Category: Research

Neuroscientist Nathan Rose and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin recently lost track of a memory.

It’s almost a good thing that we’ve never been entirely able to figure out how human memory works, because if we did, we’d probably just forget. Memory has always been that kind of meta-mystery, and one of its greatest puzzles is the question of what’s known as working memory: information we hold in short-term storage, like a phone number we’ll need to call or a face we’ll need to recognize at a meeting, and can then forget.

The study (by cognitive neuroscientist Nathan Rose and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison) suggests that information can somehow be held among the synapses that connect neurons, even after conventional working memory has faded.

Now, in a paper published today (December 1) in Science, researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and their colleagues provide evidence for a different theory, in which information can be stored in working memory in an inactive neuronal state.

It’s being hailed as the next big thing in weather forecasting and researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are taking part. A satellite now in space will hopefully collect and transmit critical weather information faster, which will mean more accurate forecasts for people back on Earth.

“The gut microbiome influences the host epigenome on a global scale,” said coauthor John Denu, an epigeneticist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “We discovered key communicators, or key molecules that communicate this information, to the host.”

The Wisconsin Pork Association has recently made a donation of $10,000 to the new University of Wisconsin Madison meat science lab.  In addition, the WPA Board challenged members to make individual contributions, resulting in an additional $5,000 raised.

The pain and frustration of not being able to conceive is one Katie Brenner knows all too well. “When my husband and I first decided to have kids we were just so excited,” says Brenner, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It took a while and then it took even longer. As we got more and more worried and more and more stressed, each month would just stretch out.”

The National Science Foundation last week released its annual report on the top universities in total research and development expenditures.

Cited as a reason to be thankful: Researchers at UW-Madison and elsewhere continue to advance treatments and drugs.

Noted: This was the first year DPI used a variable weighting system and value-added analysis to address the impact of poverty on student achievement. Under this system, the higher the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a school or district, the higher the weight on student-growth scores. The method for calculating student growth was created by the Value-Added Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Between the stadium lights, flashing scoreboard and pulsing sound system, a football game sucks up vast amounts of energy. But what if spectators at the next Badgers game, by their mere presence, generated enough electricity to power the entire event?

Professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are researching the effect the state’s new voter ID laws had on turnout in this year’s presidential election.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are taking up a tricky task after last Tuesday’s election: figuring out whether the presence of the state’s voter ID requirement affected who voted.

A UW-Madison political science professor is launching a study into whether the state’s new voter ID law was a factor in reduced turnout in last week’s election.

Peter McIntyre at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his colleagues used data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to build a global map of river fisheries, which have historically received less attention than their marine counterparts. They found that pressure from fishing was most intense in areas where biodiversity was also highest, raising concerns about conservation.

WAUSAU – University of Wisconsin officials commended two longtime central Wisconsin professors for their work in making math more understandable and accessible for students who struggle with the X’s and O’s.

For a soldier patrolling a city street in a warzone, seeing what’s around the corner of a building could be the difference between life and death. The Morgridge Institute for Research and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are collaborating to make a camera that can recreate scenes that are out of sight using what is known as scattered light technology. The project is being supported by a $4.4 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Noted: Blue Sky Science is a collaboration of the Wisconsin State Journal and the Morgridge Institute for Research.