Category: Research

The Atlantic hurricane season starts Saturday, and some scientists will try something new this year to unravel the extremely complex mosaic that creates storms of varying intensities. Is it possible, the scientists are asking, that dust storms in Africa might weaken those Atlantic storms before they reach the eastern seaboard?

For several years now, scientists have had evidence that dust from storms across the vast expanse of the Sahara Desert drifts out over the Atlantic where it reflects some solar radiation back into space, thus cooling the ocean waters that fuel hurricanes. Cooler waters should mean fewer, or less intense, storms, according to recent studies.

Amato Evan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies is hoping that this year could tell something about the effect of Africa’s dust storms on Atlantic hurricanes. His computer model indicates a moderate level of dust storm activity for Africa this year, thus a moderate impact on Atlantic storms. It may take more extreme years to answer the question, but at least this is a start.

Drug discovery is a cruel business. A hundred thousand people die every year because of adverse drug side effects. Millions die too young because drugs just aren’t good enough.

The problem is that scientists invent medicines to treat people, but they have to use animal or tumor cells to do it. Heart cells, brain cells and liver cells all die when you try to keep them in a petri dish. So over decades researchers have come up with jury-rigged tests. They use preserved kidney cells extracted from a human fetus 30 years ago to see if an experimental drug will disrupt the rhythm of the heart. They use cells from a rat’s digestive tract with human receptors stuck in. They force huge doses of every potential medicine down the throats of rodents. “The system is failing,” says Gabriela Cezar, who left Pfizer to study stem cells at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Presidential contenders spent nearly $201 million â?? easily a record â?? on TV ads during the primary season that ends today, researchers said Monday.

Equally impressive: Campaigns in both parties put ads on the air nearly 330,000 times, according to the Wisconsin Advertising Project and TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG. That averages about 2,100 times a day since the first of the year.

Red wine does indeed explain why the French get away with a relatively clean bill of heart health despite eating a diet loaded with saturated fats, concludes a new study.

People living in France have a much lower incidence of coronary heart disease than those in Britain, despite their similar intake of saturated fats – a phenomenon known as the “French paradox”.

Now two teams have pierced that veil with unprecedented clarity. One team used the Spitzer Space Telescope, which can see through dust, to chart the positions and orbital speeds of more than 110 million stars. They discovered a big surprise: Two of the galaxy’s four spiral arms are actually just small side-branches. On the other hand, the central bar of the galaxy turns out to be nearly twice as big as previously thought, Spitzer team member Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said at a teleconference today.

There is evidence that wine can have beneficial effects

A chemical derived from red wine could one day help keep the heart “genetically young”, claim researchers.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found that resveratrol appeared to halt age-related changes in the function of heart genes.

Red wine may be the next best thing to the fabled elixir of youth, new research suggests.

A compound in the skin of red grapes has been found to curb the effects of ageing, even when taken in tiny doses.

Professor Tomas Prolla, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, senior author of the research published this week in the online journal PLoS ONE, said: “Resveratrol is active in much lower doses than previously thought and mimics a significant fraction of the profile of calorific restriction at the gene expression level.”

Washington — The presidential candidates have spent almost $195 million on television ads so far in this extended primary season, with the Democratic contenders shelling out the bulk at about $136 million, an analysis of political advertising shows.

Democrat Barack Obama himself has outspent all the Republicans combined by more than $17 million. The GOP primary race ended in March when John McCain claimed his party’s nomination.

The University of Wisconsin’s Advertising Project analyzed data from the TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, a firm that tracks political advertising. The study looked at more than 327,000 ads that aired during the primary season.

The tongue display design used by Payan’s team was developed by Kurt Kaczmarek and colleagues at University of Wisconsin, Madison, US, as an alternative to vision.

Milwaukee, Wis. – In Wisconsin’s desire to compete in the technology-based â??knowledgeâ? economy, public officials know the state cannot bring to bear the resources of a California, a Texas, or a New York, but it can use collaboration to stretch the assets it has.

This collaboration can be driven by a number of mechanisms, including public-private partnerships. These partnerships are growing in number, especially as federal granting agencies emphasize collaboration as part of their decision-making process. But even if this incentive did not exist, Wisconsin would have another, more powerful reason to pursue such partnerships – economic vitality, which is a motivating factor behind several initiatives.

