The development of genetically modified plants has allowed people to change certain traits in crops, but humans have been influencing the genetic makeup of crops for thousands of years. Maize took more than 7,000 years to descend from a tropical, small-eared plant to the modern crop grown on farms today.
Men and women may be from the same planet after all, according to recent findings by UW-Madison professor of psychology Janet Hyde.
The recent study conducted by Hyde confirmed that men and women are fundamentally identical psychologically and that gender differences, such as math ability and self-esteem levels, have been greatly overestimated.
A law that prohibits state employees from signing contracts of more than $15,000 with the state has hindered UW-Madison professors attempting research with independent companies, UW officials and professors said.
The Primate Freedom Project filed a lawsuit against Budget Bicycles owner Roger Charly for selling his property to UW-Madison despite a previous contractual obligation with the animal rights group.
A special-interest group committed to ending primate testing for scientific research filed a lawsuit with a Madison property owner Oct. 18.
Bioscience is one of the fastest growing industries in Wisconsin, a new report maintains, although it has a long way to go to surpass manufacturing, agriculture and tourism as the state’s top industry.
The report, Bioscience Wisconsin 2006, issued by the Wisconsin Association for Biomedical Research & Education, measures economic growth in bioscience research, development and industry in the state.
Slide that beer down the counter and make way for the stem cells.
A report shows bioscience research and industry provide jobs for more than 26,000 people in Wisconsin and add more than $6.9 billion to the state’s economy.
In the past two years, Wisconsin’s growing bioscience industry surpassed beer as an economic force in the state, according to a report to be released Wednesday in Madison.
Khurram Hashmi has drastically cut the calories he consumes ââ?¬â? eating mostly salads and raw vegetables ââ?¬â? in the hopes of living a longer, better life. But he’s hungry almost all the time.
ââ?¬Å?That’s something for me that has never gone away, but it is easier to accept now,ââ?¬Â says Hashmi, 37. He says he used to cheat, but not anymore. The hunger tells him that the diet’s working, he says.
ââ?¬Å?It is the only nutritional regimen thought to retard aging,ââ?¬Â says Richard Weindruch at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His studies have suggested that middle-aged mice can start the diet and still get the longevity benefit.
ST. PAUL (AP) – It’s not just farm kids in the region’s agriculture colleges anymore.
It’s students like Jillian Rankins from Eau Claire, Wis., a sophomore at the University of Minnesota who hadn’t heard of the FFA future farmers group before she got to college. Her studies are in management and economics, not crops and livestock.
Rankins and her fellow students from urban backgrounds are welcomed by agriculture colleges as they reposition themselves to provide for a world that needs fewer dairy farmers and agronomists and more food scientists, veterinarians and nutritionists.
An animal rights group has filed suit against a Madison property owner, claiming the man is legally obligated to sell them the land. The land is wedged between two University of Wisconsin research facilities in which animal experimentation is conducted. The group wants to put an animal rights museum there.
The Primate Freedom Project, as well as Madison animal rights activist Rick Bogle and Los Angeles retired physician Richard McLellan, sued Roger Charly, claiming they had a contract for an option to buy the property from him.
Welcome, UW alumni, to homecoming 2005. While the big football game between the Badgers and Purdue is the highlight of the weekend, there’s something even bigger that needs to be cheered – the University of Wisconsin-Madison itself.
There have been few times in history when Wisconsin’s world-class university has been under such sustained attack. Its budget has been slashed, its administrators have been pilloried by opportunistic legislators, even some of its renowned research has been threatened by those who would put their unyielding religious beliefs ahead of the promises of science.
So, as you cheer on the football team today, save a little bit of breath for the alma mater. It needs all the support it can get.
Local public officials and health care leaders from across the region pledged their cooperation Friday as the National Children’s Study was launched, the largest study ever undertaken to monitor and assess the effects of environment on children.
The Medical College of Wisconsin and the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have received a five-year, $16.2 million contract to lead the Waukesha County portion of the study.
If Asian avian flu shows up in Wisconsin, it will probably be in a backyard flock owned by someone who is not looking for the disease.
UW-Madison professor of animal science Mark Cook and professor of medicine Dr. Dennis Maki, head of the infectious disease section at UW Hospital, are quoted.
State and industry officials are already taking steps to prevent avian influenza.
A work group focusing on preparation and planning includes representatives of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, the Department of Health and Family Services, the Department of Natural Resources, USDA agencies, the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, the UW School of Veterinary Medicine, the State Laboratory of Hygiene and Wisconsin Emergency Management.
Researchers from UW-Madison are asking hunters during the upcoming deer season to refrain from shooting deer wearing radio collars.
A UW-Madison study of radio-collared deer shows the animals do not move across the landscape nearly as much as was once believed.
Smoking, of course, plays hob with the body. Heart disease, emphysema and various cancers – lung, laryngeal and stomach, to name a few – all have been shown to have tobacco as a cause.
Now researchers are finding that nicotine can also alter the developing brain. A team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports in a recent paper that nicotine can affect the operation of a gene linked to the development of synapses of the maturing adolescent rat brain.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher (psychology professor Richard Davidson) is defending a speaking invitation extended to the Dalai Lama to a convention of neuroscientists.
