Category: Research

Weighing in at a maximum of about 20 pounds, with black circles rimming its eyes and fur encircling its face, the northern muriqui of the thick forests of southeastern Brazil is one of the world’s most endangered species.

And since 1982, Karen Strier, a University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist, has been working with colleagues in Brazil to preserve this, the largest of primates found in the New World.

Two UW-Madison engineers are working with industrial and government partners on the development of a microgrid power system at the fifth-largest incarceration facility in the country.

Thomas Jahns, the Grainger professor of power electronics, and Robert Lasseter, professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering, are involved in the $14 million project at the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, California, to allow the jail to be powered almost immediately from its own backup energy sources in case of a utility grid disturbance in the utility grid.

Lasseter developed the microgrid concept, which could be used in other facilities to allow for seamless switching from the power grid to backup systems and back again.

Madison, Wis. – Microsoft’s Bill Gates must have been very impressed with Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a 2005 visit here.

In the interim, not only has the Seattle-based software giant acquired a local company, Jellyfish.com, it now plans to open an advanced computer lab in downtown Madison to take advantage of the database expertise at UW-Madison.

Eric Sandgren, Director of the UW Animal Care and Use Program, responds to accusations that their labs torture animals. He notes all labs and records are subject to federal oversight.

“Everyone of our facilities are inspected once at least once a year by veterinary medical officers from the United States Department of Agriculture.”

The Ohio-based Stop Animal Exploitation Now has alleged primates at UW Primate Research Center suffer pain because of bolts being implanted in their skulls. Sandgren says all procedures are only done if necessary.

Computer giant Microsoft is setting up a new, advanced development lab at the UW Madison. University officials say it will greatly benefit the school, and attract prospective, talented computer students to the campus. Brian Bull reports. (Audio.)

Stop Animal Exploitation Now believes primates at UW-Madison are being tortured unnecessarily. Michael Budkie, Executive Director of SAEN, says that includes water deprivation for as much as 16 hours a day, 5 days a week.

“Various devices including restraining bars and recording cylinders are literally bolted to their skulls.”

Budkie claims from 2002-06, both UW-Madison and a private lab experimented on nearly 24,000 primates. The USDA claims not one of these tens of thousands of primates experienced any pain or distress, according to Budkie.

Aiming to tap into the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s database research talent, Microsoft Corp. will announce this morning it is opening an advanced development lab in downtown Madison.

The Microsoft Jim Gray Systems Lab will be run by David DeWitt, a world leader in database research and former chairman and recently retired professor in the university’s computer science department.

The reasons not to believe in extra-terrestrial life are steadily dwindling.

That is the view of US astronomer Professor Eric Wilcots, who is one of the speakers at SciFest Africa 2008, the annual event which began in Grahamstown on Wednesday last week.

Wilcots chairs the astronomy department at the University of Wisconsin, a key member of the international team behind the Southern African Large Telescope (Salt) in Sutherland, in the Northern Cape Karoo.

The argument over embryonic stem cell research has produced some strange bedfellows, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of law and bioethics said Tuesday at a panel discussion in Wausau.

Some within the feminist movement have made common cause with the pro-life movement, said R. Alta Charo, who previously served as a member of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission during the Clinton administration. This is because some types of embryonic stem cell research could involve taking eggs directly from women’s bodies, Charo said, an invasive process that they believe would exploit women.

MADISON, Wis. — On Earth Day, an important Wisconsin conservationist being remembered for a legacy that reminds us of the challenges to come.

The historic work of Aldo Leopold, and those who’ve followed him, is now telling people more about the world we live in today and showing us how climate change might be happening in our own backyard.

Leopold spent a great deal of time at a farm in Sauk County. Readers of his book, “A Sand County Almanac,” might know the place that he wrote from as “the Shack.” But beyond his essays, Leopold kept meticulous notes on the dates and times of when he observed things happening in nature, like the blooming of wildflowers and the return of birds. That work was continued by his daughter after his death in 1948. She kept records from 1975 to 2004, WISC-TV reported.

Now, Stanley Temple, a University of Wisconsin professor emeritus and senior fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation, is looking at the numbers, and he said that they give a greater glimpse at climate change.

