In findings that some analysts described as being of more political than scientific significance, Massachusetts researchers said yesterday that they have dramatically improved a technique for producing human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos.
Quoted: R. Alta Charo, professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin.
A lot of big new art shows await you in the coming year.
They will kick off with a bang at the end of January when the University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty art show opens Jan. 26 at the Chazen Museum of Art and continue with a new show of prints by Pop icon Jasper Johns, opening Feb. 8 at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
Another event worth noting is this weekend’s opening of “Paradise Lost? Climate Change in the Northwoods.”
The show, which is on tour around the state, features the work of 20 area artists commissioned to explore the specter of global warming in the Great Lakes region. Interspersed among the art, visitors will encounter a fair share of science, too.
MADISON, Wis. – A California company has signed a deal to license stem cell technology patents held by a nonprofit that supports the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The licenses cover some of the work of UW-Madison scientist James Thomson, who was the first to grow and isolate human embryonic stem cells in 1998.
Embryome Sciences Inc., hopes to use the technology to make new medical and research products. The company is a subsidiary of BioTime Inc., based in Emeryville, Calif.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has licensed 173 patents and patent applications filed internationally relating to human embryonic stem cell technology to BioTime Inc., a California company that’s entering the embryonic stem cell field.
A California company hopes to use stem cell technology developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to make new medical and research products.
BioTime, Inc. has signed a licensing agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to use 173 patents and patent applications covering human embryonic stem cell technology.
The patents cover some of the work of UW-Madison scientist James Thomson.
TOKYO (AFP) â?? Stem cell technologies could be used to cure diseases and heal injuries within 10 years, a Japanese scientist who recently broke new ground in the field said Wednesday.
Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, whose team reported in November they reprogrammed human skin cells to be indistinguishable from stem cells taken from human embryos, said the new technology is so simple that many laboratories are competing to make further breakthroughs.
APPLETON â?? As many parents discover, the minds of young children absorb information like sponges and their brain development seems to occur at incredible speed.
Yet there is so much more for families, educators and child care providers to know about early childhood learning, from the ramifications for school success to the economic impact down the road.
That’s the driving force behind the Appleton Education Foundation’s “Brain to Five” community education series that launches Feb. 6 with a presentation by Richie Davidson, a renowned researcher on early brain development.
In Chancellor Carlos Santiago’s vision, Innovation Park would be a place where engineers from companies such as Rockwell Automation work together in the same building with University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee scientists and students to generate research dollars and spin off new companies.
Describing that vision of the proposed Wauwatosa research park to the Wisconsin Technology Council board Tuesday, Santiago issued a challenge to businesses: open locations in the park and supply them with engineers and equipment.
When he was a high-ranking executive at GE Healthcare, Dr. Bill Clarke heard a lot of pitches from aspiring entrepreneurs.
It became fairly routine, and he wasn’t expecting anything extraordinary when he came to hear UW-Madison Prof. Jamey Weichert detail Cellectar, a local firm he founded to develop his cancer fighting compounds.
“I was going to give Jamey an hour and four hours later I walked out and I thought, ‘This is really good,’ ” Clarke said in a phone interview.
Cellectar’s technology, based on research done by a University of Wisconsin-Madison team led by radiology professor Jamey Weichert, uses fat-like molecules to deliver radioisotopes that can either destroy malignant cells or enable imaging equipment to locate them.
Madison, Wis. – New stem cell lines that are derived from a promising new technique should be housed and distributed by the WiCell Research Institute, says Carl Gulbrandsen, president of WiCell.
According to a report in the Appleton Post Crescent, Gulbrandsen has told the National Institutes of Health that WiCell would like to house and distribute the new cell lines. WiCell, a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, already is home to the National Stem Cell Bank, which now has 17 of the 21 existing embryonic stem cell lines that receive federal funding.
Like Hamlet contemplating the skull of poor Yorick, John Hawks sees a lot more than most of us when he peers at a skull, something he does frequently. In fact, it ‘s his job.
Q. Why do our eyes expand and shrink according to the light?
Submitted by Nikki Lee, eighth grade, Cherokee Middle School
A. We encounter a huge range of light levels, from dark moonless nights to the glaring noon sun. But our eyes only work within a limited range – too much light and the light-sensitive cells in our eyes are overwhelmed; too little light and the cells are not stimulated.
