Quoted: “The cows did not go away. They were bought up by other farms,” said Steven Deller, a UW-Madison agricultural economist and author of the report.
Category: Research
Skulls Analyzed From The Mayan Sacred Cenote Show That Human Sacrifices Were Sourced From Far And Wide Across Mexico
The study published in American Journal of Physical Anthropology Magazine in July of 2019 by T. Douglas Price et al. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that the birthplaces of the individuals varied from near their final resting places in the still waters of the Sacred Cenote (pronounced say-NO-tay) and from far across Mexico and beyond, indicating that the Mayan network extended across thousands of miles.
Aspirin May Interact with Cells’ DNA Modifications to Alter Breast Cancer Outcomes
In an accompanying editorial, Kristen Malecki, Ph.D., MPH, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that the findings support the importance of research examining interactions between epigenetics and low-cost therapies such as aspirin. According to Dr. Malecki, “The study by Wang et al. shows that beyond gene-environment interactions, epigenetic and environment interactions also exist, and suggest that DNA methylation could in the future help to support the identification of individuals for whom treatment may or may not be successful.
Researcher Looks At Effects Of Sulfide Mining On Wild Rice Beds
Dance’s work is part of an effort to form a stronger connection with the state’s Native American tribes and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We have a longer interview in the first segment of WXPR Saturday Edition on our website.
Asian longhorned beetle larvae eat plant tissues that their parents cannot
Also involved in the research were David Long, Penn State research technologist in entomology, and Richard Lindroth, professor of ecology in the Department of Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The problem with specialization in young athletes
Similarly, David Bell, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Director of Injury in Sport Laboratory, and a team of researchers, found that highly specialized high school athletes are over twice as likely to suffer lower joint injuries, such as around the hips or knees, relative to their unspecialized counterparts.
Climate change is amplifying deadly heatwaves
A 2018 study written by Limaye and his former colleagues found that climate change would lead to thousands more heat-related deaths in the eastern United States by the middle of the century.
UW Study Indicates Brain Bounces Back After Anesthesia
General anesthesia allows those having surgery not to feel pain or remember what occurred on the operating table. Both functions are controlled by the brain so no matter what part of the body is being operated on, the brain also is affected. To what degree has been unclear. Past studies have had mixed results.
How Exercise Lowers the Risk of Alzheimer’s by Changing Your Brain
Noted: To find out, for nearly a decade, Ozioma Okonkwo, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and his colleagues have studied a unique group of middle-aged people at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Through a series of studies, the team has been building knowledge about which biological processes seem to change with exercise. Okonkwo’s latest findings show that improvements in aerobic fitness mitigated one of the physiological brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s: the slowing down of how neurons breakdown glucose. The research, which has not been published yet, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association on Aug. 9.
Gov. Tommy Thompson headlines Roll & Stroll to support pancreatic cancer research
Everything raised will go to the UW Carbone Cancer Center to support research.
Earth’s magnetic poles probably won’t flip within our lifetime
We appear to be safe from a catastrophic reversal of the north and south magnetic poles, according to evidence showing that the last swap took a lot longer, and was a lot messier, than scientists thought. The magnetic field shields Earth from the sun’s harmful radiation and cosmic rays, so a sudden polarity reversal could affect our power and communications systems, as well as our health.
When Earth’s magnetic field flips, it could take thousands of years
But a new study August 7 in Science Advances says we should probably calm down, since the last magnetic field reversal on Earth took quite a bit longer: at least 22,000 years. It’s one more piece in the puzzle of how and why our planet’s magnetic field operates, and slowly but surely researchers are figuring it out.
Can Major Surgeries Cause a Long-Term ‘Brain Drain’?
“Our data suggest that, on average, major surgery is associated with only a small cognitive ’hit,’ and while there was a doubling in the risk of substantial cognitive decline, this only affected a small number of patients,” said senior study author Dr. Robert Sanders. He’s an assistant professor in the department of anesthesiology at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison.
Axios Science – August 8, 2019
What’s new: In research published this week in Science Advances, geologist Brad Singer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues homed in on the last reversal event in search of the steps leading up to it.
