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.
TomoTherapy – the Madison medical equipment company that began selling its stock publicly earlier this month – has opened a training center at its Far West Side headquarters and is about to open a one in Europe.
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.
The inaugural Tong Biomedical Engineering Design Award competition for students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison yielded devices designed for the use of radiologists, audiologists and those treating sports-related injuries.
All of the devices were designed by UW-Madison biomedical engineering students. The competition earlier this month at UW-Madison involved nearly 150 biomedical engineering students. First-place awards were given to teams from the sophomore, junior and senior classes.
The job was launched at UW-Madison in 1963. And it’s still not finished. Heck, even Rome was built quicker.
Initially projected to be completed by 1976, the editors of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) are in their 44th year of continuous work.
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.
Mary Troestler is excited and proud to be working with stem cells at Madison Area Technical College.
….MATC’s 20-year-old biotechnology program recently received human embryonic stem cells from WiCell through an agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation so students can learn lab techniques relating to the culture of stem cells.
A new corporate emphasis on a “triple bottom line” is leading to new and varied jobs for University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates, a trend that is expected to grow rapidly.
“The traditional bottom line is that a company has to perform well financially, but now that company has to have a good environmental performance and a good social responsibility record as well,” said Dan Anderson, a professor in the UW School of Business who also teaches at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
Q: Why do some people become addicted to drugs and/or alcohol?
A: Addiction is basically a learning process, which takes repetition and time, says John Curtin, director of the UW-Madison addiction research lab.
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.
UW-Madison may be known worldwide for stem-cell research, but the campus has lacked an organized way to get its stem-cell scientists to share lab equipment, train new researchers, educate the public and garner federal grants, campus authorities say.
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.
Dear Editor: In his May 12 letter to the editor, Dr. James W. Tracy asserts that Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka has not worked with “live, infectious” 1918 Spanish flu virus on the Madison campus.
….In the spirit of transparency, the university should make available on its Web site all research protocols involving deadly airborne agents and explain the methods being used to contain them and safeguard the public’s health.
The ability to pay attention may not have a fixed capacity, as many people believe, says a UW-Madison study suggesting that meditation can improve people’s knack for focusing their minds.
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.
A Madison stem cell start-up company will get a $1 million boost from the state, Gov. Jim Doyle announced this morning.
Top University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Gabriela Cezar co-founded Stemina Biomarker Discovery Inc. in November with Beth Donley, the former executive director of WiCell, the stem cell subsidiary of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
With the aid of two WARF stem cell patents, the company is developing ways to help drug manufacturers screen drugs for toxicity. The aim is to save millions of dollars in drug development costs by developing a library of biomarkers that discover toxins in the early stages of pharmaceutical development.
Steve Carpenter, a UW-Madison limnologist, said people should keep in mind the history of the lakes and understand that improvements are likely to take a long time, even with measures such as the phosphorus bans. Some people would find it hard to believe, he said, that all direct sources of lake pollution, including human waste, were not eliminated until the 1970s. In fact, Carpenter said, the lakes are much cleaner than they were in the 1950s when they were the repository for raw human sewage.
Quoted: Dick Cates, director of UW-Madison’s Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers, a program in the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems.
Stemina Biomarker Discovery Inc. will receive $1 million in loans and grants from the state, Gov. Jim Doyle will announce today.
The Madison company was founded in November by a former top executive at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s patenting arm and a high-profile UW scientist. It is the third company started in the state that uses embryonic stem cells.
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.
Investors warmly welcomed TomoTherapy’s entrance onto Wall Street on Wednesday.
Shares of the Madison medical equipment manufacturer opened at $24 on the Nasdaq market under the symbol TTPY. That was 26 percent higher than the initial public offering price of $19 a share, which was already up from the estimated $15 to $17 price range when the registration was filed in February.
Q: If we think the continents were, at some point, all connected, how did they separate?
