Noted: Long before this outbreak of swine flu, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Vicki Bier imagined the worst. She authored a report in 2007 that makes the case that pandemic diseases aren’t just health problems.
“It’s not just something you can hand off to public health (departments) and say, ‘Fix it for us,'” said Bier, a professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Noted: “The volume of specimens coming into my laboratory has been sharply increasing, and we would anticipate that given the public health concern,” said Pete Shult, director of the communicable disease division of the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, who is overseeing the testing.
Dr. Christopher Olsen, a swine flu expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said having this H1N1 influenza A virus go back into swine creates opportunities for it to pick up genetic mutations or swap genes with other flu viruses. Canadaâ??s swine flu caseload swelled Sunday to 101 after health officials in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia reported new confirmed cases. Worldwide the WHO confirmed 787 cases in 17 countries.
Another great example of UW-Madison helping ordinary people and the economy in Wisconsin came Friday with the announcement of a $6.9 million federal grant for Alzheimer’s research.
UW-Madison is now home to a major national center focused on Alzheimer’s.
This will boost UW’s ability to attract more brain power and money for further studies. It also will give families struggling with the disease more hope for tests and therapies to prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s terrible symptoms.
To date, there are now five probable cases of swine flu identified in Wisconsin. Of all the scientists around the world monitoring the outbreak, one of the leading researchers lives and works right here in Wisconsin. Chris Olsen is a molecular virologist who studies swine flu at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine in Madison. He talked to WPRâ??s Terry Bell about the latest developments. (Audio.)
As the flu continues to spread, Madison is an epicenter of sorts.
Tireless work is happening by experts at the University of Wisconsin while one local company is working to make sure we’re better prepared in the future. The work is grabbing the attention of federal lawmakers.
The problems are worldwide but this is a local fight.
Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka is one of the worlds leading experts on pandemic flu. From his home at the UW Influenza Research Institute he’s been in constant contact with the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At his flu institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka is already studying the swine flu virus, prodding its genes for signs of weakness.
At his nearby company, FluGen, Kawaoka is developing vaccines for swine flu, bird flu and regular flu.
“I work on anything about the flu,” said the renown scientist, who received a sample of the swine flu virus last week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Forget the face masks and stethoscopes, UW researcher Vicki Bier uses calculators to study the spread of the Swine Flu.
She says public health professionals, businesses, and local governments need to consider how a health emergency can threaten jobs.
Laura J. Knoll, associate professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, has been named one of 12 winners of the 2008 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Awards, the UW announced.
A hundred cases of swine flu in the U.S.? Health officials say there are likely more. Just how many is not important, they say. As the world faces a potential pandemic, swamped labs are not testing all possible cases. Getting an exact tally has taken a back seat to finding new outbreak hot spots or ways to limits its spread, health officials said.
“The specimens are coming in faster than they can possibly be tested,” said Dr. Jeffrey P. Davis, state epidemiologist in Wisconsin, where a lab helped spot the nation’s first known case, in a 10-year-old boy from San Diego.
In the last two days, the Wisconsin State Laboratoy of Hygiene “had a huge spike,” about 150 samples of suspected swine flu cases, said its communicable disease chief, Pete Shult. Wisconsin has five probable cases awaiting CDC confirmation.
Quoted: ‘Let’s not lose track of the fact that the normal seasonal influenza is a huge public health problem that kills tens of thousands of people in the U.S. alone and hundreds of thousands around the world,’ Dr Christopher Olsen, a molecular virologist who studies swine flu at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, told reporters.
Gov. Jim Doyle declared a public health emergency Thursday after two more probable cases of swine flu were identified, bringing the state’s total to five.
Doyle signed an executive order giving the state health department the power to take all necessary steps to prevent and respond to flu cases and distribute anti-viral stockpiles, among other things.
UW-Madisonâ??s Alzheimerâ??s disease research program, which runs the countryâ??s largest study of children of parents with the disease, is about to expand significantly.
The university is now home to one of 17 major national Alzheimerâ??s Disease Research Centers, officials will announce Friday.
A leading expert in Wisconsin on swine flu virus is urging caution, before there’s any projection about the potential of this current disease strain.
