A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that by increasing sleep duration to 8.5 hours per night people reduced the number of calories consumed in a day and the long-term potential to gain weight.
The study also involved researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and explored this question via a randomized clinical trial involving 80 adults. These subjects were overweight and had habitually short sleep duration, of less than 6.5 hours a night, a recognized risk factor for obesity. The idea was to investigate whether extending their sleep duration could mitigate this risk, with the subjects taking part in a four-week study, the first two weeks of which were used to gather baseline information on sleep and caloric intake.
New OIL-TAS test will provide cheap, fast, accurate alternative to PCR testing
Skye Bruce, a PhD student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, focuses on monarch landscape ecology, which is essentially the study of the best possible ways to conserve the species’ habitats. In her work she seeks to answer questions such as: Do monarchs need lots of habitat in the landscape in order to find a patch? Do they need continuous, non-isolated habitat like a lot of butterflies and other insects do? Or can they find these isolated patches?
Much of what scientists have found so far isn’t so surprising, but it does confirm long-held associations about what parts of the brain fire up during meditation. One meta-analysis of 110 studies showed the imprint mindfulness can have on the brain, such as increased activation in areas associated with focused problem-solving, self-regulation, self-control. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been able to teach machines how to recognize meditative states in humans through measurements of brain patterns. We are not far from a reality in which researchers could teach people how to mirror a mindful brain state through a process similar to Powers’ Decoded Neurofeedback.
In an aquatic lab in Madison, four juvenile nurse sharks swim comfortably in a new tank built specifically for them. They are not wild sharks.
Quoted: Those changes can already be seen clearly by examining lake ice, said Steve Vavrus, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Climatic Research.
Scientists studying Wisconsin’s inland lakes are able to collect a wealth of information on Madison’s lakes Mendota and Monona, whose ice records stretch back close to 170 years. Lakes have ice cover for about a month less now than they did when the records began, researchers estimate.
Out of Lake Mendota’s long ice record, the five years with the longest stretch of ice cover all occurred during the 1880s or earlier, and the five years with the shortest ice cover have all been since the 1980s, Vavrus said. It “really is a very different winter climate that we’re living in nowadays compared to over a century ago,” he said.
“I think what we’re seeing is people are pushing in at the limits of the edges of the season where it is potentially more dangerous,” said Titus Seilheimer, fisheries outreach specialist for the Wisconsin Sea Grant.
A new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison explains how hibernating animals use bacteria in their gut to maintain muscle density over the winter. The findings could lead to solutions for people with muscle-wasting disorders or astronauts headed on prolonged journeys into space.
Hannah Carey is a professor emeritus at UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine and an author of the study. She said scientists have known for years that ruminant animals, like cows and sheep, are able to recycle their own nitrogen as a way to build muscles while eating a low protein diet. Nitrogen is a vital building block of amino acids and proteins.
What is a rural college? And where can such institutions be found? The questions seem simple, but in higher education, the answers are surprisingly complex. Now two new reports aim to clarify them.
The first, released in December, comes from the University of Wisconsin and is titled “Mapping Rural Colleges and Their Communities.” Nicholas Hillman, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin who spearheaded the report, says the research was born out of the question “Where are rural colleges located?”
A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows current anti-COVID-19 pills work well against the Omicron variant, but antibody drugs are less effective. Researchers at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine found the Omicron variant has so many different mutations in spike proteins that antibody treatments can’t keep up.
UW Professor of Pediatrics Dr. Megan Moreno led the study, which evaluated one year of publicly displayed posts on Facebook and Instagram by retail companies from four states in which recreational marijuana use is legal: Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington.
Noted: Statewide, 69 percent of people are aware that global warming is happening, according to a 2020 University of Wisconsin-Madison report which said people are “eager” to hear from health professionals.
Noted: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the National Institutes of Health published their study late last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, in which they analyzed a total of 1.6 million menstrual cycles, using anonymized data self-reported through a smartphone app by 267,000 people.
