A fight between centrist and conservative Republicans over a bill to expand federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research has intensified in the past week as the House moves closer to a promised vote.
With 199 co-sponsors, supporters of the bill are confident that they have enough votes to pass it when leadership brings it to the floor this month, furthering the possibility that this legislation will become the first veto of President Bush�s tenure in the White House.
Entrepreneur magazine was not overwhelmed with the entrepreneurial programs at the UW-Madison in its April 2005 edition, and several surveys show the state ranks in the bottom third when it comes to creating new companies.
The cash-starved Wisconsin Historical Society has $1.1 million more in its endowment fund than officials thought was there.
The state Legislative Audit Bureau said this week that an audit identified an error in the society’s internal accounting records.
The Historical Society which has suffered severe cuts in its budget in recent years because of a state fiscal crisis – relies on donations and endowment fund earnings to finance many activities such as managing historic sites and operating the library and museum.
For years, Madison residents and school children have had a unique place from which to study the stars and the planets and all the wonders of the heavens. It’s called Space Place and it is operated as the outreach arm of the UW-Madison astronomy department.
HOUSTON, May 13 – Students attending the University of Texas at Austin will find something missing from the undergraduate library this fall.
Books.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has dropped an adviser from his proposed Taser experiment on pigs after a newspaper reported the adviser was a paid consultant for the company that makes the stun guns.
USA Today reported that the experiment protocol listed Robert A. Stratbucker as a consultant. It did not list that Stratbucker, an Omaha, Neb., physician, also is a medical consultant for Taser International.
MADISON, Wis. ââ?¬â? A Wisconsin researcher removed Taser International’s medical director as an adviser to a study of the safety of stun guns after critics said his invovement with the manufacturer tainted the research.
The President’s Council on Bioethics released a list of four approaches yesterday that it said scientists should explore as alternatives to generating embryonic stem cells from living human embryos.
New Limits Are Proposed for Research on Stem Cells
BOSTON, May 11 – Hoping to make a recently passed bill on stem cell research more restrictive, Gov. Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he would ask the legislature to amend the bill by changing the definition of when life begins and by excluding a type of embryonic stem cell research that he opposes.
WASHINGTON ââ?¬â? An adviser to a federally funded study concerning the safety of stun guns made by Taser International also is a paid consultant to Taser, the Justice Department acknowledges.
Sarah Jane Alger, a doctoral student in zoology at UW- Madison, was at that point in her research all scientists long to reach.
She had collected her data, hundreds of songs of the European starling, and was about to begin analyzing them. She would listen for differences between the songs of breeding and non-breeding males.
It was time-consuming and tedious research that explored almost entirely new ground, according to Lauren Riter, an associate professor of zoology and Alger’s adviser. And the research is promising not only because it offers insights into bird songs and behavior but also into autism and communication in humans. Her work is being funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health.
Madison, Wis. ââ?¬â? The second-ever group of Master of Science in Biotechnology students will walk across the stage for their diplomas at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this weekend.
Biotech farmers this week are lauding what they say is a milestone for the industry: the planting of the billionth acre of biotech seed.
LOS ANGELES, May 9 – California’s stem cell program is exploring temporary fund-raising options because a lawsuit has stopped the issuance of the $3 billion in bonds that would finance the research.
The program’s finance committee on Monday authorized the state treasurer to consider issuing up to $200 million in short-term notes to get the program up and running.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is famous for many things. An astronomy education center in an old steakhouse, though, probably isn’t one of them. UW Space Place, located for the last 15 years in a former Ponderosa restaurant, will move next month to a newly remodeled facility at the Villager on S. Park St.
Allan R. Odden, a nationally recognized expert in school finance at UW-Madison, received a $500,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation of New York to determine what it costs to adequately fund K-12 education in Wisconsin.
Milwaukee ââ?¬â? Examine the techno-geography of other states across the Midwest, and you’ll find they’re generally “bipolar.” No, that’s not a psychiatric diagnosis, but instead a reflection on the fact that most successful states have one or more tech centers.
If you had a fancy high-tech copy machine that would actually make 3-D copies of things such as molecules and proteins, wouldn’t you be tempted to play around with it, just a little bit?
Like, wouldn’t it be cool to copy something like a model car? Even Ted Pan, the technology specialist who runs the unique copy machine for UW-Madison’s Biology New Media Center, is human.
The discovery of an ivory- billed woodpecker deep in an Arkansas swamp has bird lovers in Wisconsin talking about the possibility of finding such flying ghosts in this state’s remote wooded or marshy reaches.
Is there, for example, a hidden population of passenger pigeons tucked away out there somewhere? Not likely, say experts such as Stan Temple, a wildlife ecology professor at UW-Madison who teaches a course on extinction.
Researchers at UW-Madison have found that the compounds in cranberries could help prevent heart attacks and strokes. Kris Kruse-Elliot conducted the research by feeding powdered cranberries to pigs. (Last item.)
