Category: Top Stories

The federal government last week announced it was taking the unusual step of temporarily stopping funds for certain types of studies involving influenza, SARS, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. The government asked all scientists involved in such work?called gain-of-function (GOF) research?to voluntarily halt their studies for a review of their potential risks and benefits. This looks like a case of misplaced priorities.

U.S. researchers are worried that a temporary government ban on ?gain-of-function? experiments that boost the infectious properties of dangerous viruses may also cover less-extreme forms of the work that are crucial to protecting public health. At a public meeting of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) in Bethesda, Maryland, on 22 October, researchers complained that development of seasonal influenza vaccines and antiviral drugs might be hampered by the move.

The federal government will temporarily stop funding any new studies that could make three high-risk infectious diseases even more dangerous. The government is asking all scientists involved in this research now to voluntarily halt their current studies.

Prompted by controversy over dangerous research and recent laboratory accidents, the White House announced Friday that it would temporarily halt all new funding for experiments that seek to study certain infectious agents by making them more dangerous.

University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist Yoshi Kawaoka was researching influenza viruses that were killing chickens in the mid-?90s when he picked up a new bestseller, “The Hot Zone.”

Every time astronomers learn to exploit a new signal from space, knowledge of the universe dramatically deepens. Light, seen through telescopes, reveals that our galaxy is not alone. Microwaves hint at the Big Bang. X-rays suggest the tumult near black holes. Francis Halzen?s discovery of high-energy cosmic neutrinos shifts the paradigm again, potentially offering clues to the greatest remaining mysteries. What is dark matter? How did the universe begin? Is there a theory of everything? Yet Halzen, a University of Wisconsin physicist, focuses on the search itself: ?I love to learn. Just understanding things that you thought you could never understand, that is the great pleasure of doing physics.?

Singer Rosanne Cash and the founder of virtual reality firm Oculus are being honored with American Ingenuity Awards at the Smithsonian Institution, along with 8 other scientists and scholars for their groundbreaking work. Also awarded: Francis Halzen, University of Wisconsin-Madison physicist who created a giant particle detector to study cosmic neutrinos under the South Pole.

The search for answers about Ebola, just like the virus itself, have gone on for years.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka caused a global uproar by re-creating history?s deadliest flu virus. That might sound crazy. But when a real influenza pandemic strikes, you?re going to want him on your side.

They have been stepped on and ignored for millennia, but at the Wisconsin State Herbarium, lichens are loved. So well-liked, in fact, when herbarium director Ken Cameron had a chance to acquire a rare and valuable collection of 60,000 lichen specimens from a German collector recently, he snapped them up.

An effort is underway to update the land cover map for the State of Wisconsin. The Department of Natural Resources and cartographers at UW-Madison are teaming up to create the new map. Another goal is to help create better management of the deer population throughout the state.

Alfonso Morales has a long relationship with food. He grew up on a farm in New Mexico, then went on to study sociology in school, running a booth at the Maxwell Street Market in Chicago as part of his dissertation.