Abbie Stroup
Grade 7
Sennett Middle School
A: “The answer is rooted in the fact that our planet is a living’ planet, which is still cooling,” said Laurel Goodwin, professor of geology at UW-Madison. She describes the Earth as a series of shells, like a peanut M&M. “The candy shell is the crust, on which we live. The chocolate beneath is the mantle, and the peanut is the core — just imagine that the outer part of the peanut is molten.”
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.
While meditation used to be for only devout Buddhists, it may be useful for everyday students, according to a recent study by UW- Madison professors and scientists. Released just in time for finals, the study indicates a link between meditation and the ability to focus attention in other aspects of life.
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.
Quoted: Timothy Kamp, a stem cell researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Memo to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security:
As you consider where to build a $400-million federal laboratory to conduct research to fight animal and human diseases, you should be aware of the public support for putting the lab in Dane County.
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.
Duct tape patched on windows keeps out water and mold. Clear plastic sealed over an air vent provides more insulation.
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara face a minefield of physical, financial and political barriers as they work to understand how stem cells from embryos can be used to fight disease. In this lab badly in need of upgrades, they focus on turning stem cells into a cavalry of replacement cells that can battle the eye disease of macular degeneration. Elsewhere on a campus striving to establish itself as a research nexus, scientists use stem cells from embryos, brains and even testicles in research linked to everything from Parkinson’s disease to alcoholism.
Richard J. Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, has been looking at patterns of brain activity associated with emotional regulation in a small group of older people who have participated in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. In a paper published last year, the Wisconsin team reported that older adults (the average age was 64) who regulated their emotions well showed a distinctly different pattern of brain activity than those who didnâ??t. These people apparently used their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that exerts â??executive controlâ? over certain brain functions, to tamp down activity in the amygdala, a small region deep in the brain that processes emotional content, especially fear and anxiety. In people who are poor regulators of emotion, activity in the amygdala is higher, and daily measurements of the stress hormone cortisol follow a pattern that has been associated with poor health outcomes.
Boston, Mass. – At last year’s Biotechnology Industry Organization convention in Chicago, it wasn’t intimidating for Wisconsin to be strutting its high-tech stuff. While Chicago is a business leader in almost every sense of the word, it’s not well known for its biotech. Pharmaceutical companies, yes; biotech firms, not really.
The California-based group challenging the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s stem cell patents wants WARF managing director Carl Gulbrandsen to step down from a U.S. Patent Public Advisory Committee until the case is settled.
Gulbrandsen was appointed in 2005 as one of 12 members of the committee, which advises the patent office on matters of administration, policy and budget. Another 12-member panel advises the government on trademark issues.
A pioneering UW researcher whose work has led to insights into a host of diseases, and a UW geneticist who has authored two books on animal evolution, have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Laura Kiessling, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Sean Carroll, professor of molecular biology and genetics, are among 72 new inductees to the prestigious academy.
Dalai Lama good, mad cow disease bad.
In a nutshell, that’s the way Dunn Town Chairman Ed Minihan described his day on Thursday, welcoming the Tibetan spiritual and political leader to the Deer Park Buddhist Center before following the Dane County Board’s vote against locating a $400 million national biological and agricultural defense facility at the University of Wisconsin’s Kegonsa Research Facility.
MADISON, Wis. — In what could be a blow to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s effort to land a high-security national animal disease research lab, the Dane County Board on Thursday night debated a resolution opposing the university’s proposed 40-acre lab site in the Town of Dunn.
Earlier this week, the federal Department of Homeland Security was greeted by a handful of protesters as it toured the site. It’s one of 18 sites vying for the Bio and Agro Defense Facility.
The Town of Dunn is against the proposal, saying it flies in the face of its land-use farm preservation plan, WISC-TV reported. County board officials agree, and they criticized the university for relying on only one site.
An electrical device that zaps the brain to induce deep sleep may some day give a whole new meaning to the term “power nap.”
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered they can artificially stimulate the production of slow brain waves that characterize the deepest form of sleep.
