Madison, Wis. – The first segment of a national and international pipeline to Wisconsin might have been put in place with the announcement that CellCura, Inc., a Norwegian biotechnology and stem cell research company, will be opening a location in Madison’s University Research Park.
Eliminating earmakrs could cost Wisconsin several projects, from $4.7 million for Rayovac of Madison to explore battery technology for the military, to $2.4 million for improvements to the Rice Lake Airport, to $260,000 for UW-Madison research on livestock grazing.
Jon Odorico: Surgeon moves stem-cell research forward
For all the noisy controversy over the use of human embryonic stem cells, it is very quiet in the places where the real work on the promising cells continues to occur – in the laboratory, for example, of transplant surgeon Jon Odorico.
Odorico is one of a legion of scientists on the UW-Madison campus working to understand and grow stem cells that might one day be used to treat human illnesses.
Wisconsin without evergreen trees? It could happen during the next 100 years because of global warming.
“We have worked on forest change modeling that uses climate input from global climate models that predict changes of climate in the future,” said David Mladenoff, a professor of forest ecology at the UW-Madison.
In a new finding, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have documented changes in the brain’s emotional center that may explain the social impairment seen in children with autism.
Far too many kids are fat by preschool, and Hispanic youngsters are most at risk, says new research that’s among the first to focus on children growing up in poverty.
The study couldn’t explain the disparity: White, black and Hispanic youngsters alike watched a lot of TV, and researchers spotted no other huge differences between the families.
But one important predictor of a pudgy preschooler was whether the child was still using a bottle at the stunning age of 3, concluded the study being published online Thursday by the American Journal of Public Health.
“These children are already disadvantaged because their families are poor, and by age 3 they are on track for a lifetime of health problems related to obesity,” said lead researcher Rachel Kimbro of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Q: Can drinking lots of caffeine actually speed up your metabolism and make you lose weight?
A: Caffeine can have modest benefits for weight loss, explains Dale Schoeller, a UW-Madison professor of nutritional sciences. Clinical trials have demonstrated that caffeine helped dieters lose a few more pounds than the control group.
Researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin have won a $1.45 million grant to expand a study of risk factors for carpal tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow and shoulder tendinitis.
Q: What is the softest sound humans can hear?
A: That depends on our age and on the frequency, or pitch, of the sound, says Kimberly Smuda, director of the Audiology Clinic in UW-Madison’s department of communicative disorders.
An oft-heard complaint about the University of Wisconsin-Madison, justified or otherwise, is that its academic and research fruit falls close to the tree. It has world-class scientists and well-developed mechanisms for turning their best ideas into products or services, but most of that commercialization takes place within a half-hour drive from campus.
A Norwegian stem cell company will open a Madison location, Gov. Jim Doyle announced today.
After conducting an extensive international search, CellCura Inc. chose Madison for its overall quality of life, access to world class stem cell scientists at UW-Madison, and its proximity to WiCell, according to a press release from Doyle’s office.
Not that flags can flutter on the airless surface of the moon, but if they could, the international lunar base camp on NASA’s drawing boards would be a prime spot to hoist Wisconsin’s colors. Cites UW-Madison technology advances. A column by Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council.
It seems almost too good to be true. A study shows a popular weight-loss supplement can actually help people burn off fat — even during the holiday season when they tend to eat more and exercise less.
For the study, the researchers at the University of Guelph and the University of Wisconsin-Madison recruited 40 overweight, but otherwise healthy volunteers.
Conflicts inside and outside the workplace aren’t new, but there is an effort in Madison to use forgiveness to build harmony in the business environment.
Madison’s International Forgiveness Institute, a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1994, was established as an outgrowth of the social science research done at UW-Madison by Robert Enright and his colleagues.
Mentiosn that pioneering research on vitamin D was done in the 1920s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation holds patents on uses for vitamin D in treating kidney disease and osteoporosis, and UW researchers are working with vitamin D to develop treatments for cancer and psoriasis, said Andy Cohn, a spokesman for the foundation.
