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.
A Madison company founded by stem cell pioneer Jamie Thomson has obtained an exclusive license with a New York medical school to turn stem cells into heart cells.
Cellular Dynamics International announced the deal with Mount Sinai School of Medicine on Wednesday.
Of all the seismological hot-spots around the Pacific Rim, none has been as well documented as the Nankai Trough.
“We have just a phenomenal record of earthquakes here,” says Harold Tobin from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When President Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research in March, many scientists hailed the move as a long-awaited boost for one of the most promising fields of medical research.
Quoted: “I think NIH has been hearing from many, many people how important it is to fix this,” said R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin who served on Obama’s transition team. “I can’t say how they will do it, but I’m confident they want to.”
Judging from the TV ads for drugs that treat osteoporosis, you would think that the bone-thinning disorder is something only women have to worry about, and that men can simply ignore what Sally Field and other talking heads have to say about the disease.
You would be wrong.
Though osteoporosis is less common in men than in women, it still takes a toll on men.
It’s a painless illness in which bones become fragile and are more likely to break, and its first sign may be a fracture of the hip, spine or wrist.
The disease can progress silently, according to Neil Binkley, a physician and researcher with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
The way to fight Alzheimer’s disease is to intervene decades before someone demonstrates symptoms, U.S. researchers suggest.
“The future of this disease is to intervene decades before someone becomes symptomatic. This analysis says you can save literally billions of dollars in long-term care costs if you can intervene at an earlier stage,” study co-author David Weimer of the La Follette School of Public Affairs said in a statement. “What you don’t know costs a lot of money when it comes to this disease.”
College students who frequently drink to extremes and are inclined to be thrill-seekers are more likely to be physically injured as a result of their alcohol use, a new study shows.
U.S. researchers found that students who binged heavily on alcohol at least four days a month were five times more likely to be physically hurt than their peers. Male students who had at least eight drinks on each of these drinking occasions and females who had a minimum of five drinks on each of these occasions were considered “frequent extreme heavy drinkers” in the study.
Universities and colleges are “missing the mark” in their fight against binge drinking on campus, which a new study says leads to 500,000 injuries in one year in the U.S. alone.
The research suggests that blanket efforts, such as cutting down on drink specials at campus pubs, may not be enough to curb consumption or prevent alcohol-related injuries. Universities have to pinpoint the students who are most at risk and perform some basic interventions with them, said one of the study’s authors.
Despite some efforts, drinking on campus has remained a problem. An estimated 500,000 college students in the United States suffered alcohol-related injuries in 2001 according to Marlon P. Mundt, assistant scientist in the department of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author for the study.
Can poker make you sick? How can a few herbs make your Memorial Day barbecue a little healthier? Why has the world community failed to stop genocide? “The Why Files” takes on scientific questions great and small, on the Web and in a new book. (Answers below.)
“The Why Files” has been serving up weekly samplings of science on the Internet for 13 years, which is about as long as msnbc.com has been in existence. “When the Internet was a vast wasteland, we were lucky to get out in front,” said one of the site’s creators, Terry Devitt, director of research communications at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
It was the tweet read â??round the world.
Last month â?? using only his mind â?? UW-Madison graduate student Adam Wilson composed and posted a message to the social networking Web site Twitter.
The telepathic tweet caused quite a stir. Within a few weeks, Wilson had more than 130,000 followers on Twitter, the most followers of anyone located in Madison.
Many scientists and other advocates of studies involving human embryonic stem cells had expected the pace of such research to quicken after President Obama signed an order in March easing restrictions on the types of studies eligible for federal funds. But some now are questioning whether proposed new ethical guidelines, which the National Institutes of Health released for comment last month, might have the opposite effect, The Washington Post reported.
Fishing isnâ??t an exact science.
But Ben Hobbins, 49, has spent the past few years, with help from the University of Wisconsinâ??s Polymer Research Center, using it to develop an environmentally friendly soft plastic fishing bait.
And the scientific community has taken a liking to the IronClads brand, which was launched last year by Lake Resources Group, Inc.
