A nearly flat budget for five years at the country’s main biomedical research agency is threatening medical advances and leading young scientists to leave academic research, university leaders said Tuesday.
“We are in danger of losing an entire generation of young scientists,” said Dr. Robert Golden, dean of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
Three strikes, and you ‘re out.
That baseball truism should be ringing in the ears of the folks from California who are trying to challenge UW-Madison ‘s stem-cell patents.
Q. How do people make meaning from words?
— Submitted by Jami Guimond, sixth grade, Whitehorse Middle School
A. People begin making meaning from words as babies, long before they can utter a single word themselves, says UW-Madison psychology professor Jenny Saffran.
For millions of frustrated smokers, drugmakers promise to help them quit with a little pill. But studies from the companies themselves don’t show very promising results.
“The drugs are approved because they’ve shown in FDA studies that they’re better than placebo,” said Dr. Edward Levin, a psychopharmacological researcher at Duke University Medical Center in Raleigh, N.C. “But being better than placebo doesn’t take a whole lot, so there really is room for improvement.”
Pfizer’s Chantix is the most effective therapy in quitting smoking, according to test results from a company-funded study conducted by Dr. Douglas Jorenby of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. During the 12 weeks that patients were on the drug, a little less than half were able to quit smoking.
It’s called the dead zone. Agricultural fertilizer byproducts like nitrogen are running off farms and into the Mississippi River, which then spills out into the Gulf of Mexico.
MADISON, Wis. — Hundreds of the world’s top players in the field of stem cell research will gather in Madison for a summit in September.
Up to 1,000 researchers, philanthropists and business representatives are expected to attend the World Stem Cell Summit at the Alliant Energy Center on Sept. 22 and 23.
If you thought you saw a lot of television ads for the Democratic presidential primary, you weren’t imagining it.
You did. And most of them were for Barack Obama.
The candidates together spent $1.5 million to air 3,383 ads in Cincinnati from Feb. 1 through March 4, according to a report out Wednesday. That’s more than 102 ads a day.
The report was issued Wednesday by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project, which analyzed data obtained from the TNS Media Intelligence Campaign Media Analysis Group.
Television advertising for Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama cost about $8 million in Ohio leading up to the hotly contested March 4 primary.
Obama, who lost to Clinton in Ohio for the first time in 11 consecutive contests, outspent Clinton by nearly two to one and also benefited from $1 million in special ads bought by two labor unions.
Data compiled by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project also suggests that Clinton shifted political strategy for Ohio after Obama defeated her in Wisconsin on Feb. 19.
Just a day after the University of Wisconsin’s patent licensing arm won a government ruling upholding a pair of key stem cell patents, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced Wednesday that Madison will host a world gathering of stem cell researchers, advocates and investors later this year.
The World Stem Cell Summit on Sept. 22-23 willk bring together preeminent researchers, advocates, investors, and other industry leaders to advance human embryonic stem cell research and the resultant technologies.
About 1,000 great minds from around the world will converge in Madison this fall.
“The University of Wisconsin has won the honor of hosting the 2008 World Stem Cell Summit.”
Governor Jim Doyle says he’s honored this big event will take place in Madison — the birth place of stem cell research. The governor says embryonic stem cell research holds the potential to not only save lives, but to create economic opportunity for innovation and job growth.
Wisconsin’s capital city will host an international stem cell research summit this fall, which will bring up to 1,000 of the world’s top researchers, investors and industry representatives to Madison.
The World Stem Cell Summit, to be hosted by WiCell and the University of Wisconsin Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center on Sept. 22 and 23, will mark the 10th anniversary of James Thomson’s isolation of human embryonic stem cells at UW-Madison.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office upheld the two remaining embryonic stem-cell patents in support of UW-Madison researcher James Thomson Tuesday that were challenged in April 2007.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office officially upheld Tuesday the two remaining patents on stem cell technology held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation that had been challenged by two watchdog groups.
Madison — internationally known for stem cell research at the University of Wisconsin — will host a World Stem Cell Summit in September aimed at bringing together top researchers, advocates, investors and others to advance stem cell research and promising technologies that could save lives.
“Embryonic stem cell research holds the potential to cure some of the world’s oldest and deadliest diseases — from Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s to multiple sclerosis,” said Gov. Jim Doyle when announcing the summit at a State Capitol press conference this morning. “Stem cell research represents the promise to not only save lives, but to create economic opportunity for innovation and job growth as well.”
