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Open air is getting crowded. Signals streaming back and forth from smart devices stretch existing fourth-generation wireless networks almost to their limits. As demands on these systems increase, University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers aim to open new frontiers in cutting-edge wireless communications. Their research is part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative announced July 15 to develop the next generation of wireless technologies.

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In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a University of Wisconsin-Madison research team pinpoints how immune abnormalities beneath the retina result in macular degeneration, a common condition that often causes blindness.

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The atomic structure of an elusive cold virus linked to severe asthma and respiratory infections in children has been solved by a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Purdue University. The findings provide the foundation for future antiviral drug and vaccine development against the virus, rhinovirus C.

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Food products made from a specific protein found in whey can safely be part of a more palatable diet for individuals diagnosed with phenylketonuria (PKU), according to a new clinical trial led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Boston Children’s Hospital.

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The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Chris Todd Hittinger and colleagues conclude in the July 6, 2016 edition of the journal Public Library of Science Genetics that the story of hybridization that produced the lager yeast is far more complex and potentially richer than first imagined.

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Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have confirmed that a benign bacterium called Wolbachia pipientis can completely block transmission of Zika virus in Aedes aegypti. Matthew Aliota, a scientist at the UW–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM), says the bacteria could present a “novel biological control mechanism,” aiding efforts to stop the spread of Zika virus.

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University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers studying monkeys have shown that one infection with Zika virus protects against future infection, though pregnancy may drastically prolong the time the virus stays in the body.

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People arrived at Wisconsin's Aztalan State Park, in couples and in groups, young and old. They braved the heat in order to take part in a public archaeology day, where excavations were underway to better understand the daily lives of the ancient peoples who called Aztalan home a millennium ago.

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An exhaustive look at how bacteria hold their ground and avoid getting pushed around by their environment shows how dozens of genes aid the essential job of protecting cells from popping when tensions run high.

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Modern tools like microwave ovens and X-ray machines that are powered by intense, focused beams of electrons are ubiquitous, but many of the materials in those devices have remained largely unchanged for decades. Now, electrical and materials engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have identified a substance that could vastly improve the technology.

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A new UW-Madison analysis of a group of bacteria called Streptomyces reveals the way some strains of the microbe developed advanced abilities to tear up cellulose, and points out more efficient ways we might mimic those abilities to make fuel from otherwise unusable plant material.

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A new mouse model, developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is the first to show that when more of a specific biological molecule moves between different parts of nerve cells in the mouse brain, it can lead to behaviors that resembles some aspects of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in humans.

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A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers has created the world's fastest stretchable, wearable integrated circuits, an advance that could drive the Internet of Things and a much more connected, high-speed wireless world.

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With spring now fully sprung, a new study by University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers shows that buds burst earlier in dense urban areas than in their suburban and rural surroundings. This may be music to urban gardeners’ ears, but that tune could be alarming to some native and migratory birds and bugs.

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Chemical and biological engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have uncovered new insight into how the compound hydrogen peroxide decomposes. This advance, published this spring in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could inform efficient and cost-effective single-step strategies for producing hydrogen peroxide.

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A team of researchers led by University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka describes a novel strategy to predict the antigenic evolution of circulating influenza viruses and give science the ability to more precisely anticipate seasonal flu strains. It would foster a closer match for the so-called “vaccine viruses” used to create the world’s vaccine supply.

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A stomachache can put a real damper on your love life — especially if you’re a giant panda. One minute it’s breeding season and you’re happily dining on fresh bamboo leaves, the next you’re left clutching your stomach while your gastrointestinal lining passes through your system. This is exactly what seems to happen to captive giant pandas, and the researchers are beginning to suspect it may play a role in their struggles to reproduce.

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With the help of between 4,000 and 5,000 strategically deployed trail cameras, a suite of remote sensing satellites and a global crowd-sourced database, Wisconsin’s wildlife will soon have its prime time moment. May 17 marks the official start of Snapshot Wisconsin, an unprecedented effort to capture in space and time the deer, bears, elk, coyotes, bobcats, badgers and any other wild animal that lumbers, hops, lopes or slithers across the Badger state.