Dr. James Shull has been named chairman of oncology and of the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at UW-Madison.
Shull, chairman of genetics at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, will replace Dr. Norman Drinkwater, who stepped down as oncology chairman last year. Shull got his Ph.D and did a fellowship at UW-Madison
People who already speak two languages are more adept at learning a new foreign language than their monolinguists, U.S. researchers say.
Study co-authors Viorica Marian of Northwestern University and Margarita Kaushanskaya of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said the bilingual advantage persists even if the new language they study is completely different from the languages they already know.
A $2.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will allow UW-Madison to hire 12 faculty members, with a focus on connections between the West and Asia.
With the first $400,000 of the grant in hand, officials in the College of Letters and Science will begin searching for the first four professors this fall, said Dean Gary Sandefur. The rest of the money will come in over the next three yea
Human embryonic stem cell research rules unveiled by the Obama Administration may prevent federal funding of more cells than the old rules, suggests one report.
Nowadays you’ll likely find John Knuti with his walker. Three years ago, he never imagined he would need one. He described a moment in 2006 when life changed in a humbling instant.
MADISON (WKOW) — Watertown native Mary Woodard Lasker will be honored on a 78-cent postage stamp.
The stamp is part of the Distinguished Americans series and a first-day-of-sale ceremony honored her at her childhood home on Friday.
….A special ceremony unveiling the stamp will be held Tuesday, May 19 at 9:30 a.m. The stamp will be unveiled in the lobby of the Wisconsin Institute for Medical Research on Highland Avenue.
Human embryonic stem cells, with their ability to turn into every kind of organ tissue in the body, have tantalized biomedical researchers ever since their 1998 isolation by University of Wisconsin scientists. Organ replacement tissues free from immune system rejection, grown from embryonic stem cells or from more recently discovered “induced” stem cells grown from skin cells, have been envisioned for a decade.
….In his grand exchange, the president traded away an essential piece of what he had only recently said he believed. When he campaigned, Obama said he supported the “therapeutic cloning of stem cells.” But as president, he has already traded that position for one that some see as more politically realistic.
Under the compromise plan, the president proposed that federal dollars be allowed to pay only for research on stem cell lines created from surplus fertility clinic embryos, but that funds continue to be barred from stem cell lines created in the laboratory to study particular diseases. Also barred is financial support for creating new, genetically matched stem cells for use in the treatment of disease. That is the very “therapeutic cloning” research that the president supported during his campaign.
Scientists from around the country are scrambling to get a share of new federal stimulus funding designed to enhance innovative research. The Challenge Grants, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are among the $2 billion in stimulus funds for new research, equipment and construction.
A working paper from the folks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison finds some key gaps in kids’ understanding of algebra â?? you know, that math the experts say is required for success in 21st century life.
One key gap: multiplication. The kids studied didn’t grab onto multiplication’s â??xâ? as well as they did addition’s â?? .â? And, at times, they tried to magically turn multiplication problems into addition problems as a result of this gap.
Dear Editor: There’s a common misconception that being green is the same as being economically impractical. Seen as nothing more than a conscience pleaser for the rich, renewable energy has long been perceived as expensive and beyond the reach of the average American. However, when it comes to solar power, this really isn’t the case. Through a large number of economic incentives and buyback programs, solar power can pay for itself and then some within years and simultaneously help in the fight against global warming.
UW-Madison announced last week that the U.S. Department of Energy has granted it three years of money for 10 studies. UW won more grants than any other college or university.
The Madison campus, which is home to a small nuclear research reactor, will study ways to make next-generation nuclear plants more efficient by allowing higher temperature operation. Two of the grants will focus on computer modeling of nuclear reactor behavior.
The campus also will study nuclear fuels and fuel coatings, waste separation technology and improved ways to cool reactors.
UW-Madison will get roughly $5 million over three years from the U.S. Department of Energy to study new nuclear energy technology under the Nuclear Energy University Program.
