Human embryonic stem cells could be a step closer to wide use in human studies, thanks to a research-ready cell line developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The universityâ??s Waisman Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility and the WiCell Research Institute, affiliated with the university, have produced a cell line that meets the Good Manufacturing Practices required for research in people, the organizations announced this week.
Sixty-three percent of Wisconsin residents approve of the way President Barack Obama is handling his job as president, according to a UW-Madison Badger Poll.
The poll, which was conducted over a two month period from April to June, asked 593 Wisconsin residents about their views on the nation, the state and the economy.
Wisconsinites are not feeling good about the economy.
Most of the nearly 600 Wisconsin residents surveyed in a recent UW Badger Poll are not happy about the way things are going in the U-S. Overall, 73% are dissatisfied with the state of our country – only 24% are satisfied. Political Science Professor Katherine Cramer Walsh says people feel a little bit better about Wisconsin’s economy than they do about the nation as a whole.
Wisconsinites are still dissatisfied with the way things are going in America, but are less dissatisfied than they were six months ago, right before the presidential election.
The latest Badger Poll, released Tuesday by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Survey Center, showed 73 percent of the 593 respondents were dissatisfied, compared to 81 percent in October 2008.
Dear Editor: Just wanted to say thanks to Mike Ivey for covering the furlough story and offering his views on the inequities and short-sighted aspects of the plan.
I too am one of those professors who is upset about the ramifications. Not for me per se, but for my staff who receive 100 percent of their salaries from non-state, federal sources via grants from the National Institutes of Health.
The genomes of 17 different ants, fungi and bacteria that eat through hundreds of pounds of leaf matter a year could ultimately lead to new techniques for making biofuels.
Scientists from the University of Wisconsin, the Joint Genome Institute and Emory University are sequencing the first-ever community genome, searching for clues to how what’s essentially a 50 million-year-old bioreactor operates.
Hundreds of embryonic stem cell lines, whose use in the United States had effectively been curtailed by the Bush administration, can be used to study disorders and develop cures if researchers can show the cells were derived using ethical procedures, according to new rules issued by the federal government yesterday.
Quoted: “I think it is a huge step forward,” said R. Alta Charo, an ethicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “They are making it absolutely possible to move this field forward and fund the research in a responsible way.”
The Obama administration has lifted some restrictions on stem cell research. Scientists say the new rules will give them a lot more freedom to do research that could one day lead to better treatments for injuries and disease.
Arthur Kelman, who was a highly regarded professor and researcher with UW-Madison’s plant pathology department for nearly 25 years, died Monday (June 29)at the age of 90.
“He was a stellar scientist and scholar of the first rank,” said John Andrews, a UW-Madison professor of plant pathology. “But beyond that he was a great humanitarian. He understood people very well, was a great advocate for his profession and always saw the best in people. He was broadly influential and well known on this campus.”
Beth Dumont, a fourth-year UW-Madison graduate student studying evolution and genetics, spends much of her time admiring the intricate internal architecture of mouse cells through a microscope.
It sounds like something from a science fiction movie: Sensors are surgically inserted in the brain to understand what you’re thinking. Machines that can speak, move or process information â?? based on the fleeting thoughts in a person’s imagination.
But it’s not completely fictional. The technology is out there. A researcher in Wisconsin recently announced the ability to “think” updates onto the Twitter website. Locally, researchers at Washington University have developed even deeper ways of tying humans and computers together.
Noted: But Wisconsin’s blooming biotech industry doesn’t just protect corn. It helps protect the state’s economic interests, too.
The industry in Wisconsin, home to more than 400 biotech companies employing 34,000 people, is among the nation’s largest.
On the UW campus alone, the $841 million plowed into sponsored academic research and development ranks the university third nationally behind Johns Hopkins and the University of California, San Francisco, in research and development clout, according to a study from Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council.
Animal-research facilities, including those operated by universities, will now be required to publicly disclose more information about experiments involving animals’ pain or distress.
The requirement comes out of a court settlement signed Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees such facilities, and the Humane Society of the United States, which had sued the department. The agreement, however, has raised concerns that the information could lead to more violence against scientists by animal-rights extremists.
