A part of the brain associated with emotional learning and fear shrinks in people with autism, research suggests.
Teenagers and young men with autism in the study who had the most severe social impairment were found to have smaller than normal amygdalae.
The researchers from the University of Wisconsin suggested the amygdalae may shrink due to chronic stress caused by social fear in childhood.
A group of scientists, including a University of Wisconsin-River Falls physics professor, is drilling deep into the polar ice to get a clearer view of space.
“The goal of the project is knowledge. We want to learn more about the universe,” said Jim Madsen, who recently returned from his second trip to the South Pole for the project, dubbed IceCube.
Originally called AMANDA â?? Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array â?? the first phase of the project was completed in 2000 and gave way to IceCube. The new title is a bit easier to grasp. It is in the ice and will encompass a cubic kilometer.
The names are the result of a bunch of science types getting together, said Madsen, a Racine native who got his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his doctorate at the Colorado School of Mines. It was in Madison that he first met IceCube director and UW-Madison physicist Francis Halzen.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the body that controls UW-Madisonâ??s lucrative stem cell technology patents, has decided to play nice. Criticized for its high licensing fees even to other universities, the nationâ??s leading stem cell technology producer will now offer lower fees for universities and other non-profit research organizations.
In a recent report that probably went unnoticed outside the academic world, the Association of University Technology Managers released figures that show why the rest of us should be very happy that Wisconsin is a hotbed for scientific research.
The numbers demonstrate that investment in research is not just about professors working in labs; itâ??s about creating jobs for the 21st century economy.
As state lawmakers move on legislation to provide incentives for using biofuels instead of gasoline, several University of Wisconsin professors said they are concerned corn-based ethanol may not be a practical large-scale fuel source.
A contract to manufacture DNA-based flu vaccine has been awarded to the Waisman Clinical BioManufacturing Facility at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center.
The vaccine will be tested first on animals, with human testing expected to begin early next year during the flu season, said Allen D. Allen, chief executive of CytoDyn of Santa Fe, N.M., which developed the vaccine.
A component of green tea combined with a low dose of a COX-2 inhibitor may act in concert to slow the spread of human prostate cancer.
In the journal Clinical Cancer Research, they report that low doses of the COX-2 inhibitor celecoxib (sold as Celebrex), given along with a green tea polyphenol slowed the growth of prostate cancer in cell cultures and in a mouse model of the disease.
“Celecoxib and green tea have a synergistic effect, each triggering cellular pathways, that, combined, are more powerful than either agent alone,” Dr. Hasan Mukhtar from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said in a statement.
Purdue University is about to become the first public university in the United States to sign a deal with a billionaire’s foundation that has been trying to provide $100-million endowments to universities to finance programs designed to kick-start commercialization of their inventions.
Several public and private universities have rejected the money from the Alfred E. Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering because of concerns that the foundation was seeking too much control over the universities’ intellectual-property rights (The Chronicle, March 17, 2006).
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine will conduct a clinical study looking at whether a patientâ??s own stem cells can be used to treat severe coronary artery disease, said a statement released Monday. The test is already going on at UW Hospital and Clinics, one of only 15-20 sites in the country to be participating in the study.
Two number theorists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison were flying above the clouds on their way to a conference in the summer of 2005, and halfway between Detroit and Manchester, N.H., a more than 80-year-old mathematical mystery unraveled.
When a basketball player struggles at the free-throw line, conventional wisdom provides an obvious solution â?? shoot extra free throws after practice every day.
But some organizations from high schools to the pro ranks â?? including the University of Wisconsin â?? are experimenting with a high-tech solution, showing the lengths some coaches go to get their players to hit a shot that can be frustratingly difficult for even the best.
68-year-old Steven Myrah could make the medical books if the procedure he underwent is successful. He was the first patient to undergo a new experimental surgery testing whether stem cells injected into weak areas of the heart can help blood vessels get stronger. Doctors mapped out his heart, found the weakened areas, and injected them with stem cells, or a placebo in some cases, to test whether they rejuvenate the tissue.
Trans fats have always been present in small amounts in animal products such as dairy and meats. However, large amounts of trans fats are now present in processed foods as a result of the addition of hydrogen to plant oils in a process called hydrogenation.
The MIT Club of Wisconsin, a state association for alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is honoring a UW-Madison influenza researcher and a bioscience spinoff company.
The researcher, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a UW virologist and professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine, has gained worldwide recognition for his research on how influenza viruses replicate and the genetic contributors to virulence.
Quintessence Biopharmaceuticals of Madison, a company that grew out of the research of UW chemistry and biochemistry professors Laura Kiessling and Ron Raines, is being honored in the small company category.
