We do not have enough women engineers in the United States. When I look around the undergraduate classes that I teach I don’t see very many female faces. Why? Certainly, there are influences from home, school and peers. There are negative stereotypes — like pocket protectors and Barbie dolls that say, “I hate math.”
Author: Wendy C. Crone, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Engineering Physics and Director of the Women Faculty Mentoring Program at the University of Wisconsin — Madison.
To reverse the President Bush’s stem cell policy, which he has pledged to do, Barack Obama does not need an act of Congress or to have his aides prepare an executive order for his signature. He only needs to give a simple order to the director of the National Institutes of Health, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.
Q. How do public health officials determine which strain of influenza to create vaccines for each year?
A. This year’s influenza vaccine in the United States contains three strains of the influenza virus. Last March, experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization chose those strains based on the varieties of flu virus that were present at the end of North America’s flu season.
Today is the 10th anniversary of a monumental achievement in stem cell research by University of Wisconsin professor James Thomson.
Ten years ago today, human embryonic stem cells entered the popular vocabulary. The world hasn’t been the same.
The first report that the human cells had been isolated and grown by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison appeared in the journal Science, triggering a decade of fierce debate and great hope.
Many meetings aren’t worth their salt, but a meeting coming up at UW-Madison could be worth its salt and much more.
More than 20 food and ingredient companies will gather on campus Thursday to see what could be used in processed foods that works as well as salt as a preservative, with the goal being cutting down American salt intake without cutting down on flavor.
A five-year, $8.6 million grant has been awarded to the University of Wisconsin by the National Institutes of Health to help continue efforts in solving problems associated with transmitting reliable cancer information to patients.
Not long after the virus that causes AIDS was identified, Margaret Heckler, then the U.S. secretary of health and human services, told a group of reporters that the discovery would enable scientists to develop a vaccine to prevent AIDS. â??We hope to have such a vaccine ready for testing in approximately two years,â? she declared proudly. It was 1984.
The author is a UW-Madison faculty member.
Q. How does the National Weather Service get the official snowfall totals for Madison?
A. If you look at snow on the ground after a snowstorm, you’ll appreciate that measuring snowfall is not an easy task.
Note: This is a new weekly weather feature tapping the expertise of UW-Madison meteorologists Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin. It will appear every Tuesday in The Wisconsin State Journal.
The first-born children of older parents are three times more likely to have autism than their siblings or those born to younger parents, according to a new federally-funded study.
This is the largest study to look at the issue of parental age and its role in the developmental disability, said the author, Maureen Durkin, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Joseph Salmons is struck by people, many of them descendants of immigrants, who complain newcomers are not trying hard enough to speak English and assimilate.
The University of Wisconsin linguist decided to find out if immigrants in the past faced the same “English or bust” pressures many newcomers now feel.
In any case, new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has revealed a way around the tendency to fib â?? the photo diary. Taking a digital snap of every meal was shown to be an even more powerful and accurate weight-loss tool. One volunteer told the researchers: â??I had to think more carefully about what I was going to eat because I had to take a picture of it.
Wisconsinites have mixed feelings about the health care system today, but when pressed, a large majority said they were more dissatisfied than satisfied, according to a new Badger Poll released Friday.
The Badger Poll, conducted by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, was of 538 people chosen at random from Oct. 21 to 28.
Q. Why do people like to scare themselves by watching horror movies or going on thrill rides?
A. First of all, it’s important to remember that many people don’t enjoy these experiences, said Jack Nitschke, a UW-Madison professor of psychiatry and psychology. But those who do may be seeking thrills provided by the amygdala, a brain region that controls our emotional responses to salient objects and events.
Two University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and a Marquette University researcher are winners of three grants totaling $70,000 from the Wisconsin Women’s Health Foundation.
The three women will be honored at a luncheon on Tuesday at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee.
UW-Madison is in the midst of implementing an important initiative to reduce the energy consumption on campus and to promote grassroots efforts to motivate the community.
State transportation engineers and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are building an experimental bridge in St. Croix County. The collaboration uses advanced engineering techniques, including replacing steel inside bridge decks with high-tech plastic.
A new study by the Department of Natural Resources and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory suggests there will be more female hunters in coming years â?? and possibly just 436,000 male gun deer hunters in 2030.
MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Department of Transportation and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are working together to build an experimental bridge in St. Croix County.
The bridge will be the fifth built by the state and university. Their partnership has already produced four innovative, experimental state highway bridges.
While the bridges differ in details, former WisDOT state bridge engineer Finn Hubbard said they were quick and easy to erect and designed to last a long time.
Remember the long-running controversy over the construction of Monona Terrace? How about the drive to build the South Beltline, an even more contentious public debate?
Author: Pete Nowak is a professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the UW-Madison.