They found 22% of the people in their study had menstrual cycles that vary by a week or more, a finding that is consistent with other research on the topic, said Jenna Nobles, a UW-Madison demographer who led the study. Nearly all the study’s subjects identified as women, she said.
“Less than 1% of cycles are 28-day cycles with day 14 ovulation, even though that is the stylized version of menstruation that we all learn about,” she said.
Nobles conducted the research with UW-Madison graduate student Lindsay Cannon and NIH emeritus investigator Allen Wilcox, who is a physician and a renowned scholar of reproductive epidemiology. Wilcox’s previous research has served as the foundation of knowledge around topics including when in the menstrual cycle people get pregnant and how likely it is that people will have miscarriages.
Several research groups are already working on a pan-coronavirus vaccine, including scientists at the California Institute of Technology, Duke University, University of Washington, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
At UW-Madison’s AIDS Vaccine Research Lab, thousands of samples from across Wisconsin are sequenced — or analyzed for their genetic code.
UW-Madison researchers are collaborating with three other teams to create a universal coronavirus vaccine.
Quoted: Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer for UW Health, said that helps eliminate a lot of the bias that may otherwise be present.
“To have folks studying medications, really any medications, within the confines and safety of a well-conducted clinical trial, that’s how we learn things in science,” said Pothof. “Those kinds of studies are welcome, although hard to do and time-consuming and resource-consuming.”
Wei-Di Cheng, a 1993 UW–Madison graduate, is a stress analyst at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California. Cheng analyzed mechanical ground systems to propose, design, fabricate, test and deliver ground systems to support spacecraft and payload integration of the James Webb telescope.
ActivePure’s air purifiers, are based on a technology developed in the 1990s at the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics (WCSAR), a NASA Research Partnership Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Assistant Professor for the Department of Astronomy Michael Maseda will get the privilege to be a part of the first data collection endeavors with the JWST. He said this project is the culmination of years of technological advancements.
“We cannot do an apples-to-apples comparison because we do not have brain waves data for other interventions,” Katherine Magnuson, a professor in the school of social work at the University of Wisconsin and another co-author on the study, told me. Lisa Gennetian, a professor of public policy at Duke and another co-author, chimed in after Magnuson: “There isn’t another apple. There isn’t even an orange.”
But they suspect that the money could have enabled some parents, either moms or dads, to work less or “choose a job with slightly lower pay, but with shorter commute time so that they have more time with their babies,” said Katherine Magnuson, a social-work professor at the University of Wisconsin and one of nine lead researchers collaborating on the study.
“The power of cash is that it can be used as the family needs it in the moment, to fix the car or buy diapers. It’s a powerful way to empower people to take care of themselves and that’s critical when it comes to taking care of kids,” said Katherine Magnuson, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who also co-authored the study.
The findings build on evidence that cash support can improve outcomes for older children, said co-author Katherine Magnuson, director of the National Institute for Research on Poverty and Economic Mobility, based at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
The Baby’s First Years study was conducted by researchers affiliated with Duke University, New York University, Columbia University, University of California Irvine, University of Maryland and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Over the years, Sanjay Limaye said the discovery of certain gasses — ammonia, methane and most recently, phosphine — in the planet Venus’ atmosphere has caught scientists by surprise.
Those are among several gasses that can be produced by life, as well as through other means.
Cancer researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are getting help from a unique partner on campus – sharks.
Dr. Aaron LeBeau, an associate professor of pathology and lab medicine, and radiology, at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, will be leading the shark-based cancer research. It is currently the only research of its kind in the world.
Omicron causes less severe disease in mice and hamsters than other variant strains, according to a study at University of Wisconsin-Madison, which experts say is a reliable model to understand COVID-19.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are developing a universal vaccine that would protect against multiple diseases and coronavirus strains, including COVID-19. Last fall, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases invested $7 million in the UW-Madison research collaboration, named the Pan-Coronavirus Vaccine consortium. Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a pathobiological sciences professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine, is leading the team working toward a universal vaccine.
