UW In The News
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Billions at Stake in University Patent Fights
A powerful and inexpensive technique for rewriting snippets of DNA — known as CRISPR-Cas9 — has two research institutions locked in a bitter patent battle. On one side is UC Berkeley, where faculty first reported using the gene-editing technology in 2012, on the other, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where faculty won a special expedited patent for the technique in 2014.
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Atucha: How Wisconsin Fruits Were Hit By A Late Spring Frost
Every year as spring unfolds, fruit growers around Wisconsin start feeling anxious, wondering whether a late frost will harm their crop. Overall, temperatures are warming across the state amidst global climate change, but this pattern is accompanied by unseasonable cold weather events, such as the late spring frost much of the state experienced earlier this month.
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‘Use your turn signal’: Six of the best celebrity commencement speeches of 2016
Recognize: Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson’s speech at UW-Madison
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Poverty linked to epigenetic changes and mental illness
Noted: Seth Pollak, a child psychologist at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, says that it is unclear whether poverty harms cognition and mental health, or whether a person’s intrinsic biology increases the likelihood that he or she will be poor as adults. But epigenetic research, such as the new study, shows that genetic differences are not the only important factors. “You might have a particular gene — but depending on the experience you have or don’t have, the gene might never be turned on,” Pollak says.
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1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility
Noted: But all these factors are exacerbated by common forces, says Judith Kimble, a developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison: competition for grants and positions, and a growing burden of bureaucracy that takes away from time spent doing and designing research. “Everyone is stretched thinner these days,” she says. And the cost extends beyond any particular research project. If graduate students train in labs where senior members have little time for their juniors, they may go on to establish their own labs without having a model of how training and mentoring should work. “They will go off and make it worse,” Kimble says.
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Nigel Hayes will return to UW for senior season
Wisconsin coach Greg Gard has reeled in a key recruit for the 2016-’17 season.
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UW-Madison scientist says flu virus mapping could improve vaccine
The development by virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka follows research he did last year suggesting another way to improve flu shots: manufacturing them with dog or monkey cells instead of the current, lengthy process using chicken eggs.
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Neurological therapy: Can stimulating the tongue help stimulate the brain?
A new experimental therapy is trying to determine if stimulating the tongue can retrain the brain and offer some relief to those with neurological issues.
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China’s Coming Demographic Crash
Quoted: “It’s already too late,” says Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a critic of Chinese population policies. “China’s population is aging quickly and will start to shrink soon.”
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Thousands more trail cameras coming to Wisconsin
Wisconsin scientists have launched an ambitious new project that uses trail cameras to inventory wildlife and tamp down simmering questions about how many deer really roam the state.
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Madison ranked No. 1 college football town
The Bleacher Report put out a list of the top 15 college football towns in the country based on the town’s relationship to its college program, passion in terms of fan support, traditions, culture and entertainment options on football weekends.
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UW researches why obesity is breast cancer risk factor
Studies show that being overweight or obese is associated with a higher risk of cancer. One woman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is trying to figure out why that is, specifically in cases of breast cancer.
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Madison ranked No. 1 college football town
The Bleacher Report put out a list of the top 15 college football towns in the country based on the town’s relationship to its college program, passion in terms of fan support, traditions, culture and entertainment options on football weekends.
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Thousands more trail cameras coming to Wisconsin
MADISON — Wisconsin scientists have launched an ambitious new plan to catalog wild animals using thousands of trail cameras, a project that could help answer just how many deer and other creatures roam the state.
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How the Other Fifth Lives
Noted: Timothy Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin, has explored how the top quintile is pulling away from the rest of society. In an essay published earlier this year, “Gates, Gaps, and Intergenerational Mobility: The Importance of an Even Start,” Smeeding finds that the gap between the average income of households with children in the top quintile and households with children in the middle quintile has grown, in inflation-adjusted dollars, from $68,600 to $169,300 — that’s 147 percent.