Madison (WKOW) — It may currently cost less to fill up your tank, but politicians continue to push for a break from foreign oil.
That means coming up with more eco-friendly ways to power America.
Thursday, some of the leaders in renewable energy are meeting in Madison to discuss how to make Wisconsin greener. (Video.)
Q. Are people having more hearing problems today because they are spending so much more time with iPods, cell phones and other gadgets?
A. “That depends,” says Daniel Stoppenbach, a clinical associate professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders at UW-Madison. “Noise-induced hearing loss appears to be related to how loud and how long an individual is exposed to noise.”
October 26, 1988. The Los Angeles Dodgers just won the World Series. Michael Dukakis is about to lose the presidential election. And in Madison, Kelly Cotter receives a bone marrow transplant from her kid brother, Adam, that she hopes will save her life. The Capital Times puts her story on the front page: “Tough hurdle for 12-year-old athlete.”
…in the 20 years since her diagnosis, she has become a leading advocate for cancer research, not just locally but nationally. In 2002, she completed her law degree at UW and became director of legislative affairs for the National Childhood Cancer Foundation. Earlier this year, she helped lobby Congress to pass the Conquer Childhood Cancer Act, which will devote $150 million to research over the next five years. UW Hospital will honor her for her work over the years at an event Monday.
Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain both have solid records of supporting promising but controversial research using embryonic stem cells.
A sense of cautious optimism filled the air Tuesday as the fourth annual World Stem Cell Summit drew to a close in Madisonâ??s Alliant Energy Center.
After two days of doctors, patients, advocates, company representatives and lawyers giving talks and hosting panels, almost everyone came away with a renewed sense of wonder at the promise stem cells hold for humanity. But they were also reminded of the obstacles left in the way of fulfilling that promise.
Humankind often looks to the past to understand the future. We look at our own history as a people, using social, political, economic, religious, ethnic and scientific scopes. We look at the history of the biological world, with all of the different organisms that inhabit planet Earth. And we look at the history of the Earth itself, with all of the geological and physical properties that allow for life to occur.
On Sept. 13, during an unrelenting downpour, Chicago chose to prevent urban flooding by opening and releasing runoff containing raw sewage into Lake Michigan. About a month later, a University of Wisconsin study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine predicted an increase of 50 to 120 percent in such releases into the lake by the end of the century.
“One of the strongest indicators from climate models is more intense rains,” said co-author Stephen Vavrus, director of the university’s Center for Climatic Research. “They don’t agree on everything, but they do agree on that. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, so as we get more moisture in the air, when we do have a storm situation, you get more total rainfall.”
MADISON, Wis. — The bad economy is impacting people’s indulgence in some bad habits such as smoking.
The University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention said the group most affected by the rise in cigarette prices and the tough economy is teenagers.
The center said many smokers react in stages, initially going from brand-name cigarettes to generics and, in some cases, cutting back all together.
Man-made reservoirs are contributing to the spread of non-native species in Wisconsin lakes, a study has found.
In a comparison of natural lakes and reservoirs created by damming rivers, the reservoirs were up to 300 times more likely than lakes to harbor invasive aquatic species, according to the study published in September in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
Quoted: Professor Jake Vander Zanden of the UW-Madison Center for Limnology
Almost half of Wisconsin’s minority working families are not earning enough to meet their basic needs, according to a new national report.
Overall, 24 percent of working families in Wisconsin were identified as low-income. But among minority working families, that number was nearly double at 47 percent.
“The national economic crisis is not just a problem for Wall Street, it is a problem for Wisconsin’s hard working families,” said Laura Dresser, associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at UW-Madison.
Add this to the growing list of undergraduate courses we’d like to take: “Zymurgy, the Science of Brewing.” Where else can you taste a frothy beer while earning credit?
After the University of Wisconsin at Madison christened a new microbial-sciences building last year, the beverage giant MillerCoors donated about $100,000 in brewing equipment to the university’s bacteriology department. The company hoped to both highlight brewing and train potential employees, while the university gained equipment to give students hands-on preparation for careers in Wisconsin’s nearly $7-billion-a-year brewing industry, says Jon T. Roll, a faculty associate in the department and a Ph.D. in bacteriology and biological sciences.
A UW forum looks at what climate change means for Wisconsin.
UW climatologist Steve Vavrus will serves as moderator for the third annual Wisconsin Climate Change Forum, sponsored by the Center for Climatic Research. “The goal of this forum is to try to pitch it to the general public, and we’ll be covering a variety of topics, mainly related to impacts in Wisconsin and the Midwest,” says Vavrus. “No one needs any particular scientific background to attend and get something out of it.”
Sara Rimer of The Times wrote an article last week that gave us a startling glimpse of just how mindless and self-destructive the U.S. is becoming.
â??The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued.”
