Category: Research

Michigan State University scientists have identified a protein required for photosynthesis that could ultimately lead to plants designed for biofuel production.

Professor Christoph Benning and other MSU researchers discovered the protein that is necessary for development of chloroplasts — the machinery of photosynthesis, which uses light and energy to convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates for plant food and oxygen.

UW-Madison bacteriology professor Tim Donohue, director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, is quoted.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, often mentioned as a potential running mate for Sen. John McCain, promoted McCain’s energy policy and critiqued his rival’s as he campaigned across Wisconsin on Monday.

Pawlenty said Democratic Sen. Barack Obama would “slam the door shut” on additional nuclear power and offshore drilling if elected president because of his conditional support for those options.

McCain’s plans to open more U.S. coastal waters to exploration for oil and gas and to add 45 nuclear power plants by 2030 would do more reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, he said.

“Sen. McCain’s proposal is bold, it’s aggressive, it’s an all of the above approach,” Pawlenty told reporters at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he toured a nuclear reactor used for research. “Sen. Obama has taken a very minimalist, or none of the above, or very few of the above approaches.”

Mentions that researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison looked at a random sample of 2,000 chat room posts about “World of Warcraft” to see what the players were discussing. The game is set in a fantasy world where players hunt, gather and battle to move their characters to higher levels. Players who work together succeed faster.

BOSTON (AP) — Parents, don’t put away those video games just yet – today’s gamer may be tomorrow’s top surgeon. Researchers who gathered in Boston for the American Psychological Association convention detailed a series of studies suggesting video games can be powerful learning tools – from increasing younger students’ problem-solving potential to improving the suturing skills of laparoscopic surgeons.

One study even looked at whether playing “World of Warcraft,” the world’s biggest multiplayer online game, can improve scientific thinking.

The conclusion? Certain types of video games can have benefits beyond the virtual thrills of blowing up demons.

When bacteria start talking, bad things happen.UW chemist

Many bacteria release chemical signals in search of their â??friends.â? When chemical levels remain low, the bacteria donâ??t make much mischief. But when the bugs congregate, chemicals build up, which alerts the microbes that there are enough of them to kick off an infection.

These collective infections can be especially severe and hard to treat. But Helen Blackwell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of chemistry, thinks sheâ??s found a way to stop these bacterial social gatherings before they start.

http://www.channel3000.com/health/17205528/detail.html
MADISON, Wis. — Researchers at the University of Wisconsin may have found the answer to why aging men get prostate cancer, the most commonly found cancer in men.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 190,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and roughly 29,000 die each year from it. Nearly one in six men will be diagnosed with the disease, making it the most common cancer detected in American men.

An iPod equipped with a tiny disk drive can hold up to 200 hours of video, or 40,000 songs.

In other words, not nearly enough.

The continuing effort to squeeze more digital material into ever smaller devices has taken a big step forward at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where researchers have helped develop a novel technique for making computer chips.

UW-Madison scientists are working on a way to make your cell phone and other high-tech devices even smaller and more powerful.

Theyâ??ve come up with a way to assemble microscopic patterns onto the chips used in the disk drives of those gadgets. Some experts say the technique has the potential to mass produce smaller drives at a reasonable price.

When Doug Weibel spotted an $85 microscope at Toys â??Râ? Us, he immediately bought it and brought it home for his children. His children started magnifying everything they could get their hands on – wires, sponges, insects – capturing images and recording movies on a computer linked to the microscope.

It struck Weibel, however, that this was not only fun, but also educational.

Last December, Weibel, an assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, decided to start an outreach program called MicroExplorers to bring microscopes to classrooms and after-school activities.

UW-Madison has lost a key environmental researcher to the University of Minnesota.

If this was an isolated case, it would be one thing. But this has happened before. And it will happen again as long as salaries for UW campuses do not keep up with peer institutions.

And it will keep up as long as there is wrong-headed anti-university actions taken by legislators from both political parties.

New light has been cast on the selection process for a national, multi-million dollar biolab facility, which included Wisconsin. Documents obtained and reviewed by the Associated Press show that the favored site chosen for the lab ranked much lower than the Badger State and five others. Brian Bull reportsâ?¦(Audio.)

Farms cover nearly half the land in Wisconsin, creating an immense stress on the natural biodiversity of the stateâ??s landscape.

But farms can also drastically increase the diversity of plants, birds and beneficial insects by incorporating uncultivated land, University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists reported this week at the Ecological Society of Americaâ??s annual meeting in Milwaukee.

To keep troops from being stranded and easily ambushed on the battlefield, the Army is working with researchers to develop tires for their Humvees that can better withstand roadside attacks. One such design comes from Resilient Technologies, LLC, based in Wausau, Wis., and the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison’s Polymer Engineering Center. With a four-year, $18-million grant from the Pentagon, Resilient is working to create a “non-pneumatic tire” (NPT) technology, called that because it doesn’t require air.

Wisconsinites have a higher risk of death than people living in southern states because we get less Vitamin D due to our lower exposure to the sun, according to a new study.

Albert Einstein College in New York tracked 13,000 people in their 40â??s for about nine years. Those with the lowest Vitamin D levels had a 26 percent greater chance of dying early than those with the highest levels.

Itâ??s not unusual for Wisconsinites to have Vitamin D levels in the low range, especially when itâ??s not summer. Neil Binkley of UW-Madison says Vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic in many parts of the world, including ours.

Farms cover nearly half the land in Wisconsin, creating an immense stress on the natural biodiversity of the stateâ??s landscape.

