Category: Research

UW-Madison researchers have discovered a simple two-step process to turn raw biomass into biofuel. The work is being published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Taking a chemical approach, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a two-step method to convert the cellulose in raw biomass into a promising biofuel. The process, which is described in the Wednesday, Feb. 11 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, is unprecedented in its use of untreated, inedible biomass as the starting material.

The key to the new process is the first step, in which cellulose is converted into the “platform” chemical 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), from which a variety of valuable commodity chemicals can be made. “Other groups have demonstrated some of the individual steps involved in converting biomass to HMF, starting with glucose or fructose,” says Ronald Raines, a professor with appointments in the Department of Biochemistry and the Department of Chemistry. “What we did was show how to do the whole process in one step, starting with biomass itself.”

A nuclear reactor at the University of Wisconsin will be converted to run on a less dangerous fuel to better prevent a hazardous situation from occurring if the reactor were used with malicious intentions.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and host of Nova’s “ScienceNOW” program, spoke to a packed Union Theatre crowd on Feb. 1.

Here are some audio outtakes from that lecture:

Bones donâ??t lie. John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin at Madison likes evidence he can put his hands on, so he takes me on a tour of the universityâ??s bone laboratory. There, the energetic 36-year-old anthropologist unlocks a glass case and begins arranging human skulls and other skeletal artifactsâ??some genuine fossils, others high-quality reproductionsâ??on a counter according to their age. Gesturing toward these relics, which span the past 35,000 years, Hawks says, â??You donâ??t have to look hard to see that teeth are getting smaller, skull size is shrinking, stature is getting smaller.â?

A nuclear reactor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be converted to run on less dangerous fuel under a national safety initiative.

UW-Madison officials said the reactor’s fuel will be converted from highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium this year or early next year. The school said leftover fuel will be stored at a lab in Idaho.

MADISON, Wis. — A nuclear reactor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be converted to run on less dangerous fuel under a national safety initiative.

UW-Madison officials said the reactor’s fuel will be converted from highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium this year or early next year. The school said leftover fuel will be stored at a lab in Idaho.

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Charles Darwin was able to stir up almost as much controversy with notions about dogs and emotions as with chimps and evolution.

The British naturalist, born 200 years ago on Feb. 12, transformed how the scientific community thinks about the evolution of plant, animal and human life through his brilliant, seminal work, “On The Origin of Species.”

Although Darwin’s pioneering notions about natural selection and evolutionary biology continue to draw plenty of fire and fury from religious creationists, he has another book that ruffles feathers, too.

Blue eyes are typically associated with beauty, or perhaps Frank Sinatra. But to University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks, they represent an evolutionary mystery.

For nearly all of human history, everyone in the world had brown eyes. Then, between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, the first blue-eyed baby was born somewhere near the Black Sea.

His theory of evolution is accepted in many circles, controversial in others.

Regardless, Saturday was Darwin Day at UW-Madison. It was the fourth year in a row the event took place close to the birthday of evolution expert Charles Darwin. He was born 200 years ago on February 12.

The day long festivities included biology and evolution experts as guest speakers, as well as a look at evolution research going on at the campus.

To Tony Goldberg, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, the concept of evolution is far from a dusty theory. It’s a real process that informs just about everything he does in his laboratory.

Goldberg studies the ecology and evolution of disease and disease-causing organisms and he sees evolution every time he studies a virus or a bacteria that has changed to resist our latest efforts to control it.

Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates were all under 25 when, more than 150 years ago, they set out from England to explore the wild and virtually unknown jungles of South America.

While Darwin embarked on his famous voyage in 1831 on the navy vessel the HMS Beagle, Wallace and Bates explored the Amazon two decades later on commercial trading ships. These three naturalists not only proposed and developed the idea of natural selection, but helped provide the evidence to support their beliefs and solve “the problem of the origin of species.”

Evolution has given the human brain a vast prefrontal cortex, a ball of neural tissue that enables us to engage in abstract reasoning, reflect on the past, and make predictions about the future.

It also allows us to wander a mental landscape filled with emotional minefields, says Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.

“It allows us to screw up our emotions far more than other animals,” he said during a visit to the University of Utah this week. “It allows us to persist in emotional responses beyond which they are still useful.”

Think of happiness as a skill, not so different maybe from learning to play the piano: the more you train, the better you get. That was the encouraging message Wednesday night from Richard Davidson, a pioneer in the biology of emotions.

Our emotions, it turns out, are revealed deep inside our brains, in areas such as the amygdala and the uncinate fasciculus. And these structures of our brain can physically change with training, says Davidson, who is a distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is director of the school’s Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior. He will also head up a planned Wisconsin Center on the Neuroscience and Psychophysiology of Meditation.