A new report out of the University of Wisconsin says Barack Obama all but captured the Democratic presidential nod earlier this year. That’s when lopsided campaign spending helped Obama win nine consecutive nominating contests culminating with Wisconsin’s primary. (Audio.)

U.S. presidential candidates have spent nearly $200 million on television advertising so far this primary season, according to research done by the Wisconsin Advertising Project.

The data compilation released on Monday said that the majority of the spending has been by Democratic candidates, who have spent around $135 million on campaign advertising. Republican candidates spent about $57 million.

Drug discovery is a cruel business. A hundred thousand people die every year because of adverse drug side effects. Millions die too young because drugs just aren’t good enough.

The problem is that scientists invent medicines to treat people, but they have to use animal or tumor cells to do it. Heart cells, brain cells and liver cells all die when you try to keep them in a petri dish. So over decades researchers have come up with jury-rigged tests. They use preserved kidney cells extracted from a human fetus 30 years ago to see if an experimental drug will disrupt the rhythm of the heart. They use cells from a rat’s digestive tract with human receptors stuck in. They force huge doses of every potential medicine down the throats of rodents.

“The system is failing,” says Gabriela Cezar, who left Pfizer to study stem cells at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

If you take a look around Wisconsin, one thing is apparent: The land is continually changing. Housing replaces vacant lots and farm fields; farm fields have replaced prairies and savannas – grasslands with oaks. Cities, of course, arise and expand.

Two Midwestern scientists have edited a book that takes a close look at the ecological changes Wisconsin has experienced over the past decades.

“The Vanishing Present,” published by the University of Chicago Press and due out this fall, presents a picture of what has been lost, “how the land has been shifting under our feet in ways that don’t get much attention,” said Donald Waller, a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Waller worked on the book with Thomas Rooney, formerly a scientist at UW-Madison and now an assistant professor of biological sciences at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

Ten years ago in a small, closet-like laboratory, James “Jamie” Thomson, an embryologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, changed the world by creating the first human embryonic stem cells. Few research experiments have generated as much hype or controversy. More recently, he played a key role in creating induced pluripotent stem cells, which might someday provide the benefits of embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos.

The Wisconsin Bio Industry Alliance also recently publicized a study by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor indicating that ethanol production has not been the only cause of sharply rising corn prices. That study, by Renk Professor of Agribusiness Randall Fortenbery and a graduate student, found that export demand and speculative trading are among reasons prices have spiked.

Fifty years ago, Charles Bentley and five other young men chugged across the ice of Antarctica in three tracked vehicles, exploring the mysterious white continent.

In those days when frontiers existed on the planet, Bentley — a UW-Madison emeritus professor — and his comrades saw a mountain range ahead of them that had Rocky-Mountain-size peaks with no names.

David Pooley has been drawn to the mysteries of black holes and stars since he was a boy enthralled by science fiction.

But it is unlikely that the young Pooley, growing up in New Orleans, would have believed it if someone had told him that in 2008 he would be part of a team of astronomers that would for the first time witness the explosion of a star.

A new study headed by a University of Wisconsin researcher indicates that while most teenagers don’t label themselves solely by ethnicity, about 30-percent are labeled as such by their peers. Psychologist Brad Brown of says teens have always labeled themselves and their friends to get a grasp on their own identity. He says findings show that only about 15-percent of minority students said race defined what “crowd” they belonged to at school. Roughly 70-percent chose more social categories such as “jock”, “nerd”, “popular”, or “punk”.

After Madison West girls soccer coach Donal Kaehler has coached his final game of the 2008 season, the Regents’ coach will retire and move to Boise, Idaho this summer to be closer to his three grandchildren.

MIAMI (Reuters) – A new forecasting tool launched by a U.S. university on Tuesday will track clouds of African dust over the Atlantic Ocean as a possible indicator of the severity of a coming hurricane season.

The technique launched by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison may help weather watchers, energy and commodities traders and anyone else riveted by hurricane predictions to gauge what might be coming in cyclone-prone areas of the Atlantic and Caribbean.

Thirty percent of teens are considered by peers to be part of ethnically oriented groups, as opposed to jocks, brains or nerds, U.S. researchers say.

Lead author Bradford Brown of the University of Wisconsin-Madison says ethnic crowds were linked to students doing poorly in school or with discrimination, but also linked to pride in one’s ethnic background.

