Category: Research

Stanford University and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine are considering stopping research on some of the 21 human stem cell lines approved to receive federal funding because of potential ethical problems about the line’s creation, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Several medical research institutions are reconsidering the use of five stem cell lines that are approved for federal-funded research by the National Institutes of Health, citing recently discovered problems with the consent forms signed by the patients at fertility clinics who donated their extra embryos to medical research. Now, ethics oversight committees at universities across the United States are questioning which lines should be permissible for research [Nature News].

Anxious individuals may be hard-wired in childhood to be tense, nervous and prone to depression, new research suggests.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have discovered the part of the brain linked to anxiety in young monkeys, a finding that could help our understanding of the neural basis of temperament in human children as well.

When Scott Rankin smells stinky cheesesâ??the kind so potent that the French refer to them as “the feet of God”â??he doesn’t just use his nose.

In spite of such a rarefied interest, Rankin isn’t an evangelist of the curd, a champion of cheese. No, he’s a food scientist, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He studies not only the chemistry of cheese, but also the intricacies of production (10 gallons of milk equals 1 pound of cheese) and the evolution of craft. He experiences dairy’s golden cousin like few others.

Several of the top institutions that conduct embryonic stem-cell research are considering ending research on nearly a quarter of the cell lines eligible for federal funds because of new ethical concerns raised about the origin of the lines.

A consensus to ban research on the lines would further limit, from 21 to 16, the number of human embryonic stem cell lines available to researchers supported by federal funds. A policy announced by President Bush in August 2001 restricted federal support for the research to cell lines that existed before the president’s speech.

The discussions come in response to an article published in May by an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Robert Streiffer. Mr. Streiffer found problems with the consent forms donors signed before the lines were originally derived. In one case, Mr. Streiffer wrote, patients were told their embryos would be destroyed at the end of a single experiment.

A fat that actually helps control weight gain has gotten approval from the Food and Drug Administrationâ?¦three decades after its discovery at the UW-Madison. The ruling gives the go-ahead for companies to add this nutritional component to foods. Shamane Mills reportsâ?¦(Audio.)

UW-Madison professor Janet Hyde discusses her new paper on gender as it relates to math. (Video.)

The notion that boys are better than girls at math simply doesn’t add up, according to a study published today in the journal Science.

An analysis of standardized test scores from more than 7.2 million students in grades 2 through 11 found no difference in math scores for girls and boys, contradicting the pervasive belief that most women aren’t hard-wired for careers in science and technology.

Given the grim economic climate and even grimmer forecasts for the future, itâ??s not hard to predict that the U.S. will lose its status as the worldâ??s preeminent superpower. But will we fall behind in science as well? J. Rogers Hollingsworth, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, thinks so. He and a group of historians and sociologists think that the countryâ??s diminishing lead over other nations in science investment and research output mirrors the downfall of preceding science juggernauts like France, Germany and Britain. History, they say, is primed to repeat itself.

Girls and boys have roughly the same average scores on state math tests, but boys more often excelled or failed, researchers reported.

The fresh research adds to the debate about gender difference in aptitude for mathematics, including efforts to explain the relative scarcity of women among professors of science, math and engineering.

In the 1970s and 1980s, studies regularly found that high- school boys tended to outperform girls. But a number of recent studies have found little difference.

The latest study, in this week’s journal Science, examined scores from seven million students who took statewide mathematics tests from grades two through 11 in 10 states between 2005 and 2007.

The researchers, from the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkeley, didn’t find a significant overall difference between girls’ and boys’ scores. But the study also found that boys’ scores were more variable than those of girls. More boys scored extremely well — or extremely poorly — than girls, who were more likely to earn scores closer to the average for all students.

A new report by researchers at University of Wisconsin and University of California, Berkeley, aims to overturn the long-held belief that girls aren’t as good at math as boys. According to new data, the researchers say, that gender gap has become a myth â?? a finding they hope will help shift the very real gender gap in math, science and technology professions, which are currently dominated by men.

Fifteen years ago, the gender gap was an issue that filled the headlines: By high school, girls were falling 50 points behind boys on the math section of the SAT, the leading college-entrance exam.
A new study rejects the notion that boys are better than girls in math.

But a new study, published in this week’s edition of the journal Science, shows the gap has disappeared. Researchers looked at standardized test scores of more than 7 million students, ranging from the second grade to high school junior. Whatever gender differences there once existed between girls and boys in terms of math performance are gone.

“The differences are now trivial,” said Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin, who led the research.

WASHINGTON — Sixteen years after Barbie dolls declared, “Math class is tough!” girls are proving that when it comes to math they are just as tough as boys.

In the largest study of its kind, girls measured up to boys in every grade, from second through 11th. The research was released Thursday in the journal Science.

Parents and teachers persist in thinking boys are simply better at math, said Janet Hyde, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who led the study. And girls who grow up believing it wind up avoiding harder math classes.

