Wisconsin is losing one of its top stem cell researchers to Connecticut, but the loss could open the door for more opportunities for researchers here to supply stem cells to a greater number of universities and research labs.
Ren-He Xu, the first employee of the WiCell Institute six years ago and now the senior scientist at the institute, has been named director of the new human embryonic stem cell lab being developed at the University of Connecticut.
Madison, Wis. ââ?¬â? Ren-He Xu, the WiCell Institute’s first employee six years ago and senior scientist there, has been named director of the University of Connecticut’s new human embryonic stem-cell lab.
Xu led the University of Wisconsin-Madison team that last year found out how to make some human stem-cell cultures viable without depending on mouse “feeder” cells to keep them alive.
The destruction of the tropical rainforest has been occurring in the Amazon for decades. Now scientists say the drastic changes to the landscape may be hazardous to human health as the area becomes more hospitable for the mosquito that carries malaria.
Having an MRI is an uncomfortable experience, especially going in head first. You inch into the machine until the smooth metal cylinder surrounds you. The machine hums ominously, and you would love to know what is going on around the rest of your exposed body, except you cannot sit up to find out.
Attine ants ââ?¬â? the first animals to deliberately start growing their own food ââ?¬â? have caught the attention of some University of Wisconsin researchers.
When you walk into one of Madison’s many young biotechnology companies, sometimes what you don’t see is as significant as what you do see.
NimbleGen Systems may be an example of that.
There is no fancy new building. NimbleGen, at 1 Science Court, is on the older side of University Research Park (east of Whitney Way). The do-it-yourself “front lobby” – more like an office-sized dent in the wall – consists of a few chairs and a small table with a phone on it, from which visitors ring up the employees they’re seeking.
MADISON, Wis. — If you find yourself away from a computer or TV when a winter storm rolls in, you can still follow the weather’s progress from a cell phone.
WISC-TV’s “gadget guy,” Steve Van Dinter, explained Thursday how cell phones have developed to allow users the ability to see radar, satellite dates and local forecasts.
Religious conservatives around the country are up in arms over a Wisconsin bill that would ban the teaching of intelligent design as science in the state’s public schools.
Focus on the Family, the evangelical Christian advocacy group led by founder James Dobson, panned the legislation this week on its Web site.
….Meanwhile, the University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists who helped draft the Wisconsin proposal are contacting friends and allies in other states, hoping to curry the introduction of similar legislation around the country.
The University of Connecticut Health Center has hired an expert on human embryonic stem cells and also has reached a tentative agreement to lease a Farmington building as headquarters of its new stem cell institute, university officials said Wednesday.
As soon as April, UConn scientists will be ready to work with human stem cell lines, including those ineligible to receive federal funding.
Overseeing the human stem cell effort will be Dr. Ren-He Xu, a senior scientist at the WiCell Research Institute, a private laboratory affiliated with the University of Wisconsin. WiCell creates human embryonic stem cell lines and distributes them to scientists nationally.
(MADISON) Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are a step closer to reconstructing one of the body�s building blocks. They�ve discovered a way to make an important protein in the lab, something researchers have tried to do for 30 years.
Collagen is a common protein used in everything from hair conditioner to plastic surgery. In medicine, it�s used to rebuild tissue destroyed by burns and wounds. Currently, most of the collagen used comes from cows.
The hope is to someday manufacture the substance in a lab. UW-Madison biochemistry professor Ronald Raines says this would prevent possible transmission of animal disease to humans, along with other undesired effects.
A Michigan company that is developing a psoriasis treatment based on licensed technology developed by UW-Madison Professor Hector DeLuca has filed for an initial public offering of stock.
….DeLuca, chairman of the UW Department of Biochemistry, is the world’s leading expert on the metabolism and mechanism of vitamin D with more than 150 active patents in the U.S. and more than 1,200 patents outside the U.S.
Many of us do not automatically associate the word ââ?¬Å?bossââ?¬Â with ââ?¬Å?mentor.ââ?¬Â However, increasingly in laboratories around campus many head scientists and researchers have found themselves having to fulfill both roles for the many undergrad future scientists they employ.
Animal rights activists held one of a series of monthly presentations showcasing UW-Madison primate experiments Tuesday. The program, Primate Vivisection A to Z, focuses on individual researchers in alphabetical order, with the aim of highlighting alleged animal abuse going on in the National Primate Research Center located on campus.
