Zhen Huang freely admits he was not interested in blood vessels four years ago when he was studying brain development in a fetal mouse. Instead, he wanted to see how changing a particular gene in brain cells called glia would affect the growth of neurons.
Using the meticulous phenological records of two iconic American naturalists, Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold, scientists have demonstrated that native plants in the eastern United States are flowering as much as a month earlier in response to a warming climate.
People suffering from chronic inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and asthma — in which psychological stress plays a major role — may benefit from mindfulness meditation techniques, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientists with the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center.
A single combination pill could reduce cardiovascular disease and stroke in Latin Americans by up to 21 percent at a cost of about $35 per quality adjusted life year gained, according to a study led by a University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health research team.
In a report published today (Dec. 31, 2012) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports a rising threat to the whitebark pine forests of the northern Rocky Mountains as native mountain pine beetles climb ever higher, attacking trees that have not evolved strong defenses to stop them.
A collaboration with major participation by physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made a precise measurement of elusive, nearly massless particles, and obtained a crucial hint as to why the universe is dominated by matter, not by its close relative, anti-matter.
People who regularly took aspirin 10 years prior to examination had a small but statistically significant increase in the risk of a subtype of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.
Patients who want to limit the amount of life support they receive after surgery might have a hard time finding a surgeon willing to do the procedure, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Gravity: It’s the law in these parts. But to reach the stars, humans may have to learn to live outside the law.
Researchers have found that the organism that causes deadly white-nose syndrome persists in caves long after it has killed the bats in those caves.
Writing this week (Dec. 17, 2012) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), a group led by researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports on an expansive and detailed effort to map and cross-compare environmental stresses and the ecological services provided by the five lakes, which together encompass more than 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center have discovered a new form of cell division in human cells. They believe it serves as a natural back-up mechanism during faulty cell division, preventing some cells from going down a path that can lead to cancer.
Weekly telephone contact with a nurse substantially reduced hospital re-admissions for high-risk patients, according to results of a University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health study.
To survey previously uncharted territory, a team of researchers at UW-Madison created an “atlas” that maps more than 1,500 unique landmarks within mitochondria that could provide clues to the metabolic connections between caloric restriction and aging.
High levels of family stress in infancy are linked to differences in everyday brain function and anxiety in teenage girls, according to new results of a long-running population study by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists.
For the first time, Wisconsin researchers have taken skin from patients and, using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, turned them into a laboratory model for an inherited type of macular degeneration.
A new study shows that a blood marker is linked to pancreatic cancer, according to a study published today by scientists at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center and Mayo Clinic.
Decreased activity of a group of genes may explain why in young children the “fear center” of the anxious brain can’t learn to distinguish real threats from the imaginary, according to a new University of Wisconsin study.
In 1986, when Voyager swept past Uranus, the probe’s portraits of the planet were “notoriously bland,” disappointing scientists, yielding few new details of the planet and its atmosphere, and giving it a reputation as a bore of the solar system.
Troy, the palatial city of prehistory, sacked by the Greeks through trickery and a fabled wooden horse, will be excavated anew beginning in 2013 by a cross-disciplinary team of archaeologists and other scientists, it was announced today (Monday, Oct. 15).
Scientists have identified three neighboring genes that make soybeans resistant to the most damaging disease of soybean. The genes exist side-by-side on a stretch of chromosome, but only give resistance when that stretch is duplicated several times in the plant.
Using those notes, professor Stan Temple and Christopher Bocast, a UW-Madison Nelson Institute graduate student and acoustic ecologist, have recreated a "soundscape" from ecologist Aldo Leopold's 70 year-old notes.
Pacifiers may stunt the emotional development of baby boys by robbing them of the opportunity to try on facial expressions during infancy.
At first glance, the northern muriqui monkey is a prime conservation success story. These Brazilian primates are critically endangered, but in the past 30 years a population on a private reserve has grown from just 60 individuals to some 300, now comprising almost a third of the total remaining animals.
Stress has long been pegged as the enemy of attention, disrupting focus and doing substantial damage to working memory — the short-term juggling of information that allows us to do all the little things that make us productive.
A new University of Wisconsin-Madison imaging study shows the brains of people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) have weaker connections between a brain structure that controls emotional response and the amygdala, which suggests the brain's "panic button" may stay on due to lack of regulation.
In a study by UW-Madison chemistry Professor Helen Blackwell and her colleagues, and published online in the journal ACS Chemical Biology, certain small molecule chemicals that can disrupt quorum sensing in A. baumanni have been identified, providing a glimmer of hope that the stubborn pathogen can be tamed.
