Category: Research

Members of the Dane County Board of Supervisors voiced their concern about UW-Madison experimentation on nonhuman primates in a letter sent to Chancellor Biddy Martin Feb. 5.

Is experimenting on primates ethical?
Yes.
This is the official position recently adopted by the administrative body responsible for overseeing all research involving animals at the University of Wisconsin

Twenty Dane County supervisors sent a letter to UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin on Friday questioning the universityâ??s process for deciding whether monkey experimentation is ethical.

Often when we frown, it means that weâ??re sad or grumpy. But how much does the frown also exacerbate the bad mood? To study this, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology PhD candidate David Havas tested individuals who had received Botox treatments to stop brow-wrinkling.

The towering coal piles near University of Wisconsin-Milwaukeeâ??s Great Lakes WATER Institute cannot be moved. So the institute, and the future home of UWMâ??s new School of Freshwater Sciences, might be leaving the neighborhood. UWM officials said Monday they are reconsidering plans to build the water school next to the institute, which overlooks the harbor at 600 E. Greenfield Ave.

Itâ??s not a typical event for a church basement, but this Saturday children in the community will be invited to First Congregational United Church of Christ in Madison to watch scientists blow stuff up. The event, called “God Loves Science,” is intended to help kids understand that “science and religion are not incompatible,” said Jeff Rabe, the churchâ??s director of Christian education for children and youth.

Botox injections administered to reduce frown lines may also delay patientsâ?? recognition of anger and sadness around them, according to a study to be published in the journal Psychological Science.

Your facial expressions may help people read you like a book, revealing your inner thoughts and feelings, but it turns out your faceâ??s expressivity also affects your ability to understand written language as it relates to emotions.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison conducted a study with 40 volunteers before and after they had undergone injections of Botox, a powerful nerve poison used to deactivate muscles in the forehead that cause frowning. They found that the inability to frown caused participants to be less able to understand negative emotions.

Itâ??s a version of the classic finding in psychology that facial expressions can produce the very emotion they usually reflect. Called the facial feedback hypothesis, it implies that forcing your lips and cheeks into a smile can make you feel happy and scowling can make you feel annoyed, at least a little. Building on that research, graduate student David Havas of the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to study people who had received Botox treatments that paralyzed one pair of their corrugator muscles, which cause the forehead to constrict into a frown.

The Dane County Board has gotten involved in presidential politics and war in the past.

Now, a majority of board members are weighing in on the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s primate research.

Twenty county board supervisors have sent a letter to UW-Madisonâ??s Chancellor Biddy Martin, asking her to get directly involved in the ethics of monkey experimentation.

When it opens in December, the $205 million Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery will be a showcase of high-tech design and model of collaboration.

The public/private research center under construction in the heart of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus features a circular auditorium for as many as 300 people, with walls that can be lifted into the ceiling, modular research neighborhoods with “plug-and-play” fume hoods and lab sinks, and clusters of casual seating beneath four-story high skylights.

Rudolf Jaenisch, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist, will be granted a U.S. patent for conceiving a way to turn cells from mammalsâ?? bodies into stem cells, a discovery also claimed by two other scientists.

The patent was announced by Fate Therapeutics Inc., a closely held San Diego company that has an exclusive license from MIT and Jaenisch, one of the companyâ??s founders. Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan, â??was the first one to do it, we had the idea first,â? Jaenisch said in an interview yesterday. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin also developed a method for developing stem cells.

There is a future in poverty, and that unfortunate fact has become thought for food at the UW-Madison, where its poverty research program was chosen this week to host the nationâ??s research on meeting the needs of the hungry. UW-Madisonâ??s Institute for Research on Poverty will establish a Center for National Food and Nutrition Assistance Research, funded with a federal grant of $1 million over four years. The center will be led by professor Judith Bartfeld, a nutrition researcher in the universityâ??s Department of Consumer Science.