Feb. 14, 2006 ââ?¬â? – The power of hand-holding has long been enshrined in culture — from The Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” to the 1970 film, “Love Story,” to famous works of art.
Now a new study — to be published later this year in the journal Psychological Science — purports to show that holding hands can have real physiological benefits.
Dr. Richard Davidson — who runs a brain imaging lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — ran an ad in a local newspaper, recruiting 16 couples whom he identified as happily married.
WASHINGTON — President Bush presented science and technology achievement medals yesterday to 15 laureates who have done work that has revolutionized organ transplants, led to development of global positioning systems, and helped feed millions around the world.
Honored: Edwin N. Lightfoot, University of Wisconsin, for research in how the body controls insulin levels and oxygenates blood.
There’s Nothing Like a Sympathetic Primate
During a pregnancy, it’s not unusual for the spouse to share some of the symptoms. Men have been known to experience nausea, headache, backache and, perhaps most common, weight gain.
Fifty-two undergraduate engineers took part in this year�s Innovation Days, where they vied for prizes that judged their creativity, prototype design, presentation and design notebooks. The diverse array of inventions included an Antarctic ice drill, a mobile microcrane to aid in building log cabins and a remote-controlled window washer.
Faculty at the University of Wisconsin held the first-ever Darwin Day Outreach Symposium in Ingraham Hall Saturday.
Sean Carroll would like nothing better than to show Charles Darwin, the 19th century father of the theory of evolution, around his UW-Madison genetics lab.
“After a couple of days of catching up,” said Carroll, a genetics professor. “I think he’d be blown away.”
They’ve been to Ireland and China and the thoughts of creative class guru Richard Florida, and Milwaukee’s leaders are urgent that we need more brainpower.
People in Wisconsin’s largest city are way behind on getting degrees, our graduates leave and our economy’s in danger of looking at Mississippi’s taillights.
The governing board of California’s $3-billion fund for stem-cell research approved ethical and management policies on Friday to guide the studies.
The National Academy of Engineering announced on Friday that it had elected 76 new members and nine new foreign associates, bringing its total membership in the United States to 2,216 and the number of foreign associates to 186.
Among them, Mary Pikul Anderson, professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison. For leadership in the development of groundwater-flow models.
Wisconsinââ?¬â?¢s academic and commercial biotech community plans to pull out the stops for BIO 2006, which will run from April 9-12 in Chicago. The budget to showcase the Badger Stateââ?¬â?¢s biotechnology prowess has risen to nearly $270,000 this year ââ?¬â?? nearly three times what was spent last year at BIO 2005 in Philadelphia.
ââ?¬Å?This is the perfect opportunity to tell our story and make connections,ââ?¬Â said Charlie Hoslet, managing director of the UW-Madison Office of Corporate Relations.
UW geologist Dana Geary says, for the vast majority of scientists, there is no doubt about it, evolution is what brought us to life as we know it today.
“It’s as solid a notion in science as the theory of gravity,” said Geary.
Scientists expressed mixed reactions to criticisms leveled at a University of Pittsburgh researcher who collaborated on an infamously fraudulent stem cell study.
From an efficient solar collector to a high-tech security system to a pressurized water pack for bicyclists the competition at Innovation Days, an annual contest among UW- Madison student inventors, is tough. And the stakes are high. The judges, some of whom are alumni and are now business leaders and inventors themselves, will award students more than $26,000 in prizes
Engineering students at UW Madison are making some of their best ideas come to life.
On Thursday, they presented their inventions to the public with the hope that their big ideas will help them win prizes and recognition. (Video.)
Wisconsin State Rep. Terese Berceau became concerned when she started seeing polls that showed more Americans wanted ââ?¬Å?alternative viewpoints to evolution,ââ?¬Â primarily intelligent design, she said, taught in public schools. ââ?¬Å?Evolution is not a viewpoint,ââ?¬Â Bereceau added. And she wants the Wisconsin Legislature to agree.
The legislation is the first of its kind in the country, and University of Wisconsin at Madison faculty members, five of whom Berceau consulted, applauded the bill as strong support for teachers who have been caught in the middle of the controversy. ââ?¬Å?I think it makes Wisconsin look good the same way [embracing alternative theories to evolution] made Kansas look silly,ââ?¬Â said Alan Attie, a biochemistry professor at Wisconsin and one of the faculty members Berceau consulted.