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is conducting a research study, Log2Lose, that aims to seek whether motivating text messages could impact a person’s ability to lose weight.
UW–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine Professor of Pathobiological Sciences Yoshihiro Kawaoka leads the research study and explained that the universal vaccine would prepare people for the future.
The School of Medicine and Public Health at UW-Madison is looking at whether text messages can help motivate people to lose weight.
A UW-Madison research team has received $7 million from the federal government to help develop a universal coronavirus vaccine that could protect against multiple strains at once.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have spent years making sure that their meditation app, called the Healthy Minds Program, passes clinical muster and delivers positive outcomes. Designing studies to test the app’s efficacy led Simon Goldberg, an assistant professor at UW, to confront the mountain of thousands of studies of different mobile mental health tools, including apps, text-message based support, and other interventions.
New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows balance training using video games changed the brain structure of adolescents with autism and helped improve balance, posture and the severity of autism symptoms.
Brittany Travers, a UW-Madison occupational therapy professor and Waisman Center lead researcher, said she and her colleagues are interested in finding ways to better interventions that improve the motor skills of individuals with autism. She said prior research has shown balance control appears to plateau earlier in kids with autism than those without. As people age balance becomes more of a challenge for everyone, Travers said.
“But the speculation is that autistic individuals may be more at risk for falls and later in life if these balance challenges are not addressed,” Travers said.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are digging into a different, more targeted method of controlling crop-attacking pests, a tactic that could prove to be less harmful to the environment than traditional pesticides.
Russell Groves, professor and chair of the university’s entomology department, recently joined Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Larry Meiller Show” to explain the present and future of RNA interference.
Quoted: According to data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research, Wisconsin’s average winter temperature rose about 2 to 6 degrees between 1950 and 2018, depending on the part of the state. And in the coming years, those temperatures could rise another 6 degrees, greatly impacting the amount of snow the state sees, and the areas where snow is present for the entire winter season.
But what is really impacting the hares isn’t the amount of snow falling in Wisconsin — that has largely stayed the same, said Michael Notaro, the associate director for the Nelson Institute. It’s the amount of snowpack, or snow on the ground, that is impacting animals.
As the Earth’s temperature increases, snow melts quicker, meaning the snow season doesn’t last as long.
“In the future, as it keeps getting warmer, eventually (precipitation) is going to be more in the form of a liquid, but so far that hasn’t necessarily occurred, but (snow) is just not staying on the ground very long,” Notaro said.
As part of a study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Waisman Center, teens spent three hours a week teetering on Nintendo Wii balance boards, mimicking tai chi and yoga poses prompted on a screen.
Diamond Way participated in a 2003 University of Wisconsin-Madison research project which concluded that regular meditation and reading Nydahl’s books made a group of subjects ‘develop significantly more antibodies against infection from a normal influenza vaccine than those in a group who did not meditate’.
A UW-Madison expert is launching research focused on therapies for diseases such as cancer – using sharks.In 2021, the UW Carbone Cancer Center provided the necessary equipment for the research to UW Carbone faculty member Dr. Aaron LeBeau. LeBeau will leading the shark-based cancer research, which is currently the only research of its kind worldwide.
The progress made in children’s book publishing has been encouraging and certainly necessary. According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the numbers of children’s books written by Black, Indigenous, Asian and Latino authors have all significantly increased in the past 20 years.
Five months later, Duke and two other academic institutions — the University of Wisconsin and Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital — received a total of roughly $36.3 million to fund the continued development of pan-coronavirus vaccines.
The UW–Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs’ inaugural La Follette Policy Poll was conducted between July and September 2021 among almost 1,600 Wisconsin residents from all but one county. The poll’s margin of error is +/-2.5 percentage points.
Quoted: Last month, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Michigan State University released results of a study revealing that society’s reliance on rock salt is salinating Lake Michigan.