It’s always risky to predict the results of scientific breakthroughs and new research. They often take years, trial and error, and often luck. But there is no question that the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery going up on University Avenue are being built with near limitless expectations for improving human health and welfare.
University of Wisconsin-Madison officials ended months of intense competition Tuesday by announcing the five core ideas that researchers are to pursue in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, to be completed in December 2010.
Computer models to outsmart viruses and scaffolds on which stem cells can grow are among five topics picked for the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, the public part of a public-private research building going up on the 1300 block of University Avenue.
UW-Madison on Tuesday announced the five scientists selected to lead work in the public institute, to open in December 2010. They are among 26 faculty who applied.
Clive N. Svendsen, joint leader of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at the University of Wisconsin, has been named director of the new Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute, effective Dec. 1.    Â
Currently a professor of neurology and anatomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and consulting professor at Stanford University, Svendsenâ??s research focuses on both modeling and treating neurodegenerative disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrigâ??s disease) and Parkinsonâ??s disease using a combination of stem cells and powerful growth factors. Â
Several Wisconsin students are leading a project to help restore New Orleans wetlands that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison students launched two “floating islands” last week that were made from recycled plastic and marsh grasses. The islands are intended to foster plant growth and provide wildlife habitats.
Opportunities abound for investors in a world facing massive population growth and escalating demands for food, fiber and fuel, according to a report released Thursday by Deutsche Bank and the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, exposed human skin cells to the smog-related ozone in the laboratory and found that they turned on cellular machinery that normally responds to stress, suggesting ozone may be toxic to human skin. However, further experiments are required to confirm the findings in people.
The University of Wisconsin System School Library Education Consortium has been awarded almost $1 million to help school librarians become better versed in technology and social media such as Twitter.
This Saturday, a picture display at one corner of the Dane County Farmers’ Market will bring the wonders of the universe all the way down to State Street.
Forty images of galaxies, planets and other space sites will be on display at the corner of State and Mifflin streets from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. In the event of rain, the exhibit will be on display on Saturday, July 4.
The exhibit, “From Earth to the Universe,” is part of a celebration of the International Year of Astronomy, which marks the 400th anniversary of when Galileo used a telescope to see beyond the Earth.
Ever wonder how fireworks actually work?
Inquiring minds can find out on Saturday at Memorial Union Terrace during a free public demonstration on the chemistry behind fireworks by UW-Madison chemistry professor Bassam Shakhashiri.
Students with the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a maker of buoyant marsh mats are teaming up to launch two “floating islands” in an experiment to help restore the badly eroded Bayou Bienvenue near New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward.
The floating islands will be launched Tuesday by the students and Floating Islands Environmental Solutions, a Baton Rouge company.
The Lower 9th Ward neighborhood launched two artificial marsh mats in a bold effort to fill in the open waters of a wetlands area known as the “Golden Triangle.”
Under an intense heat, the launching ceremony Tuesday was attended by volunteers, scientists, lawyers and residents. Spearheading the effort were ecologists with the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
This summer the National Weather Service will put into practice a method that uses satellite observations to predict where hazardous thunderstorms will arise.
The weather service uses radar to detect severe thunderstorms about 15 minutes before they present significant danger on the ground.
With the new method, developed by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, meteorologists could have an extra 30 to 45 minutes’ lead time, “helping us issue more accurate and timely severe thunderstorm and tornado watches before the storms form, and reduce false alarms,” said Jeff Craven, science and operations officer of the NWS Milwaukee office in Sullivan, one of four offices planning to start using the method.
A fundamental question about how sugar units are strung together into long carbohydrate chains has also pinpointed a promising way to target new medicines against tuberculosis.
Working with components of the tuberculosis bacterium, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison identified an unusual process by which the pathogen builds an important structural carbohydrate. In addition to its implications for human health, the mechanism offers insight into a widespread but poorly understood basic biological function â?? controlling the length of carbohydrate polymers.
This summer the National Weather Service will put into practice a method developed by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that uses satellite observations to predict where hazardous thunderstorms will arise.
The weather service uses radar to detect severe thunderstorms about 15 minutes before they present significant danger on the ground.
University of Wisconsin researchers are pinpointing a promising way to target tuberculosis medicines.