Why canâ??t religion and the Enlightenment be friends? Whatâ??s that, you say? They were friends? Why didnâ??t anyone tell us?
Well, David Sorkin has. A professor of history and Jewish studies at the University of Wisconsin, he argues in a new study that religion and the Enlightenment were even more than friends.
Four years after California residents captured worldwide attention by voting to spend $3 billion on stem cell research, many of the anticipated new therapies are at least 10 years away and numerous hurdles must be overcome.
Yet the optimism remains.
Mamas, you might want to let your babies grow up to be mathematicians, especially if theyâ??re girls.
“We are wasting this valuable resource,” said Janet Mertz, senior author and professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in a news release. “Girls can excel in math at the very highest level. There are some truly phenomenal women mathematicians out there.”
A UW forum looks at what climate change means for Wisconsin.
UW climatologist Steve Vavrus will serves as moderator for the third annual Wisconsin Climate Change Forum, sponsored by the Center for Climatic Research. “The goal of this forum is to try to pitch it to the general public, and we’ll be covering a variety of topics, mainly related to impacts in Wisconsin and the Midwest,” says Vavrus. “No one needs any particular scientific background to attend and get something out of it.”
Michigan voters will decide next month whether the state will continue to have some of the most restrictive laws governing embryonic stem cell research in the country.
While federal law allows research on embryonic stem cells, federal funding is restricted to the lines that already existed when President Bush articulated the policy on August 9, 2001. Since then, the issue has been taken up by individual states, with some providing their own funding, some outlawing the research altogether, and others falling in between.
A culture that fails to encourage and even ostracizes young people, especially girls, who excel at mathematics is putting America at a disadvantage compared to countries where such talent is recognized and encouraged, according to a new study led by UW-Madison researchers.
The findings are reported today in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
MARSHFIELD — Gov. Jim Doyle has unveiled an initiative he says will make Wisconsin a worldwide leader in personalized health care.
Doyle on Friday announced the formation of the Wisconsin Medical Research Triangle, one that might rival a similar research park in North Carolina.
The three points of the triangle are universities in Madison and Milwaukee and a clinic in Marshfield.
Americans may like to make fun of girls who are good at math, but this attitude is robbing the country of some of its best talent, researchers reported on Friday.
They found that while girls can be just as talented as boys at mathematics, some are driven from the field because they are teased, ostracized or simply neglected.
“The U.S. culture that is discouraging girls is also discouraging boys,” Janet Mertz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who led the study said in a statement.
The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued.
The study suggests that while many girls have exceptional talent in math â?? the talent to become top math researchers, scientists and engineers â?? they are rarely identified in the United States. A major reason, according to the study, is that American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls â?? and boys, for that matter â?? from excelling in the field. The study will be published Friday in Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
â??Weâ??re living in a culture that is telling girls you canâ??t do math â?? thatâ??s telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math,â? said the studyâ??s lead author, Janet E. Mertz, an oncology professor at the University of Wisconsin, whose son is a winner of what is viewed as the worldâ??s most-demanding math competitions. â??Kids in high school, where social interactions are really important, think, â??If Iâ??m not an Asian or a nerd, Iâ??d better not be on the math team.â?? Kids are self selecting. For social reasons theyâ??re not even trying.â?
Q: Why do apple slices turn brown?
A: The moment a knife slices through apple — spilling the contents of apple cells along the surface of the cut, and allowing everything to mix — a reaction begins. In particular, an enzyme known as polyphenol oxidase that had been held in check is loosed.
Less than a year after a Wisconsin team helped discover a major alternative to human embryonic stem cells, the Madison scientists say more than 800 labs have begun using the approach, suggesting that many stem-cell researchers are starting to move beyond controversial embryonic sources for their work.
Such shifts may reframe the emotionally fraught debate over stem cellsâ??an issue that has ignited passions across the political spectrum. Both presidential candidates have indicated they would lift President George W. Bush’s restrictions on research funding, though Sen. Barack Obama has been more adamant than Sen. John McCain.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-stemcells-09-oct09,0,6323974.story
Less than a year after a Wisconsin team helped discover a major alternative to human embryonic stem cells, the Madison scientists say more than 800 labs have begun using the approach, suggesting that many stem-cell researchers are starting to move beyond controversial embryonic sources for their work.
Such shifts may reframe the emotionally fraught debate over stem cellsâ??an issue that has ignited passions across the political spectrum. Both presidential candidates have indicated they would lift President George W. Bush’s restrictions on research funding, though Sen. Barack Obama has been more adamant than Sen. John McCain.
The biologist doing more than anyone else to stir the debate is University of Wisconsin researcher James Thomson, who co-discovered human embryonic stem cells a decade ago, in November 1998. Last year Thomson shook the field again when his lab and a Japanese team showed a way of genetically reprogramming adult skin cells to act like stem cells, including the ability to form any of the body’s tissues.
