Noted: In 2003, Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli, biologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposed that synapses grew so exuberantly during the day that our brain circuits got “noisy.” When we sleep, the scientists argued, our brains pare back the connections to lift the signal over the noise.
Although they have yet to announce a date, a group of scientists say they’re moving forward with a plan to march on Washington. In the first days of the Trump administration, some scientists are concerned about the politicization of climate change data, the future of fact-based decision-making and the road blocks to international cooperation. We look at the future of science under the Trump administration.
A $10 million plant research facility in Middleton first opened in 1982 with the help of UW-Madison scientists, and now, through donation, it has become part of the University.
Noted: At the University of Wisconsin, virologist Dave O’Connor has been infecting macaques with Zika and carefully tracking the virus’ progress through time and tissues. During the pregnancies, his team repeatedly samples blood and amniotic fluid to determine how quickly the virus can infect a fetus. They take fetal MRIs to make measurements on how the baby macaque is growing. And once the pregnancy is complete, they analyze more than 60 different fetal tissues for little bits of Zika DNA and virus-induced damage.
A $10 million commercial biotech plant laboratory in Middleton that helped develop genetically modified plants and crops was donated by Monsanto Co. to UW-Madison, which has made it the hub of a new crop research center.
The use of non-human primates in research has fueled some of the most pivotal scientific discoveries to date and saved countless lives. Rhesus macaques have been instrumental in the development of vaccines, the discovery of HIV/AIDS treatments, the characterization of blood groups, and a myriad of other medical and scientific breakthroughs.
Two University of Wisconsin students are working toward using natural substances to create eco-friendly that can help scrub cancer-causing gases from water and air.
Last week, David Bart had to tell students assisting him in research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to stop working until federal officials lifted a short-lived freeze on grants from the Environment Protection Agency. The students are back at work for the time being, but questions over what to expect in support for scientific research under President Donald Trump’s administration continue, said Bart, an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture who studies human-environmental interactions.
A new center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be researching the spread of new diseases in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest region carried by ticks and mosquitoes.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will lead a new center designed to stop insects from spreading diseases.
University of Wisconsin-Madison is one the Midwestern universities that will receive a portion of $10 million to establish a new research and training program to stop the spread of diseases carried by insects, according to a release.
An onslaught of bug-borne disease, especially in the Midwest, has led to the creation of a new federal research center to be headed by two UW-Madison scientists.
A consortium of Midwestern universities and health officials led by UW scientists has won $10 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fight the spread of tick- and mosquito-borne illnesses.
After more than a year of work, a team of UW-Madison students is ready to test its futuristic high-speed transport vehicle on SpaceX’s Hyperloop test track in California.
The first images were stunning, like switching from black-and-white to a color high-definition television.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin measured the rate of specialization — meaning an athlete significantly sacrificed time with friends or family or participation in other sports — among 1,544 athletes in Wisconsin and tracked lower-extremity injuries. The study found athletes who specialized suffered those injuries “at significantly higher rates” than those who do not.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are concerned about the future of scientific innovation in the wake of a freeze on grants and contracts funded by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Noted: A team of 25 researchers from seven labs across the UW-Madison campus are two years into a four-year, $6 million EPA grant — the largest EPA grant currently on campus. The grant helps fund development of models of adult human tissue that are then exposed to environmental toxins. The National Institutes for Health and National Science Foundation also are funding sources for this research.
Madison streets, state highways and the campuses of UW-Madison and Epic Systems could soon be laboratories for driverless cars, after federal regulators gave a team of UW researchers approval to test the emerging technology at sites around Wisconsin.
UW-Madison is now one of ten locations chosen by the U.S. Department of Transportation at a testing site for the autonomous vehicles. The research and tests will attempt to make the self-driving cars safer for public use.
The Trump administration has placed a temporary suspension on all new Environmental Protection Agency business, which bars staff from awarding new grants and contract. The move impacts five grants previously awarded to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Driverless cars are making their way to Madison. The U.S. Department of Transportation has selected the University of Wisconsin-Madison as one of 10 locations in the country to test automated technology.
