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.

Stretching probably yields no benefits
Stretching before exercise, while doing no harm, probably does not reduce the risk of injury or muscle soreness, according to a university family physician and sports medicine specialist who conducted published animal tests on the subject.

Thomas M. Best, who wrote on the subject in the British Medical Journal, conducted one of five published studies.

“We think that when we stretch, we’re changing the tissues in some way that will prevent injury,” Best says. “In the rabbit studies we conducted, stretching does not seem to affect muscle damage.”

As a family physician and sport medicine specialist, Best says injuries happen to some of his most highly conditioned patients.

“I look after varsity athletes, and I also see professional athletes,” he says. “They do stretching, and yet, some of them continue to have injuries.”

Because stretching does no harm and makes many people feel more limber, Best does not discourage anyone from continuing to stretch before exercise.

Fusion experiment receives $2.7 million
One of the world’s largest spherical-torus fusion experiments, located on campus, recently received a major financial boost from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Science.

The three-year, $2.7 million grant provides funds to continue the Pegasus Toroidal Experiment and will enable faculty, staff and student researchers to conduct more advanced studies of plasma at higher pressures.

An ionized gas, plasma is the fuel that drives fusion energy production via a process similar to that which powers the sun. Fusion potentially could be an environmentally safe and virtually limitless source of energy. Research now focuses on developing more cost-effective fusion reactor concepts.

Worldwide, there is a push to explore the spherical torus as a fusion-reactor concept and a means of studying fusion-grade plasmas, says Raymond Fonck, professor of engineering physics and Pegasus director. “It’s smaller and therefore cheaper to develop.”

The renewed funding will support the group as it remodels the experiment and upgrades its power, control and diagnostic systems. More studies will wait until late spring, when Fonck expects Pegasus modifications will be complete. And as has been the case from the beginning of the experiment more than five years ago, undergraduate and graduate students will continue to be highly involved.

Study shows common herbicides may reduce fertility
Herbicides may help keep lawns healthy, but a new study shows they also reduce the fertility of laboratory mice. A group of researchers, including zoology and environmental toxicology professor Warren Porter, tested the health effects of a mixture of commonly used herbicides on the reproduction rates of mice. The herbicides included a mixture of 2,4-D, mecoprop and dicamba—all of which can be found in off-the-shelf “weed-and-feed” products used widely by homeowners and lawn maintenance companies.

The group placed varying amounts of the chemical mix in the drinking water of female mice. At all doses, exposed females produced litter sizes that, on average, were 10 to 20 percent smaller than females not exposed. The group also found a 20 percent increase in the number of failed pregnancies at extremely low levels of exposure.

The findings were published last week in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.