But farms can also drastically increase the diversity of plants, birds and beneficial insects by incorporating uncultivated land, University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists reported this week at the Ecological Society of Americaâ??s annual meeting in Milwaukee.

Wisconsinâ??s gray wolves may be thriving, but theyâ??re still steering clear of human-altered landscapes.

A new model presented last week by University of Wisconsin-Madison ecologists David Mladenoff and Sarah Pratt indicates that wolves are least successful at living where roads and farms are abundant.

The Homeland Security Department swept aside evaluations of government experts and named Mississippi – home to powerful U.S. lawmakers with sway over the agency – as a top location for a new $451 million, national laboratory to study some of the world’s most virulent biological threats, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Mississippi’s lawmakers include the Democratic chairman of the department’s oversight committee in the House and the senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is expected to approve money to build the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility at one of five sites being considered. The two lawmakers said they were unaware of the Homeland Security evaluation system that scored the Mississippi site so low.

The disclosure is the latest example of what critics assert is the Bush administration’s politicizing of government decisions, such as efforts to steer science over global warming at the Environmental Protection Agency and hiring and firing practices at the Justice Department.

“It is very suspicious,” said Irwin Goldman of the University of Wisconsin, a leader of the unsuccessful effort to build the lab in Madison. His community’s offer was among nine sites rejected even though the government scored it more highly than Mississippi’s. “We wondered how everybody else did. It’s interesting to know that we came out ahead of one that was short-listed.”

Reading a book with “quantum mechanics” in the subtitle makes me feel smart. Especially smart. Possibly smarter than anyone around me. I noticed this unattractive effect while reading “The Black Hole War” on a long airline flight, when I caught myself sneering at the beach-book passenger in the next seat.

Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death.”

WASHINGTON — Stepfathers make slightly better parents than married biological fathers, researchers found in a new study of at-risk urban families.

Lawrence Berger, the study’s lead author, cautioned that the findings applied only to so-called fragile families, defined as low-income urban families prone to nonmarital births.

Berger is an assistant professor at the social work school of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Harvard scientists say they have created stems cells for 10 genetic disorders, which will allow researchers to watch the diseases develop in a lab dish.

This early step, using a new technique, could help speed up efforts to find treatments for some of the most confounding ailments, the scientists said.

Harvard University scientists have made lines of stem cells, able to turn into any other cell in the body, from bits of skin or blood of 10 patients with genetic diseases including muscular dystrophy and juvenile diabetes.

The findings will help researchers decipher the workings of these diseases, enabling them to study what happens as cells that carry a condition’s genetic seeds develop and age. The lines will be made available for a “nominal fee” to researchers around the world, the Harvard scientists said.

According to a new UW-Madison study, the prions that cause mad cow disease are not destroyed by conventional sewage treatment and could end up contaminating water and fertilizer. This may be of interest to folks ’round here, given that the state Department of Natural Resources has for the past few months been dumping the carcasses of deer with chronic wasting disease (CWD) in the county’s Rodefeld landfill, from which leachate is pumped into the sewerage treatment plant.

But, it turns out, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about!

It has been a long road, but one goal of the UW-Madison Dairy Science Department is now reality. The newest addition to UW-Madisonâ??s dairy facilities dedicated to serving Wisconsinâ??s and the nationâ??s dairy producers, was officially dedicated last week on location in Arlington.

â??It has been a relatively long journey for our department and college,â? noted Ric Grummer, Dairy Science Department chairperson. But the department now has an elite facility for research to prove that it is the premier dairy science department and school in the country.

The new facility is located on Badger Lane outside of Arlington. It includes a parlor and two freestall barns that are all specially geared to foster research projects in an environment that closely resembles a typical dairy operation today.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison climatologist has found that increased year-to-year climate fluctuations are expected to have drastic effects on the worldâ??s ecosystems.

â??Climate variability reduces total vegetation cover,â? said Michael Notaro, an assistant scientist at the UW Center for Climatic Research. Notaro presented his findings Tuesday at the Ecological Society of Americaâ??s annual meeting in Milwaukee.

With more than 500 grey wolves now in Wisconsin, a researcher has looked into where they’re living and likely to live. Some of the animals may wander to central and southern Wisconsin, but David Mladenhoff of the UW Madisonâ??s Forest Ecology department says the wolves will continue to prefer the northern region. (2nd item.)

Milk was featured in a toast by some of the key players in the construction of the University of Wisconsin System Arlington Agricultural Research Station’s new dairy facilities. The toast was made July 30 during dedication festivities at the research station.

A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been awarded an $8.9 million federal grant to investigate the fundamental power of embryonic stem cells and cells that have been reprogrammed to an embryonic state: their ability to become any cell in the human body.

A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison will use nearly $9 million in grant money to help fund a five year effort to discover the secrets of stem cells’ ability to morph into all of the cell types that make up the body.

Nearly one-quarter of the human stem cell lines approved for federal funding by the Bush administration may have serious ethical problems, according to a report by University of Wisconsin-Madison bioethicist Robert Streiffer.

Ethan Brodsky packed up $50,000 worth of scientific equipment on the back of his snowmobile and headed out to the middle of a snowy white expanse on the Greenland ice sheet.

â??Wow, this is just like a real snowmobile,â? Brodsky thought to himself.

Once a few miles out, he peered back toward camp to see a thin line in the snow. He smiled, knowing that the trail behind him was his only impact on the landscape.

Brodskyâ??s snowmobile was a pollution-free electric vehicle built by engineering students from the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s Clean Snowmobile Team.