It took an incredibly long time for the Earth’s poles to flip
Cheesy sci-fi movies depict the magnetic field shift as happening virtually overnight, and while researchers know that’s not the case it’s still hard to pin down an estimate. Now, a new study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that a pole flip which occurred around 770,000 years ago took tens of thousands of years to finish once it began.
Earth’s magnetic field reversals may take much longer than we thought
That said, scientists generally don’t know what causes a reversal, nor how long it takes to play out – it’s believed that the average is about 7,000 years, but some studies suggest it could happen in less than 100 years. To investigate for the new study, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UC Santa Cruz and Kumamoto University looked to the turbulent time around the last geomagnetic reversal.
Earth’s Magnetic Field Reversal Took Three Times Longer Than Thought
In their paper published today in Science Advances, Brad Singer of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues calculate that Earth’s last magnetic field reversal took roughly 22,000 years.
Earth’s Magnetic Field Went Completely Haywire During Last Reversal and Took 22,000 Years to Get Back to Normal
In a study published in Science Advances, a team led by Brad Singer, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at lava flows to trace back the last major reversal and find out how long it took.
Earth’s Magnetic Field Could Take Longer to Flip Than Previously Thought
“[Polarity reversal] is one of the few geophysical phenomena that is truly global,” says Brad Singer, professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and lead author of the study.
Earth’s Last Magnetic-Pole Flip Took Much Longer Than We Thought
“We found that the last reversal was more complex, and initiated within the Earth’s outer core earlier, than previously thought,” lead study author Bradley Singer, a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Space.com.
Earth’s roaming magnetic poles create longer periods of instability, study says
“Reversals are generated in the deepest parts of the Earth’s interior, but the effects manifest themselves all the way through the Earth and especially at the Earth’s surface and in the atmosphere,” said Brad Singer, study author and University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist. “Unless you have a complete, accurate and high-resolution record of what a field reversal really is like at the surface of the Earth, it’s difficult to even discuss what the mechanics of generating a reversal are.”
UW study: Major surgery’s impact on brain is smaller than feared
Robert Sanders, UW assistant professor of anesthesiology, said on average people’s cognition is “pretty much the same” after a major operation as compared to before, according to a study he authored that was recently published in the British Medical Journal.
Earth’s last magnetic field reversal took far longer than once thought
New work from University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist Brad Singer and his colleagues finds that the most recent field reversal, some 770,000 years ago, took at least 22,000 years to complete. That’s several times longer than previously thought, and the results further call into question controversial findings that some reversals could occur within a human lifetime.
UW research ‘angels’ help find and identify American MIAs
Tens of thousands of American service members never returned home.
People who pulled on American uniforms, raised their right hand to support and defend the Constitution before dying in foreign lands and waters far from their homes, and worried families who never got the chance to bury their loved ones.
But the missing in action have not been forgotten. Not by a nation that sent them to war and not by a dedicated group of volunteers and researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Air Conditioning Saves Lives And Needs To Be Affordable
That increased use of electricity to cool buildings could also result in as many as a thousand additional deaths annually in the Eastern U.S. alone due to elevated levels of air pollution, posits a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Camera that can see around corners created by UW scientists
Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Universidad de Zaragova in Spain reported their results Monday in the journal Nature.
Climate Change Has Made Our Stormwater Infrastructure Obsolete
“The take-home message is that infrastructure in most parts of the country is no longer performing at the level that it’s supposed to because of the big changes that we’ve seen in extreme rainfall,” lead author Daniel Wright, a hydrologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement.
Study finds that as many as one in 300 of us may be extreme early risers
Led by University of California San Francisco along with the University of Utah and University of Wisconsin-Madison, the new study looked at 2,422 patients attending a sleep disorder clinic over a nine-year period to investigate the prevalence of advanced sleep phase.
Why Poor Couples Crave Strong Relationships
Economists study poverty using hard data – but the numbers don’t always reflect personal experiences. University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor Sarah Halpern-Meekin joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about how low-income parents struggle for family and community — and how a vacuum of social ties can perpetuate the cycle of hardship. Halpern-Meekin’s new book is called “Social Poverty: Low-Income Parents and the Struggle for Family and Community Ties.”