Scientists right here in Wisconsin play a large role in helping predict exactly where Wilma will hit.
A group trying to open a primate cruelty exhibit near UW-Madison’s primate research labs filed a lawsuit this week demanding that it be allowed to buy property that it says was promised.
But Roger Charly, owner of Budget Bicycles, also promised to sell the property to UW-Madison, which has taken action to accept an option on the land, according to the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, filed in Dane County Circuit Court on Tuesday, former California middle school teacher Rick Bogle of the Primate Freedom Project and retired Los Angeles physician Richard McLellan said they signed a 180-day option to purchase the property at 26 N. Charter St. in May for $675,000 after a series of discussions with Charly.
(10/21/05 Wisconsin State Journal)
Ten years ago Minnesota attracted national attention when severely deformed leopard frogs with oddly shaped and missing limbs were discovered in a Twin Cities wetland.
MENASHA ââ?¬â? An exchange between two women in a lecture hall Thursday captured the essence of the national debate over embryonic stem cell research.
“I value the existing patient more than anything else,” University of Wisconsin law professor R. Alta Charo, a world-renowned medical ethicist, told Lori Skrober, a mother of four from Hortonville. “You shake your head because you believe something else. That’s the debate we have to have.”
Wisconsin is finally gaining some traction in the high-paying technology job world.
A report issued today by the Wisconsin Technology Council shows the state, while still lagging, is improving its standing among the 50 states when it comes to producing patents, creating high-tech jobs and investing in research and development.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has named four finalists for its Medical School deanship.
The new dean will succeed Philip Farrell, who has served for a decade. He announced last winter he will step down at the end of this year. All of the finalists are external candidates.
Madison, Wis. – Radio frequency identification technology is often touted as a way to improve supply chain management. But in the health care world, the technology is bringing other, perhaps more important benefits: safety and security.
A gift of nearly $3 million is being used to boost teacher training at the UW-Madison in a special, reading program.
But that program, Reading Recovery, has critics, who say it’s not worth the necessary investment.
Wisconsin is doing a better job of nurturing the tools necessary for a vibrant, knowledge-based economy, according to a report to be presented today at the Wisconsin Technology Council’s Early Stage Symposium.
In one widely reported 2003 study, Dr. Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison led a team of researchers that found that 25 employees of a biotechnology company showed increased levels of neural activity in the left anterior temporal region of their brains after taking a course in meditation.
South Korean researchers are proposing to develop new embryonic stem cell lines that would be offered to other researchers. A consortium led by Seoul National University’s Hwang Woo Suk would establish labs in Seoul, San Francisco and England to ââ?¬Å?cloneââ?¬Â embryos needed to generate stem cells with patients’ genetic characteristics, reports The New England Journal of Medicine.
Normally, the embryo is destroyed when the cells are retrieved, a result which prompts many proââ?¬â??life groups to oppose stem cell research.
The strain of flu scientists fear could spark a pandemic is showing signs of becoming resistant to an antiviral drug being stockpiled around the world, a warning that drugs being stored by governments might not be as strong a defense as hoped, flu experts say.
A University of Wisconsin researcher reported Friday a case of the avian flu in a human has gained resistance to a drug designed to treat the influenza virus, raising questions as to how health officials would combat a possible avian flu pandemic.
Officials said backlash against the university has been minimal in the wake of a report ABC News aired Thursday night that said the nuclear reactor on the campus was not safe or sufficiently protected from terrorist attack.
The report will likely not disrupt the flow of research funding involving the reactor, said Jacques Gansler, vice president for research.
OCONOMOWOC – Turning Wisconsin into a national biotechnology center may not be a pipe dream, but it is unlikely to happen any time soon, an official of the Milken Institute said Friday.
“It is unrealistic that in the next 10 years, Wisconsin would be in the top 10,” Ross DeVol, director of regional economics for the Santa Monica, Calif., economic think tank, said in an interview.
The dreaded bird flu virus is developing resistance to the main drug the United States and many other countries are relying on to combat a possible worldwide flu epidemic, a UW- Madison researcher reports.
The key to Wisconsin developing a sustainable biotech industry is developing collaborative research and development efforts among academic institutions in the state, according to a nationally recognized economist.
Ross DeVol, director of regional economics for the Milken Institute, Santa Monica, Calif., was the keynote speaker at the Wisconsin Biotechnology & Medical Device Association’s annual conference Friday in Oconomowoc.
Here is the statement that UW-Madison officials should have issued last week after an ABC News undercover investigation of security at the university’s nuclear reactor:
“ABC’s investigation exposed a lapse in security at the nuclear reactor used for teaching and research on our campus. Two ABC undercover investigators, posing as visiting students, were permitted to step through a door to the reactor building and take photographs without undergoing security clearance.
Two teams of researchers have reported that they obtained embryonic stem cells from mice using new techniques that, if proved in human cells, might overcome the ethical objections that influenced President Bush’s decision to limit federal financing for research on the human cells. But other scientists say the new techniques present ethical questions of their own and may not resolve Congressional debate over the financing.