From the national election to State Street’s 12-hour shutdown, these are the top stories of 2004-’05
The National Academy of Science announced the election of 72 new members to the group Tuesday, including 19 women, the largest number of females ever elected to the NAS.
Excluded from drug trials, the elderly face unknown risks.
Quoted: Alta Charo, UW-Madison professor of medicine and bioethics.
Madison, Wis. ââ?¬â? Massachusetts-based Genzyme Corp. said on Wednesday it has agreed to buy Bone Care International, a University of Wisconsin-Madison biotech spinoff, for $600 million in cash.
The National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine this week called for the creation of a new layer of oversight at institutions where research on human embryonic stem (ES) cells is conducted.
Continuing in a trend of academic expansion, Gov. Jim Doyle, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos E. Santiago and Aurora Health Care President Ed Howe announced the creation of the Wisconsin Institute for Biomedical and Health Technologies.
Through a $1 million UWM-provided seed grant, the WIBHT will involve the support of six schools and colleges and 65 researchers from UWM and Medical College of Wisconsin, according to a release.
Most people require about 8 hours of sleep a night, but some lucky oddballs function well on 4 hours or even less. A new study in fruit flies provides evidence that genetics plays a strong role in determining who can get by with little rest. A single mutation in a gene that’s also found in people can reduce the insects’ sleep needs by about two-thirds.
Common ground for ethical research on human embryonic stem cells may have been laid by the National Academy of Sciences in the well-received guidelines it proposed last week. But if research on human embryonic stem cells ever gets going, people will be hearing a lot more about chimeras, creatures composed of more than one kind of cell. The world of chimeras holds weirdnesses that may require some getting used to.
San Francisco has grabbed the lead among California cities battling for the state’s new embryonic stem-cell research headquarters, a $3 billion program that could fuel creation of biotechnology’s version of Silicon Valley.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley made a guest appearance at a political fundraiser on Thursday night for a Brookfield Republican.
Sen. Ted Kanavas’ campaign held the $100-per-person cocktail reception at the Madison Club, with information technology as the theme. Wiley’s special assistant, Casey Nagy, said the chancellor wanted to attend because it would be an opportunity to meet many people in the field of technology and venture capital.
Wiley would not make an endorsement or give any money at the event, Nagy said.
Outline of the recommendations contained in the “Report of the Madison Area Citizen Consensus Conference on Nanotechnology.”
A group of Madison area citizens has leaped ahead of the latest technological revolution – nanotechnology – previously the realm of researchers and science fiction books such as Michael Chrichton’s scary “Prey.”
….Members of the citizens group who spoke during a press conference at the State Capitol on Thursday included Gail Vick, 52, of Madison, a manager in a corporate computer technology customer service area.
“I feel very privileged to have taken part in this innovative model for connecting ordinary citizens with the potential outcomes of scientific research that will undoubtedly affect our lives and the lives of our fellow world citizens in many ways,” she said.
Retired professor Ed Schantz, the grandfather of what are now known as Botox treatments and an expert in growing the world’s deadliest poisons, has died at age 96.
Schantz died Thursday, said Joe Donovan, a spokesman for Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction Elizabeth Burmaster, one of Schantz’s four daughters.
MADISON ââ?¬â? Robin Riderââ?¬â?¢s search for the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker led not through the swamps of Arkansas but among the rare natural history books at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The result? Several startling images of the bird whose rediscovery in Arkansas has electrified the birding world because it was believed to have gone extinct decades ago.
As America’s economy continues shifting from one that is predominantly manufacturing to one primarily knowledge driven, Wisconsin must remember the lessons it learned more than 100 years ago.
That was when the Industrial Revolution changed our economy from being based in agriculture to one based in manufacturing.
MADISON, Wisconsin — The electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison had a lackluster record on gender equality for many years.
In the late 1980s, a curmudgeonly male colleague locked the department’s only female professor out of her lab, and no one in the department intervened until she appealed to senior campus administrators. Over the next dozen years, the department of 40 to 50 people hired only four more women, and two of them left before tenure.
The researchers who rediscovered the ivory-billed woodpecker slogged through a swamp in Arkansas to find the legendary bird, last glimpsed deep in a Louisiana bottomland forest in 1944.
Thursday morning, Robin Rider stalked the woodpecker on the UW-Madison campus and, to her delight, found several. And she didn’t even get her feet wet.
This responds to Eric Sandgren’s April 23 guest column quarreling with suggestions that the UW-Madison is “deliberately secretive” regarding its use of animals in research. As a reporter who has covered this issue for Isthmus, I would like to bring a few facts to your readers’ attention.
Until August 2003, members of the public were able to attend the meetings of UW-Madison committees at which the protocols of animal experiments are reviewed, in accordance with federal law. This policy was abruptly changed, and now the public is excluded from this portion of the meetings.
A group of local residents Thursday presented state legislators with a report calling for caution in the development of nanotechnology.
The emerging field of nanotechnology is based on the manipulation of materials that can be as small as atoms, and is expected to have a profound impact on the nation’s economy in the years to come.
