Advances

Advances gives a glimpse of the many significant research projects at the university. Tell us about your discoveries. E-mail: wisweek@news.wisc.edu.

UW to test for deer disease
The Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory has hired three employees and begun renovations on a dedicated testing lab for chronic wasting disease.

The lab is preparing this fall to test thousands of deer tissue samples for the fatal disease detected last February in Wisconsin’s whitetail deer.

The Department of Natural Resources plans to collect more than 50,000 tissue samples taken from deer killed throughout the state this fall and winter, and the WVDL will receive the majority of these samples to test for CWD.

Due to the anticipated high volume of samples, WVDL will have 10 veterinary pathologists working on the CWD project as part of their responsibilities within the lab and the School of Veterinary Medicine.

The renovations and new equipment, which together cost about $400,000, are important components of the state’s CWD plan, made possible by emergency funding passed recently by the state Legislature, says Robert Shull, WVDL director.

Human antibiotics in lakes may alter aquatic organisms
The overuse of antibiotics not only leads to more resistant strains of infection, but, according to new research, antibiotics also may be adversely affecting zooplankton, tiny organisms that underpin the health of all freshwater ecosystems.

In the last decade, European and American researchers have found more evidence that lakes and streams are tainted by common drugs, ranging from caffeine to anticancer agents.

This pollution, says sociologist Colleen Flaherty, has direct ties to humans, either through the improper disposal of unwanted pharmaceuticals or through the ingestion of the drugs.

“Up to 80 percent of drugs taken by humans and domesticated animals can be excreted in their biologically active form,” explains Flaherty. This means that the antibiotics, antidepressants and anti-inflammatory pills we take or throw out can eventually end up polluting the environment and harming the organisms that live in it.

Says zoologist Stanley Dodson, who studies freshwater ecology, “Pharmaceuticals can be detected in many surface water streams and lakes, yet we know little about how these strongly biologically active chemicals affect the ecology of aquatic organisms.”

Quantum computing: Moving closer to reality
For the first time, scientists have designed a semiconductor-based device that can trap individual electrons and line them up, an advance that could bring quantum computing out of the gee-whiz world of scientific novelty and into the practical realm.

Professors Mark Eriksson and Bob Joynt (physics), Max Lagally (materials science and engineering), and Dan van der Weide (electrical and computer engineering) have developed a new type of “quantum dot” device for holding electrons that can be scaled up to build a quantum computer.

Made from tiny amounts of the same semiconductor materials used in today’s computer chips, each quantum dot device contains just one infinitesimally small electron. When many devices are aligned, the electrons they house become usable quantum bits, or qubits, for computing.

“The first prerequisite to building a large computer is to have a lot of bits, and we think we have a way to get a lot of them,” says Eriksson. “We’ve done some sophisticated simulations with this device that show the concept is very likely to work, and we’re in the beginning stages of actually making the device.”