Scientists are pursuing two different ways to create embryonic stem cells without destroying an embryo. The techniques are in early stages of research and have been tested only in mice. But they ââ?¬Å?raise promising possibilitiesââ?¬Â and will open up a new dialogue in the national debate over stem cell research, says William Hurlbut, a professor at the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University and member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.
To derive embryonic stem cells, scientists must destroy an embryo. But new research might change that.
Wisconsin’s research prowess alone – much of it rooted in University of Wisconsin-Madison laboratories – won’t be enough to move the state from its second-tier position to the top of the biotech list.
The Madison City Council approved the continuation of a program that provides funding for graduate research in the UW-Madison Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Tuesday in return for information on the city’s water quality.
Oct. 12, 2005 ââ?¬â? – A four-month ABC News investigation found gaping security holes at many of the little-known nuclear research reactors operating on 25 college campuses across the country. Among the findings: unmanned guard booths, a guard who appeared to be asleep, unlocked building doors and, in a number of cases, guided tours that provided easy access to control rooms and reactor pools that hold radio
Ten students, working for ABC News, visited nuclear reactors on 25 college campuses and found many gaping security holes, prompting a federal investigation. Here’s what the team found at the University of Wisconsin.
UW-Madison representatives met the press Thursday to respond to allegations of a security breach at the nuclear reactor laboratory in the Engineering Research Building this summer by two interns posing as prospective students.
UW-Madison officials punched back at ABC News Thursday while seeking to assure the public that the school’s nuclear reactor is impervious to terrorists.
A report on ABC’s “Primetime” Thursday night purported to find “gaping security holes” at many college research reactors, including the one operating at UW-Madison.
The University of Wisconsin released a statement Thursday insisting its Nuclear Reactor Laboratory is operated and maintained in a safe and secure manner.
Madison, Wis. – Trying to find a vaccine for AIDS is tricky enough, but when your scientists are scattered in five different places on a sprawling university campus, it’s downright daunting.
Mentions the University of Wisconsin-Madison is among the leading licensing organizations in the United States, and will rank 10th or 11th in the world for the research quality of its biotechnology faculty in a yet-to-be-published Milken Institute study.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison defended the security of its nuclear research reactor on Thursday, calling an ABC News report that found “gaping holes” at it and other university reactors sensational.
“Overblown and sensational.” That’s how one UW professor describes a recent report regarding security concerns at the school’s nuclear research reactor.
Nuclear reactors used for research and education on 25 college campuses have poor security, leaving them vulnerable to truck-bomb attacks by terrorists that could contaminate surrounding communities with radiation, ABC News reported on Thursday night. Officials at several of the universities and at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission disagreed and called security adequate.
A reactor has uranium rods, surrounded by water, encased in cement. When a reactor is turned on, the uranium rods heat up.
Even Bill Gates’ harshest detractors concede that he’s doing good in the world.
The $26.8 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focuses primarily on global health and the U.S. education system, and Gates does more than just give away his money: He gets involved, traveling to places like Africa, where AIDS is killing millions, and to the nation’s top universities, where he pumps computer science as a great career.
In a session with state media after his appearance at UW-Madison on Wednesday, Gates said his foundation has been getting involved in Avian flu, which some experts fear has the potential to become a pandemic similar to the flu of 1918 that killed 50 million people.
UW-Madison’s nuclear reactor may be a target for terrorists, according to a breaking ABC news investigation set to run tonight on “Primetime.”
Over four months, ABC sent 10 Carnegie Fellows to 25 university nuclear reactors across America, including UW-Madison, University of Florida, Ohio State, MIT and Texas A&M. The investigation found potentially dangerous breaches of security protocol at campus reactors.
ABC reported the students, posing as tourists, were allowed access to nuclear reactors without showing ID or even passing through metal detectors in some cases. The students were allowed into control rooms and nuclear pool rooms, often encountering unlocked doors and reactor guards sleeping at their posts.
British soldiers seeking ways to identify friendly aircraft in World War II were given a newly developed radar transponder system called IFF – Identification Friend or Foe. It was a crude system, but it was a way to tap into technology to identify something at a distance. Fast forward 65 years, and you’ll find researchers working on today’s version of remote identification: RFID – radio frequency identification.
A four-month ABC News investigation found gaping security holes at many of the nation’s college nuclear reactors. There were unmanned guard booths, unlocked buildings, and again and again, easy access with no background checks and no metal detectors.
There’s a move afoot over in the Capitol to exempt UW System researchers from an old state law that restricts public employees who start private companies from signing contracts with the university.
A four-month ABC News investigation to air tonight will report the discovery of “gaping security holes” at many of the nuclear research reactors on 25 college campuses across the country, including the one operating at UW-Madison.
Among other things, the report says that students working undercover for ABC were able to gain access to high-security areas with no background checks, while carrying large tote bags that were not inspected. Those alleged security breaches were documented at the University of Florida, UW-Madison, Purdue University and Ohio State University, according to the report. Different problems involving security were identified at Texas A&M University and MIT.