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation said Tuesday the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected challenges to its two key embryonic stem cell patents.
The federal government has upheld two more UW-Madison stem-cell patents, meaning all three patents under contention can stand.
But expected appeals on one of the patents could linger for years. And the government review caused the university to narrow some patent claims and loosen its licensing policies, the patent challengers say.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has upheld a second and a third University of Wisconsin-Madison patent covering embryonic stem cell research at the school.
In rulings made public Tuesday, Federal examiners confirmed two patents for scientist James Thomson’s work on isolating embryonic stem cells of primates and humans. The patent office last month upheld another patent stemming from the work, but that ruling can be appealed.
Two embryonic-stem-cell patents controlled by the patenting arm of the University of Wisconsin at Madison â?? and challenged by two public-interest groups â?? have been upheld by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The news comes just two weeks after the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the universityâ??s patenting organization, announced that the first of its three key stem-cell patents had been upheld.
MADISON, Wis. – The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has upheld a second and a third University of Wisconsin-Madison patent covering embryonic stem cell research at the school.
In rulings made public Tuesday, Federal examiners confirmed two patents for scientist James Thomson’s work on isolating embryonic stem cells of primates and humans. The patent office last month upheld another patent stemming from the work, but that ruling can be appealed.
Madison, Wis. – In a decision that cannot be appealed, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has upheld the modified claims of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation on two of the foundation’s most important human embryonic stem cell patents.
The ruling, which affects two patents for primate and human embryonic stem cells known as â??780â? and â??806,â? follows a favorable determination on patent â??913,â? which relates to the discovery and culture of human embryonic stem cells by researcher Jamie Thomson.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office today upheld the final two stem cell patents taken out by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation that had been challenged by foundations in California and New York.
The actions are the second time in two weeks that the patent office has supported the claims of key stem cell patents held by WARF, a private supporting organization of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. On Feb. 25, the office affirmed the claims of a third patent also relating to Dr. James Thomson’s work with human embryonic stem cells.
The federal government has upheld two more UW-Madison stem-cell patents, meaning all three such patents under contention can stand.
Expected appeals could linger for months or years, however, and the government review led the university to make a few changes to some patent claims.
Ramping up ethanol production for alternative fuels will worsen the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, a stretch of water unable to support aquatic life, according to a report co-written by the University of British Columbia.
The U.S. Senate’s recently announced plan to triple production of ethanol made from corn starch by 2022 will increase the zone by 10 to 19 per cent from the 20,000-square-kilometres â?? an area roughly the size of New Jersey â?? it has recently occupied, the report said.
A PLANNED increase in US ethanol production from corn would spell environmental “disaster” for marine species in the Gulf of Mexico, said a co-author of a science study.
A boost in corn production will worsen the Gulf’s so-called “dead zone”, an area with so little oxygen that sealife suffocates, said Simon Donner, a geographer at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Dr Donner and Chris Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin used computer models to conclude that growing enough corn to meet US biofuel goals set for 2022 would cause a boost of 10 to 34 per cent in nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, which run into the Gulf of Mexico.
Helping reduce reliance on fossil fuels is expected to create jobs in the renewable energy sector as well as training opportunities for the state’s technical college system.
With that in mind, the state Technical College System and others will host a three-day Wisconsin Renewable Energy Summit beginning Wednesday at the Midwest Airlines Center in Milwaukee. Among the presenters will be UW-Madison’s Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.
University Research Park in Madison announced Friday that it has published “The First Fifteen Years: 1984-1999” a retrospective about the award-winning research park.
The non-profit research and technology park was established in 1984 and now is home to more than 114 companies that employ more than 4,000 people. Many of the companies are the result of research done at UW-Madison. It contributes more than $680 million each year to the state’s economy.
Some UW Hospital patients will soon test an unusual treatment: They’ll drink a cocktail of worm eggs, which will hatch inside their bodies.
Doctors say the low-grade infection of worms, harvested from pigs, can help regulate faulty immune systems. The patients have multiple sclerosis, in which the immune system attacks nerve cells.
Kyle Holen and Herbert Chen, doctors at UW Hospital, are studying an experimental drug that could someday give hope to patients with a rare form of cancer for which existing treatments rarely work.
The drug could treat neuroendocrine tumors, which involve cells that produce insulin, serotonin, thyroid and other hormones.
