Category: Research

Clark Johnson will be spending the next several years of his career as a UW-Madison geologist doing something he never really dreamed of doing — looking for extraterrestrial life.

James Thomson’s breakthrough in growing human embryonic stem cells in 1998 is worthy of the patents he received because no researchers had done what he did, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation said Thursday, in response to the federal government’s preliminary rejection in March of three patents.

What is the best place to study the Earth’s climate? The Moon, according to one US researcher.

Shoapeng Huang, at the University of Wisconsin, has got hold of temperature records taken by instruments that were left on the Moon’s surface in 1971 by the Apollo 15 mission.

Madison, Wis. – Claiming that patents and publications used to uphold a challenge to its stem cell patents are irrelevant to the isolation and proliferation of human embryonic stem cells, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has filed a response refuting an initial determination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Those observations on relevancy, made by Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of WARF, were supported by Dr. Colin Stewart, a stem cell researcher at the Institute of Medical Biology in Singapore.

With its patents on the stem cell work of University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Thomson preliminarily rejected, the foundation that helps shepherd the school’s research discoveries to market fired back Thursday, saying the rejection was wrong on multiple counts.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison said Thursday that it has been awarded a $6.5 million grant from NASA to join a collaboration studying the origins and evidence of life on Earth.

With the National Aeronautics and Space Administration funds, Wisconsin researchers will become part of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute. The Institute focuses on the hunt for extraterrestrial life and early life on Earth by developing techniques and instruments to read the chemical signatures living organisms leave in rocks and minerals.

Wisconsin is leading the way in the cutting-edge science, WISC-TV reported. A 7-year-old University of Wisconsin Veterinary School and state Agriculture Department course is now teaching high-level animal health experts, public and private, how to test for VHS.Experts said that it’s important to collect a good tissue sample from some tiny fish organs.”Because of where the virus likes to live, they prefer that we get those organs because it’s more likely that they’ll be able to isolate virus from it,” said Patricia Fox, who works for veterinary services for the USDA in Madison.UW veterinarian Michael Maroney and Indiana Board of Animal Health veterinarian Jennifer Strasser said that VHS testing is easier said than done. But they said that learning the correct process is crucial, saying they need all the tools they can muster to battle their biggest fish threat ever.

Daryl Buss, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, weighs in with a letter to the editor on the proposed National Agro- and Biodefense Facility.

Sigh. We hate to see missed opportunities and Wisconsin looks like it might miss out on a good one.

The state and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are making a pitch to have a high security national agro- and bio-defense lab just southeast of Madison, but the bid is being undercut by local opposition.

Town of Dunn residents are opposing the $450 million project out of safety concerns and worries that it won’t fit in with the quiet and rural character of their town.

They’ve started a letter writing campaign, convinced the Dane County Board and town board to oppose it and even have an opposition sampler on the town’s web site soliciting petitions and offering yard signs.

Think again when you have your allergic sneezes this year. Think about more than medicine and youâ??ll please Gregg Mitman.

He wants you to think about the environment you inhabit and how what weâ??ve built has made you sick. In his book â??Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapesâ? published this month by Yale University Press, Mitman explores the ecology of allergies, in other words, what humans have done to harm themselves.

Madison, Wis. – In retail terms, a â??loss leaderâ? is merchandise sold below cost in order to increase store traffic and sales of other items on the shelves. A store owner might lose a few bucks selling one heavily discounted gadget, but make up for it handsomely through other sales.

Madison, Wis. – The coordination of the companion disciplines of stem cell research and regenerative medicine will be the focus of a new interdisciplinary center being established at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but it is also being developed with the biotechnology industry in mind.

Wisconsin is in the running to land the nations new high-security lab that will study foot-and-mouth disease, bird flu and other deadly animal illnesses.

The $450 million lab is projected to employ at least 300 people and generate more short-term jobs to build it. The National Bio- and Agro-Defense Lab would dovetail with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s expertise in animal and human health studies and help serve the states agricultural industry, supporters say.

But there’s a snag with the labs proposed location.

Madison, Wis. – Ian Wilmut doesn’t shy away from the term â??cloning,â? even with the controversial ethical connotations that come with it, but he believes in time the technique he developed to create Dolly the sheep will gain more public acceptance in the development of human therapies, just as human embryonic stem research has.

Madison, Wis. – The coordination of the companion disciplines of stem cell research and regenerative medicine will be the focus of a new interdisciplinary center being established at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but it is also being developed with the biotechnology industry in mind.

The center initially will operate in â??virtualâ? space, and will serve as a central entity under which the UW-Madison campus can strengthen its stem cell research, training, and education programs.

Thursday would be the 10th Birthday for the cloned sheep known as Dolly.

Ian Wilmut was the scientist who created the cloned sheep 10 years ago.

He spent the anniversary in Madison to talk about the stem cell and regenerative medicine center being built back in Edinburgh, Scotland – where he is from.

He says stem cell research has come a long way since the inception of Dolly, – he says there’s still a long way to go but he thinks the end results will be great.

The birth of the cloned sheep Dolly rocked the scientific and ethical worlds 10 years ago by showing that cloning was possible.

But her biggest legacy may be that the controversial process of using cloning to try to produce customized stem cells for patients could become obsolete, according to the scientist who created her.

