Milwaukee, Wis. – Will members of the so-called Xbox generation ever be as interested in helping companies create information technology as they are in consuming it?
Judging by the growing number of technology activities in Wisconsin’s K-12 public schools and institutions of higher learning, there may be more hope than many IT labor-starved employers think.
Wisconsin won’t be getting a new federal facility for the research of animal diseases. A site in the Dane County Town of Duun was one of seventeen in the running for the Department of Homeland Security’s new National Bio and Agro Defense Facility.
UW-Madison was not selected as a finalist for a national disease research facility, officials are expected to announce later today.
The Department of Homeland Security selected five finalists in Texas, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi and North Carolina, according to wire reports quoting Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
Prions and dirt can make a sickening combination.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that when prions, the abnormal proteins believed to cause chronic wasting disease in deer, are bound to common soil minerals, they become nearly 700 times more infectious than prions alone.
Patrick Genn is bullish on Wisconsin’s new economy. And he’s putting money where his mouth is.
As managing director of the Middleton-based Continuum Investment Partners, Genn has been working the past two years connecting local “angel” investors with new companies in need of working capital.
A soon-to-be-published UW-Madison study says the Internet is playing an increasingly important role in political campaigns and in building a knowledge base for voters.
The study, which is to be published in the July issue of the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, indicates that Web users in the last election cycle had a more thorough understanding of presidential politics than users of other media.
A federal agency has ordered Texas A&M University at College Station to halt all research on biological-warfare microbes, after the institution failed to report two cases of accidental exposure of laboratory workers.
Historians tend to write about people who are no longer with us, and that has certain advantages, UW-Madison history professor Jeremi Suri says.
“A dead person can’t try to manipulate you. A dead person also can’t argue with you. And it’s a little easier to be objective when you don’t have to confront that person,” Suri said.
Getting together with the very alive Henry Kissinger, by contrast, involved all of the above for Suri. In spades.
Scientists have known for decades that black holes produce powerful jets of plasma, releasing energy into the universe at nearly the speed of light and fueling the formation of interstellar objects.
Now, a new observation suggests that neutron stars, a smaller cousin of black holes, can produce relatively strong jets that rival black holes in power and efficiency.
“This is the first time it has been shown how powerful these outflows from neutron stars can be,” said Sebastian Heinz, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
If there is one area in the state’s economy that has consistently fallen short of its potential it’s our share of federal dollars.
It’s been going on forever and some would argue it’s not all bad. But there’s nothing wrong with getting the occasional windfall from the feds especially when it’s for something as substantial and promising for the long term as a center for bioenergy research.
Madison: A new study by UW researchers has shed some light on how the soil itself could help transmit CWD from deer to deer.
It’s kind of difficult to fight the spread of a disease when you don’t really know how the disease is spread. This study provides some much needed answers, but asks a whole lot more questions.
Researchers at UW Madison have made a new finding about the disease that threatens Wisconsin’s deer herd. Researchers have known that the rogue proteins, or prions, that cause chronic wasting disease can remain in the soil for a long time.
UW-Madison scientists are at the cutting edge of nanotechnology research.
Many of the science fiction novels Glenn Seaman read as a boy were set in high-tech worlds he never thought could exist. But over the years, Seamen, now in his 50s, has watched technology bring humankind closer to realizing once-fantastical ideas, like supercomputers, artificial intelligence and deep space travel. Because of this, he sees no reason why today’s science fiction can’t be tomorrow’s reality.
“The laws of nature constantly seem to be changing,” he says. “Any time there is an absolute, it seems we at some point transcend it.”
Dear Editor: In reading the recent article about retired Professor Reid Bryson, I couldn’t help but feel that Bryson is a rebel without a cause. Current science shows a consistent connection between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and the amount of carbon dioxide that humans are putting into the atmosphere. The large majority of the scientific community is in agreement about the reality of global warming and the need for a concerted response.
What is most troubling about Professor Bryson’s position is that it encourages inaction.