A string of sugar units strung together into long carbohydrate chains has pinpointed a promising way to target new medicines against tuberculosis.
A UW developmental biologist wins one-year grant to continue research into how animals react to bacteria.
University of Wisconsin-Madison developmental biologist Margaret McFall-Ngai has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a one-year grant that will support her investigation into how animals interact with their natural complement of microbes.
Along the way, she hopes to explore a theory about the origin of immunity among vertebrates.
A UW-Madison psychiatrist says it will probably be another decade before researchers pinpoint which genes– and how many–play a role in depression.
There was widespread excitement that followed a study linking one gene mutation to depression which has since been dampened. A follow-up review in the Journal of American Medical Association shows little or no connection between one gene regulating the neurotransmitter serotonin and the likelihood of depression.
Dr. Ned Kalin chairs the psychiatry department at UW Medical School. He says it means scientists will have to broaden their search for genetic causes of depression, and the quest for clues in DNA could be a decade away. He says what it tells researchers is that thereâ??s not going to be one gene to explain why someone suffers depression or develops schizophrenia. Kalin says it’s probably going to be like many other illnesses, mainly â??A complicated story in which there are numerous genes.” (5th item.)
The invasion of zebra mussels in the Great Lakes may be followed by a takeover from one of its close cousins.
While zebra mussels have been a scourge of the Great Lakes waterways, they too may become the victims of unwanted company, namely the quagga mussel which appears to be a growing presence.
Suzanne Peyer is a doctoral candidate with the UW-Madison Zoology Department who carried out some of the research. She says for some reason, quagga mussels just seem to be doing better. While slower to colonize, ultimately they seem to be the ones that are currently being more dominant in the calmer habitats.
Invasive quagga mussels are replacing their equally destructive cousin, the zebra mussel, in calmer waters in the Great Lakes, Wisconsin researchers said.
While zebra mussels still dominate in fast-moving streams and rivers, the larger quagga mussels prefer soft lake bottoms of sand and silt, said Suzanne Peyer, a doctoral candidate in the zoology department of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Zebra mussels are being muscled out of the Great Lakes by cousin quagga.
Research done by a University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral candidate showed the quagga mussel to have become the dominant of the two species in the calm waters of the Great Lakes while the zebra mussel covers the bottoms of faster-moving waters in rivers and streams, UW-Madison announced in a news release.
The reason? Grip.
In this, the International Year of Astronomy, there may be no better way to explore our solar system than by bicycle.
Itâ??s just a little more than 23 miles to Pluto, which is in a marsh near Mount Horeb. Neptune is between Verona and Riley, so you can plan a stop at the Riley Tavern to toast your departure from the realm of the inner planets.
Welcome to what its originators are calling one of â??the largest scale models of our solar system in the universe.â?
Jim Lattis, a UW-Madison astronomer and director of UW Space Place, said the project may be one of his all-time favorite outreach efforts.
Q: Why do the blue eyes of babies often turn brown after a year or so?
A: Melanin is the pigment that makes body parts dark, said Burton Kushner, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. “Melanin makes freckles brown, hair brown and pigmented races brown, and it can make the iris brown as well. Melanin is not fully developed in newborn babies, so the iris is relatively devoid of whatever melanin pigment it will have, and that gives the eye its baby-blue eye color.”
Research by botanists at the UW-Madison has revealed a disturbing secret lurking in Wisconsin’s forests.
Suspecting that increasing development might be affecting forests in ways we cannot see, UW-Madison botanist Don Waller led a study of plants on the floor of forests throughout the state. Comparing those surveys with data collected in the 1940s and 1950s, the researchers found far fewer species of the shrubs, grasses and herbs that have traditionally been found in the understory of Wisconsin forests.
Research by botanists at the UW-Madison has revealed a disturbing secret lurking in Wisconsin’s forests.
Suspecting that increasing development might be affecting forests in ways we cannot see, UW-Madison botanist Don Waller led a study of plants on the floor of forests throughout the state. Comparing those surveys with data collected in the 1940s and 1950s, the researchers found far fewer species of the shrubs, grasses and herbs that have traditionally been found in the understory of Wisconsin forests.