UW-Madison School of Veterinary School of Veterinary Medicine swine flu virus expert, Dr. Christopher Olsen has been quoted by ABC News, and L.A.Times and other national news outlets that this current epidemic may not be much different than regular flu outbreaks.
“My reason for making those comments is that we have some framework in which to rationally think about what has happened up to this point,” Olsen said.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has done a study looking at the effects of a pandemic on schools, businesses and the working poor in Wisconsin.
Professor Vicki Bier said she and others tried to stay away from recommendations in the study. But, for example, it says if local health departments close schools, they should do it early to be effective.
As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level Wednesday and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza — at least in its current form — isn’t shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.
In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.
Quoted: Dr. Christopher Olsen, a molecular virologist who studies swine flu at UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine.
Dead men tell no tales. As it turns out, though, their teeth might.
Chemicals found in the teeth of the crew of Christopher Columbusâ?? 1492 voyage to America may reveal new insights about their origins, according to scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in a recent study.
Wisconsin deer ticks – the type known for carrying Lyme disease – are widely associated with the Northwoods. But now, they occupy a much larger territory.
In 1994, a deer tick “census” led by Dr. Susan Paskewitz, a UW-Madison Entomologist who specializes in mosquitoes and ticks, revealed the ticks had become established in the western two-thirds of the state. Since then, reports of Lyme disease and new infestations led Paskewitz to suspect that they had become prevalent throughout Wisconsin.
The state’s leading infectious disease expert is warning of a possible flu pandemic because of the swine flu outbreak.
Mexico is the hardest hit with about 149 deaths in that country. Twenty of those are confirmed to be the swine flu. Meanwhile, nearly 2,000 have been hospitalized since the first report on April 13.
Dr. Dennis Maki, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine & Public Health, said that all signs are pointing toward a large outbreak, rivaling the worldwide flu pandemic of 1918.
Maki said that there are many reasons this situation might be even worse than the 1918 flu pandemic. He said that this is because of the preliminary mortality rate associated with this particular strain.
Health experts at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine say the current strain of pig swine virus is something the world’s never seen before.
“It primarily causes pneumonia — people with the flu will have a fever, muscle aches, body aches, sore throat, runny eyes, runny nose,” said Dr. Christopher Olsen.
Olsen oversees a laboratory at the UW devoted to studying why swine influenza spreads to humans. He says while the illness originated with pigs, it’s now spreading from human to human.
In a speech on Monday at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, President Obama presented a vision of a new era in research financing comparable to the Sputnik-period space race, in which intensified scientific inquiry, and development of the intellectual capacity to pursue it, are a top national priority.
Twitter messages are so short â?? a 140-character limit â?? that you have to really think about what you want to say. For Adam Wilson, thinking is all he has to do. Earlier this month, Wilson thought of a tweet (the name for a post to the social networking site) and poof, his computer read his mind and sent the darn thing. At just 23 characters, Wilson’s message, “using EEG to send tweet,” was done with a computer setup that interprets brain waves.
For the past 13 years, the folks at The Why Files, an online magazine based here in Madison, have been answering questions about science in a way that regular folks can understand and even enjoy. On April 28, The Why Files makes the leap to the printed page with a new book from Penguin. In a recent chat with David J. Tenenbaum, who with Terry Devitt wrote the book, I got the chance to ask some questions of my own. Namely, why the heck would a writer from an award-winning science website (whyfiles.org) branch out into something as old-fashioned as a book?
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are studying ways that patients with ALS or spinal cord injuries could use the popular social networking tool Twitter to more easily communicate with the world.
Twitter is a Web site that allows people to communicate in real-time with their friends through 140-character updates. UW-Madison researches have found it might not just be a fun online tool but a way for people locked inside their mind to communicate.
A new facility to house rodents and a place to study infectious disease in primates are among two bids UW-Madison is making for federal stimulus money.
A UW-Madison committee has chosen five projects totaling $57 million to submit in a competition for National Institutes of Health grants, which are specifically earmarked for biomedical research facilities.
Individual UW-Madison researchers also are vying for some of the billions of dollars made available for research in the federal stimulus package.
It’s the latest social networking craze, but researchers believe Twitter may also someday help people with severe physical limitations. “SPELLING WITH MY BRAIN.” That’s a tweet UW Madison researchers sent out on April 15th, without touching a keyboard. Professor Justin Williams and doctoral student Adam Wilson are Twittering through an electrode embedded cap and a computer screen. Williams explains why the social networking site may be a boon for people with spinal cord injuries, and others with no mobility.