Even small increases can trigger unknown ecosystem changes and secondary effects such as drinking water pipe corrosion, said Hilary Dugan, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology and lead author of the study.
Lake Michigan is still “extremely fresh” water, Dugan said. “There’s no cause for alarm. But I think people should be aware that it is rising and that is fully because of human-derived salts.”
Officials said a study, published Monday, showed that high activity of the gene Nrf2 slowed cognitive and physical decline in mice.
In a study published Tuesday, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of sociology Jenna Nobles found those with irregular periods in states with restrictions may be less likely to access legal abortion.
Quoted: Ajay Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained that “viruses like SARS-CoV-2 evolve as they replicate in a person with infection and as they spread from one person to the next. When that evolutionary process yields a strain that has a genetic make-up which is very different from the original virus, it is considered a ‘variant.’ ”
He added that “a virus is a ‘variant of concern’ if it has the potential to threaten the pandemic response in some way. It may be more infectious than other variants, cause more severe illness, not be detectable by current tests, less affected by current treatments, partially escape immunity provided by current vaccines, or a combination of these.”
His methods quickly attracted the attention of scientists elsewhere who started to make summer trips to Vancouver and his fame as an innovative scientist grew. In 1960, moving to Madison, Wisconsin, Gobind and his colleagues worked hard to solve the problem of the genetic code — how the “language” of DNA and RNA is transformed into proteins in the cell. The Khorana lab was able to show that triplet sequences encode specific amino acids, corroborating the work of Marshall Nirenberg who was to share the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1968 with Gobind.
Their caregivers reported their symptoms went from severe to moderate.
The Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances will expand the scope of psychedelic research at UW-Madison, building on clinical studies that have been done on campus since 2014. Several other universities, such as Yale and New York University, have also invested in research on psychedelics as a treatment for headaches, alcohol abuse and depression.
In a meta-analysis of various studies last May, researchers from the University of Wisconsin found that 19% of people who tested positive for Covid simultaneously tested positive for another pathogen (a so-called “co-infection”) — be it viral, bacterial or fungal.
In October, the NIAID announced a $36-plus-million-dollar program to develop pan-coronavirus vaccines, with funding going to three academic programs, located at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Duke University in North Carolina. Recognizing the need for a comprehensive strategy, the funding is going to multidisciplinary groups with expertise in virology and immunology, immunogen design, and innovative vaccine and adjuvant platforms and technologies.
The term “‘disability’ is not a slur,” says Morton Ann Gernsbacher, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies how language is used in relation to disability. But the term “special needs” may be moving in that direction, she says.
A key question for the Delft team and its counterpart at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is how to obscure data on eye movements with privacy filters without sacrificing too much utility. Researchers from both schools said eye-trackers could give companies a wealth of information for targeted advertising at a very granular level.
When states began proposing “heartbeat bills” — legislation that would prohibit abortion as early as six weeks, as soon as a fetus’s heartbeat is detected — Jenna Nobles took notice, employing her skills as a researcher. For the past few years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of sociology has examined how these policies could affect people with irregular or long menstrual cycles.
But even small increases can trigger unknown ecosystem changes and secondary effects such as drinking water pipe corrosion, said Hilary Dugan, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology and lead author of the study.
A study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that small antibody-like proteins called VNAR in the immune system of sharks can avoid COVID, its variants and related coronaviruses from infecting people.
A class of fourth graders from Green Bay public schools recently submitted questions about renewable energy and the environment to WPR’s “The Morning Show.”
Greg Nemet, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, joined the show to answer those questions.
Sohad Murrar and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin at Madison recently applied the same idea to intergroup relations. In recent years, universities and other organizations have invested heavily in training in which instructors extol the benefits of diversity and urge participants to be mindful of their own implicit biases. But those initiatives have a mixed record. Murrar’s team found that drawing people’s attention to social norms could produce much better results.
Despite a federal effort to expand lung cancer screenings to more individuals, research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows Black and Hispanic individuals were still less likely to be eligible for screenings than white counterparts.