A 2005 decision to invest $100 million for stem cell research and training has paid off for University of Connecticut researchers and, Gov. M. Jodi Rell says, for the stateâ??s economy.

University of Connecticut researchers have created two new human embryonic stem cell lines essential for investigators working at the frontier of stem cell research. Discoveries can be translated into new treatments and cures for millions of people stricken with debilitating chronic diseases.

A UW-Madison scientist says “exciting” new research could pave the way for slowing or even stopping the onset of Alzheimers. Director of Alzheimer’s Research Dr. Sanjay Asthana says researchers are conducting studies with an experimental drug designed to stop amyloid protein from developing in the brain. Abnormal development of the protein has been linked to the disease’s progression.

Troy Runge, research director at Kimberly-Clark Corp., has been named director of the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative.

The initiative, a public-private partnership in bioenergy research, is based in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A medical technology known for its 360-degree approach to cancer treatment is finally coming full circle.

Young scientists at the Glenn Stephens Elementary School are all geared up for the school’s seventh annual Science Night, which will be held Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m. in the school gym, 120 S. Rosa Road.

“There are six-and-half billion people on this planet, and there are 6,500 astrophysicists, so that makes each of us (astrophysicists) one in a million,” Tyson said Monday night at the Wisconsin Union Theater as part of the UW’s Distinguished Lecture Series.

….Tyson is the 21st century face of space, a mantle previously held by the late, great Carl Sagan. Tyson is director of the Hayden Planetarium and the host of PBS’ “NOVA ScienceNOW” program, aimed at educating a new generation of Americans in science.

And that is no small task.

Quoted: Christopher Green, a pediatric pulmonologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Could cold, hard cash help cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases?

The Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hopes so.

Modeled on the X Prize awards for technology innovations, SAGE today announced $50,000 in prize money in the UW Climate Leadership Challenge.

In April of last year, the US Food and Drug Administration invited three large biotech companies – Geron, Advanced Cell Technology, and Novocell – to testify about how to safely test human embryonic stem cell (ESC) products in patients. The science was discussed, recommendations were made, and, seemingly, everyone was on the same page toward moving ESCs into the clinic.

Boosting the output of a protein produced by brain cells called astrocytes can provide complete protection from Parkinson’s disease, a study published Monday showed.

In the study, the results of which were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied mice with astrocytes that produced twice the normal level of a protein called Nrf2.

Researchers at Marshfield Clinic want to speed up their understanding of rare diseases and find cures — by learning how to store, share and use medical records created by universities and clinics across the country.

The clinic, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan are taking part in a pilot project led by Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland to test the effectiveness of a system. The group will share records on sleep disorders because diagnosing sleep apnea involves large amounts of data, said Dr. Justin Starren, who leads the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation’s efforts to better apply information technology to health and medical research.

Of the thousands of bacteria swimming inside you, relatively few are bent on destruction. Most busy themselves in a communal effort to keep you fit and free from disease – unless something changes.

Scientists have long wondered what causes harmful bacteria to cross the species barrier from animals to humans and what causes a good bacterium inside us to turn bad.

Now, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that a single gene can cause bacteria to change hosts. Light-emitting bacteria called Vibrio fischeri colonized pinecone fish, then jumped to the bobtail squid – all because of a regulatory gene, the scientists reported Sunday in the journal Nature.

Too much television, low self-esteem, disappointing grades and poor family relationships can be a formula that adds up to early teenage sex, according to a new study.

“If you add up all the factors, you get a much more powerful predictor of who has sex and who doesn’t,” said Dr. Janet Hyde, of the University of Wisconsin, who headed the research team.

All life – plants, animals, people – depends on peaceful coexistence with a swarm of microbial life that performs vital services from helping to convert food to energy to protection from disease.

Now, with the help of a squid that uses a luminescent bacterium to create a predator-fooling light organ and a fish that uses a different strain of the same species of bacteria like a flashlight to illuminate the dark nooks of the reefs where it lives, scientists have found that gaining a single gene is enough for the microbe to switch host animals.

The finding, reported this week (Feb. 1) in the journal Nature by a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is important not only because it peels back some of the mystery of how bacteria evolved to colonise different animals, but also because it reveals a genetic pressure point that could be manipulated to thwart the germs that make us sick.

Scientific inspiration can come from anywhere â?? a person, an event, even an experiment gone awry. But perhaps nothing can drive innovation more powerfully than the passion born of tragedy. Or, in Douglas Melton’s case, near tragedy. The co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) is one of the leading figures in the search for cures for presently incurable diseases, and his breakthrough work is challenging many long-held beliefs about the ways biology and human development work.

