozenges, to help them quit.
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.
A year after kicking the habit, smokersâ?? arteries showed signs of reversing a problem that can set the stage for heart disease, according to the first big study to test this. “A lot of people are afraid to quit smoking because theyâ??re afraid to gain weight,” said the studyâ??s leader, Dr. James Stein, a University of Wisconsin-Madison cardiologist.
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.
Written by Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
The Bay Creek Neighborhood Association passed a resolution asking the Madison City Council and Dane County Board to create a task force of experts to determine if the continued use of non-human primates in bio-medical research is ethically justified. This is big news â?? more citizens are expressing concern over this issue at a grassroots level and asking their representatives to take it seriously. Rick Bogle, a prominent and knowledgeable opponent of experiments on monkeys, will debate Paul Kaufman, an ophthalmologist at UW-Madison who experiments on monkeys, on Monday at 6 p.m. at the Memorial Union.
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.
For all the promise of Milwaukeeâ??s water-technology sector, the metro area lacks working ties between its university researchers and water-engineering companies, leaving many new ideas to be developed elsewhere. Taking the first steps to forge a missing link, Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have launched a shared research program with a small roster of regional water-engineering companies.
Resource managers and cottage owners have a new tool in the fight to keep the stateâ??s inland lakes from being infested by zebra mussels. A Web site from the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s Center for Limnology will help property owners determine how vulnerable their lakes are to an invasion.
The Bay Creek Neighborhood Association passed a resolution Monday asking the City Council and Dane County Board to create a task force of experts to examine if the use of non-human primates in research is ethically justified.
“The motivation for the resolution originated because a resident of the neighborhood brought this topic to our attention,” said Dan Kennelly, who is secretary of the Bay Creek Neighborhood Association. “Itâ??s someone who is passionate about the issue. So we passed a very simple and purely symbolic statement that expressed a wish to see more analysis and debate on the topic.”
Having the “right” brand of jeans or the latest gadget isnâ??t just an annoying trait of teenagers (not to mention their parents). New research found that even preschoolers are brand-conscious and can recognize kiddie brand logos and products.”
Children as young as three are feeling social pressure and understand that consumption of certain brands can help them through life,” said lead researcher Anna McAlister of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Findings like this show us that we need to think about materialism developing in very young children.”
According to a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in January, the odds of hearing loss are 31 percent lower, overall, for baby boomers than for their parents.
“The study shows that the prevalence of hearing loss at any given age is getting lower with different generations — that weâ??re retaining good hearing for longer than our parents and grandparents,” says University of Wisconsin at Madison professor Karen Cruickshanks, a co-author of the study.
Ronald T. Raines and Joseph B. Binder of the University of Wisconsin are proposing a different way. In a paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they describe a process that uses an ionic liquid â?? a salt with a low melting point â?? in combination with water and acids at lower concentrations to produce fermentable sugars.
Itâ??s been 25 years since the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center started on campus, and to commemorate the occasion, a celebration is set for 2 p.m. Wednesday in the Biotechnology Center at 425 Henry Mall.
Dick Burgess, founding director of the center, said there were only three companies working in biotech in Madison in 1985.
“Now we have over 150 biotech firms in the area, and the state is recognized as a premier site for biotechnology research and industry,” Burgess said in a release from the UW-Madison news service.
Quoted: Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has hired its first tenure-track professor to study the Hmong (MUNGâ??) and other groups of mainland Southeast Asia. The Wisconsin State Journal says Ian Baird has a doctorate in geography and is an expert in issues of Southeast Asia.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is distancing itself from an agreement with a conservative group to conduct public opinion polls it announced just months ago. UW-Madison officials say they never reached a formal partnership with the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. Instead, UW-Madison pollster Ken Goldstein signed his own contract to conduct polls for the group before the university deal was finalized.
The fourteenth Dalai Lama will be in Madison May 15-16 for the grand-reopening celebration of UW-Madisonâ??s Waisman Centerâ??s remodeled Center for Investigating Healthy Minds.
The Dalai Lama will make an appearance on the University of Wisconsin campus this May, marking his second visit to the campus within two years.
Bringing spirituality to science, the 14th Dalai Lama will attend the public opening of UW-Madisonâ??s Center for Investigating Healthy Minds during the weekend of May 15-16. The center was established by UW-Madison neuroscientist Richard Davidson to try to discover how healthy minds develop.
But before it began operations, Mentor Worldwide LLC decided to abandon the Madison lab, which is valued at $16 million. The company announced Wednesday that they would donate it to the Morgridge Institute, a private research partner with UW-Madison.
The Dalai Lama plans to visit a healthy minds center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May. The visit will be the eighth time the Dalai Lama has come the Madison area since 1979. During the two-day trip he will celebrate the public grand opening of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds on May 15 and give a public speech the following day.
A California company that is developing a Botox substitute has donated a $16 million biomedical manufacturing facility to the new Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison. Mentor Worldwide LLCâ??s donation will give the institute a building in Madisonâ??s University Research Park.
Still, a number of studies now suggest that low vitamin D levels are associated with allergies and asthma, says James Gern, MD, vice chair of the committee that chose which studies to highlight at the meeting and professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
The Dalai Lama plans to visit a healthy minds center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May.
The Dalai Lama will visit the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus in May. The new Center for Investigating Healthy Minds has invited the Dalai Lama to attend its two-day grand opening celebration on May 15-16 at the Waisman Center, according to a press release from the university.
