Nanodevices are typically built by connecting tiny components. But such a delicate task is not easy. So, many researchers are exploring ways to fix components in place using the binding properties of biological molecules, notably DNA.
Robert Hamers and his colleagues from University of Wisconsin-Madison propose using entire microbes instead
Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle has made much of his $750 million biotechnology plan for the state, especially as budget season pushes onward. But it can be easy to lose track of where the money is coming from and going, as the plan involves a handful of separate buildings and initiatives funded through public-private partnerships.
Electric currents are being used to move bacteria around silicon chips and trap them at specific locations. The technique could help to assemble nanomachines from miniature parts, and to create a new generation of biological sensors.
The four universities that received the most U.S. patents in 2003 were also the leaders in 2004, according to figures released on Friday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The Minnesota Board of Regents voted unanimously to work to become one of the top three research universities in the world within the next 10 years.
The vote came during the board�s monthly meeting Feb. 11.
The fly, at first, looks like nothing so much as a tiny matador. Now standing still, now feinting left or darting right, he circles the petri dish arena, waving a black-tipped wing at his quarry like a red cape.
Quoted: Sean Carroll, in whose University of Wisconsin-Madison laboratory the biarmipes flies danced,
The state Building Commission Friday voted 7-1 to finance a proposed $381 million biotechnology research institute at UW-Madison.
The 450,000-square-foot Wisconsin Institute for Discovery would be built on a wedge of land bordered by University and North Randall avenues and West Johnson and North Charter streets, just north of Union South.
The commission also approved $137.5 million in new bonds for the project that will become available over the next 10 years and reallocated to the institute $50 million of previously approved bonding, said Rob Kramer, secretary of the commission.
The state Building Commission gives the go-ahead to a two-year building plan that includes funding for the first phase of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.
If you ask Karl Mahlburg about his mathematical breakthrough, he will, typically, smile a very shy smile, duck his head, and say something self- effacing.
But Mahlburg, a 25-year-old UW-Madison graduate student, has solved what may be the last part of a historic mathematical problem that has challenged the brightest minds in the field of number theory for 75 years. It is a feat that has drawn praise from the elite in the math world.
Discussions about human cloning legislation are heating up once again, with two opposing conservative camps vying for the best strategy to outlaw the practice.
On Thursday, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) reintroduced a bill to ban human cloning that has failed to pass twice since 2001. The bill would ban both reproductive cloning, which would lead to a baby, and therapeutic cloning of the type researchers believe could lead to treatments for human diseases.
The $375 million Wisconsin Institute for Discovery will turn the near west side of the UW-Madison campus into a cutting-edge nexus for integrated research, allowing the state to remain a leader in research areas across the academic spectrum.
Marmosets who are fathers have a muted reaction to sexually available females — an unusual response among primates, scientists said on Wednesday.
In an effort to keep the University of Wisconsin at the forefront of biotechnology research, Gov. Jim Doyle announced Wednesday during a press conference that he will include $19 million for the first phase of construction of the Institute for Discovery on the Madison campus.
There were many important people at the unveiling Wednesday of the proposed $375 million Institute of Discovery, from college deans to a beaming governor.
But few in attendance may have more to gain from the ambitious research center than three children who stood quietly next to the architectural drawings as the important people spoke.
The prospect of wild monkey sex, even among wild monkeys, apparently diminishes in allure if the consenting primates are parents. UW-Madison researchers focusing on marmoset fathers found their testosterone levels “barely wavered” in response to the scent of a female, while hormone levels erupted in the nonparent males. The results, released in a report Wednesday and published in the January issue of Hormones and Behavior, surprised the scientists because not only was it a unique demonstration of testosterone response to a social situation, it was not the response everyone expected.
Gov. Jim Doyle will seek $187.5 million in state funds to build a research institute that could keep Wisconsin on the leading edge of biotechnology and biomedical research.
In December, Doyle proposed the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, which would bring together biochemists, nanotechnologists and computer engineers at UW-Madison. Doyle said today he would call on the state Building Commission to approve the first phase of funding for the institute at its meeting Friday. The project will also require legislative approval.
Several health care professionals joined Rep. Jean Hundertmark Tuesday to support the introduction of her 2005 “Conscience Protection Act.”
The bill from the Clintonville Republican is aimed at protecting doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care workers from being discriminated against or sued because they follow their consciences in refusing to take part in procedures “that are a planned, calculated destruction of human life,” Hundertmark said.
President Bush honored UW-Madison computer science Professor Emeritus Carl de Boor and representatives from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Monday with the nation’s highest awards in science and math, respectively.
Justin Becknell became an environmental science major because he wanted to help solve ecological problems. He is so determined to get results, in fact, that he’s developing a subspecialty in ethics.