A field of young sunflowers will slowly rotate from east to west during the course of a sunny day, each leaf seeking out as much sunlight as possible as the sun moves across the sky through an adaptation called heliotropism. It’s a clever bit of natural engineering that inspired imitation from a UW-Madison electrical and computer engineer, who has found a way to mimic the passive heliotropism seen in sunflowers for use in the next crop of solar power systems.
When conflict breaks out in social groups, individuals make strategic decisions about how to behave based on their understanding of alliances and feuds in the group. But it’s been challenging to quantify the underlying trends that dictate how individuals make predictions, given they may only have seen a small number of fights or have limited memory.
When it comes to gnarly weather, tornadoes, blizzards and hurricanes seem to get most of our attention, perhaps because their destructive power makes for imagery the media can't ignore. But for sheer killing power, heat waves do in far more people than even the most devastating hurricane. Ask medical historian Richard Keller.
A study reported today at the World Congress of Veterinary Dermatology in Vancouver, British Columbia, shows that placing allergy drops under a dog's tongue can be as effective as allergy injections for controlling skin allergies.
Electrical engineers at The University of Texas at Arlington and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have devised a new laser for on-chip optical connections that could give computers a huge boost in speed and energy efficiency.
Metabolic syndrome, a term used to describe a combination of risk factors that often lead to heart disease and type 2 diabetes, seems to be linked to lower blood flow to the brain, according to research by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Americans’ lives are still grounded in the communities where they live and require a set of basic information to navigate daily life, despite the proliferation of technology that seems to shrink the world by the hour.
Like many Neotropical fauna, sloths are running out of room to maneuver. As forests in South and Central America are cleared for agriculture and other human uses, populations of these arboreal leaf eaters, which depend on large trees for both food and refuge, can become isolated and at risk. But one type of sustainable agriculture, shade grown cacao plantations, a source of chocolate, could become critical refuges and bridges between intact forests for the iconic animals.
A study of university students is the first evidence to refute the supposed link between depression and the amount of time spent on Facebook and other social-media sites.
The recent heat wave baking much of the country has prompted many people to ask: Is this due to climate change?
The 2008 presidential race was one of the most watched, discussed and analyzed campaigns in U.S. history, and when it came to the vice presidential candidates, voters heard a great deal about Sarah Palin. Much more, in fact, than they heard about her opponent, Joe Biden.
Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), aided by scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, have narrowed the search for the elusive Higgs boson, discovering a new particle with a mass in the region of 125 GeV.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers Wesley Smith and Sau Lan Wu, who have leading roles in experiments to find the Higgs boson, are available to comment on the most recent developments in the search. The Higgs boson is an elusive particle expected to hold key information about how the universe is built. An announcement from the European Organization for Nuclear Research's (CERN) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collaboration is scheduled for 2 a.m. CDT July 4.
Though worries about “nuclear winter” have faded since the end of the Cold War, existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons still hold the potential for devastating global impacts.
Ice samples pulled from nearly a mile below the surface of Greenland glaciers have long served as a historical thermometer, adding temperature data to studies of the local conditions up to the Northern Hemisphere’s climate. But the method — comparing the ratio of oxygen isotopes buried as snow fell over millennia — may not be such a straightforward indicator of air temperature.
The blood-brain barrier may be poised to give up some of its secrets as researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created in the laboratory dish the cells that make up the brain’s protective barrier. The Wisconsin researchers describe transforming stem cells into endothelial cells with blood-brain barrier qualities.
A diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is generally a death sentence, but new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison lab of Dr. John Kuo shows that at least one subtype is associated with a longer life expectancy. This discovery could help with better patient prognoses and lead to targeted drug treatments for GBM subtypes.
With the help of a $2 million grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, mechanical engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will develop a tool to characterize the performance of a new class of alternative fuels that could be used in maritime vehicles such as submarines and aircraft carriers.
Discrimination felt by teenagers based on their social class background can contribute to physiologic changes associated with poorer health, according to a new study led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher.
The first U.S. population prevalence study of mutations in the gene that causes fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited form of intellectual disability, suggests the mutation in the gene – and its associated health risks – may be more common than previously believed.
Stress may affect brain development in children — altering growth of a specific piece of the brain and abilities associated with it — according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison explains why the incurable brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is highly resistant to current chemotherapies.
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