To retain minorities in science and engineering majors, culturally relevant ways to build self-confidence must be found and developed, according to preliminary results from a University of Wisconsin study.
The first-year results of the Sloan Project for Diversity in STEM Retention were presented as part of the “Wednesday Nite @ the Lab” series at the UW Biotechnology Center Wednesday. About 25 people attended the presentation of the three-year study.
Eleven of the universities that are the most active and successful in commercializing their inventions issued a series of suggestions last week for how institutions can best license their patents while serving the public good.
Among the suggestions: sue only when necessary; avoid licensing patents to companies that do not seriously commit to developing the inventions; be more stingy about exclusive licenses; and, particularly for inventions related to human health, find ways to carve out protections in licensing deals so that poor people and those in developing nations are not barred by patent rights from gaining affordable access to life-saving cures.
Cellectar, a Madison biotech company developing a shot-in-the-arm treatment for cancer, is about to take a big leap forward, thanks to a healthy wad of cash, a one-of-a-kind machine and a new, well-credentialed chief executive with big hopes and plans. Cellectar is a UW-Madison spinoff company.
Three computer whizzes from UW-Madison are headed to Tokyo this weekend to pit their brains – and endurance – against competitors from around the world.
They represent not only their own talent, but also what many hope is a resurgence of U.S. strength in the global computer science race.
Here’s one of Steve Myrah’s problems: He is such a huge fan of the University of Wisconsin basketball team that games, literally, are painful to watch, causing his angina to flare up and forcing him to pop nitroglycerin tablets to ease his chest pain.
Last week, he became the first heart patient in Wisconsin to enter a novel stem cell clinical trial using patients’ own cells to treat their heart disease.
Doctors at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics harvested adult stem cells from Myrah’s bone marrow so they could be injected into blood-deprived areas of his heart. The hope is that the cells will stimulate the formation of new blood vessels or the expansion of existing ones, restoring blood flow.
In a lab on the University of Wisconsin campus people are busy working on experiments. Looking around you would think it is a normal science lab for chemistry or physics class. But these people arenâ??t there because a grade depends on it. They are there because lives depend on the outcome of their research.
A report released Wednesday by the Association of American Medical Colleges was signed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundationâ??among other large research universitiesâ??to establish guidelines for institutionsâ?? technology licenses.
Wisconsin lawmakers must continue to provide state dollars for the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
The first grants for research at the interdisciplinary center show how promising the venture is and why it must be strongly supported.
Lawmakers wisely approved $50 million in state money last year to help build the first phase of the public-private Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
Wisconsin women, as a group, are still earning smaller paychecks than men, according to a new report. The report, issued by UW- Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy and the Wisconsin Women’s Council, was timed for release on International Women’s Day on Thursday.
Universities have plumbed a rich source of cash in recent years by aggressively patenting and licensing faculty inventions, but some schools now want to set limits on the practice. An elite group–11 top research institutions and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)–have signed a pledge to take a kinder, gentler approach to licensing intellectual property. Yesterday, they released principles on the sharing of patented discoveries, urging other universities to follow their lead.
Q: How do we know there’s no alternative universe with different dimensions?
Selma Anderson Grade 8 Sennett Middle School
A: “We don’t know that,” says UW-Madison physicist Gary Shiu. “There could be many (universes) and we happen to be living in one of them.”
George Corrigan doesn’t consider himself the activist type.
But the 46-year-old patent attorney has mounted a campaign to stop the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from selecting land in the town of Dunn for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility.
A legendary mathematical mystery, posed by the famous Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan on his deathbed in 1920, has been solved by two UW-Madison number theorists.
The problem had to do with the nature and functions of a set of strangely recurring numbers called “mock theta functions.”
The Wisconsin State Journal’s Feb. 25 editorial, “Respond to global warming,” wisely called for more state action to counter the growing challenge of climate change.
(MADISON) Despite legal, ethical and financial challenges to embryonic stem cell research, a patent official for the UW-Madison says it continues to hold medical potential.
A statewide poll by Wood Communications shows 69 percent of those surveyed support embryonic stem cell research. But there are obstacles: Carl Gulbrandsen, the managing director of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, points to what he calls the stateâ??s â??strong pro-life contingentâ? and federal restrictions on funding new stem cell lines. Both arise from concerns that discarded embryos from fertility clinics are destroyed during research. He says until scientists are able to reprogram adult stem cells, there are always going to be these ethical issues.
Dear Editor: I was disappointed by Rob Zaleski’s column on clean energy. The expert interviewed for the column, UW’s Jon Foley, dismisses nuclear power because it can’t provide more than 20 percent of our energy needs over the next few decades.
In an attempt to both inform and highlight research innovation, local business members and campus faculty gathered Friday for a stem cell symposium at the University of Wisconsin.