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A single defect in a gene that codes for a histone — a "spool" that wraps idle DNA — is linked to pediatric cancers in a study published today in the journal Science. "Unlike most cancers that require multiple hits, we found that this particular mutation can form a tumor all by itself," says Peter W. Lewis, an assistant professor of biomolecular chemistry in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Sometimes, the evolutionary history of a species can be found in a fossil record. Other times, rocks and imprints must be swapped for DNA and genetic fingerprints. The latter is the case for the good-for-your-eyes carrot, a top crop whose full genetic code was just deciphered by a team of researchers led by University of Wisconsin–Madison horticulture professor and geneticist Phil Simon.

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A recent study led by Doug Dean III of the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and published in the journal NeuroImage combined two related but different imaging techniques to non-invasively track the rate at which nerve fibers in children’s brains become wrapped in myelin.

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Cell membranes stand up to significant amounts of stretching and bending, but only recently have scientists started to fully appreciate the useful organization and functions that result from all that stress. A multidisciplinary group working within the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is trying to recreate aspects of those broad design principles in synthetic systems comprised of simple membranes and complex fluids.

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A University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist has inserted a genetic switch into nerve cells so a patient can alter their activity by taking designer drugs that would not affect any other cell. The cells in question are neurons and make the neurotransmitter dopamine, whose deficiency is the culprit in the widespread movement disorder Parkinson's disease.

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Like many would-be parents, Katie Brenner was advised to select the optimum time for conception based on blood and/or urine tests. Brenner developed a quick, saliva-based method for measuring progesterone and estrogen and sending the results to a smart device.

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A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who studies the most common genetic intellectual disability has used an experimental drug to reverse — in mice — damage from the mutation that causes the syndrome. The condition, called fragile X, has devastating effects on intellectual abilities.

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In 1442, 50 years before Columbus “sailed the ocean blue,” Shinto priests in Japan began keeping records of the annual freeze dates of a nearby lake. Along a Finnish river, starting in 1693, local merchants recorded the date the ice broke up each spring. These observations are among the oldest inland water ice records in human history, and now they are contributing to modern understanding of climate change.

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Silatronix, a University of Wisconsin-Madison startup that has invented a safer electrolyte for the lithium-ion batteries used in phones, laptops and tablets, says its formulation has survived several years of evaluation and is now moving into pilot production at a major Japanese battery manufacturer.

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High-frequency antennas transmit radio waves across vast distances and even over mountain ranges using very little energy, making them ideal for military communications. These devices, however, have one big problem: They need to be huge to operate efficiently. Instead of adding more bulk, UW-Madison engineers are working to increase the effective size of antennas by turning the military vehicles that carry them into transmitters — using the structures that support the antennas themselves to help broadcast signals.

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Most materials, too, are capable of being only one thing at a time, but a team of engineers and physicists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have created an entirely new material in which completely contradictory properties can coexist.

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One secret to creating the world's fastest silicon-based flexible transistors: a very, very tiny knife. Working in collaboration with colleagues around the country, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have pioneered a unique method that could allow manufacturers to easily and cheaply fabricate high-performance transistors with wireless capabilities on huge rolls of flexible plastic.

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Today's imaging technologies allow highly sensitive cameras to detect even the faintest glimmers of light. Unfortunately, however, highly sensitive pieces of optical equipment are also highly susceptible to damage. Intense light beams overwhelm devices designed to detect single photons.

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Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) have developed one of the first mouse models for the study of Zika virus. The model will allow researchers to better understand how the virus causes disease and aid in the development of antiviral compounds and vaccines.

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People who often mix their media consumption — texting while watching TV, or listening to music while reading — are not known for being able to hold their attention on one task. But sharpening their focus may be as simple as breathing. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have shown that heavy media multitaskers benefited from a short meditation exercise in which they sat quietly counting their breaths.

