The holiday season can be a stressful one, making it an important time to remember how to relax. For some people, this involves meditation, the discipline of the mind with the goal of reducing stress or building internal energy. While it may seem like merely a placebo or “positive thinking” effect to skeptics, a growing body of evidence supports the tangible health benefits of meditation. Curious researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison recently decided to explore meditation from a biotechnological standpoint and analyze what effects it actually has on humans.
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Tags: 2014, Midwest, 2013, WI, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Madison, UWisc, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Madison
The hype in medical media over stem cells often overlooks the complexity and difficulty behind their production. In fact, there are only a few laboratories among businesses and universities with the capacity to pull it off. This is one of the things that make the Waisman Biomanufacturing Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison particularly impressive.
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Zinc is one of the many minerals that we know is necessary for a balanced diet, yet most of us hardly know why it’s important or if we’re getting enough. Now, though, research from the labs at University of Wisconsin, Madison suggests that zinc may be linked to diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
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While solar power is one of the leading sources of renewable energy available to us, it’s easy to argue that we have a long way to go in terms of directly harnessing the sun’s rays. For instance, most solar devices in our daily lives must be hooked up to a battery or capacitor in order to store the energy they derive. A novel invention from the University of Wisconsin, Madison solves this issue by keeping solar energy readily available in the mechanism itself. But most impressive of all is that the mechanism itself is a pair of solar contact lenses.
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For all the excitement there’s been over stem cells in biotechnology (including in our Science Market Update posts- for example Mayo Clinic Spearheads Regenerative Medicine and California to Spend $32M on Stem Cell Research Biobank), one very exciting application for the technology that has been heretofore unannounced is stem cell transplants in the brain. Here to remedy this fact is the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where it was just recently discovered that stem cells can form nerve cells which can actually increase learning and memory capability.
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Tags: 2014, Midwest, 2013, UW, WI, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Madison, UWiscRP, UWisc, University of Wisconsin Research Park, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Front Line event, Madison, Front Line
When it comes to identifying the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, every minute counts. Often it’s not even possible to determine whether a person is afflicted with it until it’s too late: that is, once symptoms start to show. A promising study at the University of Wisconsin, Madison suggests that there exists a way to diagnose Alzheimer’s before the onset of symptoms, not after.
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The University of Wisconsin-Madison is a richly-funded science research environment, which is especially evident given recent NSF and NIH research funding statistics. In total, the University of Wisconsin-Madison received $335.9 million in research funding from the NSF and NIH in 2012. The NSF awarded the university $106 million. Of that money, $13.8 million went to bio research projects alone. For our readers’ convenience, we have spotlighted the top five NSF-funded bio research projects broken down by funding program, project title and research funding below.
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A little-known fact about the University of Wisconsin, Madison is their emphasis on fish research. In fact, according to an Isthmus article, the university uses and keeps over 400,000 fish: more than the rest of their three dozen species combined. The University of Wisconsin’s research on fish is extensive, and scales from regulating the waterways they travel through to the invasive dangers they face.
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Wisconsin is universally known for its abundance of milk and cheese products, which establish its reputation as the “Dairy State.” Therefore, it stands to reason that the University of Wisconsin at Madison would have a fantastic Center for Dairy Research (CDR) at the forefront of cheese research. According to the CDR Homepage, this includes studying the functional and physical properties of cheese, create new flavors and varieties of cheeses, and investigate technologies for cheese production, safety, and quality.
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An Oregon State University research lab led by Gregory Rorrer has just been awarded a $2M NSF grant as part of the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) program for Engineering projects. Of the 15 ENG/EFRI awards for 2012, 3 were in the category of Synthetic Biorefineries research: "the large-scale use of micro-organisms that harness solar energy to produce chemicals and fuels from carbon dioxide." Rorrer's lab will study diatom photosynthesis as a means of creating biofuel, as well as two other bioengineered products. Diatoms are a type of algae with a unique biosynthetic ability to extract silicate from the ocean to create cell walls of nanostructured silica. According to the grant proposal, the OSU team will identify cellular processes and cultivation strategies towards the design of scalable systems for a future diatom-based photosynthetic biorefinery.
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Tags: Oregon State University, Northwest, biofuels, women in science, Texas A&M University, Oregon, 2012, University of Wisconsin Madison, Biochemistry, Front Line event, OR, NSF, Corvalis, ORSTU