The federal National Institutes of Health received 49,015 comments on its proposed human embryonic stem cell research funding rules. NIH actually received slightly more comments, about 50,000, in 2000, concerning draft guidelines for human embryonic stem cell research proposed by the Clinton administration.
State workers who get paid by federal or private funds could be exempt from having to take furloughs, under legislation proposed by Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D-Madison.
The tornado season in Wisconsin is off to a slow start but will it continue this way? Jonathan Martin, Chair of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UW-Madison can’t give predictions on this summer’s potential tornado activity. He calls the atmosphere “a mystery” and notes forecasting regular weather is only possible about 10 days out. Another difficulty is the nature of twisters which are spontaneous when they appear.
With more than 100 research projects in limbo, dozens of labs behind on safety inspections, and the investigation into a â??Major Actionâ? violation unfinished, UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin has vowed to hire more safety officers to review campus research.
Martinâ??s response came after a campus committee sent her a letter last month stating that UW-Madison is not in compliance with National Institutes of Health guidelines because of â??gross and chronicâ? understaffing.
From: Salon.com
Maybe the infamous Barbie doll who announced that “math is hard” was on to something — that is, if she had continued on to say “when you live in a sexist society.” A new study shows that differences between boys’ and girls’ math performance has more to do with gender inequality than hard-wired ability. (Here’s a freebie for all the young’uns in the audience: “But, ma, it’s society’s fault that I failed my math test!”) Not only that, but it pokes a hole in Lawrence Summers hypothesis that men innately show more variability in mathematical ability.
Janet Hyde, a University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor, said: “It may have to do with the percentage of women in the labor force, inside technology and computers, teaching math and science at the college level” — the list goes on and on. The short of it: The math gap can’t be explained away purely by inherent biological ability.
Highly regarded UW-Madison stem cell researcher Clive Svendsen is heading to Los Angeles to become director of the new Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute.
Svendsen, who is co-director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at UW-Madison, will start his new position on Dec. 1.
â??It was nothing lacking from Wisconsin,â? Svendsen said of his decision to leave UW-Madison. â??This was a remarkable opportunity. Really, there wasnâ??t much they could do to keep me â?? it was a very spectacular offer.â?
Clive N. Svendsen, a highly regarded stem cell researcher, has been named director of the new Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute, and will start his new position on Dec. 1, 2009.
Currently a professor of neurology and anatomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and joint leader of the widely-respected Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at the University of Wisconsin, Svendsenâ??s groundbreaking research focuses on both modeling and treating neurodegenerative disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrigâ??s disease) and Parkinsonâ??s disease using a combination of stem cells and powerful growth factors.
Highly regarded stem cell researcher Clive Svendsen is leaving the University of Wisconsin-Madison to become the director of the new Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute in Los Angeles.
The announcement was made in a press release put out by Cedars-Sinai.
Svendsen, who is the co-director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at UW-Madison, will start his new position on Dec. 1.
A report released Tuesday by the National Research Council shows that although females still are underrepresented in the applicant pool for faculty positions in math, science and engineering at major research universities, those who do apply are interviewed and hired at rates higher than those for men.
The report also notes that while women are underrepresented among those considered for tenure, those who are considered receive tenure at the same or higher rates than men.
Extreme binge-drinking may be putting college students at significant risk of accidents and injuries, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that among more than 2,000 college students with drinking problems, those who admitted to “extreme” drinking — eight or more drinks in day for men, five or more for women — were more likely than their peers to have suffered a recent alcohol-related injury.
The prospects for women who are scientists and engineers at major research universities have improved, although women continue to face inequalities in salary and access to some other resources, a panel of the National Research Council concludes in a new report.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers continue to find evidence that shows there is no innate difference in the math ability of males and females.
“There is a persistent stereotype that girls and women are just not as good at math as boys and men,” said UW-Madison psychology professor Janet Hyde. “And the data we have indicates that’s just not true. I really think it’s important to get that word out and to chip away at that myth.”
Hyde and Janet Mertz, UW-Madison professor of oncology, co-authored an analysis of data compiled on math performance at all levels in the United States and abroad.
Math hasn’t always been thought of as a girl thing. For decades, boys in the U.S. were considered the brainiacs when it came to mathematics, with many believing that their gender predisposed them to better understanding it. They just naturally had a head for numbers.