The report, which was sponsored by UW-Madison with help from the Center for Democratic Action in McFarland, sought to give ordinary citizens a chance to consider the promises and perils of technologies that will have a major effect on their lives.
By their very nature, science and technology are always in the fast lane while ethics usually runs a distant third. But that hardly means ethical considerations should be given short shrift. Without some value system in place, there is a very real danger that science can quite literally run amok, reined in only by practical and, worse, mercenary considerations.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is expected to announce today that it is making a $1 million seed grant for a biomedical research institute that will bring together 65 researchers from the university and the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Thanks in part to the efforts of UW-Madison professors and students, a group of citizens held a press conference at the capitol Thursday to present recommendations on the development of nanotechnology after spending a month learning about the rapidly advancing field and discussing it among themselves and with experts.
A newly discovered pathway by which cells protect themselves from a toxic byproduct of photosynthesis may hold important implications for bioenergy sources, human and plant disease, and agricultural yields, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison bacteriologists announced Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We’ve discovered a pathway that cells use to turn on certain genes and respond to singlet oxygen,” says Timothy Donohue, a professor of bacteriology in the university’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and lead researcher on the paper.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been able to trace the cellular pathways that make up a plant’s defenses.
“This finding should make it possible to modify plants and other photosynthetic cells to avoid the toxic effects of singlet oxygen, which could impact agriculture and the treatment of human and plant disease, and aid the effort to create alternative bioenergy sources,” said lead researcher Timothy Donohu
Three workers in a downtown Seattle research laboratory were infected with tuberculosis while working on a vaccine for the deadly disease, state officials say.
L&I and IDRI reported the incident to the University of Wisconsin, which makes the Madison chamber, as it is called. But officials there said they didn’t think it necessary to alert any of the other 15 to 25 institutions using the chamber. The chamber operates with a vacuum, so no germs should get out, said Todd Kile, shops manager for the University of Wisconsin’s College of Engineering.
The National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine this week called for the creation of a new layer of oversight at institutions where research on human embryonic stem (ES) cells is conducted.
Quoted: Stanley Temple, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Madison, Wis. ââ?¬â? The University of Wisconsin-Madison is introducing two new stem-cell programs to lay the groundwork for future research and keep the university in a leading position.
Researchers at UW-Madison have found that help for those of us who have trouble sleeping may come from an unlikely source ââ?¬â?Ã? fruit flies, which are remarkably similar to humans when it comes to grabbing a few winks.
While most of us can’t seem to function with less than seven hours of sleep, some people seem just fine with three or four. The difference, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is genetic.
“….Restricting stem cell research to existing lines will send the message that Wisconsin does not care about lifesaving research and is not interested in retaining its place as a leader in bioscience. It will weaken our efforts to retain a highly educated work force and discourage the best students and scientists from coming here.
“As a registered nurse, I firmly believe in pursuing the promise this research holds for preventing debilitating diseases, easing suffering, and preventing premature death….”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has announced it will add two new stem cell programs.
Clive Svendsen, a professor of anatomy and neurology, said on Tuesday that UW-Madison will add a regenerative medicine program and an interdisciplinary postdoctoral program that will advance stem cell research. He made the announcement at a meeting of stem cell researchers.
Scientists who research embryonic stem cells may face increased regulations under new guidelines announced Tuesday by the National Academy of Sciences.
Citing a lack of leadership by the federal government, the National Academy of Sciences proposed ethical guidelines yesterday for research with human embryonic stem cells.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is establishing two new stem cell programs – a regenerative medicine program, which will draw on faculty from the Medical School and the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, and an interdisciplinary postdoctoral training program funded by a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
A National Academy of Sciences panel Tuesday called for national oversight of human embryonic stem cell research.
Concerned about inadequate regulation of privately funded human embryonic stem cell research, a panel at the National Academies issued guidelines Tuesday for American scientists, universities and private institutions. “We know this research is going to occur,” said Norm Fost, a medical ethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the academies’ advisory panel, so, “how do we make sure it gets done ethically?”
Mark Twain defined work as that which a person is obliged to do, and play as that which a person is not obliged to do. But two UW-Madison researchers suggest that with job-specific video games, work and play don’t have to be at odds.
Jim Gee, a professor of education, and Kurt Squire, an assistant professor of education, argue that video games can teach players an array of important skills, such as how to think strategically, make quick decisions, cooperate and learn from their mistakes – all skills that employers demand.
The scientific community would more closely regulate human embryonic stem cell research under guidelines released this morning by the National Academy of Sciences.
Two University of Wisconsin-Madison science ethicists, Norman Fost and Alta Charo, participated in the formation of the guidelines. The academy is trying to assuage public concerns about stem cell research, as well as to create uniform codes of ethics for all institutions. The guidelines also cover cloning.
After the Boston Red Sox won the World Series last October, a Boston friend told me he rode an emotional high for weeks, and even now feels a rush of exhilaration when he recalls the victory.
