Category: Research

Scientists have unraveled the genome of the parasite that sparked the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, revealing why it was such a killer back then and why itâ??s still a scourge today.

Do they even talk? I just ran across new study that suggests they do. First, my own observations, which as any scientist will tell you are very unscientific by virtue of being anecdotal.

Researchers from UW-Madison now have a better understanding of the genomic structure of late blight, a disease that is attacking tomato and potato crops in Wisconsin this year. The studies eventually may result in the discovery of ways to stop the blight.

Mark Krasberg avoids the worst weeks of Wisconsinâ??s harsh winters by lighting out for sunny Antarctica. There, at the bottom of the world, the UW-Madison physics researcher is helping to build a $270 million telescope, called Ice Cube, that promises to bring into focus some of the most violent and intriguing phenomena in the universe.

The University of Wisconsin Primate Research Center is staged to expand their facilities onto land animal rights activists had hoped would be the site for a new museum protesting experimentation on monkeys.

Now some of the most prominent scientists in that field have published a new paper on detecting early warning signals before a system changes. Titled “Early-warning signals for critical transitions,” the review paper is in this weekâ??s issue of the journal Nature.

“We began to realize that there was really pretty cool and fundamental thing going on here,” says Stephen Carpenter, one of the paper’s authors and a lake ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW-Madison plans to expand its primate research labs into the space that animal rights activists once hoped would house a museum to protest experimentation on monkeys.

After trying to secure the land for at least four years, University Research Park, which is a research partner with UW-Madison, purchased the lot for $1 million in July from Budget Bicycle Center owner Roger Charly.

Scientists are boldly predicting we may soon have to stop complaining that if we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we cure the common cold?

Researchers have cracked the genetic code for all 99 known strains of the human rhinovirus, the virus that accounts for the majority of human cold infections.

“That’s why we’ll never have a vaccine for the common cold,” lead author Ann Palmenberg, professor of biochemistry and chair of the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in announcing her team’s work.

The University of Wisconsin, Madison, is one of the countryâ??s leading centers of public biopharmaceutical research, and the campus has spawned dozens of spinout companies based on University research. For this, the citizens of Wisconsin should be grateful; and, even more so, hopeful.

Music has great power to alter our emotions â?? making us happy or sad, agitated or calm. Psychologists have tried in vain to figure out why that happens. Now, a composer says he’s has a clue. And he got it by writing music not for humans, but for monkeys.

David Teie plays cello with the National Symphony Orchestra and even on occasion with the heavy metal band Metallica. He’s also a composer.

They have wild shaggy manes that are perfect for tossing about and are known to bite the heads off rodents.

Unsurprising, then, that tamarin monkeys are big heavy metal fans.

When a group of cottontop tamarins were played a variety of types of music, from classical to jazz, only the songs by hard rock bands such as Metallica caused them to react.

Music may have charms to “soothe the savage breast,” but that doesn’t mean the same music that soothes humans will charm other species. Monkeys, for example, aren’t much affected by human music.

To find out whether any kind of music could affect a monkey’s mood, a musician and a primatologist created tunes tailor-made for cotton-top tamarins. They report that the experiment worked – but the melodies are unlike anything you’ve ever heard.

A study of monkeys over a twenty-year period suggests that eating less may extend life and prevent disease. American researchers said they believe their findings could apply to people as well. Their study was published in the journal Science.

Richard Weindruch of the University of Wisconsin in Madison and his team did the research. They tested the effects of calorie restriction in seventy-six rhesus monkeys over twenty years.

A UW-Madison safety expert said new techonology holds promise of reducing red light violations and the danger they cause.

The technology is geared for situations, similar to Rep. Fred Clark’s red light running earlier this month. Clark (D-Baraboo) was cited for a red light violation after his SUV entered a Madison intersection and slammed into a bicyclist and significantly injured him. The collision was captured by a Madison metro bus on-board camera, with the tape first shown on WKOW-TV Friday.

A new report shows some signs of hope with Wisconsinâ??s unemployment trend. Since April the rate of unemployment has leveled off after steady decline, according to the Center on Wisconsin Strategyâ??s Job Watch. COWS Associate Director Laura Dresser says nationally heavy months of jobs loss from September to March affected industries including manufacturing, financial services and retail.

Author Michael Pollan, one of the major architects of the current movement to create a more sustainable, environmentally sound food system, will give a free talk to the public at the Kohl Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Thursday, Sept. 24. The talk will be at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6 p.m.

Pollan is the author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” which is the focus of the University’s Go Big Read common-reading project.

The American Chemical Society, the worldâ??s largest scientific organization, has named Wisconsin State Journal reporter Ron Seely as the recipient of its 2010 national science reporting award.

Seely was announced as the winner of the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public at the ACS national meeting in Washington, D.C. One of the most prestigious prizes in science reporting, the award recognizes “outstanding reporting directly to the public, which materially increases the publicâ??s knowledge and understanding of chemistry, chemical engineering, and related fields.”

(Chemistry professor Bassam Shakhashiri, William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea and director of the Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy, is quoted. Seely has been a senior lecturer in life sciences communication in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.)

One possible treatment for people with neurological problems ranging from brain trauma to multiple sclerosis may lie on the tip of the tongue.In experiments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, neuroscientist Yuri Danilov and his colleagues have been studying for the past several years how electrical stimulation of the tongue can bring about dramatic improvements in people whose ability to balance, walk and stand has been damaged in ways that leave them virtually helpless without a walker or crutches.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have reprogrammed skin cells and turned them into different kinds of retinal cells, a remarkable demonstration that mimicked the early development of a key part of the human eye and raised hopes for treating disorders that rob millions of their vision.