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin is losing its only specialist in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Dr. Benjamin Brooks, a renowned ALS researcher, said he is leaving the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics after 25 years of work, WISC-TV reported.
He told WISC-TV he is headed to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., where he will be director of an ALS research center. He will leave University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics sometime in the middle of February.
http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_7874144
LOS ALAMOS, N.M.â??Aftershocks from earthquakes can happen minutes, hours or even days after the sound waves that radiate from them pass, but the cause of the delay remains a mystery, a group of researchers said.
In a letter that appeared Thursday in the science journal Nature, Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher Paul Johnson and his colleagues show how energy can be stored in certain types of granular materials like those found along fault lines worldwide.
Johnson said the experiment conducted with the help of researchers at the University of California-Santa Cruz, the University of Wisconsin, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Washington has helped confirm that earthquakes are periodic events and that sound can disrupt them.
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Home prices could fall “considerably” over a number of years as a benchmark ratio of rents to prices slowly returns to its long-run average, according to a new study.
“If the rent-price ratio were to rise from its level at the end of 2006 up to about its historical average value of 5 percent by mid-2012, house prices might fall by 3 percent per year,” two Federal Reserve Board economists and a University of Wisconsin professor said.
The surveillance cameras and electronic locks are the only hints that a visitor has reached the border of a scientific frontier. Behind these laboratory doors a few blocks from Columbia University in Manhattan is a research enterprise quarantined by federal law because, for many people, it poses a moral hazard.
Inside, a technician adjusts a microscope and a cluster of human embryonic stem cells — with the potential to develop into the body’s many cell types — springs into view, blurred only by politics, ethics disputes and conflicting beliefs about the beginnings of life.
MADISON, Wis. — Pre-eminent ALS researcher and University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics doctor Benjamin Brooks is leaving the hospital after 25 years of work.
He told WISC-TV he is headed to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., where he will be able to concentrate on researching ALS, which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
….Past and current patients and others in the ALS field rallied behind him in 2004 after UW Medical School officials closed Brooks’ ALS research lab in early 2003, alleging bookkeeping and training problems with testing procedures.
The new year opens with one of the greatest breakthroughs in medical science since Ian Wilmut used cells from an adult sheep to clone Dolly the lamb in 1996. Human stem cells, which for all intents and purposes are identical to the highly prized but controversial ones harvested from human embryos, now can be made from adult skin, without using embryos or eggs. Separate research groups headed by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin unveiled the technique in late November. A third group, from Harvard, confirmed that work barely a month later. It seems the path to curing diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s, and many inherited disorders has a shortcut. In fact, stem cell pioneer Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., just showed that a mouse version of these cells cures mice with sickle cell anemia.
UW-Madison zoology professor Lauren Riters knows why the starling sings.
“He’s trying to attract a female. And he wants to keep contact with the group,” Riters said. “Also, it’s because there’s a convergence of appropriate environmental stimuli – the days are longer, there are no predators around, he’s feeling well fed.
Gabriela Cezar will take aim at autism in 2008.
The Brazilian stem-cell researcher, who came to UW-Madison in 2005, will study brain tissue of autistic children who have died. The study is done in hope of creating a biochemical fingerprint of autism.
Professor Arnold Alanen sees the world through different eyes.
Where most people see a grassy mall on campus, he sees the history of agriculture and science at UW-Madison.
The program, funded by a UW School of Medicine and Public Health grant, is one of at least three efforts in the Madison area to study kids’ fitness levels. The programs also teach kids that being active doesn’t have to be limited to the dodge ball and floor hockey games their parents remember from school.
For the early morning regulars at Rennebohm ‘s on University Avenue, the smell of coffee, eggs and sausage has been just a pleasant memory since 1981, when UW-Madison bought the building and turned it into offices.
Now it ‘s time for the building itself to go.
As scientists become increasingly concerned about the safety of chemicals that mimic hormones, a group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison remembers what could have been.
The best scientific minds in big business, academia and environmental advocacy were to be plucked from across the globe to join forces in a think tank. Their charge: to investigate endocrine disruptors – chemicals in everyday products – to see if these compounds were making people sick.