UW-Madison researchers have found that the abnormal proteins that cause chronic wasting disease in deer dramatically increase their infectious nature when bound to soil particles.
A group of scientists led by Professor Judd Aiken published a study in the current issue of the journal Public Library of Science Pathogens stating that the proteins known as prions that cause CWD and other brain wasting diseases bind tightly to a common soil mineral.
Q. How well do dogs see at night?
A. A lot better than we do, says Paul Miller, clinical professor of comparative ophthalmology at UW-Madison.
By binding to a common soil mineral, the misshapen proteins that cause chronic wasting disease in deer can be as much as 700 times more infectious than exposure to the proteins alone, according to researchers at UW-Madison.
A conservative Milwaukee-based “free market” think tank recommended today that the UW-Madison should be broken off from the University of Wisconsin System, which should also be reorganized to create clearer lines of management authority.
The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute says that in the 35 years since the former University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin State University systems were merged, the result has become “an outdated, inefficient management structure.”
Some high-profile scientists have jumped into the fight over the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s stem cell patents, supporting the effort to have them revoked.
The California-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and others are challenging patents that cover discoveries by UW researcher Jamie Thomson, who was the first to grow and isolate human embryonic stem cells in 1998….Competing scientists have jumped into the fray.
U.S. scientists are studying the remarkable shiny material known as mother-of-pearl in an effort to harness its simplicity and superb strength.
University of Wisconsin-Madison physicists said while the shiny material of pearls and abalone shells has long been prized in jewelry, mother-of-pearl — also called nacre — is 3,000 times more fracture-resistant than the mineral it is made of, aragonite.
Inspired by the love she has for her ill dog, a stay-at-home mother from rural Maine has raised enough funds to bankroll a major scientific study on how long rabies vaccines remain effective.
“These will be the first long-term challenge studies on the canine rabies vaccine to be published in the United States,” Kris Christine said this week. The research will be conducted at the School of Veterinary Medicine at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Challengers to UW-Madison’s stem-cell patents have enlisted some high-profile scientists to argue that the federal government’s preliminary rejection of the patents should be upheld.
Doug Melton, a co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, said in a declaration released Monday that UW-Madison scientist James Thomson achieved his stem-cell discoveries in 1998 because of his access to money and materials, not because of ground-breaking science.
The two foundations questioning the validity of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s key embryonic stem cell patents have bolstered their protest with comments from three more scientists.
The comments were filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the groups said Monday. Douglas Melton and Chad Cowan of Harvard University and Alan Trounson of Monash University in Australia joined Jeanne Loring of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in filing declarations supporting the foundations’ efforts to get the patents overturned.
The Department of Energy announced three recipients of the most-coveted biofuel grants in the nation last week. The University of Minnesota applied for the funding but did not receive it.
Some University officials involved in the application process criticized the selections because of the DOE’s ties to research teams receiving funds. Story also quotes UW-Madison professor Timothy Donohue.
Madison is one fast city. So says Fast Company magazine in its article examining worldwide centers that offer the best in economic innovation and opportunity. Madison is named a Startup Hub in the listing of Fast Cities 2007.
….According to the magazine, “Fast Cities” are considered worldwide centers of creativity where the most important ideas and organizations of the future are located. They attract the best and brightest. They are great places to work and live.
The main reason Madison was chosen for the ranking, to be published in the magazine’s July-August issue, is research and development spending. The article reports that the University of Wisconsin-Madison spends more in research and development than Stanford, MIT or Harvard.
Mention Henry Kissinger, and most people think of an extremely powerful figure, a consummate insider easily working his will.
But the truth, according to a new book by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, is far more complex. In “Henry Kissinger and the American Century,” Jeremy Suri, an associate professor of history, says that Kissinger’s characteristic diplomacy was shaped by his experiences.
Moira Kelly, a career counselor for the Department of Continuing Education at UW-Madison, says that clients often come to her seeking major midlife change, “but find that doing something small can make a big change. It’s often the people who hit a milestone, like losing a parent, getting divorced or sending their kids off to college who have the biggest catalyst for change.”