Alzheimer’s Blood Test Shows 94% Accuracy
The IPMS method was based on prior work by the Bateman laboratory that immunoprecipitated A? to isolate it from plasma, then used liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to determine A?42 and A?40 concentrations, wrote Barbara Bendlin, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Henrik Zetterberg, MD, PhD, of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, in an editorial accompanying the study.
Summer is a season of hunger for many Wisconsin kids
Article by Sarah Kemp, a researcher with the school enrollment projections program at the University of Wisconsin Applied Population Laboratory and the UW-Madison Department of Community and Environmental Sociology.
This ‘Big Red Ball’ Can Replicate Solar Winds on Earth
Now a team at University of Wisconsin–Madison is hoping to clear up some of these lingering mysteries surrounding solar wind by building what they call the “Big Red Ball,” a device that can actually mimic solar winds.
Scientists Just Built a Mini-Sun in a Lab That Emits ‘Plasma Burps’
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison constructed the 3-meter-wide (10 feet) aluminum vacuum chamber, which they dubbed “the Big Red Ball,” to re-create some of the solar physics that take place in and around the sun.
Sun’s scorching hot, spiraling wind re-created in a lab
“We’re not re-creating the sun, because that’s impossible,” plasma physicist Ethan Peterson of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told Science News. “But we’re re-creating some of the fundamental physics that happens near the sun.”
Scientists Built a Ball of Plasma They Call a “Mini-Sun”
Physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison built a swirling orb of plasma they’re calling a “miniature Sun” — so they can study how stars work up close.
Who did the Maya sacrifice?
To try to shed some light on the matter, Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, looked at 40 human teeth recovered from different people cast into the Sacred Cenote. He and his colleagues have just published their results in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Positive messaging early in the school year can help sixth graders transition to middle school, UW study says
“There’s usually a perfect storm, or a constellation of events all happening at once in a young adolescent’s life when they get to middle school,” Geoffrey Borman, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher and the lead author of the paper, said in an interview. “We usually notice a very pronounced decline in student performance when they hit middle school, and it usually has something to do with the transition to a new school that is much more complicated.”
Lab-made “Mini-Sun” sheds light on the real thing
When scientists need to learn about something, recreating it in the lab is often one of the best ways – and now that even applies to the Sun itself. Physicists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have built a mini-Sun in the lab, and used it to probe the secrets of the real thing.
Scientists Built a Tiny Version of the Sun in Wisconsin
Enter the Big Red Ball (BRB), a “mini-Sun” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison built to simulate solar dynamics in a laboratory setting.
Mini Sun: US scientists recreate the ‘Sun’ in their laboratory to study solar winds
US scientists have recently built their own “mini-sun” in the University of Wisconsin-Madison for studying solar winds
Physicists recreate mini sun to study solar winds and plasma burps
In a new study by the University of Wisconsin–Madison, physicists report the creation of a mini sun, a laboratory model of the Parker spiral system based on a rapidly rotating plasma magnetosphere and the measurement of its global structure and dynamic behavior.
Scientists create artificial sun in a lab, the third of its kind in the world
A team of scientists in Wisconsin have created an artificial, miniature sun in their lab.
These Academics Spent $1.35 To Make Middle School Less Awful. Here’s How.
Middle school, as documented in such educational opuses as Eighth Grade and School of Rock, is legendarily awful. Students who have done well in elementary school often stumble, become isolated and fall behind. But Geoffrey Borman, a professor at University of Wisconsin Madison who specializes in education policy and analysis, and his team, think they may have found an answer.
Looking to Have a Lucid Dream? There’s a Pill for That
The results took researchers by surprise, according to Benjamin Baird, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison involved in the study. “It worked amazingly,” Baird says. “It was not at all clear that it would be this powerful of an effect.”