What happens when a rat stops dreaming? In 2004, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison decided to find out. Their method was simple, if a bit devilish. Step 1: Strand a rat in a tub of water. In the center of this tiny sea, allot the creature its own little desert island in the form of an inverted flowerpot. The rat can swim around as much as it pleases, but come nightfall, if it wants any sleep, it has to clamber up and stretch itself across the flowerpot, its belly sagging over the drainage hole.
In this uncomfortable position, the rat is able to rest and eventually fall asleep. But as soon as the animal hits REM sleep, the muscular paralysis that accompanies this stage of vivid dreaming causes its body to slacken. The rat slips through the hole and gets dunked in the water. The surprised rat is then free to crawl back onto the pot, lick the drops off its paws, and go back to sleepâ??but it won’t get any REM sleep.
Laura Kiessling works at the forefront of a promising new movement in science. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she builds synthetic molecules that imitate those in nature and influence cell behavior in fundamental ways.
Her research has suggested new strategies for targeting tumors, fighting tuberculosis and bolstering the body’s response to infection.
Time magazine has proclaimed Vladimir Putin its Person of the Year. Which leads us to ponder, as we start a new year, who might deserve that title for Wisconsin for the year just ending.
James Thomson: Already a stem cell pioneer, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher led a team that succeeded in reprogramming human skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells. A separate Japanese team did the same thing.
In a Nov. 21 article, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter John Fauber explained why this is significant: “If these new cells truly have all the beneficial qualities of embryonic stem cells without hidden hazards, it could pave the way to therapies that do not raise the moral concerns associated with the destruction of embryos or therapeutic cloning. At the same time, the new approach could avoid problems of immune rejection because the cells could be matched to the DNA of the patient.”
Stem Cell Researchers Win Nobel: Researchers in Japan and the U.S. in 2007 announced they had found a way to turn regular human skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells. By activating a handful of dormant genes, teams led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka at Japan’s Kyoto University and Dr. James Thompson at the University of Wisconsin were able to coax the cells back in time to a point in embryonic development before they’d committed to becoming a particular type of tissue.
The reprogrammed cells, known as “induced pluripotent stem cells,” genetically matched to the donor, could then be used to grow tissues for future use in tissue replacement therapies including a range of things from regeneration of damaged heart tissue to Parkinson’s to spinal-cord injury.
The discovery could provide a virtually unlimited supply of embryonic stem cells without the moral baggage of or need to use human embryos, cloning or human eggs. It also takes such research out of the political arena back into the realm of science, where it belongs.
“It’s a bit like learning how to turn lead into gold,” says Dr. Robert Lanza, a stem cell researcher at Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts-based research firm. For this discovery, and the cures it will lead to, it should warrant the next Nobel Prize for Medicine.
It was the kind of breakthrough scientists had dreamed of for decades and its promise to help cure disease appears to be fast on the way to being realised.
Researchers in November announced they were able to turn the clock back on skin cells and transform them into stem cells, the mutable building blocks of organs and tissues.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — If one of your New Years’ resolutions is to quit smoking, the state wants to help.
Starting today, people who call the state’s Tobacco Quit Line can get a free two-week starter kick of nicotine medicines.
The cost is being covered by the additional one-dollar-per-pack tax that went into effect today.
Dr. Michael Fiore is the Director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention in Madison. He says the best way to quit is to plan for it, follow the steps and use the treatment.
Two of the most significant science events of 2007 occurred within the space of a fortnight. The first was when scientists announced that they had been able to clone dozens of embryos from an adult monkey â?? a technical feat that had eluded researchers since the announcement on cloning Dolly the sheep back in 1997. The second breakthrough happened when researchers showed that it was possible to convert human skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells, which could then be used to make beating heart-muscle and brain cells in the test tube.
Low water levels. Invasive species. Global warming.
Faced with those kinds of challenges, you’d figure the Great Lakes are in trouble, big trouble. But scientists say the lakes are actually in pretty good shape and have been improving since 1969….
(Quoted: Phil Keillor, a coastal engineer with the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute)
Q. What can one person do to combat global warming?
A. The solution lies in cutting our energy consumption, especially energy from fossil fuels such as gasoline, coal, oil and natural gas, said UW-Madison climate scientist Jon Foley. That’s because the burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, a powerful “greenhouse gas.”