A computer model highlights weak points on Michelangeloâ??s David. The modelâ??s stress distributionâ??with red indicating the highest stress and purple the lowestâ??was calculated according to the statueâ??s shape and the properties of its stone. It suggests that the four centuries David spent leaning forward in an earlier mounting contributed to the cracks evident in both legs. University of Wisconsin computational engineer Vadim Shapiro says the technology used to analyze David could help in the design of human joint replacements that distribute stress to bones in a natural way.
MADISON (WKOW)– The National Institutes of Health has released funding the economic stimulus to Madison and Milwaukee for biomedical research.
The Board of Regents of the UW System in Madison will receive $449,000 in stimulus funding to support a research project on molecular and cellular mechanisms in many different types of diseases. The stimulus funding can be used to help maintain or add research positions on the projects or for materials needed for the
Adam Wilson posted two messages on Twitter on April 15. The first one, “GO BADGERS,” might have been sent by any University of Wisconsin-Madison student cheering for the school team.
The brain-computer interface allows people to compose a tweet by focusing on the desired letter.
His second post, 20 minutes later, was a little more unusual: “SPELLING WITH MY BRAIN.”
Wilson, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering, was confirming an announcement he had made two weeks earlier — his lab had developed a way to post messages on Twitter using electrical impulses generated by thought.
MADISON (WKOW) — The University of Wisconsin Madison announced on Wednesday that David DeMets, professor and chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, has been named the 2009 recipient of the Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science.
The award recognizes a person in government, industry or acadamia who, through his or her outstanding leadership, has greatly impacted the theory and practice of statistical science.
Jesting aside, the work of the Neural Interfaces Technology Research & Optimisation Lab at the University of Wisconsin is pretty sweetâ??especially if you’ve seen The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and have had nightmares like I have of being “locked in” due to a brain injury of some kind. But where Jean-Dominique Bauby had to blink out his incredible novel from his hospital bed, this EEG-controlled interface, examples of which have existed for some time, would make things considerably easier to write your locked-in masterwork.
It sounds so sci-fi, yet researcher Adam Wilson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison demonstrated earlier this month that he could â??tweetâ?? by using his thoughts.
Wouldnâ??t you like to do that?
The work shows that people with a variety of disabilities, ranging from paralysis to an inability to speak, might one day use such a brain-computer interface to communicate, according to a news release posted on the universityâ??s site. His message was â??using EEG to send tweet.â?
A doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is developing a way for those whose brain function normal, but bodies don’t work can communicate better.
Using an electrode-studded cap wired to a computer, Adam Wilson can update a Twitter status by just thinking about it, Wisconsin Technology Network reported.
The electrodes detect the brain’s thoughts and translates them into physical actions, such as a cursor motion on a computer screen.
“We started thinking that moving a cursor on a screen is a good scientific exercise,” Justin Williams, a UW-Madison assistant professor of biomedical engineering and Wilson’s adviser, told Wisconsin Technology Network. “But when we talk to people who have locked-in syndrome or a spinal-cord injury, their No. 1 concern is communication.”
Twitter has popularized short blurbs of online conversation. Now the free social messaging service is being tested as a way to help disabled people communicate.
For years now, researchers have helped those unable to talk or write communicate in alternate ways. For instance, those with cerebral palsy can control a special keyboard with eye movement or by activating a laser attached to their head. Technology is now advancing to help people with more severe disabilities speak. Those who are unable to move their head â?? such as those with ALS or high spinal chord injuries — can create short messages simply by thinking. What’s on their minds, or literally their scalp, –electrical impulses– are transmitted to a keyboard pictured on a computer screen. That keyboard that allows that to do what millions of American are doing: sending out short messages in real time, using Twitter. (7th item.)
Writing emails is all well and good, but now brain-computer interfaces have made the big leagues: a BCI has been used to Tweet. Earlier this month Adam Wilson, a graduate student in biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, sent â??using EEG to send tweet.â? He used what has become the standard methodology, in which EEGs pick up electrical signals from the brain and translate them into movements of a cursor, in this case on a screen with the 26 letters of the alphabet, as the scientists show in this video.
