The teeth and bones of mammals, the protective shells of mollusks, and the needle-sharp spines of sea urchins and other marine creatures are made-from-scratch wonders of nature.
As the race for the White House enters its final, crucial days, results of the second Big Ten Battleground Poll detailing the attitudes of voters in the eight-state Big Ten region will be released on Thursday, Oct. 23.
Joseph Salmons has always been struck by the pervasiveness of the argument. In his visits across Wisconsin, in many newspaper letters to the editor, and in the national debates raging over modern immigration, he encounters the same refrain:
"My great, great grandparents came to America and quickly learned English to survive. Why can't today's immigrants do the same?"
An anticipated increased incidence of climate-related extreme rainfall events in the Great Lakes region may raise the public health risk for the 40 million people who depend on the lakes for their drinking water, according to a new study.
As the southern pine beetle moves through the forest boring tunnels inside the bark of trees, it brings with it both a helper and a competitor. The helper is a fungus that the insect plants inside the tunnels as food for its young. But also riding along is a tiny, hitchhiking mite, which likewise carries a fungus for feeding its own larvae.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, for the first time, have found a messaging system in the brain that directly affects food intake and body weight.
A distinguished researcher from Purdue University with significant private and public sector experience will return to Wisconsin as the executive director of the new Morgridge Institute for Research, part of the twin Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
The WiCell Research Institute, a private, not-for-profit supporting organization to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is launching its own stem cell bank to distribute cell lines beyond the 21 lines eligible for federal funding and distribution through the National Stem Cell Bank (NSCB).
In the inaugural Big Ten Battleground Poll taken as the nation's financial crisis worsened this week, John McCain and Barack Obama were in a statistical dead heat in seven of the eight Midwest states included in the survey.
Chemical clues from a comet's halo are challenging common views about the history and evolution of the solar system and showing it may be more mixed-up than previously thought.
Results of the Big Ten Battleground Poll, an innovative new project that tests voter sentiment in the eight Big Ten states that are key to this closely fought presidential campaign, will be presented Thursday, Sept. 18, on the Big Ten Network.
What is happening in the minds of people who have developed a greater capacity for forgiveness and compassion? Can a quality like love "” whether it's shown toward a family member or a friend "” be neurologically measured in the brain? A new research project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers the opportunity to apply hard science to these seemingly ethereal questions.
A new manufacturing approach holds the potential to overcome the technological limitations currently facing the microelectronics and data-storage industries, paving the way to smaller electronic devices and higher-capacity hard drives.
The Ecological Society of America will hold its 93rd annual meeting on Aug. 3-8, 2008, in Milwaukee, Wis. The society was founded in 1915 to promote the practice and awareness of ecological science.
We've all heard it. Many of us in fact believe it. Girls just aren't as good at math as boys. But is it true? After sifting through mountains of data - including SAT results and math scores from 7 million students who were tested in accordance with the No Child Left Behind Act - a team of scientists says the answer is no.
In two years, NASA plans to begin the new space program that will send human astronauts to Mars. It won't be easy, and technical issues aren't the only challenges.
If a warmer Wisconsin climate causes some northern tree species to disappear in the future, it's easy to imagine that southern species will just expand their range northward as soon as the conditions suit them.
It's Friday night, and the movie's already spinning in the DVD player. You run to the kitchen to grab a gallon of ice cream and a spoon, but you find the tub nearly empty. What's left is an icy mess that crunches unappetizingly when you poke your spoon into it. Time to make popcorn.
Rarely does one come across a business where the phrase "reinventing the wheel" is not just a metaphor, it's an operating principle. An ambitious startup company in this central Wisconsin city is exploring that very challenge with a project to develop tires that can withstand extreme punishment, even those meted out in military combat zones.
Stimulant medications such as Ritalin have been prescribed for decades to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and their popularity as "cognition enhancers" has recently surged among the healthy, as well.
Patients with more concerns about their breast cancer are heavier users of online information, according to a new study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Excellence in Cancer Communications Research funded by the National Cancer Institute.
If you are curious about Earth's periodic mass extinction events such as the sudden demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, you might consider crashing asteroids and sky-darkening super volcanoes as culprits
A new analysis of ancient minerals called zircons suggests that a harsh climate may have scoured and possibly even destroyed the surface of the Earth's earliest continents.
When forming attitudes about embryonic stem cell research, people are influenced by a number of things. But understanding science plays a negligible role for many people.