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A pair of papers from a UW-Madison geoscience lab shed light on a curious group of bacteria that use iron in much the same way that animals use oxygen: to soak up electrons during biochemical reactions. When organisms — whether bacteria or animal — oxidize carbohydrates, electrons must go somewhere.

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Combining the best features of a lobster and an African fish, University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers have created an artificial eye that can see in the dark. And their fishy false eyes could help search-and-rescue robots or surgical scopes make dim surroundings seem bright as day.

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Fruit flies in the lab of John Pool, in the genetics department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, happily eat a noni fruit that is normally toxic to fly species. Pool is probing the genetic basis for this ability, which may explain how insects adapt to new foods — a line of research that could apply to agricultural pests.

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It may be called canine influenza, but Sandra Newbury, clinical assistant professor and director of the Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, has confirmed that the virus that sickened a large number of dogs in the Midwest last year has now infected a group of cats in the region.

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A changing climate and reduced snow cover across the north is squeezing the snowshoe hare out of its historic range, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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What does it mean to be science literate? How science literate is the American public? How do we stack up against other countries? What are the civic implications of a public with limited knowledge of science and how it works? How is science literacy measured? These and other questions are under the microscope of a 12-member National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel.

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Jack P. Hailman, professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and well-known experimentalist and animal behaviorist, died at home on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. He was 79. Hailman’s UW-Madison career spanned 30 years, over which time he mentored and supported numerous colleagues, undergraduates and graduate students; edited the top journals in his field; and weaved together scientific disciplines that in his era were sometimes at odds.

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“If you ask an ordinary person, ‘What is glass?’ they will point to a window, but glass is a much broader category of materials,” says Mark Ediger, a UW-Madison professor of chemistry.

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A changing climate is altering the ability of Rocky Mountain forests to recover from wildfire, according to a new study published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography. When warm, dry conditions lead to drought in the years following fires, it impedes the growth and establishment of vulnerable new post-fire seedlings. The study also shows that forest recovery has been negatively affected by increased distances between burned areas and the sources of seeds that typically replace trees lost to fire.

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A new study shows the economic and ecological impact of invasive species in the Great Lakes has been dramatically underestimated. In fact, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a single non-native species in a single inland lake has racked up $80 million to $163 million in damage.

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There is a sense among those who pay attention to youth and high school athletics that more and more young athletes today are focusing on excelling at a single sport instead of playing a variety. Perhaps surprisingly, though, little research has been conducted on the prevalence of sports specialization in high school athletes — and what that might mean for these competitors’ health.

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In one of the first studies to "read" the genetic activity inside individual brain cells, University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist Xinyu Zhao has identified the genetic machinery that causes maturation in a young nerve cell.

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Ten images and two videos by University of Wisconsin-Madison students, faculty and staff have been named winners of the 2016 Cool Science Image contest.

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A few years ago, a global team of scientists parlayed decades of research into the discovery of the Higgs boson. A humble software program called HTCondor churned away in the background, helping analyze data gathered from billions of particle collisions. Cut to 2016, and HTCondor is on to a new collision: helping scientists detect gravitational waves caused 1.3 billion years ago by a collision between two black holes 30 times larger than our sun.

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A Madison startup company that is only 14 months old has installed computerized monitors to track weightlifting by the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh football team. The company that developed and built the monitors, WeightUp Solutions of Madison, was founded by Daniel Litvak, who is now a computer science senior at UW-Madison.

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In the world of Web apps, simple, intuitive and visual are the operative words. And an emerging app from the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery’s Field Day Lab called Siftr seems to be hitting all the right notes. “The vision is to create a clearinghouse for the creation of citizen science projects,” explains David Gagnon, who serves as the program director for the Field Day Lab

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A University of Wisconsin-Madison spinoff is screening blood samples in an effort to develop a biologically based method to diagnose autism. The company, Stemina Biomarker Discovery, specializes in detecting the byproducts of cellular activity and then applying high-powered statistics to detect patterns among thousands of metabolites.