If the United States is going to change its energy use habits, research coming out of places like the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at UW-Madison will surely help.
So says Molly Jahn, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the university.
Scientists and engineers at the bioenergy center â?? funded by the Department of Energy with a $125 million, five-year grant â?? are conducting basic research on new technologies to help convert plant material such as cornstalks, wood chips and perennial native grasses to sources of energy for everything from cars to power plants.
Early on the afternoon of April 1, Adam Wilson posted a message to Twitter. But instead of using his hands to type, the University of Wisconsin biomedical engineer used his brain. “USING EEG TO SEND TWEET,” he thought.
That message may be a modern equivalent of Alexander Graham Bell’s “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.” Brain-computer interfaces are no longer just a gee-whiz technology, but a platform for researchers interested in immediate real-world applications for people who can think, but can’t move.
“We’re more interested in the applications,” said Justin Williams, head of the University of Wisconsin’s Neural Interfaces lab. “How do we actually make these technologies useful for people with disabilities?”
We’ll be honest, we’re always on the lookout for faster and better ways to annoy our Twitter followers with hopelessly mundane status updates, and this brain-control interface from the University of Wisconsin’s Adam Wilson seems to be the perfect to get all Scoble on it with a minimum of effort — you think it, you tweet it.
Adam Wilson posted the 17-character message using a brain-computer interface (BCI) that he is helping to build for people whose minds function but whose bodies do not work.
Mr Wilson, a biomedical engineering doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, first wrote: “SENT FROM BCI2000”, referring to the model number of his machine.
1n 1998, a University of Wisconsin team first isolated human embryonic stem cells in the lab. The cells are controversial because they are collected by destroying early-stage human embryos, a reason for limiting federal funding cited in 2001 by then-President George W. Bush.
From poverty and drug addiction to maternal depression and a parent’s incarceration, the environments young children grow up in can make them especially vulnerable, says brain researcher Julie Poehlmann.
But in her research into how high-risk infants and children develop, she has also observed their resilience in the face of such challenges, often tied to the response of adults who provide their early care.
“I look at the conditions and risks that can lead to less optimal development, but I also look at what factors promote positive development despite those risks,” said Poehlmann, an associate professor of human development and family studies and educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of Waisman Center’s Infant-Parent Interaction Lab.
New guidelines governing the use of federal stem-cell dollars, issued by the National Institutes of Health on Friday afternoon, drew a generally positive reaction from scientists and college advocacy groups.
The release of the draft guidelines follows President Obamaâ??s executive order last month overturning restrictions on the use of federal funds for research on human embryonic stem cells. Under the new guidelines, federal money may be spent on research involving human embryonic stem cells derived from embryos created for reproductive purposes, in what Raynard S. Kington, acting director of the NIH, called on Friday an â??incredible opportunity for the scientific community.
An environmentally friendly soda vending machine that doesnâ??t use bottles.
A snowmobile powered by an electric engine so that it doesnâ??t pollute or sound like the Indy 500.
An inexpensive windmill that can be built from junk and provide power to homes without electricity.
An environmentally friendly soda vending machine that doesnâ??t use bottles.
A snowmobile powered by an electric engine so that it doesnâ??t pollute or sound like the Indy 500.
An inexpensive windmill that can be built from junk and provide power to homes without electricity.
A golf cart that can raise paraplegic golfers into a standing position so they can swing their club.
What do all of these ideas have in common? Other than being eye-opening innovations, they all come from the minds of UW-Madison engineering students.
You donâ??t need to be rich to get into UW-Madison if youâ??re from Wisconsin or Minnesota, according to the results of a new study.
An analysis conducted by researchers at the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison found that the relative family income of Wisconsin and Minnesota applicants to UW-Madison has remained flat over the past few decades.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers said they’re hoping that navigational GPS technology can help ease the suffering of asthmatics in a new medical study.
Allergies and asthma are major problems for some people in the spring, but UW-Madison researchers are using GPS technology to study the environmental effects on asthma.
A University of Wisconsin-based group released a report Tuesday stating that Wisconsin should strive to create environmentally friendly industries and jobs.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison expert on the nation’s underground economy and unpaid taxes said Monday individuals and businesses may owe Wisconsin state government more than the $1-billion official estimate.