He spent his summers playing ball, 12 hours a day he and the other guys on Berwick Avenue pursued the sport with tireless passion.
They played until the streetlights came on. They played until someone’s mom called from an open screen door, and then they kept playing as the door slapped behind her. They played until she called a couple of more times. They played until they could not play any more.
Still, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Sean Carroll didn’t end up playing baseball for a living. One of his buddies, John Locasio, was drafted by the Reds. Mr. Carroll hadn’t gotten a bat on one of John Locasio’s pitches since 7th grade.
But he didn’t do too bad for himself anyway.
“Of all the scientists in the world today,” wrote philosopher of science Michael Ruse, “there is no one with whom Charles Darwin would rather spend an evening than Sean Carroll.”
Since it was reported this month by The Capital Times, Professor Emeritus Reid Bryson’s anti-establishment position against man-made global warming has provoked floods of interest, great indignation and — particularly among his fellow University of Wisconsin scientists — no shortage of exasperation.
Forget the proverbial seven-year itch.
Not to disillusion the half million or so June brides and bridegrooms who were just married, but new research suggests that the spark may fizzle within only three years.
Researchers — including UW-Madison professor Larry Bumpass — analyzed responses from two sets of married or cohabitating couples: one group was together for one to three years, the other for four to six years.
Dear Editor: Professor Reid Bryson, featured in a front page article in his role as a global warming skeptic, comes across as very engaging personally and highly engaged in public discourse, so I suspect he does not want to be patted condescendingly on the head and told to enjoy his retirement with gardening or other puttering.
Very well, professor, put up or shut up…
Dear Editor: As a UW graduate student affiliated with the Center for Climatic Research, I would like to respond to Professor Reid Bryson’s recent statements, which display a disrespectful attitude toward graduate students in his department.
Q What is the surface of the sun like?
A “Technically, there is no surface of the sun,” says UW-Madison’s Sanjay Limaye.
In an accompanying article on early agriculture, Eve Emshwiller, an ethnobotanist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, was quoted as saying the reports of early dates for plant domestication in the New World were remarkable because the activity appeared to have occurred not long after humans first colonized the Americas, which is now thought to be at least 13,000 years ago.
Drug technology being developed by local biotech start-up Centrose has received favorable coverage in the prestigious journal Nature.
Centrose is developing technology to combat the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, as well as anti-cancer compounds.
….A study of the issue led by Centrose co-founder and UW-Madison Professor Jon Thorson was published last week in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
An animal rights group has filed a complaint with federal regulators alleging that the University of Wisconsin-Madison violated the Animal Welfare Act in its treatment of primates used for research.
…. Eric Sandgren, chairman of a UW-Madison committee that oversees animal research projects, told The Capital Times that university researchers welcome USDA inspectors and that their visits often lead to improvement in the research program.
Scientists say they’ve created embryonic stem cells by stimulating unfertilized eggs, a significant step toward producing transplant tissue that’s genetically matched to women.
The advance suggests that someday, a woman who wants a transplant to treat a condition like diabetes or a spinal cord injury could provide eggs to a lab, which in turn could create tissue that her body wouldn’t reject.
Ethicists disagreed on whether the strategy would avoid the long-standing ethical objections to creating embryonic stem cells by other means.
MADISON, Wis. â?? Federal regulators are reviewing a complaint by a watchdog group accusing University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists of mistreating primates who died after experimentation.
Necropsy reports obtained by Stop Animal Exploitation Now show a 4-year-old macaque monkey that died in 2005 had an unspecified foreign object lodged in its intestinal tract.
A 14-year-old female rhesus monkey also died that year after a tube inserted for a surgery severely injured the monkeyâ??s throat, reports show. Another female rhesus died of a bacterial infection after giving birth.
Take the sweet sugar in your kitchen, and imagine turning this into something that could fuel your car. A team of chemical engineers at UW think they finally found a way to do just that.
“It has the same energy density as gasoline, so 40-percent more than ethanol,” said grad student and team member Yuriy Roman Leshkov.
