Category: Research

Minnesota Research chief Tim Mulcahy works hard to create partnerships between the University of Minnesota and cutting-edge companies in the state.

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin is playing a role in trying to prevent another tragedy like Hurricane Katrina.

On Aug. 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina rocked the gulf coast. In the days and weeks that followed 1,464 people died.

A UW professor said without preparedness that number might have even been higher.

Q: Why do scientists think birds descended from dinosaurs?
A: The “overwhelming majority” of specialists in ancient life think birds descended from dinosaurs, says Richard Slaughter, director of the UW-Madison Geology Museum.

Madison, Wis. – The United States Catholic Bishops did not waver, and after some initial signs of hesitation, neither did the White House.

Wisconsin Right to Life, however, is not yet prepared to rule out a new method of deriving stem cells from human embryos that does not destroy embryos, and gubernatorial candidate Mark Green believes it’s a promising development.

Scientists have for the first time grown colonies of prized human embryonic stem cells using a technique that does not require the destruction of embryos, an advance that could significantly reshape the ethical and political debates that have long entangled the research.

Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students.

Biologists have developed a technique for establishing colonies of human embryonic stem cells from an early human embryo without destroying it. This method, if confirmed in other laboratories, would seem to remove the principal objection to the research.

Researchers report today that they have found a way to create human stem cells from a single cell � without harming embryos. But this discovery may not eliminate the concerns of those who have opposed stem cell research.

Biologists have developed a technique for establishing colonies of human embryonic stem cells from an early human embryo without destroying it. This method, if confirmed in other laboratories, would seem to remove the principal objection to the research.

Madison, Wis. – The next generation of high-performance wireless communication devices could rely on crystals, according to engineering researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Q: Why does it seem women like chocolate so much more than men?

A: Chocolate does affect women differently than men, says Anthony Auger, an assistant professor of psychology at UW-Madison.

Auger, who studies sex differences in the brain, agrees that women have a stronger craving for chocolate. This distinction can be found as far down the evolutionary ladder as rats, where females also have a stronger chocolate craving.

Madison, Wis. – The next generation of high-performance wireless communication devices could rely on crystals, according to engineering researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

(UNDATED) Wisconsin needs to do a better job of attracting federal dollars for classified military research. That�s according to Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. He�s launching a new project to help Wisconsin researchers get access to lucrative Pentagon contracts linked to the war on terrorism.

Science Haven in Singapore

SINGAPORE, Aug. 16 � You can�t buy Wrigley�s Spearmint gum in Singapore. But human embryonic stem cells? That�s a different matter.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 � A surgeon who was appointed by President Bush this week to lead the National Cancer Institute said Wednesday that he had great hopes for finding new nontoxic cancer drugs but that given a shrinking of resources, some of the institute�s programs would probably have to be phased out.

Madison, Wis. – If everything goes according to schedule, the newest multimillion-dollar research institution at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be erected sometime after 2010.

But even as architects design the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (WID), campus leaders are busy forging its identity.

The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery are a risky endeavor, Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, acknowledged during a recent Wisconsin Innovation Network luncheon.

But they are worth the gamble because they hold the potential to produce breakthrough science that can improve lives and create new companies and jobs for Wisconsin. (Video.)

As part of the Renew America Food Traditions program, visitors to the annual UW Urban Horticultural Field Day will be able to view vegetables grown from seeds discovered in prehistoric Anasazi ruins in the Southwest.

The free field day is set for Saturday from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. at the West Madison Agricultural Research Station, 8502 Mineral Point Road.

UW-Madison remained the fourth largest research university in the country in 2004 – the most recent year for which statistics were available – as measured by the amount of money spent on research and development, the National Science Foundation reported this week.

Sivuyile Manxoyi works every day to reach his high school students in Cape Town, South Africa and teach them astronomy – a course previously denied to non-whites.

….Manxoyi and six other South African high school educators were part of a special international program on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, coordinated by UW geneticist Raymond Kessel, which aims to bring science and math education to non-white children who formerly had been systematically denied it.

MADISON, Wis. ââ?¬â?? Doctors are testing a radical new way to help smokers quit: a shot that “immunizes” them against the nicotine rush that fuels their addiction. That pleasurable buzz has seduced Mario Musachia into burning through nearly 500,000 cigarettes in half a century.