APPLETON â?? Societal pressure, marketers and the media make today’s parents of young children “very nervous people,” says brain researcher Seth David Pollak, who offers some reassuring words of advice.
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“Relax and be natural,” said Pollak, a professor of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics, and director of the child emotion research lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Waisman Center.

“It’s pretty hard to mess up. Trust your judgment and go with the flow.”

Last week a crowd of 350 people at the third annual Wisconsin Stem Cell Symposium heard Richard Young, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discuss work under way to understand the molecular controls that keep embryonic stem cells from developing into specific kinds of cells.

The media should consider offering an alternative version of its news products that wouldn’t contain as much violence, a panelist suggested Thursday at Missouri State University’s Public Affairs Conference.

“There would be a good audience for a different kind of news broadcast. Not the biggest audience but a good audience,” said Joanne Cantor, director of the Center for Communication Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

PLATTEVILLE, Wis. — Allison Ebert, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Waisman Center’s stem- cell research program, thinks scientists might need to do a better job marketing themselves.

Ebert presented “Stem Cells 101,” a free public event Wednesday at the UW-Platteville’s Pioneer Student Center.

Particles of invisible “dark matter” have been detected deep inside a mountain in Italy, a collaboration of Italian and Chinese physicists claims. But others remain sceptical of the result, because other experiments have failed to detect any dark matter at all.

On Wednesday 16 April, at a workshop in Venice, Italy, the Dark Matter (DAMA) collaboration announced the results of the 4-year second phase of its experiment. DAMA scientists claimed to see dark matter back in 2003, but some scientists believed the result was a quirk of statistics. Now the evidence is stronger.

“We are pretty sure now that this [signal] is not a statistical fluke. What it means is another matter,” says Francis Halzen, an astroparticle physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US. He spoke to New Scientist after attending the announcement by DAMA project leader Rita Bernabei of the University of Rome, Italy.

Michelangelos’s David may look relaxed, but he is actually rather stressed, especially around his left thigh, right shin and ankles. A new software analysis of the masterpiece predicts where it is most under strain, based solely on its shape. The method may also be able to help treat people’s physical problems as well as those of statues.

The computer conclusions match the real cracks, which have begun to appear in the 5.17-metre marble sculpture.

The crack damage, detailed in a 2006 study published in the Journal Of Cultural Heritage, indicates that the new scanning method could help archivists predict what areas of an ancient artefact may need to be bolstered to prevent damage, even if the statue has not yet shown signs of fatigue.

“Understanding structural properties of historical and cultural artefacts through computer simulations is often crucial to their preservation,” says Professor Vadim Shapiro of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The fragile and worn diaries and journals of conservationist Aldo Leopold can now be widely viewed, without leaving an imprint.

They are available on the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Web site, the first installment of an effort to digitize his full collection of work. The materials consist of early diaries, notebooks, journals and loose drawings from 1899 to 1933, hunting journals spanning 1917 to 1945 and Portage-area journals covering 1935 to 1948.

Is inequality making us sick? The answer to this key question set the stage for discussion March 26 at a public presentation held at the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s Health Sciences Learning Center.

WiCell Research Institute, a private, non-profit supporting organization of UW-Madison stem-cell researchers, named its executive director Wednesday.

NEW YORK — The dollar is at risk of being surpassed by the euro as the world’s leading reserve currency in the next seven years, according to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Realized and forecast increases in the number of countries using the euro, and the growth in the economies that have adopted it since 1999, make the 15-nation currency a stronger competitor than the German deutsche mark and Japanese yen were in the 1980s, economists Menzie Chinn, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Jeffrey Frankel wrote in a working paper for the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based NBER.

Neglectful mouse mothers are the product of both nature and nurture, a study from the United States suggests.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, writing in the journal PLoS ONE on Wednesday, report that poor parenting seems to be influenced by environment, being neglected themselves, and genetics, with an imbalance in the brain-signalling chemical dopamine.

In mice, child neglect is a product of both nature and nurture, according to a new study.

Writing in the journal PLoS ONE on April 9, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison describe a strain of mice that exhibit unusually high rates of maternal neglect, with approximately one out of every five females failing to care for her offspring. By comparing the good mothers to their less attentive relatives, the group has found that negligent parenting seems to have both genetic and non-genetic influences, and may be linked to dysregulation of the brain signaling chemical dopamine.

Today, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on the implications of climate change for human health. Malaria will top the menu, but so will ignorance and disinformation.

