Category: Research

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.

To UW-Madison stem-cell scientist Clive Svendsen, a bill the U.S. House of Representative is set to vote on today would allow him to study more diseases.
To Beth Donley, the bill to lift restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research would reduce expenses at her new stem-cell company in Madison.

To James Thomson, the bill would mean the country has gotten over the ethical quandary he ignited when he first isolated the cells here nine years ago.

Congress and the White House begin a political science experiment today as the House prepares to vote on whether to override President Bush’s restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research.

In the House, voting will proceed on the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, which is identical to the one that was passed in the House and Senate last year and then vetoed by the president. A Senate version of the bipartisan bill should come up for a vote after committee consideration in coming weeks, says Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a bill sponsor.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have made ultrathin silicon transistors that operate more than 50 times faster than previous flexible-silicon devices. The advance could help make possible flexible high-end electronics that would be useful in a variety of applications, from computers to communication.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science this week awarded 95 million hours of processing time on its top computers to 45 projects.

Of those, 75 million hours will be performed at Oak Ridge’s National Center for Computational Sciences, more than four times as much work as last year thanks to increasing computer capability there.

A University of Wisconsin study will try to plot the impact of greenhouse gases over the past 21,000 years.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said yesterday that UW-Milwaukee needs to be ââ?¬Å?unshackledââ?¬Â from constraints on the programs it offers if it is to realize its full potential. Speaking at a noon luncheon sponsored by the Wisconsin Innovation Network, Wiley said successive legislatures, boards of regents and generations of assistant administrators have been ââ?¬Å?terrifiedââ?¬Â of someone pointing out possible duplication between the universities, leading to a situation where Milwaukee ââ?¬Å?has been forced to give odd names to some of its programs and blanket names to its PhD programs.ââ?¬Â

Wiley pointed out that even though Milwaukee has a wide array of undergraduate engineering programs, a PhD in any of those areas is simply called ââ?¬Å?engineering,ââ?¬Â while a PhD in philosophy is called ââ?¬Å?urban studies.ââ?¬Â

(MILWAUKEE) The chancellors of the two biggest universities in Wisconsin say their schools practice academic cooperation, not competition, and they say that benefits the whole state.

The 41,000 students at UW-Madison and the 28,000 students at UW-Milwaukee may argue over things like men�s basketball, but at a Milwaukee forum, the press offices of the two universities listed more than a half-dozen programs in which the two schools cooperate. The topics include small engines, nanotechnology and Latin American studies.

Praying in online support groups can help breast cancer patients obtain mental health benefits, according to a study by the Center of Excellence in Cancer Communications Research at UW-Madison.

Praying online in a support group may help women with breast cancer cope with the disease more effectively, a new study shows.

Dr. Bret Shaw of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues found that breast cancer patients who used a higher percentage of religion-related words in their communications with an Internet support group had lower levels of negative emotions, better functional well-being, and more confidence in their ability to deal with their illness.

UW Researchers say the discovery of stem cells in amniotic fluid, should not impact embryonic stem cell research.

Scientists at Wake Forest and Harvard Universities released a report claiming stem cells taken from the womb of pregnant women can become many different tissue types, for the liver, heart, bone and even brain.

A type of cell that floats freely in the amniotic fluid of pregnant women has been found to have many of the same traits as embryonic stem cells, including an ability to grow into brain, muscle and other tissues that could be used to treat a variety of diseases, scientists reported yesterday.

Letting the river run can help run up property values, a study recently released by the River Alliance of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison reveals.

Minnesota has stumbled badly in the race among states for academic research and development dollars, according to a new study by University of Minnesota economists.

Once above average, Minnesota now ranks 43rd in the money it spends on academic research compared to the size of its economy, and the university’s research spending has grown the slowest among its peers. Much of the ground has been lost over the last 15 years.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Pennsylvania State University have come up with a clever way of potentially decreasing the contamination of invasive species and other aquatic critters that latch onto boats in the Great Lakes and beyond.

A study suggests that preschoolers who bottle-feed for several years are more likely to develop weight problems. The study, led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher, also indicates that obese mothers are likely to raise heavy kids.

Researchers sought to find out what role income and ethnic background play in making preschoolers overweight. Rachel Tolbert-Kimbro from the UW-Madison Department of Population Health Sciences led the study. It examined the habits of three-year olds from urban, low-income families around the nation. She says the study found very high levels of television watching across all the groups, so didn�t see a lot of ethnic differences in television watching.

Does prayer benefit cancer patients?

A new study says it does. Breast cancer patients who pray in online support groups can get mental health benefits, according to the study.

“We know that many cancer patients pray in online support groups to help them cope with their illness. This is the first study we are aware of that examines the psychological effects of this behavior,” said Bret Shaw, an associate scientist in UW-Madison’s College of Engineering and lead author of the study.

More than a third of disadvantaged 3-year-olds in Chicago and other major U.S. cities are overweight or obese, according to a new study that supports the notion that the struggle with obesity often begins in early childhood.

Hispanic children from low-income families were most at risk, with 44 percent either overweight or obese, compared with 32 percent for white and African-American children from similar households.

The study’s authors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison also identified several practices that may protect kids from excessive weight gain, including breast-feeding for at least six months and not allowing children to take a bottle to bed.

Madison, Wis. – To find out whether radio frequency identification can improve the speed and accuracy of the blood banking process, the RFID Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is partnering with three blood banks and multiple vendor partners on what is being called an “end-to-end” research project.