Over the last three weeks, every bat in Major League Baseball that has shattered, chipped, cracked or smashed during a game has been collected so that it can be analyzed, part of a continuing heightened effort to deal with the safety concerns caused by the proliferation of broken bats.

In addition, Major League Baseball has also enlisted some eclectic new consultants â?? a wood research institute at the University of Wisconsin and a statistician at Harvard â?? as it tries to develop a better understanding of why so many bats are breaking and what can be done about it.

Major League Baseball has now worked out a consulting agreement with Forest Products Laboratory, an institute at the University of Wisconsin that was established nearly a century ago by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Crunch the numbers from a recent study, and the results might surprise you: Girls are just as good at math as the boys.

UW-Madison psychology professor Janet Hyde led a study that looked at SAT results and math scores from 7 million students who were tested in accordance with the No Child Left Behind act. And the numbers showed the average scores of boys and girls were virtually the same.

“Our country has a lot of stereotypes that boys are better than girls at math, and we have current evidence that both teachers and parents think that that’s true,” said Hyde. “But the data don’t show that at all — at least with these very current samples.”

Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holdings is continuing its Madison buying spree by acquiring Madison-based Mirus Bio for $125 million. Mirus, a privately held company, develops therapies based on nucleic acids.

Mirus was established in 1995 based on the gene therapy work of UW-Madison scientists who were the first to show that native DNA can be directly taken up by muscles and other tissues. This provides a new way to deliver nucleic acid-type therapies. Building on this pioneering research, Mirus now markets novel research reagents and is developing gene therapy tools.

They were the most successful animals on the planet â?? and the most ferocious. They ruled the world for 100 million years. Some grew to a gigantic size: stegosaurus, diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus rex. Others became fearsome underwater predators, like icthyosaurus and plesiosaurus, while pteradons, with their vast wing-spans, dominated the skies. And then they died and left the way clear for shrew-like mammals to evolve into lions, lemurs and lemmings.

The debate about what killed the dinosaurs has been equally fearsome. Depending on who you believe, it was an asteroid impact, a supervolcano, or a gamma ray. They were starved, poisoned, frozen, boiled, drowned, dried, asphyxiated, irradiated or all of the above. “A colleague of mine said, ‘Paleontologists are responsible for the third law of mass extinctions: for every extinction, there’s an equal and opposite mechanism,'” says Shanan Peters, a professor of geology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A new UW study looks into reasons why kids smoke.

The purpose of the study was to look at psychosocial risk factors associated with adolescent smoking in Wisconsin. Karen Palmersheim, UW Carbone Cancer Center, Program Director of the Tobacco Surveillance and Evaluation Program, says they found a number of factors influencing youth smoking.

“Kids who have one or more parents who smoke are twice as likely to be smokers compared to students who do not have a parent who smokes. Another strong factor was having a greater number of close friends that smoke.”

A new Web site is under construction to be a Wisconsin geologic Wikipedia of sorts, with user-generated content about rock exposures, fossils, sinkholes and more across the state.
Called the Wisconsin Geologic Record, the site is being created by geologists at UW-Richland, UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey.
“It’s the first of its kind anywhere as far as we know, in that it’s a community-based geologic Web site that really tries to foster collaboration between professionals, students and the public,” said Patrick McLaughlin, a UW-Extension geologist with the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey.

Given UW-Madison’s standing as a top public research university, and the expertise at facilities like the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Marshfield Clinic, Doyle has maintained that Wisconsin is well positioned to be a player in biotechnology, including embryonic stem cell research. With its agriculture and forests, he believes the state is ideally suited to produce the next generation of alterative energy, cellulosic ethanol. The strategy is to build pillars of the state’s economy on improving people’s health and providing clean energy.

Two consumer groups that had challenged three key human embryonic stem cell patents held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation said Friday that they have filed an appeal to the patent office’s decision to uphold the patents.

Consumer Watchdog, formerly The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, and the Public Patent Foundation appealed to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Board of Appeals and Interferences. The appeal comes three weeks after the agency ended the review of two key patents, upholding the validity of both in official certifications.

“It is very exciting!” exclaims Dr. John Fleming, “It’s the first time in the world that it’s been tried in a systematic way with Multiple Sclerosis patients. So in Wisconsin, we will be ground zero.”

Dr. Fleming is the lead researcher on a new study to determine whether drinking a worm potion can reduce the symptoms of MS.

Madison, Wis.â??The patent dispute between two California organizations and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation isn’t over yet: The groups filed an appeal today to have a key stem-cell patent overturned after its claims were narrowed, but upheld.

Consumer Watchdog, formerly The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, and the Public Patent Foundation claim that WARF’s control of the patent is slowing down stem-cell research. They are attempting to have the patent overturned on the grounds that the creation of human embryonic stem cells was obvious after the work had been done on other species.

MADISON, Wis. – Animal rights activists’ plans to build a first-of-its-kind museum protesting animal research between two University of Wisconsin primate labs received a major blow Thursday from a Wisconsin appeals court.