A key patent on human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) is back from the dead – in a form that seems less likely to stifle research.
James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison isolated the first human ESCs in 1998. This work and earlier experiments with cells from monkeys was covered by three US patents granted to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
A decade ago, a 150 rhesus monkeys from the Henry Vilas Zoo were shipped to Tulane University in New Orleans.
And, that’s where they died.
At the zoo Saturday a group of animal rights activists returned to remember the monkeys.
Pharmaceutical giant Roche has tapped University of Wisconsin researcher James Thomson to use heart cells derived from human embryonic stem cells to test new compounds that affect the human heart.
Q. At what temperature does lake-effect snow happen?
— Submitted by Mason Rather, sixth grade, Jefferson Middle School
A. Lake-effect precipitation is driven by large temperature differences between cold air flowing over warm lake water, says Scott Bachmeier, a research meteorologist at the Space Science and Engineering Center at UW-Madison. The amount of precipitation depends mainly on the size of the water-to-air temperature difference and how far the wind blows across the lake.
Patricia Keely is fighting cancer on two fronts:
â?¢ In her lab, she and her colleagues at UW-Madison are discovering secrets of breast cancer, including why it occurs more often in dense breast tissue.
â?¢ In her life, she volunteered for a clinical trial at the Mayo Clinic of a new drug in hopes of surviving her own cancer of the esophagus.
Hereâ??s a place thatâ??s unlikely ever to be a vacation spot for Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain: Lake Myvatn, in Iceland.
Myvatn, translating from Icelandic to English, means Midge Lake.
During mating season, the air at Lake Myvatn can also be thick with male midges, each hovering, waiting for a female to join him. â??Itâ??s a like a fog, a brown dense fog that just rises around the lake,â? said Anthony R. Ives, a professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin.
Aided by satellite monitoring, scientists at the University of Wisconsinâ??s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies have updated their study of cyclone formation in the eastern Atlantic Ocean off of Africaâ??s west coast. Their findings, released last moevels (Voice of America)nth, appeared about the same time as tropical Cyclone Ivan struck Madagascar in the Indian Ocean east of the African continent.
For several years, scientists have suspected that our hyper-hygienic world of vaccinations, antibacterial soap and bottled water actually might be making some people sick by bewildering their immune systems and causing them to turn on their bodies.
Now, doctors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are about to carry that theory to the ickiest extreme.
The UW Board of Regents today approved a land swap allowing construction of an underground holding facility for thousands of rats and mice for research use on the UW-Madison campus.
The project will be located in the 1200 block of Campus Drive at North Orchard Street, as part of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, a biomedical research complex.
Approval of the land swap between the UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation was needed so a $20 million plan that includes a receiving dock as well as the 10,000-square-foot “vivarium” — a facility for live animals for observation and research — could proceed.
A company formed by UW-Madison stem cell pioneer Jamie Thomson today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Roche Palo Alto, one of pharmaceutical giant Roche’s five research facilities, to test candidate drug compounds for cardiotoxicity, or damage to heart tissue.
Under the agreement, Roche will supply Madison-based Cellular Dynamics International Inc. with two sets of 25 well-characterized drug compounds to validate CDI’s current toxicology products and services.
If you think there are too many midges in Scotland, try visiting Iceland where blizzards of the bugs form.
In the journal Nature, a team of ecologists from the University of Wisconsin, The University of Iceland and Royal Holloway, University of London, report on the flighty behaviour of algae munching midges in Iceland’s Lake Myvatn, which means “midge lake” in Icelandic.
LAKE GENEVA — Stem cell researcher Jamie Thomson, conservationist Aldo Leopold, flamboyant Liberace. Visionary architecture, below-zero tailgating, cheese curds that squeak. House on the Rock, Taliesin, Harley.
Wisconsin is a place where you can feel free to be yourself and express yourself. This is the conclusion of a five-month branding project undertaken by the state Department of Tourism and announced Tuesday night by Gov. Jim Doyle at the annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism.
The Wisconsin Capitol building will once again find itself full of young researchers today eager to present their findings to state leaders.
Better cancer treatment. Smaller, faster computers. Self-cleaning windows, even. This is just a small glimpse into the potential of nanotechnology, a science concerning the manipulation of materials at the molecular level. Sounds like a worthwhile project, right?
