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.
With the recent release of the second of two ad hoc reports addressing the structure and needs of the University of Wisconsin Graduate School and research enterprise, faculty, administrators and the campus community now have a foundational analysis from which to move forward.
The rush to find new drugs to fight cancer is spurring big growth for a Madison company. Founded in 1998 as Tetrionics, the company was purchased in 2004 by a division of Sigma-Aldrich, of St. Louis. Its main product at the Madison building is still the vitamin D compound discovered by UW-Madison professor Hector DeLuca that forms the basis of Zemplar, by Abbott Laboratories.
State wildlife officials reeling from hunter frustration and distrust announced a $2 million project to better track Wisconsinâ??s deer population Wednesday. The initiatives include working with UW-Madison and UW-Stevens Point to study hunter participation and develop retention strategies.
UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin and Provost Paul Deluca put out this statement thanking a pair of ad hoc committees on campus for their work in looking into the proposed restructuring of the $900 million research enterprise on campus.
Itâ??s at least mildly surprising that the UW-Madison administration appears to agree with much of what these reports were saying. The statement put up on the universityâ??s website Tuesday reads, in part: “We are inclined to agree with the major recommendations of the faculty task force. We are eager to hear from the broader campus community and are committed to working with the University Committee and faculty on developing and implementing a plan of action before the conclusion of the academic year.”
While much focus in town has been on filling vacant land at Hilldale Mall or the squabble over the downtown Edgewater Hotel, a big development is coming to the far west side that has sort of floated under the radar — the addition of a second University Research Park, or, as its backers call it, “URP2.”
I talked with Mark Bugher, research park director, who says they will break ground on a undetermined date this spring and that he foresees the first occupant there late in 2011 or early 2012. After city approval last fall, Bugher says the project has been moving along and it was decided to name new streets within the park after the five UW faculty members who won Nobel Prizes while at the university.
One of the greatest remaining benefits for government workers in Wisconsin is under fire as being too expensive and unfair to taxpayers.
In a report released Wednesday, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute says public employees pay almost nothing toward their own retirement while enjoying pension benefits that far exceed the private sector.
The doors at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul food pantry on Fish Hatchery Road donâ??t open for another 30 minutes, but a line has already formed.They wait quietly, for the most part, this rainbow coalition of all ages: African-American grandmothers, Latino families, young women with pierced tongues, disabled seniors and working fathers.
What they have in common is poverty.
….Measuring poverty in college towns can be somewhat misleading, researchers caution, since many students live below the poverty line and are counted by the U.S. Census Bureau as officially â??poorâ? even if they come from wealthy families.
Quoted: Tim Smeeding, director of the UW-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty and professor of public affairs
Noted: UW-Madison research on manure and other issues related to factory farms.
Researchers who mixed together bird flu and ordinary flu viruses created three extremely virulent new strains, a reminder that influenza viruses can swap genes to create dangerous offspring. Their experiment, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates that as H1N1 swine flu wanes, other forms of flu continue to circulate and could make surprise appearances.
Time is running out on the last season of Lost. And time travel may be the key to the finale. Alternate realities, the grandfather paradox and magnetic fields are all elements of time travel in â??â??Lostâ??â?? that arenâ??t all that far fetched.
“From a pure empirical point of view, it’s very difficult. That’s why you need to make some conjectures.” According to UW Physics professor Daniel Chung. He says basically, that means making your best educated guess, which is something lost fans are used to.
A UW-Madison Faculty Senate committee released a report Monday opposing any separation of graduate school education from research in response to a recent restructuring proposal from UW administrators.
A faculty ad hoc report released Monday evaluating the structure of the University of Wisconsin graduate school confirmed some common concerns with UWâ??s research enterprise, but directly opposed a wholesale reorganization.
When the 2009 H1N1 flu virus emerged last April, it triggered the first new pandemic in more than 40 years, producing endless headlines and panic. But, now, some 10 months into the pandemic, the publicâ??s fear has subsided. H1N1 turned out to be relatively weak, and action by global and national health officials has helped blunt the damage caused by the virus; by mid-February, more than 16,000 people worldwide had died from the new flu, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), but that figure is in line with mortality in a normal flu year.
Research in mice suggests the avian flu virus and the ordinary seasonal flu virus could combine to create a new deadly kind of flu, researchers say. A single bit of genetic material from the seasonal virus converted the avian flu — officially known as H5N1 — into a very dangerous form, the scientists report in a study published in the Feb. 22-26 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Quoted: Steve Ackerman, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW-Madison.
Quoted: â??Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women,â? said Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin whose research on trends in Milwaukee since 2002 provides a rare portrait of gender patterns in inner-city rentals.
Rising demand for locally-grown produce means farmers need to adapt new strategies, according to a new UW-Madison study.
Whether itâ??s at farmers markets, food stands, restaurants or grocery stores, producers are having a tough time keeping up with consumerâ??s appetites. UW researchers looked at 11 operations in Wisconsin and other states, and found that oftentimes producers donâ??t need to grow more food to meet demand, but rather a better way to distribute their products.
MILWAUKEE â?? Shantana Smith, a single mother who had not paid rent for three months, watched on a recent morning as men from Eagle Moving carried her tattered furniture to the sidewalk. Bystanders knew too well what was happening. â??When you see the Eagle movers truck, you know itâ??s time to get going,â? a neighbor said. New research is showing that eviction is a particular burden on low-income black women, often single mothers, who have an easier time renting apartments than their male counterparts, but are vulnerable to losing them because their wages or public benefits have not kept up with the cost of housing. â??Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women,â? said Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin whose research on trends in Milwaukee since 2002 provides a rare portrait of gender patterns in inner-city rentals.
Guest: UW-Madison journalism professor Deborah Blum, author of “The Poisonerâ??s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.”
In one of the coldest places on Earth, UW-Madison scientists are building the worldâ??s largest telescope to search for some of the universeâ??s smallest particles.
Over the past six years, the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute has ranked the health of each county in Wisconsin. While calling attention to the counties with the best and poorest health is often controversial and may at first glance seem somewhat punitive, we have learned that in both rural and urban low-ranking areas, the rankings have raised awareness and inspired action to improve health. A column by David A. Kindig, emeritus professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