“So we’re making a fuel that’s superior to ethanol and biodiesel,” said fellow researcher Chris Barrett. The two worked under the leadership of professor James Dumesic, who’s findings were reported earlier this month in the journal ‘Nature.’
The UW-Madison plans to build a $100 million research facility to house a federally funded bioenergy research center that it will head.
….The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center will focus on basic research toward new technologies to convert cellulose in nonedible plants into energy as a way of increasing U.S. energy independence.
Funding of the facility will be a state and university effort.
Gov. Jim Doyle committed $50 million in state funds for the facility Tuesday, but that funding will have to be approved by the state Legislature. The UW hopes to raise the other $50 million with gifts, grants and company investments, according to Al Fish, associate vice chancellor for facilities planning and management at the UW-Madison.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has won one of the largest federal grants in its history to create a center that will explore how to convert cornstalks, wood chips, grass and other plant material into fuel for cars and power plants.
Gowtham Karri looks young for a city planner. He wears tennis shoes and shorts on the job and can’t be much more than four and a half feet tall.
But he brings a professional intensity to the task of redesigning Madison’s neighborhoods.
UW-Madison will build a $100 million facility to support a new federal research center for developing alternative fuel sources, with half of the money coming from state taxpayers, officials said Tuesday.
The school will also spend another $4 million to hire eight faculty members affiliated with the center.
WASHINGTON — Michigan will get at least 100 new jobs — with the potential for thousands more — as a result of $50 million in federal ethanol research money Michigan State University was awarded Tuesday.
The money puts MSU at the center of a major federal effort to turn common plants into ethanol that could replace gasoline in the nation’s cars and trucks — an effort whose “Holy Grail,” one MSU official said, is a Michigan economy fed by fuel from plants.
Corn is king of biofuel — for now.
But a $50-million federal grant to Michigan State University aims to dethrone the kernel and turn tall grasses, trees and other growing things into cheap fuel to power vehicles, possibly within a decade.
Elated MSU officials and Gov. Jennifer Granholm predict the research will spawn thousands of Michigan jobs and put the university at the center of a national effort to wean the country from foreign oil, and oil in general.
“Maybe tomorrow we don’t lower the price of gas, but, over the long haul, you better believe it will,” said Granholm at a news conference at MSU’s grass research center. “And it will make us less dependent on oil in the Middle East.”
WASHINGTON â?? New research centers in Wisconsin, Tennessee and California will try to develop new ways of turning switchgrass, poplar trees and other plants into fuel under a $375 million plan.
The three centers, partnering with universities, national laboratories and private companies, will each receive $125 million to research new biofuel technologies over five years. The centers will be located in Madison, plus Oak Ridge, Tenn., and near Berkeley, Calif., the Energy Department said Tuesday.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will receive one of its largest grants ever to fund renewable energy research.
The $125 million grant will be used to open the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. Governor Jim Doyle helped unveil the plan on Tuesday, which he says will help the nation meet its growing need for alternative energy sources.
Madison, Wis. – The United States. Department of Energy will invest up to $375 million over five years in three new Bioenergy Research Centers, including $125 million for a center led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to promote the development of cellulosic ethanol.
The Madison bioenergy research facility, which will be called the DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, will operate in collaboration with Michigan State University and be directed by Timothy Donohue, professor of bacteriology at UW-Madison.
UW-Madison has won a major federal Department of Energy grant worth $125 million to build a Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center to develop cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels. The five-year grant is the largest single research award the university has ever received.
Gov. Jim Doyle yesterday said he’ll ask the Legislature to chip in another $50 million for the project, plus another $4 million for new faculty and staff at the center. In addition, he said the university will seek to raise $50 million from private sources for the project.
Molly Jahn, dean of the UW-Madison College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said the center will be built at one of three sites the Madison campus. She said it will focus on developing energy resources from non-food resources such as cornstalks, wood chips, paper waste and perennial native grasses.
A local company sees energy potential in our backyard.
Millions in federal funding will bring a center for biofuel research to UW Madison.