A new study showing that a low-fat diet does not necessarily decrease the risk of cancer and heart disease is not a license to go out and eat a Big Mac and super-sized fries, local doctors say.
Doctors here praise the study as important and well-designed, but point out that the research has limitations.
….The principal investigator for the UW site, Dr. Gloria Sarto, acknowledged that the study didn’t turn out as she and other researchers had expected.
Wisconsin must focus on continued modernization of its manufacturing and agricultural industries, while also working to develop emerging industries, such as bio-medical research, to keep the state’s economy competitive, Gov. Jim Doyle said at a Madison conference today. (Can be found in Journal Sentinel’s Daywatch blog).
Seven University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty members will speak at the free, public Darwin Day symposium Saturday from 9:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Room B10 of Ingraham Hall.
The symposium is being held in honor of Charles Darwin’s 197th birthday. Darwin’s theory of evolution, of course, has long been the target of advocates of “creationism” or “intelligent design” and the disagreement has blossomed into a national debate.
A chorus of scientists, politicians and business leaders has long sounded this lament: The USA is about to be deposed as the world’s leader in science and technology. And last week President Bush joined the choir, calling in his State of the Union address for a $136 billion boost in science education and research over the next 10 years.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher says she’s found further evidence of a link between a cold-like virus and obesity.
After experimenting with chickens, UW-Madison associate scientist Leah Whigham concluded that a human virus caused the chickens to become fat. That could lend credence to the idea that a virus causes obesity in humans, she said.
MADISON, Wis. ââ?¬â? Two Democratic lawmakers introduced a plan Tuesday that would ban public schools from teaching intelligent design as science, saying “pseudo-science” should have no place in the classroom.
The proposal is the first of its kind in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and comes as a debate over how to teach the origins of human life rages in local school districts.
Thirty-one college presidents and chancellors, including John Wiley, are among the 140 business, political, and educational leaders who have endorsed an advertisement appearing in today’s issues of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal that urges readers to “help keep America the driving force in innovation.”
A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor says treating intelligent design as science in our schools could have a negative impact on the state. UW Madison biochemist Michael Cox says there are efforts across the nation to include intelligent design in school science classes, but some of those views misrepresent the theory by treating it as proven science. (Audio.)
A Democratic legislator said Tuesday that she will sponsor a bill that would require schools to teach an evolution-based science curriculum approved by the National Academy of Sciences and prohibit the teaching of “intelligent design.”
Creationism or intelligent design could not be taught as science in Wisconsin public schools under a first-of-its-kind proposal announced today by Madison state Rep. Terese Berceau.
Under the bill, only science capable of being tested according to scientific method could be taught as science. Faith-based theories, however, could be discussed in other contexts.
Alan Attie, a biochemistry professor at UW-Madison, said the bill puts Wisconsin on the map in the ongoing controversy over evolution and intelligent design.
President Bush’s budget for academic science in 2007 may inspire researchers in the physical sciences to pop Champagne corks, but many biomedical researchers will be looking for their aspirin bottles.
A recent geological discovery helps UW-Madison geologists refine the story of Wisconsin�s last ice age.
ââ?¬Å?Up until now, there have been no dates on when the last glaciation began in Wisconsin,ââ?¬Â said Dave Mickelson, UW-Madison professor emeritus of the department of geology and geophysics. Mickelson was one of three geologists who discovered and dated glacial lake sediments buried on UW-Madisonââ?¬â?¢s campus.
Tastebuds alone do not determine what something tastes like. Researchers have demonstrated that expectation, too, plays a role.
Previous research in primates had suggested that expectation had little effect on how taste registers in the brain. Neuroscientist Jack Nitschke and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin lined up 30 college-age volunteers to see whether the same holds true for humans.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor is working on a computer model that she says can identify the targets that terrorists are most likely to hit, which would help authorities figure out how to best allocate their limited security resources.
Your wife is pregnant; so why are you gaining weight?
Working with man’s closest relatives, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have shed new light on the centuries-old observation that is part of a phenomenon in people known as the couvade syndrome.
As a child and later as a parent, Vicki Bier worried about swing sets.
They just didn’t seem safe, she thought, the way individual swings arced back and forth, faster and higher.
Bier, a professor of industrial engineering and engineering physics at UW-Madison, has more serious things to be concerned about now.
The mysterious “couvades” effect, in which men put on weight during their partner’s pregnancy, has been observed for the first time in monkeys. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin- Madison Primate Centre found that male marmoset and tamarin monkeys added about 10 per cent to their girth while their mates were expecting.