Jur5lenc But new research from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, seeks to dispel that myth via a meta-analysis of studies and data showing that the gap is more a cultural issue than a gender-based one. The study, published in the June 2 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sought to answer three questions: Do gender differences in math performance exist in the general population, do gender differences exist among the mathematically talented, and do females exist who possess profound mathematical talent?
Just as boys tend to gravitate to toy trucks and girls usually prefer dolls, the gender differences in math performance have more to do with culture than aptitude. That’s according to a new review of relevant studies.
Such findings challenge the century-old idea that males are innately more capable than girls in mathematics. More recently, the gender bias showed up in the 1990s when Mattel introduced a Barbie doll that said, “Math is hard.” And in 2005, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University and current economic adviser to President Barack Obama, brought the debate into the spotlight again.
While speaking at an event, Summers stated that males are intrinsically smarter than females in science and engineering.
“I have to say that Larry Summers’ comments in 2005 inspired me,” to complete the current study, said Janet Hyde, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of psychology.
Even the most hidebound male chauvinists have been forced to admit that girls are as good at math as boys, on average. Boys no longer start outperforming girls at age 12 or 13, as they did as late as the 1970s; in the U.S., high school girls now take calculus at the same rate as boys; tests mandated by No Child Left Behind show that girls have reached parity with boys in math achievement through high school; and tests of complex problem-solving (which NCLB doesnâ??t measure) find that girls have now pulled even with boys through 12th grade on this skill, too.
The race to craft stem cells that have the virtues, but not the notoriety, of their embryonic brethren faces its final hurdle: becoming safe enough to help patients.
Researchers have unveiled a flurry of advances in recent months in the development of “induced pluripotent” stem cells. “The induced pluripotent stem cell field is probably one of the most fast-moving areas in all of biology,” says researcher Leonard Zon of Children’s Hospital in Boston.
My port of entry to Madison was a frozen field of tallgrass, an echelon of dark pines and a patch of oak woods. As my brother and I drove into town along the south Beltline, searching for the Seminole Highway exit, I looked around and marveled: Hey, this is all right…. There’s a forest in the middle of the city!
I didn’t know at the time that I was seeing the UW Arboretum. I didn’t know those tawny grasses were the Curtis Prairie, the world’s first prairie restoration project. I didn’t know those were the Leopold Pines, planted in the 1930s. I didn’t know the highway had been punched through the Arboretum in the early 1950s. I didn’t know my new place was just beyond those oaks.
Chris Meyer uses the word â??funâ? a lot.
Working all day on dirty, smelly engines is â??fun.â?
Learning the business, software and electronics sides of inventing is â??fun.â?
Even working with the bureaucracy to get his latest invention established on the UW-Madison campus is â??fun,â? he says with a grin that makes you not quite sure heâ??s being sarcastic.
In graduation season, the phrase “make a difference” is in the air. Students dream of making a difference. Commencement speakers urge graduates to make a difference.
And cynics scoff at the notion that any one person can make a difference.
Scientists and engineers with the University of Wisconsin-Madison who are working on a giant neutrino observatory at the South Pole are coming off one of their most successful construction seasons.
Workers in Antarctica installed 19 strings of optical sensors in 1½-mile-deep holes drilled into the crystalline ice. That surpassed the projectâ??s goal by three and put the observatory on track to be completed by 2011, according to Francis Halzen, principal investigator of IceCube and a UW-Madison physics professor.
It may be that in spring, a young personâ??s fancy turns to thoughts of love. But under some circumstances, falling in love may not be all itâ??s cracked up to be.
Thatâ??s the tongue-in-cheek message heart physiologist Richard Moss likes to deliver to medical students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The faster your heart beats, the shorter your lifespan,” says Moss, chair of the physiology department and an-award winning teacher at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “So to live longer, you donâ??t want to be using up heartbeats foolishly.”
A Madison company aiming to put itself at the center of the evolving field of regenerative medicine said Wednesday that it has licensed a key patent portfolio involving the differentiation of stem cells into heart cells.
Cellular Dynamics International negotiated an exclusive license to the technology from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, the company said in a news release.