University of Wisconsin climate policy experts held their first seminar on formulating effective policy Monday, even as the incoming president has signaled disinterest in combating the issue.
Noted: Enter the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Led by Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist Time named one of the world’s most influential people in 2006, the center recently began shifting its emphasis from pure research to applied science, testing its findings about neuroplasticity, mind-body medicine, and the mental-health benefits of mindfulness outside the laboratory.
A new report based on work from two separate research teams adds to the evidence that cutting back on calories helps rhesus monkeys live healthier and longer lives. Beyond this, the research could lead to a greater understanding of factors that could improve human longevity down the line.
Cutting your calorie intake by a third could reduce your risk of heart disease and dementia by up to 40 percent, a new study claims.
The National Institutes of Health released a statement saying the longtime head of the agency “has been held over by the Trump administration.” But it was unclear whether that status was temporary or permanent.
Some reach for the stars. Others, like University of Wisconsin professor James Lawler, devise ways to measure their chemical elements.
A study being conducted by the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention is looking into whether video games on a smart phone can help smokers quit.
A study being conducted by the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention is looking into whether video games on a smart phone can help smokers quit.
JangoBio, a University of Wisconsin-connected biotech that announced its launch at the end of 2016, is refining a stem cell-based solution for restoring the flow of hormones in aging patients.
Monkeys that eat less than normal live longer and are healthier than other monkeys, meaning the same is likely true for humans, according to a new study by scientists at UW-Madison and the National Institute on Aging.
Putting monkeys on a diet delays the health problems of old age, new science says. But whether it makes them live longer is still open for debate. These findings in our close evolutionary relatives could help us better understand our own aging process — and how to slow it down. What’s more, these latest conclusions begin to resolve a scientific debate that has been unfolding (amicably, the scientists say) over the past three decades.
Depriving ourselves of food to the point of near-starvation doesn’t sound very appealing, but it could prolong our lives and prevent the onset of age-related diseases. A combined analysis of two long-running studies shows that caloric restriction does indeed work in monkeys, hinting at its potential to work in humans. More research is needed before we can be sure this translates to humans, so you should probably avoid any drastic dietary measures for now.
Monkeys that eat less than normal live longer and are healthier than other monkeys, meaning the same is likely true for humans, according to a new study by scientists at UW-Madison and the National Institute on Aging.
Later this month, the brainchild of a team of UW-Madison students will be loaded into a trailer and driven across country to a site south of Los Angeles, home to the headquarters of tech titan Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX.
With a new research initiative, UW-Madison hopes to garner new research tackling the microbiome and its effects on everyday life.
In 2013, archeologists discovered the body of a 13th century farmwoman in a graveyard outside the former city of Troy in western Turkey. She sported strawberry-sized calcified nodules below her ribs, which they assumed were a sign of tuberculosis, a common disease for people of her era. But it turns out, they were wrong.
A Long Island City warehouse has been transformed into a safe haven for more than 500 cats who may have been exposed to an unusual flu virus. “We came to the decision that it is in the best interest of the cats to move them all to a quarantine facility while we clean the buildings.” She contacted experts at the University of Wisconsin’s Veterinary Diagnostic Lab. They determined the virus was a rare strain of avian flu — the first time it had ever spread to domestic cats.
Death during pregnancy or childbirth would have been common in the ancient world, but these stories are often invisible in the archaeological record. However, in a new study of ancient DNA, researchers reported evidence of a woman who died of a pregnancy complication — specifically, a fatal bacterial infection — 800 years ago at Troy.
Who would you call if you had a wood-related question? The Forest Products Laboratory, of course. But, did you even know of its existence?
Death during pregnancy or childbirth would have been common in the ancient world, but these stories are often invisible in the archaeological record. However, in a new study of ancient DNA, researchers reported evidence of a woman who died of a pregnancy complication — specifically, a fatal bacterial infection — 800 years ago at Troy.