LOS ANGELES — Two years after California voters passed a landmark $3 billion bond measure for stem cell research, not a single bond has been sold and not a penny of bond money has been spent. The fund is caught up in court challenges.But remarkably, the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap with almost unprecedented contributions to state government.
HOUSTON ââ?¬â? Since the 1970s, women have surged into science and engineering classes in larger and larger numbers, even at top-tier institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where half the undergraduate science majors and more than a third of the engineering students are women. Half of the nationââ?¬â?¢s medical students are women, and for decades the numbers have been rising similarly in disciplines like biology and mathematics.
Yet studies show that women in science still routinely receive less research support than their male colleagues, and they have not reached the top academic ranks in numbers anything like their growing presence would suggest.
Q: What determines the colors of the sky at sunrise and sunset?
A: The colors of the sunset result from a phenomenon called scattering, says Steven Ackerman, professor of meteorology at UW-Madison.
A third stem-cell research company is in the works in Madison, spearheaded by two big names in University of Wisconsin research.
The week after a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student was diagnosed with tuberculosis, scientists at the Madison campus have discovered a protein that could aid in the development of a new medication to fight the human TB infection.
The start of a third stem-cell company in Madison shows, yet again, how UW-Madison’s dynamic research is spurring business and economic growth.
It also is leading to better health for Wisconsin citizens.
A former top executive at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s patenting arm and a high-profile university researcher are forming the state’s third embryonic stem cell company.
Wauwatosa, Wis. – Maya Sieber-Blum doesn’t even have a patent and she’s excited about the commercial possibilities of her discovery involving adult stem cells.
The first executive director of The Morgridge Institute for Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be instrumental in shaping its direction and values. And the search for the right leader has begun.
MIR, the new private, not-for-profit research institute is officially seeking nominations and applications for the executive director position. The institute’s core mission is to bring together scientists from a range of disciplines to advance the study of human biology and biomedical science as part of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
Projects are springing up that bring to light men’s unfair advantage in the field of science.
For example, the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US runs workshops for faculty chairmen of search committees. Part of the aim of these workshops is to point out the tendency we all have to take an unfairly doubtful view of women’s achievements and abilities. Promisingly, science departments that sent at least one faculty member to such a workshop ended up with a 19 per cent increase in new female assistant professors, compared with a dismal 23 per cent decline in departments that did not participate.
Madison, Wis. – It’s not too early to gauge the level of investor interest in Stemina Biomarker Discovery, Inc., a new company formed by Beth Donley and University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell scientist Gabriela Cezar.
The former head of UW- Madison’s stem-cell patenting arm has teamed up with a stem-cell scientist on campus to launch a company using stem cells to develop tests for diseases.
From a couple in De Pere who make bricks from wood pulp to a business in Superior that produces a natural gas substitute from sawdust, officials say Wisconsin is embracing environmentally friendly innovations.
Q: What is the best way to quit smoking?
A: Dr. Michael Fiore, director of the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, says there is no “magic bullet pill” to quit smoking. However, using a combination of medication and coaching can dramatically improve smokers’ chances of quitting.
ENVIRONMENTALISM IS A kind of religion, and that�s OK, William Cronon told an audience of 150 at the Chicago History Museum in late November. Just don�t get fundamentalist about it. To put it another way, Joni Mitchell was wrong: there is no garden, we can�t get back to it, and trying to do so will just make it harder to protect nature.
Cronon teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He�s no stranger to the museum, formerly the Chicago Historical Society, having camped out in its library researching his 1991 blockbuster Nature�s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West.
Autistic male teens and young men with severe social impairment tend to have an abnormally small amygdala — the brain’s “fear center” — U.S. researchers report.The almond-shaped amygdala is located deep within the brain. Reporting in the December issue of theArchives of General Psychiatry, a team at the University of Wisconsin used MRI to examine the study participants’ brains, specifically the amygdala.
Dear Editor:….Regarding people who advocate for animals, it is impossible to generalize. Some do marvelous work in various sanctuaries and shelters. Some work in organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund that peacefully try to save wildlife species. And a minority use destructive tactics.
University of Wisconsin researchers have discovered a new way to make glass that could result in better prescription drugs.