MADISON, Wis. — Some groundbreaking research being done at the UW could greatly affect those at risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
The goal of the research is to try to identify Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms start occurring, and researchers believe to do that, you must look at the brain.
That’s exactly what Dr. Sterling Johnson is doing. He’s been doing work where healthy people, both with a family history of Alzheimer’s disease and without, have MRI’s done while performing memory tasks.
The UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine will receive a $2.5 million tomotherapy center, due to a bill that passed the state Legislature Thursday.
The state Senate voted in favor of allowing the University of Wisconsin to construct an addition to the School of Veterinary Medicine late last week.
In your Feb. 21 article titled “Challenges remain for biotech,” The Capital Times reviewed an interesting talk given at the University of Wisconsin last week by Steve Burrill, a venture capitalist who has created a very successful business focused on biotechnology investments. In the talk, Burrill presented his viewpoints on the biotech industry as an investment.
As a biotechnology industry advocate, scientist, and entrepreneur of over 20 years and as a father to three children, I found the article and Steve’s talk too pessimistic and narrow in scope.
With wolves now roaming the state in greater numbers than anyone believed possible, their future is tied less to biology and the landscape than to public opinion toward a creature that is defined as much by myth as by science.
Adrian Treves knows this better than just about anyone.
Treves is a UW-Madison animal behaviorist and ecologist, and along with his wife, UW-Madison geography professor Lisa Naughton, has used extensive surveys to plumb public attitudes toward wolves in a deeper fashion than has ever been done before in Wisconsin.
Whether it is actually used, the science is referenced in everything from state-of-the-art golf clubs to the iPod Nano. College kids and middle-aged corporate Americans alike are trying to tap into what the National Science Foundation predicts will be a one trillion dollar industry by 2015.
A disputed stem-cell patent held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation was upheld Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The patent was one of three held by WARF under review.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office decided Thursday to uphold the terms of one of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundationâ??s three previously contested stem-cell patents.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office announced Thursday they upheld the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundationâ??s patent on human embryonic stem cell technology discovered by University of Wisconsin researcher James Thomson.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office delivered some good news to the University of Wisconsin-Madison today (Thursday).
In dismissing a key challenge to James Thomson’s breakthrough discovery on stem cells by New York and California interests, the office cleared the way for the UW to benefit from the research in the years ahead.
Congratulations to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which holds the patent, and Thomson, who pioneered the stem cell procedures. Not only will the school benefit, but so will Wisconsin taxpayers.
Q. Why do we need leap days?
A. Leap days appear every four years or so, including this year, and they are needed because the Earth’s orbit around the sun does not take an exact number of days, said Jim Lattis, director of UW Space Place, in the UW-Madison astronomy department.
The global blood supply â?? going vein-to-vein, from donor to warehouse to hospital to patient â?? is tough to track. And tracking problems are part of the reason that thousands of bags of critically needed blood are thrown out every day.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are hoping to use radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to create a way to better track blood supplies around the world. That, according to Alfonso Gutierrez, RFID lab director at the university, could lead to better handling and fewer instances of patients receiving the wrong blood.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has upheld one of the three disputed University of Wisconsin patents on a technique for isolating and maintaining embryonic stem cells. But the two groups that have challenged the patents say they will continue their efforts to overturn that patent, and the two other related ones.
MADISON, Wis. – A federal agency has upheld a patent that covers embryonic stem cell research, rejecting a challenge from critics who say the patents are hindering research.
An examiner with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled this week that one of three patents can stand. A challenge to two other patents remains pending.
Two consumer groups said Thursday that they intend to continue challenging three key human embryonic stem cell patents held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office upheld the validity of one of the disputed patents.
The decision was announced just a day after the International Stem Cell Forum in San Francisco, hosted by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, concluded Wednesday.
With a government decision upholding an important 2006 patent on human stem cell techniques, biomedical researcher James Thomson and his school, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have won the latest skirmish in a long-running conflict over patents
Wisconsins role in the commercialization of embryonic stem cell research has received a boost from the U.S. patent office, which rejected a challenge to a key patent held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
MADISON, Wis. — Federal regulators are upholding a patent that covers embryonic stem cell research discovered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
An examiner with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said that one of three patents held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) can stand. It hasn’t yet ruled on two others being challenged.
Critics had asked the patent office to throw out the patents, which cover discoveries made by UW-Madison scientist James Thomson. They argue the patents have hindered research in the U.S.
