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.
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.
Small companies and public sector agencies still have a ways to go before they can match the technology-fueled productivity gains of their corporate peers, agreed experts gathered in Madison for an information technology conference Wednesday.
The scientific community at large recognizes global warming as a genuine phenomenon. Dissenters suggest the increased temperatures might be due to natural climate fluctuation-perhaps the higher temperatures are part of the same cycle that caused the Ice Age long ago. But recent research indicates that Earth’s natural cycles do not sufficiently account for the temperature increases currently observed.
Imagine an airplane piloted by a cluster of brain cells growing in a little glass dish. The scenario sounds unlikely, but in Thomas DeMarse’s lab, the brain cells are already in flight school.
Information-technology businesses are taking apart their processes and putting them back together. With the Fusion 2005 CEO-CIO Symposium on Wednesday just around the corner, some of the experts watching IT in Wisconsin offered their opinions on how the state and its industries will be shaping their business practices as the year progresses.
Closing the achievement gap remains a hot topic in education these days. While statistics suggest that Black and Hispanic students are narrowing the academic-achievement gap that separates them from White and Asian students, the problem persists in schools nationwide.
Some of the nation’s leading microbiologists criticized the National Institutes of Health on Monday for financing a large expansion of research grants on bioterrorism.
Officials at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine are nearing acceptance into a late-stage clinical trial that would allow them to test a promising new drug for stroke victims.
Quoted: Nancy Mathews, professor at UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
Washington — More than 700 scientists sent a petition on Monday to the director of the National Institutes of Health protesting what they said was the shift of tens of millions of dollars in federal research money since 2001 away from pathogens that cause major public health problems to obscure germs the government fears might be used in a bioterrorist attack.
Not even Meryl Streep could accurately mimic the speech of most born-and-raised Wisconsinites, according to a recent study by a team of linguists from UW-Madison.
Represenatatives of the UW System, UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Marshfield Clinic have agreed to form a consortium in an effort to attract classified and sensitive federal research funds to the state.
Quoted: John Magnuson, UW-Madison limnologist.
It didn’t take a scientist to figure out that grumpy people make others feel lousy, and feeling lousy makes them less productive at work.
In an effort to bring together the strengths of universities, former director of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign�s supercomputer center Daniel A. Reed will bring together a research center aimed at unifying both science and the arts through the benefit of technology.
Harvard University president Lawrence Summers has suffered acrimonious condemnation, and may have jeopardized his job, for suggesting that the underreprentation of women in engineering and some science fields may be due in part to inherent differences in the intellectual abilities of the sexes.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley imploring him to cancel plans for a two-year study that would test the effects of Tasers on live pigs.
Several of Wisconsin’s institutions of higher education have agreed to organize a consortium designed to attract classified and sensitive federal research funds to the state. The Wisconsin Technology Council will be the administrative headquarters of the Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, according to a memorandum of agreement. Representatives of the University of Wisconsin System, UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Marshfield Clinic have signed the agreement.
Giant tube worms and underwater volcanoes are among topics that Edward Baker, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, will discuss today at a public lecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Journal Sentinel interviews Baker.
Dear Editor: What’s this crap about using pigs to test the casualty rate regarding the use of Tasers? What’s a pig going to tell you after being shot up with drugs, then zapped by a 50,000-volt electrical charge?
If it’s not dead, it’ll just squeal like hell to register a relative discomfort at being electrocuted.