The tiny tyre device that could change the way cars work
In 2015 the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed what appears to be similar technology to that used by Sumitomo, using a nonogenerator to capture the energy from the movement of the tyre.
Sun’s Mysterious Plasma Blobs were Recreated in a Lab
The scientists have a simple model for the Sun’s magnetic field: a bar magnet, or a dipole, which has a north and a south pole. A research team from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, built those three elements into their laboratory model.
Significant Digits For Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, built a 3-meter-wide plasma containment chamber called the Big Red Ball, inside of which they created a model of the mysterious, charged, flowing environment of the sun.
Science Explains Why Chimps Throw Their Feces
According to Karen Strier, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison , feces throwing is not that normal of an occurrence in primates, especially in the wild.
Thanks to science, parasite can have sex in mice, not just cats
In a study now online in the journal Public Library of Science Biology a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison peels back the mystery of why the parasite, which infects a wide range of mammals, including humans, can only have sex and reproduce in the intestines of cats.
Sun’s Puzzling Plasma Recreated in a Lab
A research team at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, built each of these factors into their laboratory model. Inside a 3-meter-wide plasma containment chamber — the “Big Red Ball” — the team placed a cylindrical permanent magnet about 10 centimeters wide and 10 centimeters long.
Physicists Made a Hot Plasma Doughnut to Study Solar Wind
So, to supplement the data gleaned from satellites and space probes, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently created a glowing, doughnut-shaped plasma, a respectable 10 feet in diameter, that behaves like a miniature version of the solar wind.
NIH requirements offer new hurdles for fetal tissue researchers
Researchers using fetal tissue faced another setback during the Trump administration as a notice from the National Institutes of Health spelled out new requirements for requesting grants for research involving the use of the tissue.
Cat-like lab mice created at UW could enhance study of parasite infection
Now UW- Madison scientists have discovered why the parasite replicates sexually only in cat intestines. Using the new knowledge, they created cat-like lab mice to enable more research on the disease, a risk especially for pregnant women and people who eat undercooked meat.
Cannabis Culture
Noted: African Americans in Wisconsin are four times more likely than whites to be arrested for violating marijuana possession laws, according to an analysis of 2018 arrest data by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.
Commenting on the state-specific study, University of Wisconsin-Madison sociology professor Pamela Oliver said: “The only possibility for these statistics to happen is for police to be stopping blacks more than whites. … We know the usage patterns are not different, so if you’re generating a difference in arrests, it has to be differential policing.”
Smith: Regional meeting raises profile, highlights challenges of CWD management
Noted: Mike Samuel, UW-Madison professor emeritus, gave a presentation Tuesday titled “Lessons from 15-plus years of CWD Research in Wisconsin.” Since CWD is a frequency-dependent disease, Samuel said the only way to beat it is to reduce the prevalence in the population.
Graduate school research cited in Mueller report
Josephine Lukito, school of journalism and mass communication graduate student, was interviewed on CNN about research she and a team of UW-Madison graduate students did showing how media used tweets from Russia troll accounts while covering the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. The research was cited in the Mueller report.
In Milwaukee County, hundreds are hurt every year by reckless drivers. This is one victim’s story.
Noted: Preliminary data show there were 299 car crash injuries related to speed in Milwaukee County through Monday, compared with 224 through roughly the same period in 2010, according to the Community Maps database, an online tool developed by the state Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Safety and the Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That’s a 33% increase.
Sumitomo’s concept tire harnesses friction to generate electricity
Back in 2015 we looked at a research group from the University of Wisconsin-Madison working on a similar technology, which was able to harness tire friction to power headlights on a toy Jeep.
The Vaccine That Could Prevent Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
Quoted: One single risk factor will never explain the entirety of psychiatric problems, wrote Chuck Raison, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in a special report on the topic in Psychiatric Times. But “inflammation turned out to be a common denominator and likely risk factor for every manner of psychiatric disturbance, from schizophrenia to obsessive compulsive disorder, from mania to depression,” he wrote.
Food Pantry Helps Columbia Students Struggling to Pay Bills
A study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates that as many as one-third of American undergraduates experience food insecurity while pursuing college degrees.