Category: Research

An internationally renowned veterinarian will come to Madison this spring to work hand in hand with University of Wisconsin students as the head of one of the state�s largest laboratories.

An international panel of scientists plans to release a report Friday on global climate change that will likely affect environmental policy worldwide.

Gov. Jim Doyle met with Democratic lawmakers Wednesday to push for expanded federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, an issue on which Congress and the White House appear headed for another standoff.

Count to three. Did you feel anything unusual? By the time you finished counting, more than 150 trillion tiny particles called neutrinos shot through your body at about the speed of light.

A group of scientists at the South Pole is tracking these tiny particles as they fly through ice. They are building a telescope called Ice Cube to find out what happens when a neutrino bumps into other particles in the ice.

As Congress renews debate about funding stem cell research using human embryos, people are thinking hard about what to do with excess embryos after their families are complete. Only they � not politicians, doctors or ethicists � are legally entitled to make the call.

Researchers at UW-Madison have found that silicon, the material used for years to make computer chips, may have healing properties for humans.
Because humans are carbon-based life forms, all medicines are also carbon-based.

As UW-Milwaukee embarks on several endeavors to boost its research university presence in Wisconsin, Chancellor Carlos Santiago announced his proposal to establish two more UWM campuses in the greater metropolitan area Friday.

A new relationship blossoming between the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and manufacturing giant Rockwell Automation could be a watershed in Chancellor Carlos Santiago’s efforts to expand research at UWM.

http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=5422
Most people who look at plants just see plants � ferns, perhaps, or perennials or weeds, or trees. When Dr. Mohammad Fayyaz looks at plants, the director of the UW botany department�s greenhouses and garden looks beyond species and sees opportunity.

He did not, for example, acquire a rare Wollemi pine seedling just for the educational uses ââ?¬â? although ââ?¬Å?it is a good specimen for teaching,ââ?¬Â he says, citing applications in courses ranging from plant geography to classification, morphology and anatomy.

Charles Roselli set out to discover what makes some sheep gay. Then the news media and the blogosphere got hold of the story.

Some of those breakthroughs are expected to happen in Madison. The president’s speech came just hours after Molly Jahn, dean of UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, said that UW-Madison is vying to become the home of a federally funded bioenergy research and development center through a $125 million grant.

MADISON, Wis. — President George W. Bush’s call for decreasing dependence on foreign oil has researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison talking about the future of biofuels in the state.

Gov. Jim Doyle said he thinks Bush’s speech on Tuesday is the symbolic opening of the door for Wisconsin to be at the forefront of energy production. Doyle said he wants Wisconsin to be at the forefront of becoming self-sufficient in producing its own energy.

Members of UW-Madison’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences gathered on Tuesday to talk about ethanol and the changes needed for the future.

Researchers are already looking at ways to make the production of ethanol, which is currently made from corn, more efficient. Researchers said they are now looking beyond the corn kernel for alternative energy sources.

Rockwell Automation’s chief executive flew halfway around the world this month to cut a ribbon at a technology lab at the University of Pune in India, where the Milwaukee-based company aims to train engineering students and hire them when they graduate.

Conspicuous by its absence in Rockwell’s global strategy, until now, has been the largest university in the company’s own hometown.

The industrial automation concern is preparing to announce this week a $1 million grant to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as a first step toward a technology research program tailored to bolster the region’s manufacturing industry, Rockwell and UWM officials said.

Engineering physics researchers at UW-Madison are devising a way to insulate tiny batteries, allowing them to squeeze as much electricity as possible from nuclear-powered batteries the size of a coarse grain of salt.
The tiny batteries, which generate electricity from the natural decay of radioactive isotopes, could provide virtually endless power for micro-technologies such as fly-sized robots for military applications or sensors that monitor a building’s health.

It may be easier for active people to stay slim after a few days of eating too much fat, a new study shows.

Given that eating lots of fat over short stretches likely leads to accumulation of excess body fat over time, Dr. Kent C. Hansen of the University of Wisconsin in Madison and his colleagues write, regular exercise may help people maintain a healthy weight even if they do indulge occasionally.

Madison, Wis. – The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a California consumer watchdog organization, says policy changes that ease licensing requirements on human embryonic stem cell patents held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation are a step in the right direction, but don’t go far enough to relinquish WARF’s claims on embryonic stem cells.

Music hooks deep into emotions and memories in ways that words do not. At the University of Wisconsin, scholar Craig Werner and Vietnam vet Doug Bradley have found that music is a highway into veterans’ memories of the war.

What stinks like a dead animal, sucks the water, nutrients and minerals out of plants, is about 3 feet wide and weighs nearly 16 pounds? The answer is not a fetid, parasitic extraterrestrial, but a group of plants in Southeast Asia known as Rafflesia.

And for the first time, after nearly two centuries of debate and research, scientists have figured out just where these plants belong in the broad “tree” of life.

