Category: Research

“You’ve got to think like a vegetable now,” says Simon Gilroy, a botanist who studies how plants sense and respond to their environments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

New research published today in Science is providing an unprecedented view of the signaling action that happens within plants when they’re under attack. A second or two after a plant receives an injury, like a chomp from a caterpillar, a warning signal radiates from the location of the wound, spreading out through the entire plant in a process that takes fewer than 120 seconds.

Researchers of a new study found that an injured leaf may send distress signals to other undamaged leaves when under threats such as being eaten. The fluorescent experiment shows how quickly plants’ internal communication really works.

According to new research, plants use the same signalling molecules that animals use in their nervous system. Our green friends don’t have nerves, exactly – but they certainly have something surprisingly similar.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health is teaming up with Facebook for a study investigating the question parents want answered: How much does social media impact the health of our children?

Plants have a unique challenge in staying alive long enough to produce offspring. Unable to move and at the mercy of their surroundings, they present a tempting source of nutrition for bacteria and animals alike. But they’re not helpless. Botanists have long known plants are capable of sensing their environments and responding to them. They can grow differently in response to shade or drought, or release noxious chemicals to fend off predators, even as a caterpillar is mid-way through chewing on a leaf.

When plants are under attack from a very hungry caterpillar, a warning signal flashes through the plant to the other leaves, revealed for the first time in the video above.The video, captured by Masatsugu Toyota at the University of Wisconsin was created using a plant modified to fluoresce in response to calcium signals. The details were published in Science.

“[For] the first time, it’s been shown that glutamate leakage at a wound site triggers a system-wide wound response, and the first time we’ve been able to visualize this process happening ,” says Simon Gilroy, professor of botany at the Gilroy Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and senior author on the paper out today in the journal Science.

Dr. Jim Kossin, NOAA atmospheric scientist at UW-Madison, found that in the past 70 years, hurricanes have slowed 10% over open waters and 16% on the U.S. Coast.

Brain injuries often go undiagnosed because hundreds of brain cells can die, symptoms could still be small enough to go unrecognized.

Kids and teens spend plenty of time playing video games, but new evidence from the University of Wisconsin-Madison study suggests certain games may be good for their brains.

But one of every five workers in Wisconsin is earning poverty-level wages, black women are three times more likely than white men to work at lower-paying jobs, and Latino employees earn 43 percent less than white employees, based on median pay, according to the analysis by COWS, formerly known as the Center on Wisconsin Strategy.

A research team led by Xudong Wang, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of materials science and engineering, has developed a prototype wood floor designed to convert footsteps to electricity.

Noted: Rozalyn Anderson, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health, told Business Insider that her work in monkeys also suggests metabolism is at the center of the aging process.

Noted: The study authors—Michael Light, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Ty Miller, a graduate student at Purdue University—wrote that ramped-up border enforcement had not led to an overall reduction of crime in the U.S. because undocumented immigrants were not responsible for increased crime rates in the first place.

According to Steve Vavrus, senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research, a combination of high humidity and a very slow-moving storm is what caused the huge amount of rainfall.

MADISON, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin–Madison Center for Limnology is experiencing flooding from lake levels on Lake Mendota rising, a blog post from center said.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Lucidity Institute in Hawaii have figured out a more consistent way to create a lucid dreaming state, and it involves the use of drugs normally used to treat Alzheimers.

“Russian groups appeared to identify and target nonwhite voters months before the election with benign messages promoting racial identity,” said the author of the report, Young Mie Kim, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Then, on Election Day, the group sent them an ad encouraging them to boycott the presidential election.

For most, the idea of sitting down to take a bite out of a grasshopper or cricket seems unappetizing. But for Valerie J. Stull, PhD, MPH, a post-doctoral research fellow at University of Wisconsin-Madison, the idea is not as ludicrous as some might think.

In the 21st century, nearly a century after its founding in the 1930s, the institution balances Wisconsin’s tradition of ecological research with public outreach, citizen-science projects, and hosting visitors, whether they want to learn more about prairie ecosystems or just enjoy the scenery.

A 2008 study conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison of inter-district choice in Colorado found that under the policy, poorer and lower performing districts tend to lose students while wealthier and higher performing districts gain them.