The path to diabetes and heart disease may begin in infancy for children in poor urban households, according to a nationwide study released this year that suggests as many as one-third of 3-year-olds in low-income families may be overweight or obese.

The study found the problem is even more pronounced in Hispanic households.

Researchers looked at several factors, such as television viewing hours, breast feeding and weight of the mother, and couldn’t explain why Hispanic children are more at risk, said Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research Into Poverty.

Ian Wilmut, the Scottish biologist who created Dolly the cloned sheep, will give a public lecture at 7 p.m., Thursday at the Overture Center.
“Cloning in the 10 Years Since Dolly” will explore the science of somatic cell nuclear transfer, or cloning, and its potential for biomedical research.

Intensive meditation training does more than foster inner peace and relaxation. Mental practice of this type boosts control over attention and expands a person’s ability to notice rapidly presented items, at least during a laboratory test.

The new results demonstrate that mental resources devoted to attention can be amplified through mental training, say psychologist Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison and his colleagues

MADISON, Wis. – A Madison stem cell company developing ways to screen drugs for side effects will receive $1 million in a grant and a loan from the state to help get started, Gov. Jim Doyle said Monday.

Stemina Biomarker Discovery, Inc., is trying to commercialize discoveries made by University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher Gabriela Cezar, the companyâ??s co-founder and chief scientific officer.

The company is trying to build a library of biomarkers to help companies screen drugs and drug candidates for potentially toxic side effects. Biomarkers are the signals that stem cells give off when exposed to a certain drug or disease.

For all the hype and hope surrounding stem cell research, most of the companies trying to develop treatments from these powerful cells live in a place Governor Deval Patrick this week called the “valley of death.” It is a harsh place where neither the federal government nor private investors provide much support and small firms with limited funding struggle to figure out how to harness stem cells’ extraordinary power.

Do you have trouble getting a good night’s sleep? University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are working on a gadget that can help you.

Dr. Giulio Tononi, professor of psychiatry at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health is working on a device that uses transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to stimulate the slow brain waves characteristic of deep sleep.

TMS sends a harmless magnetic pulse through your skull to alter brain activity. In experiments, sleeping volunteers immediately began reproducing the slow, deep waves seen in Stage Three and Stage Four sleep.

MADISON, Wis. — Radio frequency identification, or RFID, is a new technology that might revolutionize the way businesses and even governments track objects.

And while experts say RFID holds tremendous positive benefits for both industry and consumers, questions remain about how invasive this technology could be for people.

RFID technology uses radio waves along with microchips and antennas called tags to give an object a unique number, similar to the idea of a Social Security number for items. Receiving devices called readers then remotely track the object from a distance and download information about it, WISC-TV reported.

Meditation may train the brain to pay close attention, a new study shows.

The study comes from researchers including Richard Davidson, PhD, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

For decades Massachusetts has been fertile ground for the life sciences. Our unique concentration of extraordinary universities, teaching hospitals, research facilities, venture capital, and talent, spurred by a tradition of entrepreneurialism, provides a strong foundation for the growth in the biotech industry. These strengths have brought thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in life science investments to Massachusetts.

In meditation, people sit quietly and concentrate on their breath. As air swooshes in and out of their nostrils, they attend to each sensation. As unbidden thoughts flutter to mind, they let them go. Breathe. Let go. Breathe. Let go.

According to a study published today in the online edition of the journal PloS Biology, three months of rigorous training in this kind of meditation leads to a profound shift in how the brain allocates attention.

It appears that the ability to release thoughts that pop into mind frees the brain to attend to more rapidly changing things and events in the world at large, said the studyâ??s lead author, Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Expert meditators, he said, are better than other people at detecting such fast-changing stimuli, like emotional facial expressions.

(UNDATED) Alternative medicine is not as widely used in the United States as it is in other parts of the world. But a vexing medical problem for diabetics is prompting a Wisconsin medical researcher to put an ancient remedy to the test.

Diabetics can get foot that donâ??t heal. This can lead to amputation. The best way to prevent this hasnâ??t been found; doctors have tried everything from gel therapy to maggots.

UW Health Assistant Professor of Family Medicine Jennifer Eddy works at a clinic in Eau Claire. She wants to try something different. She says thereâ??s a broad range of options and thatâ??s usually a sign in medicine that nothing has been clearly shown to be more effective than anything else. (Third item.)

A child’s first word is a special moment, their eyes widening in curiosity, one chubby finger pointing to an object in sudden recognition as “juice” or “train.” Forever written in baby books and memories, that first word is a triumph, their induction into the speaking world.

But it is what precedes that moment, the processes leading to language comprehension, that most interests the Waisman Center Infant Learning Lab.

“Our research provides us with a way to actually try to understand and study something that appears almost magical,” said Professor Jenny Saffran, who runs the Infant Learning Lab.

A dozen states including Wisconsin are competing intensely to play host to a government lab full of killer germs like anthrax, avian flu and foot-and-mouth disease – a prospect some of their residents want to avoid like the plague.

Spreading honey on a diabetic ulcer could prevent the need to amputate an infected foot, researchers say.

A doctor at the University of Wisconsin who helped about half a dozen of her diabetic patients avoid amputation has launched a controlled trial to promote the widespread use of honey therapy.

The therapy involves squeezing a thick layer of honey onto the wound after dead skin and bacteria have been removed.