Curiosities column: Produced by University Communications.
UW-Madison engineers are in the final stages of building the world’s deepest drill for taking ice samples far below Antarctica’s frozen surface.
Scientists funded by the National Science Foundation will use this core barrel cutter head to drill up to 2.5 miles beneath Antarctica’s surface for ice core samples to use in climate change research. The core barrel will take ice pieces 13 feet long and nearly 5 inches in diameter, for the biggest such samples possible so far with an ice drill.
Stratatech, a Madison company that’s been developing skin tissue to heal wounds, will expand its research into another arena with the help of a new federal grant.
A discussion of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror, by UW history professor Alfred McCoy. His book is not a collection of opinions but a scholarly investigation into CIA tactics and results.
When it comes to fat and health, you are not off the hook just because you do not see it when you look in the mirror, according to Gail Underbakke, senior clinical nutritionist in preventive cardiology at the UW-Madison medical school.
UW-Madison earned another top 10 accolade Wednesday when it ranked No. 1 on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals list of the top 10 worst offenders for lab animal treatment, according to a PETA statement.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have rated University of Wisconsin laboratories the worst offender of animal abuse among ââ?¬Å?some of the nationââ?¬â?¢s premier university laboratories.ââ?¬Â However, university representative and UW professor Eric Sandgren said PETA is simply ââ?¬Å?pushing an agendaââ?¬Â and misrepresented information in their ratings.
Madison-based Stratatech Corp. has received a new federal grant that enables it to expand into cancer research.
Stratatech has received several federal grants for its work in developing human skin substitutes for burn victims and chronic wounds such as diabetic and pressure ulcers.
….Stratatech, a UW-Madison spin-off established in 2000, has 27 employees at its offices in the MGE Innovation Center in University Research Park.
New evidence keeps emerging that the medical profession has sold its soul in exchange for what can only be described as bribes from the manufacturers of drugs and medical devices. It is long past time for leading medical institutions and professional societies to adopt stronger ground rules to control the noxious influence of industry money on what doctors prescribe for their patients.
Last week two new cases came to light that reveal the lengths to which companies will go to buy influence with doctors, pharmacists and other medical professionals. Reed Abelson reported in The Times on Jan. 24 about a whistle-blower’s lawsuit alleging that Medtronic had paid tens of millions of dollars in recent years to surgeons in a position to use and recommend its medical devices. In one particularly egregious example, a prominent Wisconsin surgeon received $400,000 for just eight days of consulting.
Modern-day astronomers have learned remarkable things about the heavens. But, then, they have the Hubble Space Telescope at their disposal.
Native Americans, on the other hand, had their eyesight and a rich history of astronomical observation passed on by ancestors. Yet those tools were enough to allow them to develop an impressive and practical understanding of the movements of constellations, stars and planets.
Ground to the bone, the teeth of the famous fossil skeleton, Kennewick Man, look as if they’ve spent a lifetime gnashing rocks.
But it’s from these worn choppers that Thomas Stafford Jr., a research fellow in the department of geology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and president of Stafford Research Laboratories in Boulder, Colo., plans to learn about the origins, movement and lifestyle of this highly controversial, 9,000-year-old North American.
Mithridion Inc., a start-up pharmaceutical firm near Madison, announced Wednesday that it scored a $1.6 million investment to help develop drugs that stop or slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
The firm was founded in 2004 and grew out of research on mice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Pharmacy. It will use the funds to expand its laboratories, hire scientists and develop Alzheimer’s-inhibiting drugs. Its investors are Rosetta Partners LLC, a private equity consortium in suburban Chicago, and Leazer’s Wisconsin Investment Partners.
If current trends continue, by 2010 more than 90% of the world’s scientists and engineers will live in Asia, warns the Business Roundtable, which represents the nation’s leading companies. Failing to reverse that trend will result in a ââ?¬Å?slow witheringââ?¬Â of U.S. economic might, the group warns. Strong stuff. And that’s just the beginning of the complaints from the business community.
A Fitchburg company that aims to develop drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease today announced it has attracted funding that it will use to establish labs, hire scientists and develop drug candidates.
Mithridion Inc. said it has received the first portion of an anticipated $1.6 million in angel funding, with the remainder expected over the next few months.
….Mithridion’s technology was developed at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy by Jeffrey A. Johnson, an associate professor, and Thor D. Stein, a researcher.