Madison, Wis. – In an earlier column about the recent Stem Cell Symposium held on the Promega Campus, I extolled the exciting frontier of stem cell basic science that was on display; however, it was just as interesting to catch up with local stem cell researchers who attended the Symposium because I caught a glimpse of the current status of stem cell science in the Madison area.

For instance, I ran into Tim Kamp, an associate professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine’s Department of Physiology. Kamp, who along with Professor Jamie Thomson, recently developed a reliable way to derive human heart cells from embryonic stem cells (ESCs).

A UW Madison researcher played a role in the this week’s decision by a federal agency, to list polar bears as a threatened species. UW Climatologist Eric DeWeaver used climate models to predict how global changes in coming decades will likely affect the Arctic, particularly with regard to summertime sea ice, a critical component of polar bear habitat.

How is the Iron Man suit made? We admire the result in the movie (still number one this week at the box office); the comic book version states that the Iron Man suit circuits were created using a process called biological circuit fabrication:

“Micro-Scale suit tiles fabricated by genetically engineered metal affinity bacteria which assemble themselves in specific orderly arrays, then expire, leaving behind various metallic deposits which form all the metal shapes and microscopic circuits.”

Now, a group of scientists led by Michael Sussman, director of University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Biotechnology Center, and oceanography professor Virginia Armbrust of the University of Washington, are seeing if diatoms will help make even smaller integrated circuit chips by a similar process of biological fabrication.

Instead of donning a white lab coat after today’s graduation ceremony for UW-Madison’s Master of Science in Biotechnology program, one student will be writing a business plan. Abdalla Saad hopes to start a company in Madison that would market a better drug delivery system.

The system would be

Questions remain on ethanol. There has been an impact on food prices, even if that impact is less than the impact of the rise in oil prices. There is an argument that ethanol is not as efficient as gasoline. Ethanol production is not environmentally benign; in addition to other issues, a report co-authored by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher predicts that the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico will grow, thanks to ethanol production’s impact on the Mississippi watershed.

Q. Does the amount of carbon dioxide in the air go up during the winter because trees lose their leaves and grass is covered by snow?
A. Seasonal changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide are well documented, says UW-Madison geography professor Jack Williams, with long-term records showing peaks every winter and troughs every summer.

The sun is constantly shining, the expanse of ice and snow stretching for miles in all directions is amazing — but the walk to work through minus 30 degree temperatures at an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet is no picnic.

In other words, it’s just another summer day at the South Pole.

For two Park Ridge natives, the icy, barren terrain of Antarctica doubled as home and office this past January during what is the Southern Hemisphere’s summer season.

Michelangelo D’Agostino, a physics Ph.D. student at the University of California at Berkeley, and Paul McGuire, an information technology specialist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, spent five weeks at the South Pole working on a scientific experiment called the IceCube Project. The project involves the construction of a telescope at the South Pole that will detect invisible subatomic particles from space called neutrinos. The data that is collected will be useful for astronomers in understanding more about the galaxy, D’Agostino said.

The countryâ??s biggest potential water problem â??is what we donâ??t knowâ? about water and climate change, the University of Arizonaâ??s Nobel Prize-winning climate scientist testified in Congress today.

â??We donâ??t know what lies underground . . . We donâ??t know how climate change will affect water resources,â? said Prof. Jonathan Overpeck, director of the University of Arizonaâ??s Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, in pushing hard for more federal support of research on the effects of climate change on water supplies and on possible solutions.

He testified as his own future at the UA remains unclear. He has been one of two finalists for the position of director of the larger Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin and Madison. He has been interviewed for the job and is weighing a decision on whether to stay or leave UA. His decision is expected this week, said his wife, Julia Cole, a UA associate professor of geosciences.

The U.S. Department of the Interior has listed the polar bear as a threatened species, the first major listing based largely on the effects of climate change.

The decision announced Wednesday by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne was based in large part on research by University of Wisconsin-Madison climatologist Eric DeWeaver.

DeWeaver used climate models to predict how global changes in coming decades will likely affect the Arctic, particularly with regard to summertime sea ice, a critical part of polar bear habitat.

But Reed Hopper, a principal attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, issued a statement following the Interior secretary’s announcement threatening a legal challenge to the government’s decision.

Putting food back in the freezer after it thaws causes ice crystals to grow, imparting the unwelcome crunchy texture and mildew-like taste of freezer burn. Now food chemist Srinivasan Damodaran of the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison has derived an edible antifreeze from papaya enzymes and gelatin. His concoction, which stunts ice-crystal growth, promises always-creamy ice cream and juicier T-bones, even after their third trip between icebox and table.