The University of Wisconsin is internationally known for its achievements in stem cell researchâ??a reputation upheld in 2005 when the federal government announced a Madison research institute would house the United Stateâ??s first and only embryonic stem cell bank.
….For teachers who are interested in environmental education, the UW Arboretumâ??s RESTORE Institute can help.
As part of its Earth Partnership for Schools initiative, the RESTORE Institute trains teachers how to engage their students with the local ecosystem. Funded in part by grants from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Forest Service, the nationally acclaimed program features one- and two-week seminars where teachers from around the country learn about ecosystem restoration on school grounds.
Quoted: Nicola Ferrier, engineering professor at UW-Madison.
Ecologists used to be able to use environmental factors such as precipitation, soil type and tree structure to predict the plants that might be found in wooded areas.
But those days are gone because of the overwhelming influence human activity now has on plant life composition, according to the research of a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who will speak in Baraboo Thursday evening.
The technology you have at your fingertips may be ruining your memory and killing your creativity. A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher said computers and electronic devices are creating digital distractions that could be affecting your life in a way you might never expect. “I donâ??t like to waste time. Iâ??ve got a lot on my plate,” student and business owner Jonathen Nothen said.
Quoted: Michael Dubis, a lecturer on financial planning in the real estate program at UW-Madison.
Quoted: Michael Shank, a history of science professor at UW-Madison.
Noted: UW-Madison research on manure and other issues related to factory farms.
A group of 10 UW-Madison professors is recommending the universityâ??s Faculty Policies and Procedures be amended to account for potential academic freedom problems associated with a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
….Also at Monday’s Faculty Senate meeting, the University Committee is requesting that FP & P be amended so that departments on campus can recommend certain employees of the Morgridge Institute for Research — the privately funded research enterprise established to partner with the state-funded Wisconsin Institute for Discovery — become members of the UW-Madison faculty.
When it comes to biofuels, ethanol is king. But itâ??s not an ideal fuel. Among other drawbacks, it has only about two-thirds of the energy of gasoline. So scientists have been working to turn crops and crop waste into gasoline and other energy-rich hydrocarbons. Now, researchers in Wisconsin have developed a two-step process that can help convert agricultural waste into the liquid hydrocarbons found in gasoline and jet fuel.
Exerting delicate control over a pair of atoms within a mere seven-millionths-of-a-second window of opportunity, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison created an atomic circuit that may help quantum computing become a reality.
Jacquelyn Gill is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sheâ??s been researching a period of rapid cooling that occurred about 13,000 years ago. Gill said that global temperatures took an extreme and sudden dip, just as the world was coming out of an ice age. She spoke with EarthSky at a science meeting in late 2009.
Wisconsin scientists say theyâ??ve made a breakthrough in developing jet fuel from biomass, instead of oil. But itâ??ll still be awhile before your next flight runs on the biofuel.Engineers at the UW-Madison took a biomass compound, called GVL.
University of Wisconsin engineers have made a breakthrough in technology that would allow food waste to be converted into clean jet fuel.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin report a breakthrough on Friday in the journal Science. Their two-step chemical conversion turns waste biomass efficiently into liquid hydrocarbons that could fuel vehicle or jet engines.
Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Thursday announced a discovery that advances the renewable-energy research aimed at converting corn stalks or switchgrass into jet fuel.
U.S. researchers have developed a highly efficient way of creating biofuel out of crop waste.The researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed a chemical process that converts gamma-valerolactone, a derivative of the woody and grassy parts of plants, into fuel.
Dear Editor: I believe Mark Sturnickâ??s letter not only insults Professor Ric Grummer for his expert opinion but insults the University of Wisconsin as well. Whether his facts are also â??industry factoidsâ? is of no import whatsoever unless they are proven to be false. When it is claimed that the other half of his statements were unsubstantiated and misleading, that is of no significance either unless it is substantiated by unbiased evidence.
Regardless of where the professorâ??s funding for research comes from, it takes character to come forward to take what some might consider an unpopular stand particularly in a community like Madison. I applaud Professor Grummer for not sticking his nose in places where it may become soiled or suffer from nauseous odors.
Since the first commercial cultivation of genetically modified GM crops in 1996, Monsanto and the rest of the big six biotech seed companies Pioneer/DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, BASF and Bayer have become masters at the art of story telling.
Farmers, always looking for the next big technology fix, loved the stories: the promise of better yields, less chemicals needed for weed control, higher profits and of course, a solution to the elusive goal of feeding the world.
Governments, seeing biotechnology as a huge economic engine, embraced the technology. University research was shifted almost exclusively to biotech crops.
An experimental new drug is more effective than a widely used flu drug in treating bird flu, at least in lab mice, a UW-Madison study found. Mice infected with bird flu who received the drug, CS-8958, had a higher survival rate and lower virus levels than infected mice who got Tamiflu, according to the study, released Thursday and led by campus scientist Yoshihiro Kawaoka.
An ad hoc committee of the Faculty Senate released its report Monday in response to proposals from Chancellor Biddy Martin and Provost Paul DeLuca, who intended to substantially restructure the UW-Madison Graduate School. Administrators sought to divide the graduate education and research sections of the Graduate School into more separately defined entities and create a new administrative structure to accommodate them. Martin and DeLuca both said restructuring was needed so UW could remain competitive in securing multi-million dollar federal grants, fix problems in research safety compliance and better administer UW-Madisonâ??s ever-expanding research capabilities.
