Category: Research

The UW Madison is home to a titan. And people all over the world could feel the impact of it. But it is some employees of the UW who will feel it most. The giant will unleash a foul odor at the height of its success. (Video.)

Still trying to make sense of stem cells and cloning?

Log on to The Why? Files, www.whyfiles.org, a Web-based magazine featuring a news-you-can-use approach to science, math and technology information.

The site, around since 1996 when the Internet was in its infancy, was highlighted in PC Magazine this spring as one of its top 100 sites. It’s the second time the site produced at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has earned the distinction.

He’s a movie star, but you won’t find W. Nicholas G. Hitchon chasing the villain or sweeping the heroine off her feet. Instead, he taught an undergraduate electrical-engineering course this morning, and now he chats with two students in a cafeteria at the University of Wisconsin here.

Two days later a camera crew arrives and films Mr. Hitchon talking with the same two students at the same cafeteria — only this time at an outdoor table, where the light is better.

Randy and Julie McClure had three children who were long out of diapers and no plans for more when they heard about a program called Snowflakes, which arranges for women to become pregnant with embryos left over at fertility clinics.

UW-Madison has set its share of records, from athletics to academics, so why not one in botany?

Big Bucky, a malodorous tropical plant of the species Titan arum, is blooming again, and this time, as surely as Badger football great Ron Dayne ran for his place in history, this strange tropical plant is going for the botanical gold – the world title for the tallest Titan arum flower.

In an unprecedented move, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) asked the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) to pull a bioterrorism-related paper that the journal planned to publish online on 30 May. The journal took the paper off its publication schedule on 27 May and has been reviewing it internally.

UW-Madison’s weekly online science magazine, The Why Files, was for the second time named one of the World Wide Web’s top 100 sites by PC Magazine. “This down to earth science site was a PC Magazine pick way back in 1997, when you had dialup and about 12 bookmarks. With tons of articles and activities, Why Files will take you from ignorance to expertise in dozens of subjects,” the magazine states.

A UW-Madison center focused on the science of the very small is going after big money.

Local professors are going to Washington, D.C., this week to compete for a federal grant for research into the emerging fields of nanotechnology, said Juan De Pablo, director of UW- Madison’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. The group is asking the National Science Foundation for $18 million over six years.

KRT) – ST. LOUIS – In one hand, plant geneticist Michael McMullen holds black teosinte kernels, the seeds of what scientists say is the grassy ancestor of corn. In the other, he holds needlenose pliers – definitely needed to crack the tough hulls into a few starchy bits.

The work, a joint project among the University of Missouri, the University of California at Irvine and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is published Friday in the journal Science.

A $6.6 million pixel camera for taking detailed research photographs of the night sky is scheduled to be built for the Kitt Peak National Observatory with help from the University of Wisconsin.

American scientists looked on in envy last month when Korean researchers announced a breakthrough in embryonic stem cell research. The news fanned fears the US is losing ground in the field and heightened the sense of urgency in Congress to pass legislation to ease federal restrictions on stem cell funding.

Three writers express their views.

It was barely a drop, but the effect of the drug was astonishing. Pointing to a digital recording of fathead minnows gasping for breath in a milky, murky stew, researcher Rebecca Klaper said: “We had planned to keep them in there for a week, but we had to pull them the next day. They were going to die.” Refers to UW-Madison research by Stanley Dodson and Joel Pedersen.

The significance of the House vote this week to allow federal research on stem cells taken from discarded human embryos was perhaps best illustrated by Rep. James Langevin of Rhode Island. He cast his vote from a wheelchair.

WASHINGTON, May 25 – Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican and chief sponsor of a bill to expand federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research, issued a stark challenge to President Bush on Wednesday, saying he had enough votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto of the measure.

A survey of more than 100 medical schools has found that they vary widely in their standards for testing new medicines for drug companies, with some saying they would accept far more control from the companies than others would.

MADISON, Wis. — The scientist who first isolated human embryonic stem cells now hopes to profit from the discovery.

Even as the debate unfolds in Washington over federal funding for stem-cell research, Jamie Thomson and two colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have formed Cellular Dynamics International, a company that will test new drugs on heart cells they plan to develop from the undifferentiated master cells.

Four years ago, when President Bush placed severe restrictions on the types of embryonic stem cell research eligible for federal funding, he made it tougher for scientists to pursue potentially life-saving medical advancements.