CHICAGO (AFP) â?? It was the kind of breakthrough scientists had dreamed of for decades and its promise to help cure disease appears to be fast on the way to being realized.
Researchers in November announced they were able to turn the clock back on skin cells and transform them into stem cells, the mutable building blocks of organs and tissues.
Then just earlier this month a different team announced it had cured sickle cell anemia in mice using stem cells derived from adult mouse skin.
The director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project predicts candidates in the 2008 election campaign will spend more on television ads than any campaign in history. This year marks the 6th campaign that UW-Madison researchers have tracked TV election spending . Gil Halsted reports. (Audio.)
Madison, Wis. – A coalition of consumer advocacy and public interest groups, including two organizations that are challenging stem cell patents held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), have filed legal papers in support of proposed new U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rules that would curtail what they believe is abusive behavior by patent applicants.
In a friend-of-the-court brief filed recently in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., the groups urged that an injunction blocking the proposed rules be lifted and that they be implemented immediately.
The white walls of Gary Shiu’s office are broken up by little but a blackboard and a calendar. But inside the plain space, the soft-spoken UW-Madison physicist is creating dramatic images of phenomena people can’t see.
In November, two teams of scientists reported success in reprogramming human skin cells to behave as embryonic stem cells, which can become any cell in the body.
Their papers appeared in two prestigious journals, Cell and Science. The Cell report was from a group led by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan. The Science study was from Junying Yu and James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
About 15 percent of the air pollution in the United States comes from overseas, according to a new report by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (Second item in briefs package)
Q. Why do onions make us cry when we cut them?
A. Chopping onions unleashes a “chemical defense that onion plants have to protect themselves against insects and microbes, ” said UW-Madison horticulture professor Irwin Goldman. We ‘re just innocent bystanders, it seems.
The 68th Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference was held in Madison last week, drawing more than 1,200 fish and wildlife professionals from Midwestern states to hear reports on recent research and management experiences.
….John Magnuson, emeritus professor in the Center for Limnology at UW-Madison, gave a keynote address followed by presentations on how climate change is affecting natural resources. Magnuson made the point that people see and know how to deal with short-timeline problems and solutions, but something that changes in terms of decades is much more difficult to realize and to deal with.
(Also included in this article is Chris Kucharik of the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.)
A fierce moral debateâ??whether the therapeutic potential of stem cells could justify destroying embryos to get themâ??appeared to vanish when scientists in Wisconsin and Japan announced that they had figured out how to convert adult skin cells into near-perfect copies of the wonder cells. More research remains to be done, but this might be the most delightful discovery since common bread mold birthed the age of antibiotics.
The biggest biomedical breakthrough of 2007 was the transformation of adult skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells by adding only four genes. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University ignited this revolution first by himself using mice cells, then later in the year in competing papers with Dr. James Thomson of University of Wisconsin in human cells.
Until these results, embryonic stem cells – which have the potential to become any cell in the body – could only be generated by destroying either eggs or embryos. The research holds the promise of eliminating the ethical minefield that has so hampered what many scientists see as the great potential for stem cells to treat all sorts of diseases, including Parkinson’s, diabetes and spinal cord injury.
Richard J. Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that the findings dovetail with his own work on emotion and the brainâ??s structure and function. While studies have long shown that negative emotions, such as anxiety and fear, can interfere with learning, Mr. Davidson, who was named one of the worldâ??s most influential people by Time magazine in 2006, has documented that in people who undergo regular training in meditation or other practices akin to social and emotional learning, the brain circuitry actually changes.
Sometimes the rights to use university technology are granted to major corporations or other established companies.
Though that might not be the ultimate aim, it can be a lucrative practice generating millions of dollars for universities.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, received $43.5 million in 2006 licensing income. The University of Wisconsin received $42.3 million. The University of California system received more than $193 million.
During the 2000 presidential election, the Republican and Democratic parties paid for 50% of advertising in the 70 largest cities, according to a study by the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin. In 2004, that figure fell to 17%. Outside groups accounted for 20% of the advertisements in the 2004 presidential campaign, double the amount of 2000, according to the project.
