Presidential candidates spent $107 million on television advertising so far this season, with nearly all of it spent in the run-up to the earliest primaries and caucuses and almost none of it on Super Tuesday states, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study shows.
When the world's most powerful particle accelerator starts up later this year, exotic new particles may offer a glimpse of the existence and shapes of extra dimensions.
Sculpting a surface composed of tightly packed nanostructures that resemble tiny nails, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers and their colleagues from Bell Laboratories have created a material that can repel almost any liquid.
More than 99 percent of all modern potato varieties planted today are the direct descendents of varieties that once grew in the lowlands of south-central Chile. How Chilean germplasm came to dominate the modern potato-which spread worldwide from Europe-has been the subject of a long, contentious debate among scientists.
In the four short months since its launch in October 2007, the University of Wisconsin-Madison-based ACTION Campaign to combat substance abuse has already met its initial goal to enlist 500 agencies nationwide.
The deadly Ebola virus, an emerging public health concern in Africa and a potential biological weapon, ranks among the most feared of exotic pathogens.
Denizens of oceans, lakes and even wet soil, diatoms are unicellular algae that encase themselves in intricately patterned, glass-like shells. Curiously, these tiny phytoplankton could be harboring the next big breakthrough in computer chips.
Most people know it from experience: After so many hours of being awake, your brain feels unable to absorb any more-and several hours of sleep will refresh it.
Political attack ads, widely demonized by pundits and politicians, are instead a kind of multi-vitamin for the democratic process, sparking voters' interest and participation, according to a new book co-authored by University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kenneth Goldstein.
During a successful first expedition to one of the most active earthquake fault zones on the planet, scientists unearthed initial clues to the geophysical fault properties that may underlie devastating earthquakes and tsunamis.
Countering a common theory that human evolution has slowed to a crawl or even stopped in modern humans, a new study examining data from an international genomics project describes the past 40,000 years as a time of supercharged evolutionary change, driven by exponential population growth and cultural shifts.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin and a worrisome environmental contaminant, but the severity of its threat appears to depend on what else is in the water.
Though a worldwide problem, arsenic contamination of drinking water does not have a universal solution.
Experts have been warning for years that foods loaded with high-fructose corn syrup and other processed carbohydrates are making us fatter. Now, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study has uncovered the genetic basis for why this is so.
As the world warms, the interaction between the Atlantic Ocean and atmosphere may be the recipe for stronger, more frequent hurricanes.
The unknown human health and environmental impacts of nanotechnology are a bigger worry for scientists than for the public, according to a new report published today (Nov. 25) in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
The approach of winter in the northern hemisphere means that summer is coming to Antarctica - still bitterly cold, but just warm enough to let scientists make progress on ongoing studies.
Chimpanzees inhabiting a harsh savanna environment and using bark and stick tools to exploit an underground food resource are giving scientists new insights to the behaviors of the earliest hominids who, millions of years ago, left the African forests to range the same kinds of environments and possibly utilize the same foods.
The epic poem Beowulf has all the elements for a Hollywood film: action, monsters and classic battles of good vs. evil. But it also features a "monastic" hero with little sex appeal whose story is told in Old English, a combination that wouldn't exactly fill seats with movie fans.
Far removed from streams of gas-thirsty cars and pollution-belching factories lies another key player in global climate change. Circling the northern hemisphere, the conifer-dominated boreal forests - one of the largest ecosystems on earth - act as a vast natural regulator of atmospheric carbon levels.
What do the countries of Thailand, Uruguay and Ghana have in common? They all could become leading producers of the emerging renewable fuel known as biodiesel, says a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
Writing in the journal Nature, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Sean B. Carroll and former UW-Madison graduate student Chris Todd Hittinger document how, over many generations, a single yeast gene divides in two and parses its responsibilities to be a more efficient denizen of its environment. The work illustrates, at the most basic level, the driving force of evolution.
Since it first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997, the H5N1 avian flu virus has been slowly evolving into a pathogen better equipped to infect humans. The final form of the virus, biomedical researchers fear, will be a highly pathogenic strain of influenza that spreads easily among humans.
A cadre of private and public entities in the addiction treatment field announced the launch of the National Adopting Changes to Improve Outcomes Now (ACTION) Campaign for the improvement of addiction treatment services. The ACTION Campaign goals are to increase access to addiction treatment for individuals in need and to keep clients engaged in treatment.
To move a gene from point A to point B, scientists and gene therapists have two proven options: a virus, which can effectively ferry genes of interest into cells, and a plasmid, an engineered loop of DNA that can do the same thing, albeit usually only on a short-term basis.