Noted: “Any time influenza viruses start to behave in an unusual way, there’s a concern about what might happen,” said Aleisha Swartz, a doctor on loan from the University of Wisconsin veterinary school’s shelter medicine program, which is managing medical care at the quarantine center. “There’s this virus that popped up, and if we didn’t respond, it could have become widespread in cats all over the place.”
The ancient skeleton of a woman who lived near the storied city of Troy has given up the secrets of what killed her. Researchers unearthed the Byzantine bones and discovered both that she was pregnant and that a bacterial infection probably caused her death.
It’s not the legendary Troy of Agamemnon and Paris, but the site of the ancient city is still giving up secrets to disease detectives who study the evolution of bacteria and other microbes that continue to cause illness in humans today.
A skeleton from the outskirts of what was once the ancient city of Troy, has yielded the genome of an 800 year old mystery infection.
A group of UW-Madison professors criticized the state Department of Natural Resources on Monday for scrubbing its website of language that stated human activity is causing climate change, accusing the agency of ignoring facts and violating the public trust.
Prominent scientists at UW-Madison say that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ revised statement on climate change is “simply incorrect.”
As archaeologists excavating a cemetery near Troy, the fabled city from Homer’s Iliad, carefully removed the skeleton of a woman buried eight centuries ago, they noticed two chalk-like strawberry-sized nodules near her ribs.
A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison professors criticized the state Department of Natural Resources on Monday for scrubbing its website of language that stated human activity is causing climate change, accusing the agency of ignoring facts and violating the public trust.
In the 2004 disaster film “The Day After Tomorrow,” global warming leads to the failure of an enormous current in the Atlantic Ocean, triggering catastrophic natural disasters and establishing freezing conditions in North America and Europe over a matter of weeks.
Last summer, more than 800 bicyclists took on The Ride. The event raised more than 150 thousand dollars for cancer research and this week that money will be put to use on the research initiatives of 6 special recipients.
Quoted: “It seems like climate science is going to be targeted,” said Michael Notaro, associate director of the university’s Center for Climatic Research, which receives about 90 percent of its roughly $3 million budget from federal sources. “We are very vulnerable, and from our standpoint we see climate change research as something very critical that has big impacts on the state and the globe.”
A UW-Stout biology professor and his students may have made an important discovery in the effort to determine why honey bee hives are dying out during the winters in the Upper Midwest.
The US government should restrict or eliminate support for research with human fetal tissue obtained from abortions because it is of little use to medicine, a special panel of the US House of Representatives said on January 3.
When climatic conditions favor a lot of hurricane activity, they also create a buffer zone that weakens the storms as they approach the coastal United States.“It’s an incredibly lucky phenomenon,” said James Kossin, an atmospheric scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the author of the study, published Wednesday in Nature, which looked at hurricane data from 1947 to 2015. Kossin is based at UW–Madison, which is not mentioned in the story.
A journey with noted University of Wisconsin-Madison botanist Hugh Iltis usually took much longer than normal because he frequently pulled the car over to show passengers a plant he noticed on the side of the road.
A high rate of hurricane activity far out in the tropical waters of the Atlantic Ocean doesn’t necessarily translate into a high number of big, powerful storms that could ravage the East coast. That’s one of the key findings of new research conducted by James Kossin, a federal atmospheric research scientist based at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Intense future climate change could have a far different impact on the world than current models predict, suggests a thought-provoking new study just out in the journal Science Advances. If atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were to double in the future, it finds, a major ocean current — one that helps regulate climate and weather patterns all over the world — could collapse. And that could paint a very different picture of the future than what we’ve assumed so far.
Imagine an app on your phone that can sense whether there is carbon monoxide in a room. If the display doesn’t change, you’re safe. But if the screen changes, “maybe it’s time to get out of the room,” says Manos Mavrikakis.