More hurricanes are striking the Atlantic Ocean, an historically low area of activity, according to a new study released by scientists from the University of Wisconsin and National Climate Data Center.
Q: Why do people in Wisconsin say “soda” while people in other parts of the country say “pop”?
A: Interestingly, this is the most frequent question put to staff at UW-Madison’s Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), says senior scientist Luanne von Schneidemesser.
A panel of Madison-area entrepreneurs shared their business experiences Wednesday in an effort to tap into the young minds of University of Wisconsin students and promote entrepreneurial awareness.
Itâ??s a stereotype. When the scientist finally isolates the protein and solves the age old conundrum, he yells â??Eureka!â? in a fit of joy. These days, however, that shout is immediately followed by a call to the lawyers.
U.S. elderly adults who continuously participate in community groups are often spared losses in psychological well-being.
Individuals who were ongoing members of religious organizations in particular showed higher levels of personal growth than those who were not, according to an article published in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.
Emily Greenfield and Nadine Marks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison used survey data to track changes in respondents’ physical, psychological and social functioning over a five-year period.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison saw its licensing income – done through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation – rise to $49.1 million in 2005 from $47.5 million in 2004, according to the latest annual report from the Association of University Technology Managers.
However, the UW dropped from third to fifth in the nation in licensing income.
Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, says a new study by psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.
A groundbreaking adult stem cell report contains “significantly flawed” data, and its conclusions are “potentially incorrect,” says a panel of scientists.
The increasing intensity of hurricanes hitting the U.S. is partly driven by global warming, and the ferocity of storms to come is likely to increase as surface temperatures of the ocean rise, says a noted scientist visiting UW-Madison.
“The effects of global warming do not only concern scientists,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Kerry Emanuel told an audience at a public lecture Thursday. “I want to put this issue into a societal context.”
IT can take years, sometimes decades, for the commercial applications of a scientific or intellectual breakthrough to become apparent â?? like the notion that brainless bacteria communicate through networks to cause diseases that can also wreak social or economic havoc. [. . .]
Quorum sensing has captured the interest of a new generation of scientific researchers. One of them is Helen E. Blackwell, an organic chemist and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She received her bachelorâ??s in chemistry in 1994, when quorum sensing was on the rise, and then earned a doctorate in organic chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and received a post-doctoral appointment at Harvard, but she did not hear of quorum sensing until she joined the faculty at Wisconsin in 2002.
It seems too simple to be true: Expose most of your body to about 15 minutes of sunlight a day during the summer and take large doses of inexpensive vitamin D pills during the winter and maybe, just maybe, you will substantially reduce the risk of getting various cancers, the flu, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune diseases and neurological disorders.
(MADISON) A campus research center, which wonâ??t open for another three years at UW-Madison, is laying the groundwork for what kind of studies might take place there.
The Institutes of Discovery is providing start-up money for different areas of research. One of them has to do with drugs used to treat hyperactivity in children. UW psychology professor Craig Berridge will lead a team looking at medications like Ritalin to examine why or how these drugs act to improve higher cognitive function, calm behavioral activity and reduce impulsivity. He says given that these drugs are prescribed by the millions annually in this country for both children and adults, very little is known about the biology behind those behavioral actions.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison awarded seed money to eight major research projects Wednesday as part of a program to build interest in its new research institutes.
The proposals will receive a total of $3 million to tackle problems including detecting disease, producing human embryonic stem cells and improving reading among black children.
The research projects, selected from a pool that originally included 220 ideas, are designed to illustrate the interdisciplinary approach embodied by the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
Researchers at UW-Madison are zeroing in on a protein that may hold some of the secrets to the devastating damage that Alzheimer’s disease can do to the human brain.
The protein is more commonly connected to an inherited mental retardation disorder known as fragile X syndrome. That disorder is caused by absence of the protein, called the fragile X mental retardation protein.
The eight winners of a campuswide competition for $3 million in seed grants for research offer an early look at the scope and range of the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery at UW-Madison.
UW-Madison official Marsha Mailick Seltzer said the Discovery Seed Grants show off the diversity of the future Institutes for Discovery, twin public- private centers for cutting-edge research that will span different academic disciplines.
MADISON, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin-Madison awarded seed money to eight major research projects Wednesday as part of a program to build interest in its new research institutes.
The proposals will receive a total of $3 million to tackle problems including detecting disease, producing human embryonic stem cells and improving reading among black children.
The research projects, selected from a pool that originally included 220 ideas, are designed to illustrate the interdisciplinary approach embodied by the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
The eight winners of a campus-wide competition for $3 million in Discovery Seed Grants offer an early look at the breadth and scope of the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery at UW-Madison.
