Category: Research

South Korean researchers Wednesday said they have created the world’s first cloned dog: a playful, black, tan and white Afghan hound named Snuppy.

Man’s best friend has been cloned for the first time in a genetic duplicate of a 3-year-old male Afghan hound, South Korean scientists report today.

Thanks to its geography and its clear skies, South Africa has long been a prime location for astronomy.

Which is why UW-Madison ââ?¬â?? plus a dozen other international organizations – signed on a little more than five years ago to help build and fund SALT, the Southern African Large Telescope.

Analysis of 3,000-year-old pottery shards from the ancient Olmec capital of San Lorenzo and other sites contradicts the notion among some researchers that the Olmec civilization was the “mother culture” that laid the foundation for the Inca, Maya and other civilizations of Central and South America.

Many researchers believe that the Olmec were the primary culture of the region, dominating, inspiring and ultimately raising the other chiefdoms to the level of civilization.

U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, the majority leader, announced on Friday his qualified support for a bill that would loosen President Bush’s limits on federal financing of research on human embryonic stem cells.

Sean Carroll is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In a review for Science & Theology News, Michael Ruse called Carrollââ?¬â?¢s recent book, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, ââ?¬Å?an attractive and accessible introduction to the field of evo devo [shorthand for evolutionary development].ââ?¬Â

The Dalai Lama, who once said he would have been an engineer if he hadnââ?¬â?¢t become a monk, has been invited to speak at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, in November ââ?¬â?? to the distress of some society members who are boycotting the meeting.

Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and lead investigator in the study, said he shares concern about the ââ?¬Å?slippery slopeââ?¬Â of involving religion in science. However, he helped set up the talk by the Dalai Lama because it could ââ?¬Å?encourage increased attention to these domains of inquiry,ââ?¬Â which he thinks hold potential for improving health.

A package of used hypodermic needles delivered to Assembly Speaker John Gard�s office last week has highlighted a political battle over stem-cell cloning for diabetes research. It�s also caused Gard to question Gov. Jim Doyle�s judgment in sanctioning the political stunt.

The Dalai Lama is at the centre of an unholy row among scientists over his plans to deliver a lecture at a prominent neuroscience conference.

His talk stems from a growing interest in how Buddhist meditation may affect the brain, but researchers who dismiss such studies as little more than mumbo-jumbo say they will boycott the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in November if it goes ahead.

The research peaked in November last year when a team led by Richard Davidson, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, published research in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that suggested networks of brain cells were better coordinated in people who were trained in meditation.

The Senate is having trouble deciding how to approach the controversial issue of stem cell research using human embryos, dimming hopes of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and other supporters that a bill will pass before the summer recess begins Friday.

MILWAUKEE ââ?¬â?? When UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago was provost at State University of New York at Albany, he was part of the team that created a $1 billion nanotechnology research center.

Santiago, who celebrated his first anniversary as chancellor last week, hopes to duplicate that public-private partnership at the state�s second largest university.

Almost 20,000 state workers will not receive pay raises for the more than two years they worked without contracts, but they also won’t have to pay back the state for covering health insurance premiums, under union contracts approved Wednesday by the Legislature.

Quoted: Patty Loew, an associate professor who teaches American Indian issues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: A study that tracked 12,000 graduates, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Science of Sociology masters thesis by Katherine McCoy.

In Wisconsin, it often seems as if the debate over whether to allow embryonic stem cell research to proceed is a partisan one. Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, stands on the side of science and supports research. The Republican-controlled state Assembly and Senate take the side of conservative extremists and superstitious merchants of fear to oppose it.

But it is important to recognize that, while key Republicans in Wisconsin may be living in the dark ages, Republicans elsewhere agree with Doyle.

SAN FRANCISCO – (KRT) – In 1981, University of California-San Francisco biologist Gail Martin isolated some remarkable cells from a mouse embryo. She named them “stem cells” because nearly every type of cell seemed to stem from them.

The discovery laid the groundwork for a whole new area of research. Nearly two decades later, a University of Wisconsin scientist adapted Martin’s technique to human embryos.

The July 10 editorial concerning the state budget suggested that it may make sense to require state employees to pay 1.5% of their salaries toward their pension benefits. In essence: The floggings will continue until morale improves (“Education funding must be restored”).

Drinking gallons of orange juice and popping vitamin pills may not make you live longer, say US researchers, contrary to previous reports.
In the past, scientists have suggested that taking antioxidants to combat free radical cell damage might delay ageing.

But a University of Wisconsin-Madison team has found no proof that highly reactive oxygen molecules are involved.

Under what it described as a common practice, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has paid four former administrators more than $600,000 in taxpayer dollars for yearlong leaves granted after their resignations.

The leaves were given to three deans and the university’s provost over the past four years. Two of the four agreed to resign from their tenured faculty positions as well, according to copies of settlement agreements provided by UWM.

When it comes to undergraduate majors, there is a full economic recovery in place.

Between 1990 and 1995, economics enrollments dropped every year, and departments saw their share of undergraduate majors fall from more than 2 percent to about 1.4 percent. But data that will be published in this summer�s issue of The Journal of Economic Education will document a continuation of a rebound that started in 1996.

A criminal justice assistant professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is under investigation on allegations of finagling a scholarship by forging an application for a female student with whom he sought a relationship.

Four years ago, Senator Bill Frist, speaking as a physician and former medical researcher, took the lead in the debate over embryonic stem cell research by urging lawmakers not to limit this “promising and important line of inquiry” with unscientific restrictions. Now, as the issue approaches a climactic moment, Mr. Frist, speaking as the Republican majority leader and someone with presidential ambitions, will lead the debate as a convert to President Bush’s unrealistic hobbling of full-fledged research financing. The results will affect the fate of a worthy and overdue commitment to add funds for greater research, something that has already been approved by the House.

If stem cells ever show promise in treating diseases of the human brain, any potential therapy would need to be tested in animals. But putting human brain stem cells into monkeys or apes could raise awkward ethical dilemmas, like the possibility of generating a humanlike mind in a chimpanzee’s body.

MADISON, Wis. — A new University of Wisconsin System computer project is supposed to streamline operations by improving use and cutting costs, but a News 3 investigation finds that after years of work — a massive computer upgrade is bogged down, offline and off budget, reports News 3’s Linda Eggert in this I-Team report.

WASHINGTON — The morality of the stem cell research technique pioneered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was called into question yet again Tuesday before a Senate subcommittee as a panel of scientists debated alternatives that may avoid the destruction of human embryos.

I have become increasingly frustrated with the student-athlete disciplinary policy at UW-Madison in the past few years.

As a basketball and football season ticket holder, I consider myself an avid Badger sports fan. However, the recent disciplinary decisions, particularly in the case of running back Booker Stanley, have led me and others to question both the aims and the effectiveness of the new so-called “tough stance.”