The discovery, to be published Friday in the journal Science, may allow pharmaceutical companies to explore previously unusable drug compounds, the scientists say.
“Many newly discovered drugs are poorly soluble, in water or in fluids in the body,” explained Lian Yu, an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy who co-authored the report in Science.
A review of The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution.
People who exhibit antisocial behavior fall into two distinct groups, according to behavioral scientists Terrie E. Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, both at King’s College London and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Once again today, a couple of stories landed on our desks that were more related than they first appeared.
The first, from a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Alliance for Excellent Education, produced a study showing if every Wisconsin student in the class of 2005-2006 graduates from high school, the state would save $202 million in lifetime health costs. The second, from the UW-Madison Center on Wisconsin Strategy, found that 178,000 Wisconsin families need public health or other benefits despite having year-round jobs.
Catholic Bishop William Morlino found an ally in academia as he argued during a forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that human embryonic stem cells should be saved from research that destroys them.
William Hurlbut, a professor in the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University, told an audience at Union South on Tuesday that human embryos are, by their very nature, living beings, and he argued that scientific stem cell extraction procedures that destroy these embryos are immoral. He attacked notions that embryos that have only developed for a short time period are simply “clumps of cells.”
The issue of stem cell researchââ?¬â?one of UW-Madisonââ?¬â?¢s most lucrative research areasââ?¬â?is one that ââ?¬Å?challenges the most fundamental principles on which our society is based,ââ?¬Â said William Hurlbut, a member of the Presidentââ?¬â?¢s Council on Bioethics and consulting professor of the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University.
The nuclear reactor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is small and not particularly powerful, with a core no bigger than a dormitory refrigerator and operating power one six-hundredth that of an average power reactor. Compared with its commercial counterparts, it is so unimposing that some nuclear scientists call it a “Micky Mouse reactor.”
But its fuel is weapons-grade uranium, a crucial ingredient in the making of nuclear bombs. If the fuel were ever stolen, it could be used in a nuclear weapon.
This year, two nutritional scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rachel N. Close and Dale A. Schoeller, took a unique twist on the calculations to determine what ââ?¬Å?supersizingââ?¬Â a fast-food meal costs society. Paying 67 cents to supersize an order ââ?¬â? 73 percent more calories for 17 percent more money ââ?¬â? adds an average of 36 grams of adipose tissue. The future medical costs for that bargain would be $6.64 for an obese man and $3.46 for an obese woman. ââ?¬Å?The hidden financial costs associated with weight gain from upsizing a value meal may help convince people it is not a bargain,ââ?¬Â Mr. Schoeller said.
A second study found that the amygdala, the brain’s fear hub, likely becomes abnormally small in severely socially impaired males with autism.Teens and young men who were slowest at distinguishing expressions had a smaller than normal amygdala, Richard Davidson, and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin found when they made magnetic resonance imaging studies of their brains.
As second-year medical students at the Medical College of Wisconsin, we speak on behalf of many other medical students in support of the college’s circulatory control laboratory using dogs. An opinion column by three medical students.
OTTAWA — Preschool is better preparation for kindergarten than the attention of a stay-at-home mom, new research shows.
The national study in the United States found children who attend preschool — centre-based care — enter public schools with higher levels of academic skills than their peers who experienced other types of child care, including stay-at-home parent, relative care and babysitters.
And the preschool advantage in reading and math persists through Grade 3 unless children are placed in small classes with high levels of reading instruction.
“The key is, you really have to look at what happens at home versus what happens at preschool or centre-based care,” lead author Katherine Magnuson of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said in an interview.
Dear Editor: A recent letter to the editor expressed concern about the possibility of a new federal agricultural support laboratory, the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility, being located at the UW Kegonsa Research Facility.
It is important to note that the safe conduct of research on infectious diseases, and employment of the related precautions to ensure that safety, is not new. The UW-Madison has for decades been a leader in such research, and the findings and applications of that research have led to the elimination of such diseases as tuberculosis and brucellosis from our livestock population….
