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.
Stem cell researchers reacted with enthusiasm and reservations to a report that scientists have found stem cells in amniotic fluid, a discovery that would allow them to sidestep the controversy over destroying embryos for research.
Researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard University reported Sunday that the stem cells they drew from amniotic fluid donated by pregnant women hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells.
….Andrew Cohn, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, said the discovery is an exciting step forward, but that it represents a continuum of all types of research, including studies of adult and embryonic stem cells, all of which must continue.
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.
Gov. Jim Doyle spent much of his first term lowering expectations, and this newspaper frequently criticized the Democratic executive for the narrowness of his vision.
As Doyle begins his second term, however, he is raising expectations. And we celebrate him for that.
….He spoke of making Wisconsin a global leader in the search for cures and treatments for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, juvenile diabetes and other devastating diseases and conditions, promising that “we’ll invest in stem cell research that could one day bring cures – and save millions of lives around the world.”
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.
Q: Why does too much sleep make you tired?
A: From time to time, many of us experience a dragging feeling of fatigue and grogginess when we awake from a deep sleep. Scientists call this “sleep inertia.”
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.
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.
