Category: Research

It may be the first chicken coop to become a National Historic Landmark.

Aldo Leopold’s beloved getaway on the Wisconsin River near Baraboo has been officially listed as one of the nation’s historic sites. Known simply as the “Shack,” the converted chicken coop served as a weekend retreat for the famous naturalist and his family.

In a research milestone, the federal government will allow the worldâ??s first test in people of a therapy derived from human embryonic stem cells.

Federal drug regulators said that political considerations had no role in the decision. Nevertheless, the move coincided with the inauguration of President Obama, who has pledged to remove some of the financing restrictions placed on the field by President George W. Bush.

In the rogues’ gallery of microscopic infectious agents, the prion is the toughest hombre in town. Warped pathogens that lack both DNA and RNA, prions are believed to cause such fatal brain ailments as chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and moose, mad cow disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

Patients with spinal cord injury will become the first people to be treated with human embryonic stem cells this summer in a move that marks a new chapter for science.

The first human study of the controversial technology, which is opposed by pro-life groups because it involves destroying embryos, will today be approved by U.S. regulators.

Federal regulators have cleared the way for the first human trials of human embryonic stem-cell research, authorizing researchers to test whether the cells are safe to use in spinal injury patients, the company behind the trials announced Friday.

Embryonic stem cells are blank cells found in embryos, which have the ability to turn into any cell in the body.

Embryonic stem cells are blank cells found in embryos, which have the ability to turn into any cell in the body.

The tests could begin by summer, said Dr. Thomas Okarma, president and CEO of the Geron Corporation. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the trials, which will use human stem cells authorized for research by then-President George W. Bush in 2001.

The patients will be those with the most severe spinal cord injuries, called complete spinal cord injuries.

In a biotech laboratory close to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Bloomsbury, London, Professor Geoffrey Raisman, is researching a treatment for spinal cord injury using adult stem cells. This week, with no brief for Republicans or Democrats, he has been pondering the presidential inauguration celebrations with serious misgivings. He believes that the new presidentâ??s pledge to fund human embryonic stem cell ­research could have a detrimental effect on the future of his work.

Ten years ago in a tiny, underequipped laboratory in the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Professor James “Jamie” Thomson, an embryologist, extracted the first human embryonic stem cells from an embryo. Thomson was part of a community of scientists who had been pursuing the “philosopher’s stone” of embryonic stem cells with slender resources and huge determination for a decade. Last year, at a conference in New York City calling itself the World Stem Cell Summit, it was projected that the market for stem cell clinical products could reach $8.5bn within a decade.

The cost of doing business for Wisconsin farmers could be less in 2009, but the price they get for their milk, meat and grain won’t be as high as in 2008.

A UW-Madison and UW-Extension report outlining the status of the state’s farm economy predicts the national recession will loom over the state’s agricultural industry this year but that two years of record net income could help ease the pain for farmers.

In his recent letter, Rick Marolt asks University of Wisconsin System administration, regents, ethicists, researchers, and others: “Who among you has the courage to defend these experiments (on monkeys) on moral grounds?”

I would remind him that the ethics of these experiments is discussed and defended publicly by the research community.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison might have found a chink in one of biology’s most fearsome infectious agents: the prion, believed responsible for the family of brain-wasting diseases that includes Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans and chronic wasting disease in deer.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found a chink in the armor of the tough infectious prion that is believed to cause CWD, the fatal brain-wasting disease that plagues Wisconsin’s white-tailed deer herd.

The finding is particularly important because prions survive in soil for years, meaning that they could potentially infect other animals.

The National Stem Cell Bank, housed at the WiCell Research Institute in Madison, has received two more embryonic stem-cell lines, giving it all 21 lines approved for federal funding by the Bush administration.

The two new lines are from Cellartis, a biotechnology company in Sweden, WiCell announced Monday.

The U.S. National Stem Cell Bank said it now has all 21 lines of embryonic stem cells approved for use in federally funded research.

The Madison-based bank said it recently received deposits of the last two cell lines from Cellartis AB, a biotechnology company based in Sweden.

A former UW-Madison professor has been named vice chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.

Said Abdel-Khalik earned a master’s and doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in the 1970s and remained on campus as a faculty member until 1987.

Dear Editor:

Research proves that monkeys think, feel, and relate to each other much like people do. They deserve ethical consideration similar to the consideration given to people. But UW-Madison and Covance hold thousands of monkeys in neurosis-inducing conditions and conduct brutal and fatal experiments on them.

Kevin Reilly, UW System president, has refused to study the ethical problems raised by the research proving these animals’ similarity to us.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has quietly decided to stop manufacturing its signature aerosol chambers used for researching infectious disease, which were involved in a few dangerous lab accidents nationwide.

The College of Engineering is shutting down the business after an internal audit found it was poorly managed and carried the potential for huge liability costs in the event the chambers failed, exposing researchers to toxic agents.

To see if a mother’s touch might also cause sex-specific changes in rats’ brains, Anthony Auger at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues stroked baby female rats, giving them the attention normally reserved for males. They found that the number of oestrogen receptors in the hypothalamus of stroked females was lower than in unstroked females, and similar to levels found in males.

A column by UW-Madison faculty members Greg Nemet and David Weimer says that a policy window on energy has opened for President-elect Barack Obama that could fund his energy program with minimum fuss: the re-emergence of the oil import fee.