When University of Wisconsin-Madison civil and environmental engineering students Dan Zignego, Jake Varnes, Bill Schmitz and Nick Bobinski began a design project meant to be the crowning glory of their educational careers, they never thought it would turn into such a disaster.
Today, a "blood drive" is a cheerful community event, featuring cookies and chats with the neighbors in the high school gym. But a century ago, the first successful blood donations occurred when two people were sewn together by their blood vessels as blood flowed from the donor to the recipient.
For those hoping to create a greener world, our country's millions of miles of asphalt roads may seem like an odd place to seek solutions. Yet, it's precisely because asphalt is so common that we have much to gain from making it more eco-friendly, says University of Wisconsin-Madison civil engineering professor Hussain Bahia.
In our brains, where millions of signals move across a network of neurons like runners in a relay race, all the critical baton passes take place at synapses. These small gaps between nerve cell endings have to be just the right size for messages to transmit properly. Synapses that grow too large or too small are associated with motor and cognitive impairment, learning and memory difficulties, and other neurological disorders.
As China prepares to welcome athletes from around the globe for the Summer Olympics in Beijing, interest in the games and the world's most populous country is reaching new heights.
As the official June 1 start of the Atlantic hurricane season approaches, forecasters are developing predictions about the severity of this year's season. For the first time this year, African dust may provide a piece of this puzzle.
As temperatures warm, farm fields begin to green and outdoor farmers' markets get under way, the time is ripe for thinking about local foods. For Madison residents, finding locally produced foods is now just a mouse click away.
Viruses are masters of deception, duping their host's cells into helping them grow and spread. A new study has found that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) can mimic a common regulatory protein to hijack normal cell growth machinery, disrupting a cell's primary anti-cancer mechanism.
Since scientists first learned to make nanowires, the tiny wires just a few millionths of a centimeter thick have taken many forms, including nanobelts, nanocoils and nanoflowers.
When University of Wisconsin-Madison junior Claire Flanagan graduates in May 2009 with bachelor's degrees in biomedical engineering (BME) and biochemistry, she might display her diploma next to an equally prestigious document: a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
A new Wisconsin project funded by the U.S. Department of Education will feature an unprecedented partnership among public school teachers, university and technical college faculty, and the Wisconsin Veterans Museum to invigorate the teaching of American history.
Microsoft, the world's largest computer software company, will open an advanced development laboratory in Madison later this spring, helping expand on a highly productive 20-year research and alumni relationship between the company and the University of Wisconsin-Madison computer science department.
In mice, child neglect is a product of both nature and nurture, according to a new study. Writing in the journal PLoS ONE on April 9, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison describe a strain of mice that exhibit unusually high rates of maternal neglect, with approximately one out of every five females failing to care for her offspring.
Molecules, any chemist will tell you, have lots to teach us. Giving voice to the lessons of molecules and other props of science, as the lamentable state of science literacy in the United States attests, is no easy task.
University of Wisconsin-Madison historian Ned Blackhawk would argue that there has never been a more fertile time to be a researcher of Native American history, with a surge in scholarly interest and a deep well of subjects "literally waiting to be written."
Can we train ourselves to be compassionate? A new study suggests the answer is yes. Cultivating compassion and kindness through meditation affects brain regions that can make a person more empathetic to other peoples' mental states, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) are wagging a finger at currently held notions about the way digits are formed.
The pending federal decision about whether to protect the polar bear as a threatened species is as much about climate science as it is about climate change.
A new application under investigation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison would further expand the RFID frontier into a vital health-care concern: Ensuring the safety and quality of the nation's donor blood supply.
Working with University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering and business school faculty and students, a Wisconsin entrepreneur has perfected a fiber-reinforced fishing lure that may prevent millions of pounds of toxic plastics from polluting waters nationwide.
The same chemical reaction that causes iron to rust plays a similarly corrosive role in our bodies. Oxidative stress chips away at healthy cells and is a process, scientists know, that contributes to a host of diseases and conditions in humans ranging from Alzheimer's, heart disease and stroke to cancer and the inexorable process of aging.
Every year, storms over West Africa disturb millions of tons of dust and strong winds carry those particles into the skies over the Atlantic. According to a recent study led by University of Wisconsin-Madison atmospheric scientists, this dust from Africa directly affects ocean temperature, a key ingredient in Atlantic hurricane development.