Scientists genetically â??reprogrammedâ? human skin cells to possess the same properties as those that make up the retina.

The process involved first turning them into pluripotent stem (IPS) cells, which have the potential to develop into virtually every kind of tissue in the body.

Study leader Dr David Gamm, from the University of Wisconsin, said: â??This is an important step forward for us, as it not only confirms that multiple retinal cells can be derived from human IPS cells. but also shows how similar the process is to normal human retinal development.

University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have grown multiple types of retina cells from two types of stem cells, they reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team led by Dr. David Gamm, an ophthalmologist, and Jason Meyer, a research scientist, said the development could lead to cell therapies, grown from a patientâ??s skin, that repair damaged retinas.

A notorious plant disease that destroyed the Irish potato crop decades ago has been found in two commercial potato fields in Wisconsin.

Plant pathologist Amanda Gevens of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said it’s a community problem because each infected plant puts more spores into the air, which threatens to infect more plants.

In the future, cars and trucks could run on a special cocktail of gasoline and diesel fuel, boosting fuel efficiency and cutting pollution.A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has developed technology that takes advantage of the best attributes of both fuels to help engines run more efficiently.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin -Madison have developed a synthetic protein that could prevent human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.

HIV and several other human viruses rely on interactions between proteins and the virus to infect a healthy cell. The new discovery could develop proteins that block a virus from hurting healthy cells.

A new technique that transforms embryonic and adult stem cells into six types of mature white blood cells could produce blood cells with specific defects for use by researchers studying the development and treatment of disease.The method, devised by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, could also be used to grow specific types of immune cells to target specific infections or tumors, or to test the safety of new drugs, they said.

An engine which blends diesel and gasoline fuels could potentially be 20% more efficient than traditional gas engines, while also lowering the emissions, say researchers at the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison.

WASHINGTON (WKOW) — U.S. Senator Herb Kohl will meet the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner in Madison on Tuesday to discuss science, food safety, and public health.

Senator Kohl and Commissioner Margaret Hamburg will start off their meeting with a tour of the Babcock Hall Dairy Plant.

Senator Kohl is the chairman of the Senate’s Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, a group that oversees funding for the nation’s two main agencies responsible for keeping the food supply safe – the FDA and the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

On a warm, breezy day in Oak Lawn, veterinary graduate student Jessica Girard of the University of Wisconsin-Madison removed a robin from a finely threaded net hidden in the shadows of a tree-lined meadow.

Gently, she extended its wings to check for emerging feathers and look for parasites. She took measurements, noting patterns in the feathers indicating the robin’s age. Her fingers traced its orange chest, feeling along the bone for telltale fat deposits that signal a healthy bird.

Girard needed a blood sample from the robin to test the strength of its immune system, and she had to work quickly, before the bird’s stress weakened its immune response. She moved feathers from the bird’s neck, baring translucent skin colored with fine blood vessels. Whispering soothing words, she drew her sample with a needle.

In all, Girard and her colleagues would catch and test four robins, a sparrow, a cardinal and a blue jay this morning as part of a research effort aimed at understanding why certain neighborhoods in the Chicago area are “hot spots” for the West Nile virus.

The Department of Energy Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center GLBRC at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has received $8.1 million in new funding from the U.S. Department of Energy through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to provide crucial support for plant cell wall imaging and sustainability research.

What is the best way to encourage science in Africa?

Some African scientists come to the United States to train and then return to their home countries to teach and perform research (read about two examples here).

James Ntambi took a different approach – after receiving his Ph.D. he remained in the United States and now leads a lab at the University of Wisconsin, where he trains African scientists and teaches Americans what life is like in Uganda.

Bioethics expert R. Alta Charo is joining the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a senior adviser to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. In an interview Wednesday, Hamburg said that Charo will be involved in many cutting-edge fields. “I expect that we will quickly make use of her as we think about strategies on how to address the review of products in the arena of personalized medicine, in-vitro diagnostics, stem-cell therapies, where she’s already done important work,” Hamburg said.

The Department of Energy has granted $8 million in federal stimulus money to the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center for plant cell wall imaging and sustainability research.

Half will be allocated to plant cell wall imaging and the other $4 million is for sustainability research.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have developed an engine that runs on a mix of diesel and gasoline that produces fewer emissions and is as much as 20 per cent more fuel-efficient than conventional engines.

Led by mechanical engineering professor Rolf Reitz, a research team at the school presented their findings at a diesel engine conference in Detroit sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Every semester, “service learning” programs send students out to local community organizations to get their hands dirty, putting to use the concepts they learn in the classroom. The intended outcome is a symbiotic relationship between the college and the community. In The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning(Temple University Press), Randy Stoecker, professor of community and environmental sociology at the University of Wisconsin, and Elizabeth Tryon, community partner specialist for the Human Issues Studies Program at Edgewood Collegeâ??s School of Integrative Studies, explore the relationship between college and community, asking whether the latter benefits as much as service-learning proponents say.

A forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Friday is focusing on the risks and benefits of nuclear energy.

The Wisconsin Public Utility Institute daylong workshop will examine the potential of nuclear energy in the face of pressure to replace greenhouse gas-emitting fuels. It will address strategies that utilities can adopt to meet demands for energy but also not harm the environment.