The research, conducted by botanists and geneticists at Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin, Southern Illinois University and the Smithsonian Institution, was published in Jan. 12 issue of the journal Science.

MADISON, Wis. — Looking for a shiny glob of gold thread leftover from a university research experiment?

Apparently nobody else is either.

Thursday night’s deadline passed with nobody bidding on a ball of gold thread being auctioned off by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists.

It’s more than 12 troy ounces of 99.999 percent pure gold, and the school’s Space Science and Engineering Center said it wants $8,500 for it.

A $1 million alumni donation to the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology will advance research on children of preschool age and offer much-needed infant care on campus.

Elliot Lehman and his wife, Frances, made the donation. Lehman was a leader in providing a family-friendly environment at his former company, Fel-Pro, which made automotive gaskets.

The money will be used for adding a teaching and research preschool laboratory to the School of Human Ecology, housed on Linden Drive in a historic building that is being renovated and enlarged.

Scientists who recreated “Spanish flu” – the 1918 virus which killed up to 50m people – have witnessed its remarkable killing power first hand.

Let’s say that somewhere on the edge of the universe, a sun explodes.
It is next to impossible for most of us to conjure such a cataclysm, let alone think about the possibility of capturing cosmic debris from the ruined star.

Scientists who tested monkeys with the resurrected 1918 killer flu virus have a better idea of how the deadliest epidemic in history killed so many people: by overcharging the victims’ own immune systems. Those findings in a first-of-its-kind experiment also help explain why so many of the roughly 50 million who died in the flu pandemic were young and healthy. Scientists discovered the virus replicated quickly and unleashed an excessive immune system response in the macaques that destroyed the lungs in a matter of days. “Essentially people are drowned by themselves,” says University of Wisconsin researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka, lead author of the study in today’s Nature. Scientists say the results open a window into what could happen if the current bird flu in Asia changes into a highly lethal strain that spreads easily among people.

Scientists infected monkeys with a virus that caused the 1918-19 influenza pandemic and said in the Jan. 18 issue of the journal Nature that it caused an illness like that suffered by patients with the bird flu now spreading in Asia.

Infection with a reconstructed version of the 1918 virus, known as the Spanish flu, incited a deadly chemical reaction in the laboratory animals, a group of scientists said in the magazine.

Scientists who infected monkeys with a resurrected version of the 1918 Spanish flu virus reported Wednesday that the animals became mortally ill with symptoms similar to those reported among humans during that pandemic, which killed an estimated 50 million people nearly 90 years ago.

MADISON ââ?¬â?? A new drug created by UW-Madison scientists in collaboration with Colby Pharmaceuticals may pave they way to successful prevention and treatment of prostate cancer. With a current lack of investment support for menââ?¬â?¢s health research, however, getting the drug to the critical clinical-trial phases remains a challenge.

Last month, Colby Pharmaceuticals wowed a panel of venture capitalists and angel investors at the Wisconsin Early Stage Symposium, earning a crown as one of the four winners of the ââ?¬Å?Elevator Pitch Olympics.ââ?¬Â For Colby’s breakthrough drug, called MDL, and three other drugs active against prostate cancer in the pipeline, this meant far more than simply a trophy or plaque.

A rare plant whose ancestors lived when dinosaurs did has taken up residence in the University of Wisconsin-Madison botany greenhouses.

The Wollemi pine was presumed extinct until a “bushwalker” named David Noble discovered it in an Australian national park in 1994. As part of a worldwide effort to conserve and propagate the tree species – one of the oldest and rarest on earth – UW greenhouse director Mo Fayyaz recently purchased a foot-tall Wollemi pine seedling, one of a limited number that just became available in the United States through National Geographic.

The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to end a ban on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. But the vote fell 37 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to overturn President Bushs promised veto.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison study meditation classes like those at the Zen Center. And while the complex workings of the brain remain a mystery, technology now allows for brain scans that show surprising differences after just weeks of meditation.

The U.S. House of Representatives reapproved a bill on Thursday to expand federal spending for research on human embryonic stem cells, but not by a large enough margin to overturn an expected veto by President Bush.

The president vetoed an identical measure last year and vowed this week to do so again. But Democratic leaders viewed Thursday’s move as a way to ratchet up pressure on Mr. Bush to reverse himself, or at least compromise, to accelerate a form of research that many Americans and universities support.

As expected, a large majority in the House of Representatives voted Thursday to lift restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. But with President Bush promising to veto the measure as he did last year, and with House leaders acknowledging that they lack the votesto override such a veto, the national outlook for the research remains unsettled.

MADISON, Wis. — Local researchers said they were encouraged Thursday by a vote in Congress on a bill that would increase federal funding for stem cell research.

The bill was passed by lawmakers in the House of Representatives, but the vote of 253-174 was not enough to override the president’s promised veto.

The bill was No. 3 on the Democrats’ priority list once they took control of Congress. The vote was closely watched by researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where stem cell research is a crown jewel.