With ten proposals funded, UW-Madison received the most grants of any college or university.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and two other universities are working on a study of how organic and conventional farming practices affect cows’ health.
There is a stem cell research project under way in Wisconsin that could change almost everything about that field.
It could lead to medical breakthroughs without the ethical concerns that often surround stem cell research.
But what may be more incredible is the local man who’s helping to make that project possible.
President Obama on Thursday proposed a $30.9-billion budget for the National Institutes of Health for the 2010 fiscal year, including basic and clinical research. It sets a baseline 4.7 percent higher than the agencyâ??s final budget under President Bush in 2008.
The announcement is the latest in a series of budget swings for the NIH, which is the largest source of money for academic research. The agencyâ??s budget doubled over five years, from $13.6-billion in fiscal year 1998 to $27.1-billion in 2003. After that, Mr. Bush presided over a six-year trend during which the NIH received annual increases below the rate of inflation.
Actor Michael J. Fox is one of the best known Parkinson sufferers. As of 2006, his foundation gave more than $50 millions dollars to Parkinson research. About $1.2 million of that went to the University of Wisconsin’s stem cell studies.
In 2005, Fox visited the Waisman Center on campus. If the cause isn’t known, Fox hoped at least a treatment, or methods of early detection, could be found.
“I realized the best role for me to play was research, and dole out those dollars to researchers,” he said during a news conference at the center on February 1, 2005.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and Pfizer, the number one biopharmaceutical corporation in the world, signed a research license this week for the use of human embryonic stem cells.
Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a significant discovery in understanding the way human embryonic stem cells function.
They explain nature’s way of controlling whether these cells will renew, or will transform to become part of an ear, a liver, or any other part of the human body. The study is reported in the May 1 issue of the journal Cell.
The research team includes James Thomson, who provided an important proof to the research effort. Thomson, an adjunct professor at UCSB, is considered the “father of stem cell biology.”
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) will allow Pfizer Inc. to use some of its patented human embryonic stem cell lines for the development of new drug therapies.
WARF, the private, nonprofit patenting and licensing arm of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, announced the signing of the licensing agreement Tuesday. Janet Kelly, a spokesperson for WARF, said financial terms of the deal were confidential.
Pfizer Inc. on Tuesday announced a licensing agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF, for the development of drug therapies using human embryonic stem cells.
The pharmaceutical giant said it would use embryonic stem cells, discovered by UW-Madison researcher James Thomson in 1998, to improve drug safety, screen new drugs and develop cell therapies.
Medicare wonâ??t pay for genetic tests to determine patientsâ?? best dose of the blood thinner warfarin, discovered at UW-Madison and named after the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Monday there isn’t enough evidence that the tests improve patientsâ?? health â?? though the agency agreed to pay for tests in studies that could lead to more such evidence.
It’s a new twist on an age-old question: What came first, the chicken or the fertilized egg?
So far as flu vaccine production is concerned, the answer is definitely the egg. Millions of contaminant-free, fertilized eggs are needed each year to produce vaccines against predicted strains of influenza. Absent sufficient numbers of â??cleanâ? fertilized eggs, there is no current way to produce the flu vaccines public health experts believe we’re most likely to need.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health has received a $6.9 million grant to create an Alzheimer’s disease research center, Gov. Jim Doyle announced.
Noted: Research being done at the University of Wisconsin, combined with FluGen’s cell-based vaccine production, could prove vital in studying the virus and developing a successful vaccine, officials said.
The number of probable swine flu cases in Wisconsin has risen to 66. Meanwhile Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation is backing federal funds to boost research on a new flu vaccine technology at U-W Madison. Gil Halsted reports. (Audio.)
A new study on poverty in Wisconsin shows a sharp increase in the need for food assistance as the recession deepened in the past two years.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty said the number of Wisconsin residents receiving food stamps has increased by 37 percent since 2007.
Noted: “It’s impossible to say with any assurance what’s going to happen,” said Dr. Christopher Olsen, a molecular virologist who studies swine flu at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Veterinary Medicine. “Influenza viruses can evolve quite quickly.”