Since the 1970s, energy analysts have advocated an oil import fee to help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Advocates have argued that there are external costs associated with oil imports from the unstable Middle East that should be internalized in the price of oil.

In an initial study, UW School of Medicine and Public Health assistant professor of pediatrics Megan Moreno and a team of researchers found more than half of 18-year-old MySpace users they studied mentioned sex, violence or substance use on their Web profiles.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is taking advantage of its location to create a geothermal heating and cooling system for the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

Geothermal systems use the earth’s mass and stable temperature to produce or absorb heat.

Building project manager George Austin said the institutes’ location between two lakes makes it ideal for such a system because there’s water moving under ground that will conduct heat and cooling well.

Dartmouth College, the University of New Hampshire and University of Wisconsin have signed new agreements on polar research.

The agreements create two new entities regarding ice coring and drilling that are vital to polar research.

The first entity is the Ice Drilling Program Office at Dartmouth, with collaborations at UNH and UW. It will provide scientific leadership and oversight of ice coring and drilling funded by National Science Foundation.

The ground far below much of Madison is particularly efficient for creating geothermal heating and cooling, and the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on the UW-Madison campus is taking advantage of that fact.

Drilling started Monday on 75 bore holes about 300 feet deep below the site of the huge research facility being constructed on the 1300 block of University Avenue.

U.S. researchers suggest brain scans may help predict how anxiety disorders patients react to drug therapy.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to use that eventually to determine what kind of treatment to provide to people,” lead author Jack Nitschke, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health said in a statement.

Recent stem cell headlines are all about how adult cells can be reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which was recently hailed as the biggest scientific breakthrough of 2008. All of this attention to iPS cells and hardly a word about embryonic stem (ES) cells, which raises a question:

In the largest study of its kind, researchers have shown that the risk of autism increases for firstborn children and children of older parents.

The risk of a firstborn with an autism spectrum disorder triples after a mother turns 35 and a father reaches 40.

Two researchers at the University of Wisconsin – Madison have published a study showing that America has a long history of (dare I say it?) multiculturalism. The researchers are Joseph Salmons, a German professor, and Miranda Wilkerson, a Ph.D. graduate in German.

Stem-cell research is entering a new phase: Research breakthroughs in Wisconsin and elsewhere have made it possible to send adult human cells back to their embryonic origins. Much work remains, but the prospect for clinical tests using this new pathway are drawing closer – and Wisconsin has the R&D team to be a leader. Stem cell research in Wisconsin has been privately financed, for the most part, but President-elect Obama may make it easier to obtain federal research dollars. Finally, the economic slowdown has enhanced Wisconsin’s position in an unexpected way. The California stem cell initiative, which is largely publicly financed, has hit on hard times. Wisconsin’s more cautious approach seems all the wiser now.

Engineers at UW-Madison are teaming up with the National Science Foundation and two other universities to support ice-core drilling in Antarctica. The research is used to study climate change.

The Ice Drilling Program Office will oversee polar research at Dartmouth College, the University of New Hampshire, and UW-Madison. Emeritus professor of Geophysics Charles

Bentley says the new group will establish an annually updated five-year plan, to help them be more responsive to what researchers will need in the future. (11th item.)

A new sweetener developed and patented by the UW-Madison is close to hitting the market, where it would compete with aspartame as well as regular sugar products. But some people are soured by its potential, and are accusing its makers of â??bio-piracyâ?.

For nearly 15 years, UW scientists have worked with the pulp of a berry from West Africa, to create brazzein. Fariba Assadi-Porter, whoâ??s been on the project since 1996, says the substance has great commercial potential. She says it has sweet properties very close to sugar without an aftertaste effect found in other products. Assadi-Porter adds its properties also make it potentially ideal for baking and not just soft drinks. (16th item.)

Three key genes can turn a regular flu virus into a super killer like the strain that devastated the world 90 years ago and one that could come again, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found in a study involving ferrets.

Three key genes can turn a regular flu virus into a super killer like the strain that devastated the world 90 years ago and one that could come again, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found in a study involving ferrets.

The discovery by a team led by virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka could help scientists better recognize new flu strains capable of causing a global epidemic, or pandemic, and develop drugs to ward off any kind of flu, the researchers said.

Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly — a group of three genes that lets the virus invade the lungs and cause pneumonia.

They mixed samples of the 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the three genes and said their study might help in the development of new flu drugs.

A US-Japanese research team announced it had isolated three genes that explain why the 1918 Spanish flu, believed to be the deadliest infectious disease in history, was so lethal.

The pandemic killed between 20 and 50 million people — more than in all of World War I, which ended in November 1918 — and spread around the world.

“Conventional flu viruses replicate mainly in the upper respiratory tract: the mouth, nose and throat,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka, who co-authored the study along with Masato Hatta, also of UW-Madison.

Gabriela Cezar, UW-Madison stem-cell researcher: How are the brains of people with autism different? UW-Madison stem-cell scientist Gabriela Cezar, whose goal for 2008 was to study tissue samples from 20 autistic patients, says the results have been “compelling.” She hopes to publish the findings in early 2009 and expand the study.

This year, scientists achieved a long-sought feat of cellular alchemy. They took skin cells from patients suffering from a variety of diseases and reprogrammed them into stem cells. The transformed cells grow and divide in the laboratory, giving researchers new tools to study the cellular processes that underlie the patients’ diseases. The achievement could also be an important step on a long path to treating diseases with a patient’s own cells