The monetary rift forming between the federal government, the state and private interests has created an onerous overhead for stem cell research, and its effects are visible on the UC Berkeley campus.

Quoted: Pilar Ossorio, visiting professor of law from the University of Wisconsin.

In the 30-plus years that Richard Atkinson has been studying obesity, he has always maintained that overeating doesn�t really explain it all. His epiphany came early in his career, when he was a medical fellow at U.C.L.A. engaged in a study of people who weighed more than 300 pounds and had come in for obesity surgery.

Wisconsin should vigorously pursue a business’s offer to eliminate 25 percent of the state’s airborne mercury pollution, but not under the terms outlined so far.

Once a week, Malini Aisola drives the hour from Madison to the Waupun Correctional Institution.

The 25-year-old graduate student at UW-Madison then questions incarcerated men on topics such as their family relationships and their sexual histories.

Aisola’s goal? Identifying inmates whose callousness, lack of conscience and skill at manipulation indicate they are psychopaths.

The much-maligned bat may soon be earning praise from climate scientists, after a discovery that the winged mammals have dropped thousands of years of data in caves throughout the world.

That data is waiting to be mined – but only by researchers willing to scour through millenniums of bat poop.

According to Louis J. Maher Jr., a retired professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, guano, or bat dung, can be used to examine ancient environments in a manner analogous, or even preferable, to lake sediment or peat.

In the five years since President Bush authorized and at the same time restricted research on human embryonic stem cells, a marked shift has taken place in some scientists� views of how the research is likely to benefit medicine. Many no longer see cell therapy as the first goal of the research, parting company with those whose near-term expectations for cell therapy remain high.

With a little coaxing, Japanese researchers were able to make adult and embryonic mouse cells behave like embryonic stem cells. The resulting cells look and grow like mouse embryonic stem cells, and analyses indicate these induced cells share the same genetic characteristics, as well.

A new study at UW-Madison indicates emergency contraception is “significantly underused.”And along with that underuse of the so-called “morning-after pill” comes “a significant opportunity to avoid unintended pregnancy,” according to one of the study’s authors, associate clinical professor Laura Sabo.

Four UW-Madison researchers have invented a miniscule gel lens that can adjust its focus without human control.
According to assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering Hongrui Jiang, the tiny hydrogel lens, which is made out of a jelly-like polymer, can be used to sense any sort of chemical or biological agent in a fluid sample and either swell or contract based on whether the agent is there.

(MADISON) The Madison Area Technical College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have launched a joint biodiesel project. The goal is to train students to develop new blends of vegetable-based diesel fuel and test their effectiveness in different kinds of engines.

Only a handful of colleges across the country offer students the chance to make and test their own biodiesel. The new portable 50 gallon reactor is the first of its kind in Wisconsin. It was designed and built at the university but it will be used at MATC. MATC President Bettsey Barhorst says the recent hike in fuel prices helped spur the two schools to launch the project. (Sixth item.)

Children who tend to work by themselves, are not very well liked by their peers, or are otherwise socially isolated may have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood, new study findings show.

“Longitudinal findings about children followed up to adulthood suggest that social isolation has persistent and cumulative detrimental effects on adult health,” lead author Dr. Avshalom Caspi, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues write in the Archives of Adolescent Medicine.

Students at the UW and MATC are doing their part to reduce our dependence on oil.

The Madison Area Technical College introduced its new biodiesel reactor today. The machine converts waste vegetable oil and methanol to make diesel.

Madison, Wis. – Madison Area Technical College’s new biodiesel reactor will not only produce clean fuel, it will help educate the technicians that will maintain and improve the emerging technology.

UW and MATC teamed up to invest in alternatives to fight those high gas prices and find a feasible alternate form of energy.

A team of UW engineering students unveiled a new biodiesel reactor today at the MATC/Truax campus on Monday.

MADISON, Wis. — UW students are thinking of the next form of fuel.

On Monday, UW engineering students unveiled a bio-diesel reactor they designed and built.

Review of “Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death” by Deborah Blum, a journalism professor at UW-Madison.