Category: Research

I used to think that there were two things you never discussed in mixed company — politics and religion.

It appears now that there’s a third taboo subject — science. I had always been under the impression that science was not open for debate, that facts are facts. Right?

Well, not so fast. The Republicans have decided that facts are only facts if they help the GOP political cause. And if they go against those tendencies, either political or religious, then those facts can be disregarded as “junk science.”

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago on Thursday will launch an uphill effort to win new state taxpayer funds for a $300 million effort to transform the school into a major 21st century research institution.

The Dalai Lama is here to give a speech titled “The Neuroscience of Meditation.” Over the past few years, he has supplied about a dozen Tibetan Buddhist monks to Richard Davidson, a prominent neuroscience professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Davidson’s research created a stir among brain scientists when his results suggested that, in the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the monks had actually altered the structure and function of their brains.

MADISON ââ?¬â?? Growing up in the Brazilian state of Goiana, Gabriela Cezar was deep in cattle country. And as far back as she can remember, she wanted to be a veterinarian.

ââ?¬Å?My father was head of the national beef cattle research center in Brazil, so I was always exposed to animals,ââ?¬Â said Cezar, who earned her veterinary medicine degree in her native country and has additional graduate degrees from Scotlandââ?¬â?¢s University of Edinburgh and UW-Madison.

But Cezarââ?¬â?¢s career path took a turn toward stem cell research early on. She has since worked on three continents ââ?¬â?? including a stint with the giant Pfizer pharmaceutical company. She also worked at the Roslin Institute in Scotland with the cloning team that produced ââ?¬Å?Dolly the Sheep,ââ?¬Â an early attempt at cloning a mammal.

ââ?¬Å?Stem cells are incredibly interesting territory,ââ?¬Â said Cezar, who joined the faculty of the animal sciences department at UW-Madison late last year. Her specialty is developmental biology.

An animal rights group says leaked government reports detail experimental procedures on animals, at UW-Madison.

Michael Budkie with Stop Animal Explotation Now (SAEN) says documentation details primates being confined in restraint chairs, paralytic agents being used in cats, and both primates and cats being deprived of water. Budkie says such practices are not illegal, but are sanctioned by the federal government, and he claims the UW could halt animal experimentation, if it wished.

UW’s Dr. Eric Sandgren says that assertion is unrealistic.Sandgren says the document cited by Budkie is not hidden or covert, but simply a form the university sends to the federal Food and Drug Adminstration each year.

Among the many temptations of the digital age, photo-manipulation has proved particularly troublesome for science, and scientific journals are beginning to respond.

Glaciers

A glacier last covered Madison more than 10,000 years ago, according to soil samples from the pit dug on the site of the future Microbial Sciences building.

The first of a weekly series called “Curiosities,” in which UW-Madison experts answer public questions about everyday science. The feature will appear every Thursday and is produced by University Communications.

Research policies in Wisconsin probably will not be affected by fraud on the other side of the world, UW-Madison researchers said. Yet, the actions of Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk, a South Korean stem cell researcher who was found Dec. 23 to have faked results of several of his experiments on human embryos, may give the field a black eye in the short term.

Now that a South Korean scientist’s work has been exposed as a fraud, U.S. institutions say they have new momentum for efforts to clone human embryos to produce stem cells, an achievement that could cure debilitating diseases.

Only a few laboratories worldwide have the ability or desire to do the highly technical and controversial work of creating patient-specific cloned human stem cell.

In the culmination of more than four years of study, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-affiliated WiCell Research Institute reported a major breakthrough in the way stem cells are derived and cultured.

South Korean prosecutors Monday began questioning junior researchers who were part of a team led by disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo Suk over possible crimes linked to science fraud.

A UW-Madison researcher has developed a program to provide developing countries with quality dairy cows resistant to harsh tropical conditions.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is overhauling the way it allocates state funding for research, with the goal of creating more accountability and entrepreneurship within its ranks.

UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago said the new Research Growth Initiative is the university’s main strategy to boost its annual research budget from $39 million now to more than $100 million within 10 years.

On Cambodia’s Tonle Sap River, conservationist Zeb Hogan is hoping to save the giant catfish, the largest freshwater fish in the world, one fish at a time.

If fishers here catch the critically endangered species, which can grow up to 10 feet (3 meters) long and weigh 650 pounds (295 kilograms), they now must turn it over to Hogan, who heads the Mekong Fish Conservation Project.

Research by Richard Weindruch at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and others, for example, suggests that an extremely low-calorie diet, one right on the edge of starvation, pushes the life span of mice and other animals to an extreme.

A new Web site developed by a UW meteorologist and programmer provides weather information in the palm of your hand.

Toxins and the fear of their misuse – especially since Sept. 11 – has changed life in the laboratory for many scientists.

Passed in 2002, the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act requires scientists doing research on any of a number of bacteria, viruses and toxins meet a variety of strict security measures, as well as have employees pass a federal background check. While some researchers say that the regulations are appropriate and reasonable, considering the potential for terrorism, others complain that the requirements impede their work on important issues.

“The constraints are reducing research effectiveness,” says Caitilyn Allen, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

When Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed a ban on all forms of human cloning in November, he argued that despite what its supporters claimed, the legislation would go against Wisconsin’s history of biomedical innovation, specifically in the controversial field of embryonic stem cell research.
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“Continuing this research,” Doyle correctly observed then, “is a win-win for our state.” And, we would argue, for the world as well, since many scientists believe that the research may one day lead to cures for a variety of illnesses and ailments.

Less than two months later, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have underscored the importance of this research with a development that moves their work closer to the day when it may one day actually reap therapeutic dividends.

(MADISON) Most people measure the scope of a disaster in how many human lives are lost or shattered. For students and staff at the University of Wisconsin�s School of Veterinary Medicine, the loss can also be felt in the many animals that are killed, abandoned or injured during a catastrophe. (5th item.)

The recent signing of a bill by President Bush that provides $50 million for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel has rekindled a highly charged debate on how to deal with nuclear waste.

Reprocessing exacerbates the problem of nuclear proliferation, is not economical and does not solve the problem of waste disposal, said Allison Macfarlane, a research associate in the Program in Science Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the meantime, new technology for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is being developed at a research center that is co-directed by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.

WASHINGTON, Jan 1 (Reuters) – Scientists at a laboratory affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a stem-cell culture medium free of animal cells and used it to derive two new human embryonic stem-cell lines.

UW-Madison scientists analyzing genetic data from many species in an attempt to construct the animal kingdom’s family tree, have hit a snag.

UW-Madison scientists have created two new embryonic stem-cell lines, the first grown without animal products, officials say, removing a major obstacle to their potential use as cell therapies in people.

All 22 stem-cell lines available for federal funding, including the five created by UW-Madison researcher James Thomson in 1998, have been grown with animal products such as mouse cells and cow blood proteins.

The creation of the first embryonic stem-cell lines without animal products is a research breakthrough that highlights, yet again, UW-Madison’s pre-eminence in the field.

The new lines also show how close stem-cell research is to life-saving cures and how much closer it could be if the federal government would ease its unreasonable funding restrictions.

Two UW-Madison projects to study advanced materials and fuels for current and future nuclear reactors have received a total of about $1 million in federal funding.

The funding is from the Department of Energy Nuclear Energy Research Initiative, which supports research and development under three initiatives: Generation IV nuclear energy systems, advanced fuel cycles and nuclear hydrogen.

Investigators at South Korea’s leading university announced Thursday that all of the cloned stem cell lines created by its disgraced star scientist are fake. The Seoul National University panel found that Hwang Woo Suk ââ?¬â? who until recently was celebrated as a pioneer in stem cell research ââ?¬â? lied and did not produce stem cells individually tailored to patients as he had claimed.