The 4th District Court of Appeals ruled that business owner Roger Charly was free to revoke an offer for activists who run the Primate Freedom Project to purchase his property and dismissed the breach of contract lawsuit against him.

The decision overturns a November 2006 lower court ruling ordering Charly to sell the property for $675,000 to Richard McLellan, a retired California doctor who wanted to bankroll a National Primate Research Center Exhibition Hall.

Madison, Wis. â?? Using a $1.6 million federal grant, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is adding to its collection of large scientific instruments a device that will help it search for new antibiotics and drugs and perform other research.

The device will live at the National Magnetic Resonance Facility at Madison and consists of a mass spectrometer, a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer and a liquid-chromatography system, integrated into a single instrument. The facility will be the first to have a device combining all three technologies, according to a university news release.

Menomonie, Wis. – James Dahlberg, a professor of biomolecular chemistry in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, has been appointed as the first scientific advisor to Governor Jim Doyle.

Doyle announced the appointment during an address at the Wisconsin Science and Technology Symposium at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

A slew of recent reports have warned that talented women are continuing to leave research because academia is overpoweringly ‘masculine’.

Writing in this issue of Chemistry World, Annette Williams, director of the Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (UKRC), points out that although 47 per cent of chemistry graduates are female, only 6 per cent of chemistry professors are women.

Jo Handelsman is professor of bacteriology and co-founder of the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI) at the University of Wisconsin, US. She agrees that a brutally competitive culture is off-putting to many women. ‘Chemistry seems to be much more cut-throat than biology in terms of competition. It’s more about getting to the finish line first than how you get there, and I think competition, in its fiercest form, is more appealing to men.’

A new map produced by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s WisconsinView program shows just how much the water from flooding last month had a widespread and devastating impact across southern and central Wisconsin.

To view the map, visit http://www.news.wisc.edu/15388.

Fairbanks, Alaska – A 150-meter ice core pulled from the McCall Glacier in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge this summer may offer researchers their first quantitative look at up to two centuries of climate change in the region.

A team using a drill from the Ice Core Drilling Service at the University of Wisconsin-Madison pulled the cores from the glacier, one meter at a time, for nearly two weeks straight, despite storms strong enough to break and blow away some of their tents. About midway down, drillers hit an aquifer in the ice, which filled the borehole with water and complicated the drilling effort.

With spurring local economic development central to its mission, the two-year-old University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Research Foundation is making headway, especially through assistance from area groups like the Helen Bader Foundation and local businesses.

Dear Editor:

I had to chuckle at Phil Haslanger’s understatement that the Dalai Lama’s beliefs can’t be stuffed into tidy boxes.

While the Dalai Lama’s position on Tibet and China appears confused, even more so does his position on compassion for all sentient beings, a hallmark of Buddhism. After his visit here in 2007, he went to Milwaukee and dined on veal.

Madison celebrity Richard Davidson often cites the Dalai Lama’s support for animal experimentation — such as Davidson’s own invasive brain experiments on monkeys — when asked about these experiments during his own public lectures.

It takes Mother Nature millions of years, but an hour is all Eric Apfelbach needs.

Apfelbach is president and chief executive officer of Virent Energy Systems, a Madison-based company founded in 2002 by UW-Madison scientists Randy Cortright and Jim Dumesic.

Building upon technology invented and patented at the university, Virent uses solid-state catalysts to trump Mother Nature in the conversion of plant sugars into “biogasoline” and other hydrocarbon biofuels.

Doctors prescribe Ritalin to hyperactive kids to calm them down and increase their attention span. And college kids have taken to using Ritalin to concentrate when they hit the books. But it hasnâ??t been clear how the drug boosts focus. Now a paper in the journal Biological Psychiatry suggests how it might work. (Audio.)

Youâ??d think that a drug prescribed to 10 million Americans would be well understood. But until now, scientists havenâ??t firmly grasped why Ritalin helps the scatterbrained. In a University of Wisconsin-Madison study published recently in Biological Psychiatry, researchers found that the stimulant works by optimizing brain signals in the prefrontal cortex.

Genetic research teams in Salt Lake City and Madison, Wis., announced last week that they have found more evidence why some people who start smoking can’t seem to quit, no matter what.

Two years ago, the same teams from the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin found out that some people just have a taste for smoking: Those who like bitter or are more tolerant to bitterness tend to like the flavor of burning tobacco.

The latest and perhaps the most important reason teenagers should steer clear of using tobacco has been discovered by genetic researchers at the University of Utah.

Common genetic variations affecting nicotine receptors of the human nervous system can seriously increase the chance that those who begin using tobacco daily before age 17 will be severely nicotine-dependent their whole lives, according to findings published today in the journal PloS Genetics.

The variations don’t predispose teens to smoke or use tobacco, but those who have the variance and pick up a tobacco habit are much more likely to smoke more and only 5 percent will likely be able to quit as adults, according to findings in the joint study conduct by the U. and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.