Quoted: Frances Westley, director of the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
WASHINGTON – President Bush presented 16 science and technology achievement medals on Monday to recognize breakthroughs in various fields, including geology, computer software, genetics and neurology.
Gov. Jim Doyle signed off on an agreement between the University of Wisconsin System and a Mexican college that allows them to exchange students and faculty and possibly conduct joint research projects.
The first question asked by state legislators who must pass judgment on a major building project is, “How do we pay for it?” The second is, “How will it help Wisconsin ââ?¬â?? and my district?” Governor Jim Doyle’s emerging plan for the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery is providing some straightforward, and exciting, answers
Pay-per-view has always been popular with humans interested in explicit material, but recent findings show that monkeys will also pay for a glimpse of power and beauty. Researchers have discovered that monkeys will forego valued treats for a glimpse of photographs of socially attractive peers or female hindquarters.
The number of people enrolled in marijuana treatment and rehabilitation programs has surged, approximately tripling from 1992 to 2002. The government uses this statistic to argue marijuana is addictive and that current strains of the drug have become more potent. Proponents of marijuana legalization disagree, arguing that the rise in enrollment in these programs reflects people being forced into them by court rulings.
The National Institutes of Health has put the finishing touches on an eight-year effort to overhaul the peer-review committees that evaluate applications for research grants, the first such systematic retooling ever.
A team of University of Wisconsin linguists recently discovered the dialect of Wisconsin speakers is becoming more distinct as time passes, mirroring a similar trend all over the country.
Earlier this week a group of scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois began an experiment in which they send a continuous beam of neutrinos to a large iron detector deep in an underground mine in Soudan, Minn. The neutrinos are traveling through parts of Wisconsin, including Madison.
“Just know that (Joe) Skulan, 44, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geology Museum, is not your garden variety science geek. This is a guy who dug a 14-foot 83 million-year-old shark skeleton out of a rancher’s field in Kansas and, more recently, unearthed the skeleton of a 3,200-pound rhinoceros from the ground on Picnic Point.”
Autistic youngsters may shy away from eye contact because they see even familiar faces as uncomfortable threats, according to brain tests at the University of Wisconsin.
The research deepens understanding of an autistic brain’s function and may lead to new treatment and teaching approaches.
Cat lovers have been coming at a UW-Madison professor with sharpened claws after his cat research was described in this newspaper Sunday.
Two police agencies are investigating death threats against wildlife ecologist Stan Temple, who has also received dozens of round-the-clock phone calls at home and work after a Wisconsin State Journal article about a debate over whether feral cats should be shot.
LA Weeklyââ?¬â?¢s Margaret Wertheim was the National Science Foundationââ?¬â?¢s visiting journalist to Antarctica for the 2004ââ?¬â??05 season. In the second of two articles on her recent trip, she reports on the worldââ?¬â?¢s oldest ice, the physiology of freezing and IceCube at the South Pole.
Federal restrictions on stem cell funding are forcing states to choose between pursuing such research on their own or risking the loss of jobs, revenue and highly sought-after scientists, state biotechnology leaders said Wednesday.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been assigned 65,000 Internet addresses to boost its network capacity, allowing it to go forward with a planned expansion of its wireless network to blanket the campus.
Autistic children and adults are typically reluctant to make and keep eye contact with others — part of their general lack of social or emotional connection. A new study suggests a basic reason for this: The eye contact overstimulates a part of the brain that processes fear and emotion, and people with autism learn to limit their eye- and face-tracking as a result.
(This article from The Washington Post is about research done by professor Richard Davidson. It was published in the 3/9/05 Capital Times print edition.)
The truth is out there, and it may be closer than you think.
Recent data from the Mars rovers and the Huygens probe on Saturn’s moon Titan reveal tantalizing evidence that life existed or still exists elsewhere in our solar system.
VANCOUVER, B.C. – Good relationships and a sense of purpose may help women over age 60 fend off heart disease, arthritis and other illnesses by reducing the inflammation that promotes them, according to a new study conducted by psychologist Elliot Friedman of the University of Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is throwing a rock concert to celebrate the world’s oldest stone.
A piece of zirconium silicate some 4.4 billion years old and no bigger than a grain of sand will appear on stage next month with the New York band Jazz Passengers, who will use rocks as percussion instruments and use recordings of rock strikes on a synthesizer keyboard.
In “The Da Vinci Code,” author Dan Brown described the number phi, which he claimed occurs in countless occasions in nature. Because of its ubiquity, Brown wrote, phi was dubbed the Divine Proportion by ancient scholars who believed the number was “God’s building block for the world.” But is the number really all around us? And is it as magical as Brown would have us believe?
Most universities don’t need legal help to protect the safety of their faculty members, much less construction workers. In November, however, a High Court in Britain barred certain animal-rights activists from coming within 50 yards of a research laboratory under construction at the University of Oxford, except during scheduled weekly demonstrations.
Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers ignited a controversy in January when he suggested that innate differences between men and women explain why women are underrepresented in science and engineering at top universities. His comments prompted swift responses from researchers and educators who attribute the difference more to external factors than to physiological causes.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers looking for ways to make safer stem cells for use in medical therapies said on Monday they had grown human cells without the use of contaminating animal cells.
They said their work, done outside U.S. federal restraints, could bypass problems with existing stem cell batches, which scientists complain are contaminated by animal products and thus of no use in treating people.
MADISON ââ?¬â?? As the second Iraq war neared and the Pentagon feared chemical weapons attacks, Air Force commanders heard that a new, hand-held chemical weapons sensor was hot out of the laboratories. So they pleaded for 100 early models to be pressed into action at a cost of $1 million.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is throwing a rock concert to celebrate the world’s oldest stone. A piece of zirconium silicate some 4.4 billion years old and no bigger than a grain of sand will appear on stage next month with the New York band Jazz Passengers, who will use rocks as percussion instruments and use recordings of rock strikes on a synthesizer keyboard.
Researchers in Wisconsin have come a step closer to developing a culture for human embryonic stem (ES) cells that is free of animal products–a recipe that is essential for growing any cells that would be used for therapy in humans.
At a press conference Friday, Gov. Jim Doyle accepted a $15 million donation from the Oscar Rennebohm Foundation, which will go to build the new Interdisciplinary Research Complex on campus.
The Oscar Rennebohm Foundation announced Friday a donation of $15 million to aid in the costs of building the new University of Wisconsin Interdisciplinary Research Complex.
Just so nobody gets the wrong idea, Evelyn Howell is a big supporter of wind farms and the push for alternative forms of energy. She is, after all, an ecologist in the Department of Landscape Architecture at UW-Madison.
University of Wisconsin researchers have confirmed the usefulness of a non-invasive test that identifies people at increased risk for heart disease.
James M. Stein, co-director of UW Health Preventive Cardiology, presented the study results Sunday at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Sessions in Orlando, Fla.
For those who don’t eat dairy products, calcium-fortified drinks can be a substitute. But research shows consumers may not be getting as much calcium in orange juice or soy and rice products as the label indicates.
Children suffering from autism pay very little attention to faces, even those of people close to them.
Kim M. Dalton of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her colleagues studied 27 autistic teenagers who looked at pictures of faces while a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine scanned their brains.
Gov. Jim Doyle and UW-Madison officials on Friday announced a $15 million gift — the fifth biggest in university history — from the Oscar Rennebohm Foundation to help build the planned Interdisciplinary Research Complex.
Madison, Wis. ââ?¬â? To find the catalyst for the United States’ economic growth over the past 10 years ââ?¬â?? including the nation’s astounding 26 percent gain in productivity ââ?¬â?? look no further than market flexibility and incentives, says University of Wisconsin Business School Dean Michael Knetter.
The I-94 corridor connecting Madison and Milwaukee is not only 70 miles of concrete enabling us to get back and forth in just a little over an hour but a main artery along the “IQ Corridor” that stretches through Wisconsin from the Twin Cities to Chicago. Wisconsin’s ability to flourish and grow depends in part on our ability to remove any old blockages in this artery and cooperatively leverage the strengths of our two cities.
The Oscar Rennebohm Foundation is giving $15 million to help build a research complex on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Gov. Jim Doyle was planning to announce the donation today at the university.
Researchers in Wisconsin have come a step closer to developing a culture for human embryonic stem (ES) cells that is free of animal products–a recipe that is essential for growing any cells that would be used for therapy in humans.
The most frightening situation for a firefighter can be getting lost in a smoke-filled building. But, three students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, hope their invention will stop that situation from ever occurring again. Nick O�Brien of Apple Valley, Chandler Nault of Bloomington and Mitch Nick of Green Bay, Wis., designed FireSite and won the $10,000 first prize in UW-Madison 2005 Schoofs Prize for Creativity competition.
Patricia Kiley is wondering whether to hop on the bandwagon. As a young microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Kiley is making a name for herself studying some of the most basic life processes–for instance, how bacteria sense changing oxygen levels in their environment. But lately, she has felt the oxygen being sucked out of her own field, as funding has become increasingly scarce.
Wisconsin, and the Milwaukee area in particular, host a patchwork of medical technology researchers and companies. A key challenge facing the region’s array of emerging biomedical industries, some of them argue, is the disjointed way they pursue new technologies.
A new study out of California makes it clear that human actions are causing global warming, said a University of Wisconsin-Madison specialist in atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
The study, which shows people are responsible for the increase in temperature in the oceans, is another piece of strong evidence that global warming needs to be addressed, said Galen McKinley, an assistant professor at UW-Madison.
New research from the California Institute of Technology indicates brand loyalty may not have much to do with the quality of the product.