CHICAGO (AFP) â?? It was the kind of breakthrough scientists had dreamed of for decades and its promise to help cure disease appears to be fast on the way to being realized. Researchers in November announced they were able to turn the clock back on skin cells and transform them into stem cells, the mutable building blocks of organs and tissues.
Then just earlier this month a different team announced it had cured sickle cell anemia in mice using stem cells derived from adult mouse skin.
Deltanoid Pharmaceuticals â?? the company formed by UW-Madison vitamin D expert Hector DeLuca to bring 2-MD, a bone-building drug, to market â?? is plunging ahead with two new drug compounds, thanks to a hefty infusion of cash.
Scientists and others close to Wisconsin’s research sector often use the term “public-private partnership” to describe a nirvana of converging interests: the power of a public research university paired with the flexibility and rapid response of private collaborators, says a column by Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council.
A new way to trick skin cells into acting like embryos changes both everything and nothing at all, says a column by UW-Madison professor James Thomson and Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science
Phil Fisette is a scientist who’s creating art by offering customers a colorful photograph of their own DNA.
Fisette, 37, who has a doctorate in cell and molecular biology from UW-Madison, became intrigued by the beauty of the microscopic world. He started his company, Cell Portraits, in June.
An important new study by University of Wisconsin economist John Karl Scholz, provides a chilling perspective on the real human costs of this oversight. With the after-tax return for working so low, it should be little surprise that many individuals simply choose not to get a job.
St. Paul, Minn. â?? Human beings are evolving at an ever faster rate, according to a new study.
A group of anthropologists and geneticists tracked this change by looking a relatively new gene for digesting milk, which varies depending on where in the world you live.
Guest John Hawks, anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was part of a team that analyzed DNA sequences and skeletons to determine the pace of human evolution. He writes a blog on paleoanthropology, genetics, and evolution.
Douglas N. Harris, a professor of policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, took a different tack. Looking across occupations, he said, cognitive ability is the best predictor of worker effectiveness, especially in complex occupations such as teaching. Nonetheless, a recent study of his own failed to find a relationship between teachersâ?? college-entrance-exam scores and their ability to produce state test-score gains by their students.
Pay me now, and pay me later.
Thatâ??s the new mind-set at some leading research universities in dealing with business â?? and the essence of an emerging model for how corporations can tap big brains on campus without having to pay their salaries.
Corporations have long been able to license intellectual property from universities, but these deals are cumbersome to negotiate and tend to work best when corporate researchers know exactly what they need to create.
Brookfield – He’s the pride of the Packers, Sports Illustrated magazine’s Sportsman of the Year, and a nearly unavoidable celebrity.
On Thursday, Brett Favre’s image even joined the effort to build support for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and its ambitions to expand as a catalyst of research, technology innovation and risk-friendly start-up companies.
In a show of support, UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley drove in from Madison to attend the event at the Brookfield Suites Hotel and Convention Center.
Milwaukee cannot thrive without a research complex, Wiley said. UWM needs to expand “as fast as possible, to be the biggest and best research university that it possibly can be,” Wiley said.
Favre is the epitome of the “thoughtful risk taker,” said Colin Scanes, UWM’s vice chancellor for research and economic development.
The University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks canâ??t figure out why deCODEâ??s CEO publicized the companyâ??s analysis of James Watsonâ??s DNA. The analysis showed, in the words of the New York Times report, that Watsonâ??s DNA â??has 16 times the number of genes considered to be of African origin than the average white European does â?? about the same amount of African DNA that would show up if one great-grandparent were African, said Kari Stefansson, the chief executive of deCODE Genetics of Iceland, which did the analysis.â?
Terry Devitt, a spokesman for the University of Wisconsin at Madisonâ??s research programs, said he saw no evidence that his school could not compete with the Ivies, citing the universityâ??s top-10 ranking as a recipient of federal funds for scientific research.
â??Take a look at the numbers,â? Devitt said. â??This is a first-class institution and is the equal or superior of Harvard in many areas.â?
University of Wisconsin at Madison ranked second in total research and development expenditures in 2006, while Harvard did not break the top 25, according to the National Science Foundation. Only four of the top 10 institutions listed were private.
Research conducted by a University of Wisconsin professor found human evolution has advanced faster in the past 40,000 years than ever before.
