Category: Research

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) has filed three supplemental amendments to its disputed embryonic stem cell claims, which are undergoing re-examination by the US Patent Office.

But the changes will have little impact on the point at issue, which is whether the techniques described were original enough to be patented, according to William L. Warren, an intellectual property lawyer with Sutherland Asbill & Brennan in Atlanta.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The H5N1 bird flu virus has mutated to infect people more easily, although it still has not transformed into a pandemic strain, researchers said on
Thursday.

The changes are worrying, said Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.”We have identified a specific change that could make bird flu grow in the upper respiratory tract of humans,” said Kawaoka, who led the study.

The Babcock Institute for International Dairy Research and Development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has helped train Chinese farmers in some of the latest dairying techniques. More than 700 model dairy farms have been established around Beijing and Tianjin, with 280,000 cows, according to the Chinese government.

A planned $150 million research and business incubator in Madison will be housed in one building, with two institutes representing the public and private sectors each having their own lab areas.

Architectural renderings unveiled Monday on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus showed a building with three towers.

The University of Wisconsin received more than $6.6 million last week from the federal government in an effort to jumpstart alternative fuel research.

A grant received by Centrose LLC highlights the growing cluster of companies in Madison aiming to develop new drugs in areas like cancer and neurodegenerative and heart disease.

Centrose said Friday it has received a $160,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute to continue developing its lead anti-cancer drug program. The company, based in Madison, is using sugar chemistry to work with a variety of existing and failed drugs to make them less toxic and more effective.

Many University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have received grants from the cancer institute, but more companies in the area are getting them now, said Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council.

Madison, Wis. – In an era of standardized testing, the idea of introducing computer games into the classroom might be tantamount to driving a square peg into round hole.

Even though parents and educators increasingly see the value of computer game learning, the powers who drive education policy are either still too wedded to the type of learning that prepared students for the industrial age, or they think teaching with computer games is too radical to suggest at the moment – even if they know the digital world is creating a new paradigm for education.

The potential value of computer game education, and the counterintuitive thinking it requires, has not been lost on University of Wisconsin-Madison professor David Williamson Shaffer, author of â??How Computer Games Help Children Learn.â?

The use of animals for drug testing and disease research is flawed science and should be abandoned, the leader of an advocacy group says.

“It’s like using a canoe to cross the Pacific Ocean. Yes, it was done at one time, but today we use airplanes,” said Dr. Ray Greek, president of Americans for Medical Advancement and a retired anesthesiologist and expert in pain management living in California. “Today we are studying humans at the level where the differences between species outweigh the similarities.”

Greek debated with UW animal researcher Eric Sandgren on the merits of using animals in scientific research before a crowd of about 175 at the Wisconsin Historical Society building Wednesday night.

UW Madison researchers have found the symptoms of autism sometimes improve over time. (Audio.)

U.S. researchers found just 7 percent of respondents do not have the usual human tendency to favor one’s own group and not form racial prejudices.

Their study, published in the journal Psychological Science, found the 7 percent of people that showed no racial bias differed from biased individuals in a fundamental way — they also were less likely to form negative emotional associations in general.

Robert Livingston of Northwestern University and Brian Drwecki of the University of Wisconsin asked white college students to do tasks that repeatedly paired unfamiliar Chinese characters with positive or negative images such as puppies or snakes. The results showed non-biased individuals were less likely than biased individuals to acquire negative emotions toward the character paired with negative pictures.

Should animals be used by UW-Madison researchers? Are they a reliable predictor of diseases and their cures for human beings?

Two highly respected experts on the subject will tackle that issue in a debate sponsored by The Capital Times at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the auditorium of the Wisconsin Historical Society building on the UW’s Library Mall.

It was back in 1995 that a group of Minnesota middle schoolers shocked the scientific community when they returned from a field trip to report that more than half the frogs they’d captured had major deformities.

Some had five or more hind legs or even no legs at all.

But in the investigations that followed, it quickly became clear that cases of deformed amphibians went far beyond that Minnesota pond and were actually fairly widespread across the U.S.

Both education and income can determine whether a person will remain healthy, but those who stay in school longer have the best odds, largely because education so strongly influences income, say the authors of a new study.

“Those with less education are more likely to develop health problems and those with low incomes who already have health problems are more likely to see their health worsen,” said lead author Pamela Herd, a University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist.

When it comes to natural disasters, the Japanese government is good with numbers. It expects, for instance, a magnitude-8.1 quake to strike in the next 30 years with an epicentre in the Nankai trough â?? a depression in the sea-floor 100 kilometres off the country’s east coast. And when it hits, it is likely to kill between 12,000 and 18,000 people.

The Nankai trough lies in a subduction zone, a perilous region in which one tectonic plate dives under another, building up the sort of rock strain that can unleash the world’s most powerful earthquakes. All earthquakes with a magnitude of greater than 9 have occurred in these zones. And although the next earthquake at Nankai is not expected to be quite this big, the region could prove key in understanding why earthquakes in subduction zones release such vast amounts of energy.

Quoted: Harold Tobin of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the project’s other chief scientist.

UW-Madison stem-cell scientists have received a $7.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study rats with Lou Gehrig’s disease.

About 30,000 Americans have the disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The progressive condition, usually fatal within a few years after diagnosis, weakens muscles and eventually makes people unable to breathe.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – A Wisconsin scientist will set sail Friday to study earthquakes off Japan.

University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist Harold Tobin is part of a team that will investigate deep oceanic faults in the Nankai Trough. Such faults are responsible for creating tsunamis.

Tobin and the team will launch their research vessel from Shingu Port in Japan.

The expedition calls for deep-sea drilling.

It’s expected to last eight weeks.

The University of Wisconsin allowed a star researcher to study material that could be used to produce the Ebola virus in a lab less secure than whatâ??s required under federal guidelines.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison allowed a star researcher to study genetic material that could produce the Ebola virus in a lab less secure than required under federal guidelines, officials said Wednesday. The study stopped last fall after a federal health official told the university the material must be contained in the most secure type of lab, a Biosafety Level 4.

A researcher at the University of Wisconsin at Madison performed work on the Ebola virus genome from late 2005 to 2006 in a less-secure environment than is required by federal regulations, according to documents released on Wednesday by an advocacy group, but Wisconsin officials said the research did not put public safety at risk.

UW-Madison allowed a star researcher to study material that could be used to produce the Ebola virus in a lab less secure than what’s required under federal guidelines.

The study was stopped last fall after a National Institutes of Health official told the university the material must be contained at labs with the highest level of security, or Biosafety Level 4.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s proposal for a new engineering school and research park would require buying some 83 acres of Milwaukee County Grounds property near Highway 45 and Swan Blvd., UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago said Monday.

Milwaukee, Wis. – The private sector’s interest level in the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center is extremely high and includes a diversity of interests that are engaged in the project, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison dean who helped write a successful grant proposal to fund the center.

Molly Jahn, dean of UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, said the recent five-year, $125 million Department of Energy grant award that established the research center will produce economic and environmental benefits for Wisconsin and the Midwest – something the private sector is keenly aware of.

University of Wisconsin biotechnology will soon have the capability to accomplish unprecedented feats, thanks to $23.6 million in recent investments in a Madison company.