Category: Research

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.”

It was late on a night in 1969 when Marie and Frank Radtke pulled away from a stop sign, missed a turn and rolled down an embankment into a utility pole.
Bones in her face, and eventually her life, were shattered. Doctors were able to put Radtke’s face back together, but as the years went on, the pain in her face became more and more intense, almost unbearable. Several months ago, Radtke’s doctor at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison offered a solution. It was a novel therapy that would require removing part of her skull, peeling back the membrane that covers her brain and implanting strips of electrodes on the surface of her motor cortex, the brain region that controls movement in the face and other parts of the body and processes sensory input from nerves in those areas.

Eight local governments including Green Bay, the Town of Caledonia and the New Berlin School District will ask a judge to allow them to be defendants in a lawsuit filed against the state seeking to extend unemployment benefits to domestic partners of state workers.

Quoted: Jeff Nelson, research specialist in the biological systems engineering department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

More than one in five state residents is obese, according to a new analysis in the Wisconsin Medical Journal that for the first time measures the problem county by county. Casey Schumann, one of the authors of the new report is a UW-Madison grad student.

Quoted: Norman Drinkwater, an oncology professor at the University of Wisconsi

What would have been the tallest residential building in Madison….won’t become a reality. The city council voted down a proposal for a 16-story apartment building on Charter Street….and Alderman Ken Golden believes it would have set a bad precedent.

At least once a day – in the aftermath of a 10-year, violent civil war – someone would step on a land mine in Nicaragua and either be killed or maimed.

It was the severity of these lower extremity injuries that turned a 1991 missions trip of plastic and reconstructive surgeons from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to Nicaragua into a cooperative medical training project.

I was born and grew up in the Midwest, but subsequently studied both on the East and West coasts. I therefore know firsthand that there is a strong impression on both coasts that the middle of the country is an intellectual void.
If a TV sitcom takes place in either L.A. or New York, and the writers want to introduce a character that is a well-meaning yokel, they often put a T-shirt on him with “Wisconsin” printed on the front to establish his character. It has been a great source of pride to me that the publicity surrounding human embryonic stem cells and its universal association with Wisconsin has helped to remove that T-shirt. Please be absolutely clear: Any legislation that impacts basic science that is more restrictive than current federal legislation will only help put that T-shirt back on.

A former University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who follows Middle East politics says whether Iran�s new President took part in the hostage crisis may not matter. Kemal Karpat says many former revolutionaries have since moderated their political views, although the new President has been described as a hardliner.

UW-Madison researcher and embryonic stem cell pioneer James Thomson is expressing deep concern that Wisconsin will be left behind if the Legislature passes restrictive legislation limiting research on stem cells, saying he is “saddened and disappointed” by some recent developments.

The Madison Landmarks Commission has put off making a decision about the historical significance of the 80-year-old Rennebohm Building until Aug. 8. UW-Madison officials say making the building a landmark would complicate plans for a high-tech research center.

Madison, Wis. – Educators and video-game developers gathered last week in Madison to explore how learning technologies can alter traditional classroom and textbook education models, which speakers agreed early e-learning projects failed to achieve.

After a debate that pitted hope for cures to some of humanity’s deadliest diseases against the specter of vats of proto-humans grown for spare parts, the Republican- controlled state Assembly voted Thursday to ban human cloning in Wisconsin.

Madison has become home to a new laboratory to study radio frequency identification technology, or RFID.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s E-Business Consortium late last year established its RFID lab to put into practice concepts studied by the group’s RFID workgroup. During the first half of this year, the lab has been installing donated equipment and preparing for an official opening Aug. 12, announced Wednesday during the consortium’s second annual RFID Conference in Waukesha.

SAN FRANCISCO ââ?¬â? Universities nationwide are racing to lure top biotech scientists and research dollars, resources that could fuel one of this century’s most promising industries.
Perhaps nowhere is the outcome more crucial than in the bicoastal battle pitting Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology against Stanford and the University of California in San Francisco.

California-based Geron was once feared for its patent might. Because the company held exclusive rights to many embryonic stem cells developed at the University of Wisconsin, biotechnology rivals believed the company would establish a stem cell monopoly. In 1999 Geron purchased rights to the cloning technology used to make Dolly the sheep in Scotland, a technique given patent protection by the British government a year later.

The head of the UW research park is lobbying heavy criticism at state lawmakers today…for recent attempts he claims are scaring scientists. Mark Bugher tells WIBA news…proposals to ban cloning and certain types of stem cell research…have researchers “worried.”

Not surprisingly, a lot of folks remain unconvinced � including a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Justice Department to study the matter.

Biomedical engineer John Webster told the Associated Press that he believes many Taser-related deaths were actually caused by a combination of drug use and medical factors, but that others may have been caused by a rare condition known as malignant hyperthermia, in which bodies essentially overheat as a result of an electrical jolt. He also theorizes that other deaths may be attributable to potassium released into the bloodstream after muscle contractions caused by a Taser shock reaching the heart. He�s hoping his research will help set standards for how powerful Tasers should be and provide guidelines for emergency room doctors on how to treat those who have been hit with the weapon�s jolt.

A $500,000 federal grant given by the U.S. Department of Justice to shock-test pigs with Taser International, stun guns should be withdrawn, according to People for Ethical Treatment of Animals.

PETA called for the grant withdrawal as well as prosecution and punitive damages Wednesday against two Taser executives who reportedly conducted experiments by shocking pigs in 20

Professor Don McCready of the University of Wisconsin believes the true explanation rests in the fact that our brains tend to make objects smaller when they appear closer to us based on distance cues.

Patents for discoveries made at UW-Madison brought in more money than at all but four other universities nationwide, a new study shows.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Despite optimism and enthusiasm, stem cell researchers arriving here Thursday for a conference are rowing hard against strong currents of financial, political and technical turmoil.