Want another reason why you shouldn’t spend too much time at the trough? Because consistently eating too much food over a period of just a few weeks can screw up your brain, taking away your ability to control your appetite.
That’s the basic finding in a new study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison that could help explain why once you’ve put on those extra pounds, it’s really hard to take them off. The study is published in the current issue of the journal Cell.
“Two or three months of overnutrition, a diet high in fat and sugar,” can wake up a normally dormant “pathway” in the brain, which can take away a person’s ability to control his or her appetite, says Dongsheng Cai, assistant professor of physiology of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Madison, Wis. – One of the speakers at last month’s World Stem Cell Summit in Madison wasn’t a scientist, a patient advocate, or a university administrator. She was an investor – an encouraging sign that human embryonic stem-cell research has entered a new and transformative phase.
Linda Powers of Toucan Capital, a Maryland-based investment firm, is like other venture capitalists in at least one major way – she invests to make money. But Powers is different from most other venture capitalists in at least one respect – she thinks she can make money by investing in stem cell companies.
The University of Minnesota has concluded that falsified data were used in a 2001 article published by one of its pioneering researchers on adult stem cells.
The stunning admission followed an 18-month investigation into research published by Dr. Catherine Verfaillie, an internationally known stem-cell expert.
Extreme rainfall events in southern Wisconsin will become 10 to 40 percent stronger as the climate continues to change toward the end of the century, resulting in greater potential for flooding and waterborne diseases that often accompany high sewage diversion into Lake Michigan, University of Wisconsin researchers predict.
When I listen to some politicians that support stem cell research, especially embryonic stem cell research, I understand why stem cell research pioneers like Dr. James Thomson try to be realistic when talking about its potential benefits, and the timetable on which these benefits will reach us.
It is the political season, and in the coming weeks we’ll hear a lot about the potential cures and treatments that stem cell research could produce. Be prepared, however, for snake oil salesmen (and women) that trot out families whose members suffer from debilitating conditions and make it sound as though stem cell research will produce cures that are just around the corner.
A national law firm specializing in biotechnology and life sciences issues is closing its Madison office but the 25 affected employees are expected to land with another firm.
It’s not unusual for video game players to speak of a routine that involves ordering pizza, getting a sugar jolt, and then playing “World of Warcraft” for hours.
But the person talking in this case is Constance Steinkuehler, an educational researcher at UW-Madison who organized an afterschool group for boys to play, for educational purposes, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
VANCOUVER – Experts are welcoming a study that suggests the pine beetles devastating large tracts of North American forests could be a treasure trove of new antibiotics.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard Medical School have isolated a new antibiotic compound in the bacterium associated with the southern pine beetle, a close relative of British Columbia’s mountain pine beetle.
A passage in the brain may determine caloric intake and therefore obesity, University of Wisconsin researchers announced Thursday.
A team of researchers from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health has identified a breakdown in the brain’s control tower for obesity — a snarl in a complex molecular messaging system that regulates the body’s food intake and weight.
In a study published Thursday in the Oct. 3 issue of Cell, researchers led by Dongsheng Cai, an assistant professor of physiology, honed in on a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. Smaller than a grape, this tiny structure is charged with a mighty mission: the regulation and control of the body’s metabolism.
Southern pine beetles get by with a little help from their friends, including a newly discovered bacterium that makes a weed killer.
When the beetles burrow into trees to lay eggs, they leave behind spores that sprout into a garden of fungal baby food. Now electron microscopy, beetle sampling and lab tests suggest that the female beetles also mix in helpful strains of bacteria, says Jarrod Scott of the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Overeating makes the brain go haywire, prompting a cascade of damage that may cause diabetes, heart disease and other ills, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
Eating too much appears to activate a usually dormant immune system pathway in the brain, sending out immune cells to attack and destroy invaders that are not there, Dongsheng Cai of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues found.
The discovery of another way in which the body appears to control how much it eats could shed fresh light on obesity.
US researchers said poor diets may trigger a signalling system which prompts the body to consume even more.
The latest “pathway” under investigation, by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is normally associated with the immune system, and inflammation, one of the body’s defence systems.
Mentor Corp. announced Wednesday that a drug it is developing in Madison to compete with the well-known and hugely successful Botox has successfully completed the first of three Phase 3 clinical trials.
….The development of PurTox stems from Mentor’s 2003 deal for an exclusive license from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation for botulinum toxin technology developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Q. How many people can the Earth support?
A. It depends on the kind of lifestyle those people enjoy, says Lisa Naughton, a UW-Madison professor of geography and environmental studies.
The late 18th century English economist Thomas Malthus — one of the first to express concern about overpopulation — observed that there should be no more people in a country than can “daily enjoy a glass of wine and piece of beef for dinner.” But what if people choose tofu and beer instead?