Ethanol is to blame for some of the increase in the price of corn to $6 a bushel from $2 a bushel two years ago, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin agribusiness professor Randy Fortenberry and graduate student Hwanil Park.

The study looked at the rise in corn prices paid to farmers from September 2006 to December 2007. It found that 31 percent of the total price increase was related to ethanol production. The remainder was linked to a combination of other factors – increased demand for food from developing countries, the shrinking value of the dollar and commodities speculators.

Skin game: First James Thomson created a controversy; then he resolved it. In 1998, Thomson became the first scientist to isolate human stem cells, which can develop into any tissue in the body and thus have tremendous medical potential. Researchers are currently working to figure out how to “instruct” these cells to replace damaged tissues. But the science has been bogged down in controversy, because until recently the cells could be harvested only from embryos.

Last fall, Thomson, 49, announced that he had caused a human skin cell to revert to a stem cell that was virtually identical to those found in embryos. The achievement could open the floodgates of investment. How soon might this bear fruit? “In my lifetime,” Thomson says.

APPLETON â?? A February snowstorm prevented University of Wisconsin-Madison Waisman Center “brain investigator” Richard Davidson from opening Appleton Education Foundation’s speaker series on early brain development.
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Now Davidson, the scientific community’s equivalent of a “rock star” for his groundbreaking research, will wrap up the four-part “Brain to Five” series at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Appleton East High School.

A Wisconsin biotech firm is using home grown technology to produce flu vaccine faster and better. Paul Radspinner, president and CEO of Madison based FluGen, says flu vaccines today are manufactured in embryonated chicken eggs. “It can be time consuming, it can be messy, it’s ripe for contamination, there’s all kinds of issues than can and have arisen,” with that procedure, says Radspinner.

FluGen is built on technology, licensed through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and created UW Madison’s Yoshi Kawaoka and Gabrielle Neumann. “This . . . shows why Wisconsin is a hotbed for biotech right now,” says Radspinner.

Q. After such a tough winter and a rare January tornado, can we expect more thunderstorms and tornadoes than usual this spring and summer?
A. For better or worse, the past winter doesn’t offer many clues to the coming spring and summer, said UW-Madison atmospheric and oceanic sciences professor Jonathan Martin.

When television news reports about traffic crashes, fires or other injury-causing events feature interviews with police officers and fire department officials, viewers are more than twice as likely to hear prevention information that could help them and their families, according to a U.S. study.

Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin analyzed one month’s worth of late-evening TV newscasts from 122 stations in the nation’s top 50 television markets.

(UNDATED) Health and policy experts say Wisconsin could reduce over-consumption of alcohol by raising the liquor tax and making it less available.

Data on Wisconsinâ??s drinking habits show beer is the most popular choice and that availability of alcohol in general is high. Paul Moberg with the UW-Madisonâ??s Population Health Institute says on average, there is a liquor license for every 336 people in Wisconsin. Iron County has the most bars and liquor stores per capita and Waukesha County, the fewest.

The newest stem cell researchers on campus arenâ??t world-renowned. They havenâ??t spent the past decade trying to figure out how stem cells work. In fact, most of them havenâ??t even graduated from high school yet. But, thanks to UW-Madisonâ??s new Stem Cell Learning Lab, the most recent scientists to tinker with stem cells on campus are young science enthusiasts from across Wisconsin.

Women who stop smoking dramatically reduce their risk of heart disease and stroke by 20% within five years, and have a lung cancer risk similar to that of a non-smoker after 30 years, a new study shows.

The findings support previous research that removing tobacco from the body is beneficial to health.

Meanwhile, a U.S. panel headed by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher is releasing updated guidelines today on the best way to quit.

In a new study, University of Wisconsin-Madison agricultural economist Randy Fortenberry says it’s clear that the increasing use of corn to produce fuel has played a role in rising corn prices – but he cautions that the magnitude of the increase has been overstated.

How to combat Wisconsin’s drinking problem is the topic of a Capitol forum on Tuesday. Wisconsin leads the nation in binge drinking, alcohol abuse and drunk driving. So, what to do? “There’s good evidence that alcohol taxes can reduce the use, particularly among young people,” says Paul Moberg with UW Madison’s Population Health Institute.