But it was a very personal experience that brought Melton to stem cells, one that 17 years later he still finds difficult to discuss. When his son Sam was 6 months old, he became ill with what his parents thought was a cold. He woke up with projectile vomiting and before long began taking short, shallow breaths. After several hours, he started to turn gray, and Melton and his wife Gail brought the baby to the emergency room. For the rest of that afternoon, doctors performed test after test, trying to figure out what was wrong. “It was a horrific day,” says Melton.

The state’s 2005 law promoting stem-cell research has begun paying dividends, according to state officials who announced Wednesday that University of Connecticut scientists have developed two kinds of human embryonic stem cells.

The cells — called CT1 and CT2 and created as part of the state’s 10-year, $100 million commitment to stem cell science — will be given away to researchers for nominal fees to study their potential for medical uses.

UConn joins the University of Wisconsin, Harvard University and the University of California at San Francisco among institutions that have developed lines of human embryonic stem cells.

Stressful experiences can have a long-lasting impact on children’s health, U.S. researchers report.

They evaluated the immune systems of teens who’d experienced either typical or extremely stressful childhoods, such as physical abuse or time in an orphanage. Specifically, the researchers looked at levels of antibodies against the common and usually latent herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1).

Early stressors in children have long-term implications on a child’s immunity, U.S. researchers said.

Senior study author Seth Pollak of the University of Wisconsin in Madison said the study revealed impaired immune function in adolescents who, as youngsters, experienced either physical abuse or time in an orphanage.

It’s the iconic dinosaur battle, seared into every kid’s imagination from picture books and cartoons: Tyrannosaurus rex lunges, mouth agape, and Triceratops parries with its horns and bony neck frill. This scene probably did unfold in North American forests 65 million years ago, but new research suggests Triceratops also used its headgear in fights against its own species.

Paleontologists have proposed this idea before. It makes sense, given that other animals with horns or antlers, such as deer, use them against their own kind in battles for dominance or mating rights. The new study, published Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE, documented wounds on Triceratops fossils, backing the idea up with hard data for the first time.

The three-horned dinosaur Triceratops used its spectacular headgear to charge and wrestle with other members of its species in a similar way to modern deer and antelope, according to research.

Battle scars on the skulls of Triceratops fossils have revealed a pattern of injuries that is best explained by Cretaceous-era combat in a study that could settle a long-running debate over whether the creatureâ??s horns were used for fighting or display.

Meanwhile, studies in animals dating back to the 1980s show caloric restriction can extend lifespan and slow aging. The current findings are “another piece of evidence that what we see in laboratory rodents on caloric restriction translates to humans,” said Richard Weindruch, of University of Wisconsin–Madison, who has studied caloric restriction since 1975 but did not participate in Floel’s study. “I find it somewhat remarkable that such a brief period of [caloric restriction] actually would have these effects.”

WHITEWATER, Wis. (AP) — The scientific journal Nature says a former University of Wisconsin-Whitewater biology professor has put forward some of the decade’s best ideas on evolution.

The journal recognized Jeffrey McKinnon for his work on the mating habits of three-spine sticklebacks, which are silvery fish about 2 inches long.

Ten years after University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher James Thomson first isolated and cultured human embryonic stem cells, a California company has received clearance from regulators to begin the first clinical trials for a therapy based on them.

Geron Corp. will enter uncharted territory when it begins the first federally approved human studies on an embryonic stem cell therapy, marking what some consider a major milestone in a field that’s still a long way from commercialization.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company plans begin testing a treatment using embryonic stem cells that could fix major spinal cord injuries in people.

Researchers Tell Morley Safer Red Wine Substance Resveratrol Could One Day Lengthen Lives

Noted: In one experiment, a group of rhesus monkeys is on a major diet. For nearly two decades they have been taking in a good 30 percent fewer calories than their well-fed brothers and sisters.

They are the centerpiece of a National Institutes of Health study at the University of Wisconsin on whether or not CR- calorie restriction – makes them healthier and extends their lives. To maintain their sterile environment, the 60 Minutes team had to suit up to visit them with Ricki Colman, the “project leader.”

The control animals are nearing the end of a typical monkey lifespan, about 27 years, and major differences in their overall health are becoming clear. The skinny monkeys actually look younger, their coats are shinier, and fewer have arthritis.

And the chunky monkeys? Many have diabetes, and a significantly higher number have cancer and heart disease.

Pound for pound, Colman says the lighter monkeys do better.

Dr. Richard Weindruch, who heads up the study, believes that calorie restriction turns on these monkeys’ genetic survival switch. A hungry life seems to lead to a longer life.