With the help of a device capable of depositing metals an atom at a time in the materials used in computer chips, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers has successfully blended modern semiconductor technology and nanomachines.
Hallmarks of autism are characteristic behaviors - repetitive motions, problems interacting with others, impaired communication abilities - that occur in widely different combinations and degrees of severity among those who have the condition.
A hormone system linked to reducing food consumption appears to do so by increasing stress-related behaviors, according to a new study.
New research in primates suggests that infants and children who carry a certain gene variant may be more vulnerable to the ill effects of fetal alcohol exposure.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded the University of Wisconsin-Madison's new Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) one of the largest grants in the history of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, making UW-Madison a key player in an ambitious NIH plan to transform the country's clinical and translational research enterprise.
A UW-Madison study of more than 1,800 U.S. life scientists shows that, despite an explosion in academic patenting in recent years, most life science professors still do research the "old-fashioned" way: by winning federal grants, publishing results in scientific journals, and graduating Ph.D. students.
By guiding an enzyme down a new evolutionary pathway, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has created a new form of an enzyme capable of producing a range of potential new therapeutic agents with anticancer and antibiotic properties.
The little blue pill may do more than get the blood pumping. Sildenafil - the generic name for Viagra - also increases release of a reproductive hormone in rats, according to a new study.
In what may be the first study to use brain imaging to look at the neural circuits involved in emotional control in patients with depression, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that brains of people with clinical depression react very differently than those of healthy people when trying to cope with negative situations.
A study of the reproductive apparatus of a model virus is bolstering the idea that broad classes of viruses - including those that cause important human diseases such as AIDS, SARS and hepatitis C - have features in common that could eventually make them vulnerable to broad-spectrum antiviral agents.
In a study that demonstrates the promise of cell-based therapies for diseases that have proved intractable to modern medicine, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has shown it is possible to rescue the dying neurons characteristic of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal neuromuscular disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Two University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professors are studying fantasy sports leagues, including their own, in a new research project aimed at understanding how both expert and novice players approach the game and what it can teach us about how people learn.
"Becoming Jane" arrives in theaters this summer, starring Anne Hathaway as the 21-year-old Jane Austen engaged in a romance with a young Irishman. The studio bills the love story as "her greatest inspiration," but when the end credits roll, moviegoers probably won't know too much more about the real Austen than they did when they were buying popcorn in the lobby.
The rogue proteins that cause chronic wasting disease (CWD) exhibit a dramatic increase in their infectious nature when bound to common soil particles, according to a new study.
While the shiny material of pearls and abalone shells has long been prized for its iridescence and aesthetic value in jewelry and decorations, scientists admire mother-of-pearl for other physical properties as well.
Reporting in the June 21 issue of the journal Nature, University of Wisconsin-Madison chemical and biological engineering Professor James Dumesic and his research team describe a two-stage process for turning biomass-derived sugar into 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF), a liquid transportation fuel with 40 percent greater energy density than ethanol.
In examining the complicated and controversial legacy of Henry Kissinger, UW-Madison historian Jeremi Suri creates a portrait of a man whose political career was motivated by deep moral convictions, yet the outcomes of many of his policies were viewed as morally horrendous.
As a brain-damaged woman named Terri Schiavo lived her final days in 2005, her family's bitter feuding imparted a tragic lesson about the importance of specifying one's wishes for end-of-life medical treatment.
Bearing such freight as consumer goods, agricultural products and manufacturing shipments, thousands of semi trucks hurtle daily through the Midwest on the region's increasingly crowded web of highways and freeways.
When is the best time in a woman's reproductive history to start hormone therapy? How does estrogen therapy affect a woman's cognition and mood? What is the most beneficial form of estrogen?
A gene that controls the flow of potassium into cells is required to maintain normal sleep in fruit flies, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). Hyperkinetic (Hk) is the second gene identified by the SMPH group to have a profound effect on sleep in flies.
Now, chemists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have designed a powerful analytical tool capable of measuring molecular structures quickly and accurately enough to catch moving proteins in mid-fold and see the shapes of intermediate steps.
Efforts to create a safe haven from allergens, for example, actually have contributed to the alarming rise of this irritating and even deadly malady, according to Gregg Mitman, William Coleman Professor of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Public concerns about climate change, energy independence and corporate social responsibility have pushed companies large and small to focus on sustainability to improve the bottom line. Just last month, Home Depot launched an "Eco Options" label identifying certain products on its shelves as environmentally friendly.
A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that attention does not have a fixed capacity - and that it can be improved by directed mental training, such as meditation.
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