While the overall economy is struggling, the underground economy is surging, based on research by a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist.
Unreported income in the United States has likely ballooned to as much as $2.25 trillion, creating a ratio of unreported income to reported adjusted gross income that is approaching the peak levels of the World War II era, the university said Monday.
For years, runners have been told that they burn the same amount of calories per mile no matter what their speed, fast, medium or slow. But a new study from Seattle Pacific University contradicts that theory.
Running a mile fast, medium or slow – which burns the most calories?
Carl E. Gulbrandsen, WARF managing director, told a recent WisBusiness.com luncheon that the new federal stimulus package is good news for UW-Madison research.
â??The university is in the sweet spot of the stimulus package,â? Gulbrandsen said, singling out projects like the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery being built on campus, and the medical research, bio-energy and green energy sectors.
He said WARF, which helps spur UW-Madison research then licenses results to the private sector, is an â??83-year-old start-upâ? that has had â??one home run after anotherâ? dating back to Vitamin D discoveries in the 1920s.
Q: When will we see cures or treatments from stem cells?
A: It may seem like stem cells are new to the world, but science and medicine have been exploiting stem cells for decades.
Bone-marrow transplants, which were pioneered at UW-Madison nearly 30 years ago, are a form of stem-cell therapy and are routinely used to treat certain cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma.
On more than one occasion this fall, a group of researchers streamed out of the Microbial Sciences Building, garbage bags flapping in the breeze, each a different degree of overqualified for this work.
U.S. scientists say they’ve coaxed human embryonic stem cells into generating cells that might someday be used to repair nerves damaged by multiple sclerosis.
The researchers pushed the stem cells to grow into critical nervous system support cells called oligodendrocytes, according to a report released Thursday.
As policymakers and scientists try to find the best way to pump emissions from coal-fired power plants into deep underground reservoirs, another carbon dioxide sink is already soaking up greenhouse gases and has the potential to soak up much more.
Temperate forests in eastern North America are storing only part of their historic carbon sequestration potential, according to ecologists at McGill University and the University of Wisconsin.
Planning for Wisconsin’s energy future will be the subject of a conference sponsored by the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison later this month. Emerging federal and state energy policies, opportunities to develop more homegrown energy sources such as biomass, wind and solar and job creation will be among the topics addressed.
The conference is planned for Earth Day, April 22, at Monona Terrace in Madison. Speakers will include Eric Callisto, chair of the state Public Service Commission, former PSC chairman Charles Cicchetti, co-founder of Pacific Economics Group, and Faramarz Vakili-Zadeh, director of a campus energy conservation at UW-Madison. Alastair Totty, head of the National Climate Change Team at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., also is expected to speak.
Noted: Compared with solar cells, nanogenerators are still a relatively inefficient way of harvesting energy, says Wang, but “sometimes solar energy isn’t available.” So he collaborated with Xudong Wang, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to make the new hybrid device.
Madison has long dreamed of a leafy “Central Park” in the blighted industrial corridor between East Washington Avenue and Williamson Street. Ambitious plans there have included water features, gardens, market space and walking paths.
While the concept has been generally well received — who’s against turning a train yard into a parkway? — hassles with the railroad, tight budgets and other priorities at City Hall have the project on a slow track.
But the area some real-estate types are now pitching as “Willy-Wash” is slowly emerging on its own as a center for housing, business, entertainment and employment rather than a respite from urban living.
Last week, the University Research Park gave the area a badly needed boost by unveiling its “Metro Innovation Center” inside the former Marquip factory at the corner of East Wash and Baldwin Street. Old-timers will remember the site as the Gisholt factory, which at one point made huge gun barrels for Navy war ships.
Where asthma strikes, medical inhalers follow. Which got one disease detective thinking: Could asthma triggers be tracked via GPS technology?
Enterprising epidemiologist David Van Sickle at the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to find out. He recruited four asthmatic undergraduates to carry around inhalers outfitted to relay location data when they were being used, via the Global Positioning System satellite network.
Why, when a major league pitcher hurls one toward a batter, does a curve ball curve?
And why does a big rear end on a race horse make the horse faster?
If these are the kinds of questions you find yourself pondering, you should check out a new book from the people at the UW-Madison who bring you The Why Files, the Web page devoted to a frequently wacky look at science in our everyday lives.