“The seed grants are a wonderful way to begin the program of the institutes,” said Marsha Mailick Seltzer, interim director of the institutes’ public half, known as the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID), and director of the UW-Madison Waisman Center.
At least two dozen universities each earned more than $10-million from their licensing of rights to new drugs, software, and other inventions in the 2005 fiscal year, according to a survey released Tuesday night, while the number of institutions creating large numbers of spinoff companies based on their researchers’ inventions apparently dropped off sharply from the previous year.
The findings are drawn from a report on a survey conducted by the Association of University Technology Managers.
In a break from past years’ practice, however, the association did not release summary data for all colleges and universities that participated in the survey (there were 160 respondents for 2005). But it did provide selective information from the 151 institutions that agreed to have their name and responses published.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Too much zinc supplementation may not be a good thing for the urinary system of older adults, according to a new report.
The finding comes from a secondary analysis of a trial involving 3,640 adults between age 55 and 80 years of age with the retinal disease, macular degeneration. As treatment for their eye condition, the subjects were assigned to various treatments: daily antioxidant therapy with vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene; zinc, 80 milligrams daily; antioxidants and zinc in combination; or inactive ‘placebo’ supplements.
In the Journal of Urology, Dr. Aaron R. Johnson and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, report that there was a “significant increase in hospital admissions due to genitourinary causes in patients on zinc vs. non-zinc formulations (11.1 percent vs. 7.6 percent)” during the 6 years of the study.
Jon Foley was a sixth-grader in Bangor, Maine when the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.
Though he was just 11, Foley says he remembers how it was front-page news for days and how relieved everyone was when disaster was finally averted.
….Foley, director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, says he tends to believe nuclear experts when they say today’s nuclear plants are far safer than those built 30 years ago.
It’s been just over 50 years since I first laid eyes on – and fell in love with – Wisconsin.
After the dull ride through bleak Illinois, my college buddy, Marty, and I entered the green, rolling, exuberant countryside of Wisconsin in its late spring glory and thought we had suddenly entered paradise. The prosperous-looking farms with their gleaming white houses, bulging Holsteins, just-emerging corn and carpets of new alfalfa quickly erased the gloom of Illinois.
Even the University of Wisconsin was a sort of bucolic haven.
In the war for survival, it pays for males to choose their battles wisely, especially when food and females are involved. The poor guy who makes the mistake of picking a fight and losing is unlikely to attract many mates. For animals, the ability to determine one’s rank among competitors without direct contact reduces needless fighting and wasted energy. Now, Stanford scientists say fish are capable of deducing how they stack up against the competition by simply watching fellow tank-mates duke it out.
Nobody ever accused computer games of being too educational. The most that most players learn from hours in front of the gamepad is the best way to defeat a Strogg alien army or find the blue key that unlocks Level 17.
But professors at the UW are on the vanguard of research into the idea that computer game technology can be a powerful learning tool, one that could transform education as we know it.
Can a researcher who uses the scientific method to prove fossils can be billions of years old nevertheless believe that science is wrong and the Earth is only a few thousand years old?
And, if such a person could be found, should a reputable university award that person a graduate degree or hire him to teach science?
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers released information from a study that shows some promising links between activity and breast cancer risk.Researchers found a reduced risk of breast cancer in women who exercised vigorously for six or more hours each week.
A recent shortage in a widely used cancer treatment drug points to the importance of research going on at the UW-Madison Paul Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Dr. Dan Mulkerin is working on an oral form of chemotherapy. When you take it as a pill it gets converted in the body to the same drug used in the intravenous method.
The prospect of new nuclear power plants rising on the Wisconsin horizon sent sparks flying on the UW-Madison campus Friday.
UW engineering physics professor Michael Corradini irked many in the audience at Grainger Hall with his call for expanding nuclear energy, saying that concerns over safety and waste disposal have been overblown.
….”This is an industry that built two bombs that killed a lot of people and since then they have been trying to make something good out of it,” said Jim Pawley, a UW professor of zoology.
(MADISON) Researchers at the University of Wisconsin- Madison say theyâ??ve found a substance thatâ??s stiffer than a diamond. The compound doesnâ??t really have a name, but Roderic Lakes calls it â??extra liberalâ? because of its unique positive-negative balance.
Lakes is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering Physics and Biomedical Engineering. He and some colleagues recently published an article in Science Magazine describing the new compound, made of bariumtitanate and tin, which he says looks like tin with grains of sand in it.
This is just the kind of news I didn’t want to hear. A UW-Madison microbiologist warns that tomorrow’s cause of global warming might be dirt.
Yes, dirt.
At least, that’s the hypothesis of Teri Balser, an assistant professor of soil science.