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Teaching today’s students is more taxing
Gloria Ladson-Billings posed a question to point out a troubling trend in education: “How can we develop culturally competent students if our teachers are culturally incompetent?” Ladson-Billings asked at her “Urban Education and Community Forum” lecture at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
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Health officials work with UW to track Zika-prone mosquitoes
Health officials are collaborating with the a state university after learning that a Wisconsin woman contracted the Zika virus.
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The Opening Bell 05-18-16: GMO + TSA = BAD!
On the May 18, 2016 episode of The Opening Bell, Steve Grzanich talked with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Life Science Communication department chair, Dominique Brossard. The two discussed the recent details of a genetically engineered crop study and how it effects the market. Rick Seaney, airline industry expert, stopped by as well to share some more perspective on the TSA line madness.
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Our view: Wisconsin’s higher education will drive our economy
Tommy Thompson still knows how to work a room. The former Wisconsin governor thanked faculty members during a graduation ceremony last week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, calling them “some of the greatest professors in the United States of America.”
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Taking a ‘snapshot’ of Wisconsin wildlife
Wisconsin is home to numerous species of wild animals, although getting a handle on just how many can often prove quite difficult. A joint effort between University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and the state Department of Natural Resources could take some of the guesswork out of that process, with members of the public also lending a hand.
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Wisconsin Fruit Crop Is Still Strong Despite Recent Frosts, Expert Says
Noted: But recent damage isn’t the end of this year’s crop, according to Dr. Amaya Atucha, a University of Wisconsin-Extension fruit specialist and assistant professor of horticulture at UW-Madison. She said the impacts of the frost varied greatly across the state.
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DNR, UW-Madison researchers launch crowdsourced wildlife tracking project
Anyone with computer access can now take part in conducting wildlife research in Wisconsin.Snapshot Wisconsin, a collaboration between UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, is recruiting the public to help track the state’s wildlife population.
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5 books Bill Gates says you should read this summer
Listed: “On the surface it’s about math, but it’s really about how much math plays into our daily lives without our even knowing it,” Gates wrote in his review of How Not to Be Wrong.
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Cold snap damages wine grape crops in Midwest
Noted: Temperatures dipped below freezing in much of those areas late Saturday and early Sunday, wiping out grape shoots that had emerged early due to a warm spring. The cold turned the water in the shoots cells to ice, killing the tissue, said Amaya Atucha, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant horticulture professor.
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Report: Genetically modified foods safe but not curing hunger
“To some extent we know more about some genetically engineered food than we do about other food,” committee member Dominique Brossard of UW-Madison said. “There are limits to what can be known about any food. That’s something we’re not used to hearing as consumers.”
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Tech Council report warns of continuing higher ed cuts
A new Wisconsin Technology Council report warns further state budget cuts to higher education “will prove costly over time.”
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Farms That Rise to the Challenge
Quoted: “There are situations in dense urban areas where space is highly limited that growing food with artificial lights, stacked vertically, makes sense, especially highly perishable products like sprouts or salad greens where there is an immediate market for them,” said Stephen J. Ventura, a professor of environmental studies and soil science at the University of Wisconsin.
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Seahawks Quarterback Russell Wilson Delivers University of Wisconsin Commencement Speech
Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson was back at Camp Randall Stadium Saturday, the place where he helped lead the Wisconsin Badgers to a Big Ten Championship in 2011. This time, however, Wilson wasn’t in Madison to deliver passes, but rather the commencement speech to the 2016 graduates of the University of Wisconsin.
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Nearly 6,800 UW-Madison students celebrate graduation
Despite overcast skies, chilly temperatures and an occasional raindrop, thousands of UW-Madison students celebrated their hard work and efforts Saturday.
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101 years later, posthumous degree for UW-Madison student who left for World War I
On graduation day, 101 years after Milton Pettit Griswold entered UW-Madison, his family will accept his engineering degree, posthumously.
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