For the study, the researchers used a transcranial magnetic stimulation device on a group of sleeping volunteers. When placed on top of the head, the instrument sends a painless and apparently harmless magnetic signal through the skull and into the brain.
Gas prices shot up another dime today at stations on University Avenue, now hitting $3.15 a gallon for regular. But, just a little further up the road, the University of Wisconsin thinks it just might have the answer to lower prices.
“It may save us money, it may stabilize prices, and it certainly may reduce the risk,” said Molly Jahn, dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
Cow waste, soybeans, prairie grasses, or corn might hold the answer to new fuel sources. The UW is one of a handful of universities being considered for a national $125 million grant over five years to study the development of these fuels made from BioMass. The U.S. Dept. of Energy will make a final decision this summer.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision could make it more difficult for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to defend existing stem cell patents that are now being challenged by two national groups and patent experts.
A United States Supreme Court decision Monday may have a negative impact on a pending case against three of the University of Wisconsinâ??s embryonic stem cell patents.
Itâ??s a bright Monday morning in the town of Dunn, warm but windy. The sun shimmers on the surface of Lake Kegonsa in the distance and on the hoods of a stream of cars being parked along the shoulder of Schneider Road.
Quoted: Neil Binkley, a co-director of the University of Wisconsin Osteoporosis Clinical Center in Madison.
Madison, Wis. – Has the United States Supreme Court strengthened the case against stem cell patents held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation?
The answer is yes, according to the California consumer watchdog organization that is challenging the patents, but that’s not necessarily a consensus opinion.
When BIO 2006 was held in Chicago last April, it was no great surprise that Wisconsinâ??s commercial and academic biotech community wanted to have a major presence at the international conference. It was, in a global sense, just down the road.
And while there will be some drop in attendance at this year’s BIO gathering in Boston, the Badger State again will be putting on a good show, officials say. The conference starts Sunday and will run through Thursday.
Last year, Wisconsin spent more than $270,000 — triple its investment from the 2005 conference in Philadelphia — to tout its research and business prowess. This time around, the total budget is around $250,000, officials said. But the state did not have the cost of a building a new pavilion this year.
Madison, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has been called the â??father of stem cell researchâ? has reportedly agreed to operate a research lab as an adjunct professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
The Santa Barbara Independent is reporting that Thomson, who remains a tenured faculty member at UW-Madison, will be in Santa Barbara about one month out of the year and lead an interdisciplinary team of four postdoctoral researchers.
Jamie Thomson, the reputed â??father of stem-cell research,â? will soon be operating a research lab in Santa Barbara as an adjunct professor at UCSB. Thomson will be in Santa Barbara about one month per year, leading an interdisciplinary team of about four postdoctoral researchers. The bulk of his work will remain centered at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he remains a tenured senior faculty member.
A Supreme Court ruling this week could make it more difficult for a Wisconsin foundation to defend key embryonic stem cell patents against challenges by two groups, some patent experts and representatives of those groups said Tuesday.
The groups have argued that three fundamental patents the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation holds are based on research that would have been obvious to anyone familiar with literature in the field. University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist James Thomson in 1998 was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells.
A good night’s sleep may be as simple as flipping a switch, say scientists.
By sending magnetic pulses through the skulls of sleeping volunteers, US researchers were able to stimulate the slow brain waves seen in deep sleep.
Such a machine-generated “power nap” could one day be an insomnia treatment, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study suggests.
Dear Editor: I recently learned about the University of Wisconsin’s plan to commit $11.4 million to building a laboratory for Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a UW faculty member and one of the world’s leading viral researchers. Dr. Kawaoka intends to study the 1918 Spanish flu, which essentially was extinct before he and his colleagues revived it, and the Ebola virus, in his new state-of-the-art facility.
Perusing the minutes of the 2005 UW Biosafety Committee meetings, in which Dr. Kawaoka was granted approval to study these two deadly diseases in his current lab, I see that the committee expressed substantial safety concerns.