The lead witness will be Dr. Jonathan Patz of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has suggested that U.S. energy policy may be “indirectly exporting diseases to other parts of the world.” Dr. Patz, the World Health Organization (WHO) and others claim that global warming is now spreading disease and may be the cause of some 160,000 deaths a year.

Madison, Wis. – The WiCell Research Institute, which operates the National Stem Cell Bank, has named Wisconsin executive Erik Forsberg to the newly created position of executive director.

Forsberg, who most recently served as the senior director of scientific development at Pharming Group, will direct all operations of WiCell.

What do we talk about when we talk about global warming? It’ll get hotter, that’s a safe bet, polar ice caps will be melting and wildlife that can’t adapt to warmer temperatures could be on the way out. But what does it really mean for the health of us, the human race?

It’s a question that remains surprisingly difficult to answer â?? research into climate change’s impacts on human health have lagged behind other areas of climate science. But what we do know has scientists and doctors increasingly worried â?? a rising risk of death from heat waves, the spread of tropical diseases like malaria into previously untouched areas, worsened water-borne diseases.

“When we think about climate change, we think about ice caps and biodiversity, but we forget about human health,” says Dr. Jonathan Patz, a professor of environmental studies and population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “There are a huge number of health outcomes that are climate sensitive.”

When the University of Minnesota needed a new vice president of research in 2005, the school searched the country for someone who could breathe much-needed life into its sleepy technology transfer office.

As it turned out, the U didn’t have to look far. As associate vice chancellor for research policy at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Tim Mulcahy already was intimately familiar with his cross-border rival.

Ever had a boss berate you for showing up late to work on the day your dog died? How about a brother who refused to attend your aunt’s funeral because it was the same day as a Steelers game?

We all know a few people who could use some intensive training when it comes to compassion – but instead of sending them off to expensive psychotherapy, your best bet might be to buy them some meditation mats and books on Buddhist mantras: According to a recent study, the act of meditation may help people learn how to be kinder and more compassionate to their fellow human beings.

In the study, researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Waisman Center for Brain Imaging scanned the brain waves of a group of Tibetan monks and other people who practiced meditation, as well as a group who were not experienced in meditation practices. While reading each subject’s brain waves, the researchers played a variety of recorded noises, including a woman’s scream and a baby’s laughter. A region of the brain called the insula, which is associated with the sensation of emotion, was far more active in the meditators’ brain scans than the non-meditators. The meditation experts’ brains also showed more activity in the right temporal-parietal juncture, which is associated with empathy.

At the University of Washington, researchers are testing whether toddlers will imitate them when they push buttons and pull open drawers.

At The Gottman Institute in Seattle, a psychologist has put together a program for parents of newborns to help them create stronger relationships with each other and their baby.

And halfway across the country, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a neuroscientist studies changes in the brain when people meditate on compassion.

Madison, Wis. – Susan Carlson, who has served as director of operations for the WiCell Research Institute, has left the institute to pursue other opportunities.

In the embryonic stem-cell wars, the microscopic building blocks of human life have been fodder for presidential politics, pro- and anti-evolutionists, multibillion-dollar state ballot initiatives, and squabbles among Hollywood celebritiesâ??and even members of Ronald Reagan’s family.

Now it appears that embryonic stem cells may be nearly ready for something altogether different: treating patients.

Daedalus used feathers and wax â?? and we all know what happened to his son when he flew too close to the sun. Instead, you could try surgery, says Samuel Poore, a reconstructive surgeon at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who has now described the steps that would be needed to transform human arms into wings.

MADISON, Wis., March 31 (UPI) — U.S. agricultural scientists said they’ve discovered organically grown wheat or alfalfa can be as productive as conventional crops.

University of Wisconsin researchers investigated yield differences between organic and conventional cash grain and forage crops in the Upper Midwest.

MADISON â?? No one has to tell Jim Leonhart that Wisconsin is the stem cell state.

As head of the Wisconsin Biomedical and Medical Device Association, heâ??s watched â?? with keen interest – scientific breakthroughs by UW researchers and the launching of five stem cell companies.

â??The commercialization of that research is just starting to have an impact now,â? argues Leonhart, who says his sentiment was reinforced when Gov. Jim Doyle announced in March that Madison would host the 2008 World Stem Cell Summit.