Sometimes, researchers slave away for years without making significant inroads to their topic of interest. Other times, a serendipitous event can provide the spark needed to quickly advance a study. Sometimes these events can come in the form of a surprising experimental result caused by setting up the test just slightly differently.
Once the lid of the cannula was removed, I could smell the bacteria inside doing the digesting. A uniquely awful smell. As I reached my arm into the rumen, the feed the cow just ate was still in good-sized particles, yet to be fully digested. As my arm reached farther into the rumen, I began to feel the particles turned to liquid. The cowââ?¬â?¢s rumen was churning, digesting around my rubber glove. The cow leaned toward me; this means she likes it. They told me she was feeling a ââ?¬Å?good sensation.ââ?¬Â
Another election season has come and gone. In Wisconsin, there was little intelligent discussion about our environment and how we should protect, manage and use our incredible natural resources to maintain the quality of life and recreational opportunities most Wisconsinites cherish.
….Gov. Jim Doyle and his agencies, along with a new Legislature and new local leadership, now have a responsibility to lay out their vision for Wisconsin’s environment, including what actions they plan and what resources they propose to commit.
(Born is a UW-Madison emeritus professor of planning and environmental studies)
WASHINGTON – Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner will seek the top Republican spot on the House Science Committee, after GOP leaders told him term limits would prevent him from taking that spot on the Judiciary Committee.
….(Sensenbrenner spokesman Jeff) Lungren said that if Sensenbrenner gets the top GOP spot on the Science Committee, he would focus on oversight as well as issues such as climate change and NASA.
ââ?¬Å?Once upon a Christmas Cheery in the Lab of Shakashiriââ?¬Â wowed audiences once again over the past weekend.
So much to skewer, so little space:
Animal rights activists last week won a court battle moving them closer to opening a “cruelty museum” next to UW-Madison’s primate lab.
It’s a free country. If the activists want to spend a rich California man’s money on a museum virtually no one will go to, so be it. As long as taxpayers aren’t footing a penny of the bill, let the museum fail on its own.
Animal diseases such as bird flu, hoof and mouth, and mad cow could find a home near Lake Kegonsa under a plan by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison may soon be home to a nationally funded lab jointly operated by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Homeland Security.
The lab would be ââ?¬Å?the nationââ?¬â?¢s preeminent laboratory for studies of foreign animal diseases and measures to prevent, contain and treat them,ââ?¬Â according to a University Communications statement.
UW-Madison representatives answered questions concerning the proposed federal lab in a public meeting at the Dunn Town Hall. Some opponents say building this laboratory could be hazardous to local residents.
Animal diseases such as bird flu, hoof and mouth, and mad cow could find a home near Lake Kegonsa under a plan by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If the University of Wisconsin wanted to know if its proposal to house a federal, foreign animal-disease laboratory in a small town outside of Madison would be met with resistance, local residents gave Provost Patrick Farrell and more than a half-dozen university representatives their answer Thursday night: Yes, it would.
Q: Are winters getting less snowy?
A: “That depends on how long your memory is,” says Scott Bachmeier, a research meteorologist with the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at UW-Madison. “If you were here through the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, those were some pretty snowy decades, and if we compare these years to those years, yes, we are in a snow drought.”
One of its primary goals, says Prof. William Cronon, is “getting people to fall in love with the place.” The environmental historian and geographer is touting the interactive online map of UW-Madison’s Lakeshore Nature Preserve, launched the Sunday before last as part of the preserve’s vast new Web site.
Continuing a series of informative conventions and lectures for World AIDS Week, the Student Global AIDS Campaign sponsored a lecture by University of Wisconsin experts in AIDS-related pharmacy and law Wednesday evening.
By LAURIE KELLMAN, The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The same embryonic stem cell bill that prompted President Bush’s only veto is headed to his desk again, this time from Democrats who have it atop their agenda when they take control of Congress in January.
It’s uncertain whether supporters of the measure can muster enough votes to override another veto.
Five University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty have been awarded fellowships from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest scientific society in the world, founded in 1848, the year before classes began at the UW. (11/29/06 print edition of the Capital Times)
