Category: Research

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Cat food could be the unlikely inspiration for important insights into multiple sclerosis and other afflictions of the central nervous system, scientists say.

While looking into why pregnant cats on a special diet of irradiated food began to have problems with movement, including paralysis and vision, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found that the felines’ nerve fibers had lost the fatty myelin insulation that helps signals pass along these axons.

Whatâ??s the difference between setting fire to a balloon filled with helium and one filled with hydrogen? (One produces a fiery explosion).

How does it feel to hold a cockroach? (â??A little tickle-y,â? according to 9-year-old Alexandra Hei).

What happens when you freeze a racquetball in liquid nitrogen and throw it against a wall? (It shatters).

At 10 a.m. on a frigid January, the lights automatically flicker on in a rat room at the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison’s Research Park. Postdoc Erin Hanlon strolls in, still wearing her scarf from the trip to the lab, where she will spend the next hour or so with Telito, a rat. Telito’s cage is tucked away in a television cabinetâ??like enclosure.

Immigrants bring many things to the U.S., but their lasting contribution to the country has always been their children. NPR’s series Immigrants’ Children looks at that legacy, telling the stories of those children and examining the issues they face.

QUoted: “In 1910,” says Joseph Salmons, a linguist at the University of Wisconsin, “a quarter of the population told the census taker they spoke only German and didn’t speak English â?? a quarter of the population.”

That fact stunned Salmons. When he set out to study the area’s census, church and court records, he had no idea the language had thrived for so long. The year 1910 was already a full generation after the mass migration had dropped off, yet Salmons discovered not only that many in Hustisford and other farm towns were still bilingual, but that a sizeable portion was monolingual.

A UW-Madison discovery that could someday help people with multiple sclerosis came from an unlikely source: pregnant cats.

When Harlan Laboratories in Madison gave irradiated food to cats to study their growth and development, some of the cats who were currently or recently pregnant developed movement disorders, vision loss and paralysis, said Ian Duncan, a neuroscientist on campus.

It may be prickly on the outside, but the sea urchinâ??s spines hide â?? well, if not a heart of gold, at least teeth of calcite.

The urchinâ??s five teeth are very strong and capable of grinding limestone, creating depressions in the rock that the sea urchin can settle in. Since limestone also consists of calcite (a form of calcium carbonate), how can the teeth grind the rock without being ground down, too?

The teeth consist of calcite crystals (including a small amount of magnesium) in the shapes of needles and plates, and a polycrystalline calcite matrix that contains a higher concentration of magnesium. Yurong Ma, Lia Addadi and Steve Weiner of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, with Pupa Gilbert of the University of Wisconsin and other colleagues, show that the magnesium levels increase toward the tip, contributing to the hardness, and that all the elements are aligned in what they call polycrystalline blocks.

Having mastered the ability to roll back a cell’s clock to its embryonic origin, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison cleared a major technical hurdle this week, raising hopes that the technique could usher in a new kind of medicine that exploits the body’s own repair system.