Category: Research

A new study out of UW Madison shows the amount of noise pollution in your home could hinder your little ones academically.

Smokers may worry that trying to quit will alienate them from other smokers, said coauthor Megan E. Piper of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But in practice, people who quit actually gain nonsmoking friends, she told Reuters Health by phone.

The IceCube experiment, a particle detector at the South Pole that uses the ice itself to measure neutrinos, has shown that (hints of an elusive fourth type of neutrino) were probably just a mirage. After a years of analysis, researchers haven’t found anything. “We don’t see this—unfortunately, actually,” says principal investigator Francis Halzen. “I wish we had.”

Scientists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica who have been searching for mysterious particles known as sterile neutrinos have come up empty.

UW-Madison researchers working with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in the Antarctic looked for the particle known as the sterile neutrino but have determined it doesn’t exist.

An observatory buried deep in Antarctic ice has reported the results of its search for an hypothesized particle called the ‘sterile neutrino’: a total blank.

A finding of nothing doesn’t often get a run in research reporting, but an almost-certain conclusion that the hypothesised “sterile neutrino” doesn’t exist is an important one in the world of particle physics.

After conducting a diligent search for a hypothetical subatomic particle — the “sterile neutrino” — that would have filled in another blank of the Standard Model of particle physics, scientists at a particle detector in the South Pole are now almost certain that such a particle does not exist.

Scientists say they’ve discovered a new virus during an investigation into a largemouth bass die-off in Forest County’s Pine Lake.

When it comes to saving energy, three-toed sloths are on a league of their own—panda bears, koalas and opossums can’t beat them—according to a research paper by Jonathan Pauli and Zachariah Peery, of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “We really expected them to have low metabolic rates, but we found them to have tremendously low energy needs—much lower than their cousins, the two-toed sloths, and the lowest documented for any mammal,” Pauli says.

Toddlers who spend a lot of time in a noisy environment may have a harder time learning to speak, a small study suggests. That’s because background noise – especially the kind that comes from voices on the television or radio – can make it tough for young children to learn new words, said study co-author Brianna McMillan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Based on research by UW-Madison scientists Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Gabriele Neumann and licensed exclusively to FluGen by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the vaccine deletes a key gene in the influenza virus so the virus can infect the body’s cells and replicate once but cannot spread through the body and produce the flu infection.

Research shows lakes with no shoreline development generally produce bigger, faster-growing fish. Lakes with heavily developed shorelines, full of homes, lawns, beaches, and docks, have the opposite effect. Researchers at the UW-Madison Trout Lake Station in Boulder Junction want to know more about that dynamic.

A professor of Quantitative Genetics and Genomics in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has earned some national recognition. Dr. Guilherme J. M. Rosa was named the recipient of the 2016 American Society of Animal Science’s Rockefeller Prentice Award in Animal Breeding and Genetics during the group’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Brain-challenging jobs — especially ones focused on people — may help shield a person’s mind against the ravages of age-related dementia, a new study finds. People who work in jobs that task the intellect are better able to withstand the effects of brain lesions commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease, report researchers from the University of Wisconsin’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

Visitors are welcome to stop by and see one of the top research facilities in Wisconsin August 5.

The environments children are in, including how much and the kind of stimulation they are exposed to, influence what and how they learn. Children need to zero in on information that’s relevant and ignore what isn’t. A new study has found that background noise makes it more difficult for toddlers to learn new words. The study also found that providing additional language cues may help young children overcome the effects of noisy environments. Conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the research appears in the journal Child Development.

Background noise from the radio or TV can make it harder for toddlers to learn new words, research suggests. Psychologist Brianna McMillan, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, said: “Learning words is an important skill that provides a foundation for children’s ability to achieve academically.”

Noted: The researchers, the University of Wisconsin’s Jihae Shin and the University of Pennsylvania’s Katherine Milkman, broke down the main finding of a study they’d recently published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: Just thinking about a Plan B can diminish the amount of effort you’ll put into your Plan A, making it less likely that you’ll actually achieve whatever you set out to do.

The eagle known as Old Abe was a part of Civil War history.  He was said to have instilled fear in enemy armies and was even wounded in battle on his travels with Wisconsin’s 8th infnatry regiment.  But stories calling the eagle’s gender into question persisted through the decades.  Today, we find out about the results of new genetic testing that reveal Old Abe was a boy, after all.

Old Abe, Wisconsin’s celebrated war eagle who was carried into numerous Civil War battles, was in fact male, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists who sequenced his DNA to settle a centurylong controversy.

Researchers gave a herd of dairy cows daily doses of a chemical which converts into serotonin which is associated with feeling happy.