Catching up on a couple higher education-related items worth noting …** Raise your hand if youâ??re in favor of a “smart furlough” plan. Many on the UW-Madison campus — especially science researchers, who are paid mostly with federal grants or private funds, and professors, one-fifth of whom derive their salaries from non-state sources — still are upset they are being forced to take furloughs.

The topic will be discussed once again Monday afternoon at UW-Madison’s Faculty Senate meeting at Bascom Hall.

The National Institute of Health approved a commonly researched line of stem cells Friday for continued use by scientists across the United States, including those at UW-Madison.

Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine may have taken the controversy out of the entire field of stem cell research. In a paper published online today in the journal Nature, they report that they were able to transform mouse skin cells directly into functioning nerve cells without needing to go through a stem cell stage first.

If pills, patches, sprays, inhalers, lozenges or gum havenâ??t helped you stop smoking, maybe some shots can. A UW-Madison study of an experimental nicotine vaccine seeks 60 adult smokers to roll up their sleeves for six injections over six months.

There is a great debate about the ethics of experimenting on animals. The simple answer is it is not necessary.

Q. Is the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic over?

A. Since swine flu emerged in Mexico last year, itâ??s swept across the world, said Jonathan Temte, professor of family medicine at UW-Madison and an expert in infectious disease. Swine flu struck Wisconsin in the spring and again in the fall, when schools and universities returned to session.

Sweet news for baby boomers: Despite all those warnings that loud rock music would damage their ears, their generation appears to have better hearing than their parents did.

In fact, a new study suggests that the rate of hearing problems at ages ranging from 45 to 75 has been dropping for years, at least among white Americans. “Iâ??m less likely to have a hearing loss when I get to be 70 years old than my grandmother did when she was 70,” said Karen Cruickshanks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A UW-Madison study on monkeys indicates influenza may do permanent damage to a developing fetus. The Centers for Disease Control has already urged pregnant women to get vaccinated against the flu and now thereâ??s more evidence as to the risks if they donâ??t.  Brain imaging of year old offspring from 12 pregnant monkeys infected with a seasonal flu virus showed they had fewer brain cells than the healthy “control” group.

“Fat” and “wanted” are two words that donâ??t often go together. After all, procedures like liposuction are all about getting rid of fat.

But a University of Wisconsin-Madison neurosurgeon and his colleagues think that the fat removed by liposuction and usually just thrown out might be put to good use.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture cleared UW-Madisonâ??s Research Animal Resources Center as compliant with animal welfare standards according to a report released last week.

Learning is no game on todayâ??s college campuses. Itâ??s serious work that many students dread. Yet when those same students play video games like World of Warcraft, they happily spend hours on difficult tasks, and actually learn quite a bit in the process. Granted, what those gamers learn is how to cast spells and fell dragons, which hardly counts toward a college degree. But Constance Steinkuehler argues that thereâ??s a good model of teaching in those popular amusements.

Embryonic stem cells are the progenitors of all tissues in the body. Since 1998, when a University of Wisconsin team first isolated human embryonic stem cells into colonies, or lines, researchers have contemplated using the cells to screen drugs, investigate organ development and perhaps grow rejection-free replacement tissues for victims of diabetes, paralysis and other ailments.

A National Institutes of Health advisory committee Friday voted to recommend the first human embryonic stem cell line leftover from Bush administration rules receive federal research funding.

An academic staff committee is opposing a plan to create a new office to oversee research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. UW-Madison leaders have proposed creating a vice chancellor for research to oversee the office managing research grants.

If youâ??re looking for a can of freeze-dried turkey tetrazzini that has a shelf life of 25 years or need a handbook on emergency food storage and survival, the website 2012Supplies.com has you covered.

The much-hyped theory that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012 â?? a premise that is often attributed to the fact that the Mayansâ?? 5,125-year-long calendar ends on that date â?? has spawned a virtual industry, including movies, television shows and websites that variously entertain, explain and help one prepare for the impending cataclysm.

Itâ??s not the first doomsday prediction, and likely will not be the last, as Peter Sobol, a historian of science, told an audience of about 50 last week at UW-Madisonâ??s Space Place.