Supporters of a bioenergy research facility coming to Madison say a safer, more environmentally friendly source of fuel is in our future.
That source of fuel is, of course, plants. We already use corn to make ethanol, but the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center will take biofuels a step further.
“This basically what we’re looking at converting to alcohol,” Phil Brumm says.
It’s being called a big win for UW-Madison. It is one of three universities chosen to spearhead bioenergy research. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded the Madison campus $125 million over five years for research.
The goal of the center is to find ways to convert plant biomass, from things like cornstalks and woodchips, to sources of energy to power anything from cars to electrical power plants.
MADISON, Wis. — Madison will be home to a major new bioenergy research center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The department announced Tuesday it had awarded University of Wisconsin-Madison and a partnership of other universities and labs a $125 million grant to start the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.
The federal facility will be built in Madison as part of a new alternate fuel initiative being organized by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Michigan State University. Both universities will help run the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.
Several universities will be major partners in three new research centers on bioenergy, the U.S. Department of Energy announced on Tuesday. The centers, which involve researchers from a total of 18 universities, along with seven national laboratories and several corporate partners, will each receive $125-million over five years to study new techniques for producing ethanol and other biofuels.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison will lead one of the centers, with the State of Wisconsin providing an additional $54-million for a new building and new faculty positions. Michigan State University, which will receive about $50-million of the federal grant, will be a major collaborator in the Wisconsin center. Other academic partners will be Illinois State University, Iowa State University, and the University of Florida.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and its partners have been selected as one of three consortiums nationally that will receive $125 million each in federal funds to find new ways to turn plants into energy.
UW-Madison will be the site of one of three bioenergy research centers designed to find new ways to turn plants into fuel, officials said Monday.
The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center on UW-Madison’s campus, along with centers in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and near Berkeley, Calif., were described by the Department of Energy as three startup companies with $125 million each in capital, said two officials with knowledge of the grants, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official announcement had not yet been made. They will involve numerous universities, national laboratories and private companies as partners.
Science Times this week has a special issue devoted to these advances and Sean B. Carroll, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin, is one of scientists whose work is featured. Watch a video interview with Dr. Carroll.
WASHINGTON, June 25 â?? The Energy Department is creating three bioenergy research centers to find new ways to turn plants into fuel.
The three centers, which the department described as three start-up companies with $125 million each in capital, will be in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Madison, Wis.; and near Berkeley, Calif. They will involve numerous universities, national laboratories and private companies. The goal of the centers, which are to be announced on Tuesday, is to bring new technologies to market within five years.
The new approach supports President Bushâ??s goal of reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years.
A new generation of Americans like the Morrises, in moving to places perched on the edge of vast, undeveloped government lands in the West, are living out a dangerous experiment, many of them ignorant of the risk.
Their migration â?? more than 8.6 million new homes in the West within 30 miles of a national forest since 1982, according to research at the University of Wisconsin â?? has coincided with profound environmental changes that have worsened the fire hazard, including years of drought, record-setting heat and forest management policies that have allowed brush and dead trees to build up.
â??Itâ??s like a tsunami, this big wave of development thatâ??s rolling toward the public lands,â? said Volker C. Radeloff, a professor of forest ecology and management at the University of Wisconsin. â??And the number of fires keeps going up.â?
WASHINGTON – Michigan State University will receive $50 million in federal grants over five years to conduct basic research on biofuels, officials said Monday.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman is expected to announce Tuesday that Michigan State and other universities have been selected to share $375 million in federal funding to develop new bioenergy centers for research on cellulosic ethanol and biomass plants.
The young geographer would tell strangers he was hunting uranium. In 1952, that explanation seemed more understandable than the truth about what he was doing in the desert.
Who would believe the broad, flat rocks called pediments had led this slender man, 98 pounds, into Arizona’s San Pedro River Valleyto map remote country under a blazing sun? At night, he camped out in a beat-up Ford coupe, and read by Coleman lamp until, tired, he pulled down the seats and slept with his head by the steering wheel, his feet stretched back into the trunk.