A federal trial is scheduled next week in Madison involving major makers of scientific equipment, UW- Madison and an entrepreneur, all over who can profit from a device most people know from high school chemistry.

At stake is millions of dollars in U.S. sales of the adjustable pipette, the syringe-like instrument that researchers around the world use to measure and transfer liquids from one container to another.

In a move that could help resolve one of the most politically controversial issues in science, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to overturn President Bush’s limitations on federal financing for research on human embryonic stem cells.

MADISON — Over the past dozen years, the UW-Madison campus has seen a building boom of more than $1.6 billion, with two-thirds of the funding coming from federal and other sources. Many of the new and renovated structures were for the sciences.

The House of Representatives defied President Bush’s veto threat and voted Tuesday to expand federal funding for stem cell research using human embryos.

As debates over embryonic stem cell research flare anew worldwide, a private foundation says it will give $50 million for such work to three Upper East Side medical institutions, a gift they say will position New York City as a player in an increasingly competitive field.

Four years ago, when President Bush placed severe restrictions on the types of embryonic stem cell research eligible for federal funding, he made it tougher for scientists to pursue life-saving medical advancements. That was a mistake.

MADISON � A federal trial is scheduled next week involving scientific equipment makers and the University of Wisconsin over who can profit from a device common to high school chemistry.

At stake is millions of dollars in U.S. sales of the adjustable pipette, a syringe-like instrument that researchers around the world use to measure and transfer liquids from one container to another.

Up and down the East Coast, stem cell researchers are feeling the tug of a powerful, invisible force. It is a wave of recruiting calls from institutions in California seeking to expand their research programs with help from Proposition 71, the state’s $3 billion stem cell initiative.

President Bush on Friday condemned stem-cell research advances in South Korea and said he worried about living in a world in which human cloning was condoned. He said he would veto any legislation aimed at loosening limits on federal support in the United States.

“I’m very concerned about cloning,” Bush told reporters in the Oval Office. “I worry about a world in which cloning becomes acceptable.”

The Bush administration policy on stem cell research is shifting efforts that might lead to cures and treatments for a host of diseases away from the federal government. President Bush limited federal funding to 78 existing stem cell lines when he set his policy on Aug. 9, 2001. That policy has led to a patchwork of initiatives that scientists, patients and some lawmakers say has stunted progress on finding cures for diabetes, Alzheimer’s and other diseases. ââ?¬Å?The field would move much more quickly if the federal government gave its support,ââ?¬Â says George Daley, a Harvard University scientist.

Scientists in South Korea have developed a reliable technique for generating lines of human stem cells from cloned human embryos, opening up a new avenue for studying diseases and possibly for treating or curing them.

With speed and efficiency that will make waves in laboratories and legislatures around the world, scientists have created nearly a dozen new lines of human embryonic stem (ES) cells, ones that for the first time carry the genetic signature of diseased or injured patients. Last year, a group led by veterinarian Woo Suk Hwang and gynecologist Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University reported the first–and until now the only–derivation of ES cells from human nuclear transfer experiments (Science, 12 March 2004, p. 1669). Those efforts yielded just one cell line from more than 200 tries, but the researchers report online in Science this week that they can consistently derive a cell line in fewer than 20 tries.

Using remarkably efficient cloning techniques, South Korean researchers have created the first lines of embryonic stem cells customized to specific patients, a major advance that could accelerate the long-awaited dream of using genetically matched healthy cells to replace human cells and tissues damaged by disease and injury. Quotes Norm Fost, a medical ethicist and professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

WASHINGTON, May 18 – With a vote on embryonic stem cell research expected as early as next week, the House majority leader vowed on Wednesday to defeat a measure that would expand federal financing of the science.

“Once people understand the issue,” said the majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, “more than 70 percent are against embryonic stem cell research.”

It was a true eureka moment. The discovery two decades ago of a similar set of genes in fruit flies, mice and humans was both startling and unifying.

Up to that point, biologists believed that diverse animals use diverse tool kits to build their bodies. With the discovery of so-called homeobox genes, it became clear there is but one.

Interview with Sean Carroll, a professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin,

The National Science Foundation on Monday announced the winners of the 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.

The individual recipients include Jeffrey S. Russell, a professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.