A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that attention does not have a fixed capacity - and that it can be improved by directed mental training, such as meditation.
The sore on Catrina Hurlburt's leg simply wouldn't heal. Complications from a 2002 car accident left Hurlburt, a borderline diabetic, with recurring cellulitis and staph infections. One of those infections developed into a troublesome open sore that, despite the use of oral antibiotics, continued to fester for nearly eight months.
Sleep remains one of the big mysteries in biology. All animals sleep, and people who are deprived of sleep suffer physically, emotionally and intellectually. But nobody knows how sleep restores the brain.
"People can respond to injustice and tragedy in a forgiving way," explains Enright, a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In 1928, Alexander Fleming opened the door to treating bacterial infections when he stumbled upon the first known antibiotic in a Penicillium mold growing in a discarded experiment.
For the growing number of people with diminished immune systems - cancer patients, transplant recipients, those with HIV/AIDS - infection by a ubiquitous mold known as Aspergillus fumigatus can be a death sentence.
Beyond the lineage of primates, according to scientific gospel, social behavior is dictated primarily by competition for resources such as food, territory and reproduction.
What television viewers saw in the 1950s seemed benign enough: Lucy Ricardo planning hijinks with pal Ethel Mertz, a freckled Howdy Doody, and the vaudeville antics of Uncle Miltie. What they didn't see - and what University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor James Baughman chronicles in his new book "Same Time, Same Station" - is the tug-of-war that network executives waged in the early days of television for the soul of mass culture.
For the millions of Americans whose vision is slowly ebbing due to degenerative diseases of the eye, the lowly neural progenitor cell may be riding to the rescue.
At the root of scientific study are observations made with the eyes; yet in nanoscience, our eyes fail us. That's why nanoscale experiments offer such great opportunities to teach blind and visually impaired students about science and pique their interest in the field, say UW-Madison scientists.
A new global warming study predicts that many current climate zones will vanish entirely by the year 2100, replaced by climates unknown in today's world.
Gene therapy - the idea of using genetic instructions rather than drugs to treat disease - faces a sizeable hurdle in getting the right genes into the right place at the right time. University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers are developing a tool to tackle this problem.
By mimicking Nature's way of distinguishing one type of cell from another, University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists now report they can more effectively seek out and kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones.
Several of the world's leading experts on the formation of blood and heart cells from stem cells, and clinical applications of stem cells in blood and heart diseases, will come together on Wednesday, April 18 for the second annual Wisconsin Stem Cell Symposium.
The interface between molecular biology, medical applications, law, religion and ethics will be the focus of the sixth annual international Bioethics Forum, hosted by Promega Corp.'s BioPharmaceutical Technology Center Institute (BTCI) in Fitchburg, Wis.
Accessing high-quality health information on the Internet may improve breast cancer patients' opinions about their doctors, according to a new study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center of Excellence in Cancer Communications Research, funded by the National Cancer Institute.
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is among the first medical centers in the country taking part in a novel clinical trial investigating if a subject's own stem cells can treat a form of severe coronary artery disease.
On Monday-Wednesday, April 23-25, the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx) will host the first NIATx Summit in San Antonio. Addiction treatment providers, payers, policymakers and clinicians will come together to celebrate recent successes in treatment access and retention, unveil a national campaign and learn cutting-edge practices to improve the quality of treatment service.
Atmospheric scientists have uncovered fresh evidence to support the hotly debated theory that global warming has contributed to the emergence of stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.
Nature has outfitted us with a pair of ears for good reason: having two ears enhances hearing. University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists are now examining whether this is also true for the growing numbers of deaf children who've received not one, but two, cochlear implants to help them hear.
A Wisconsin autism surveillance project reported today that approximately five out of every 1,000 Wisconsin children born in 1994 display symptoms indicative of autism.
The object of fascination for most is the DNA molecule. But in solution, DNA, the genetic material that hold the detailed instructions for virtually all life, is a twisted knot, looking more like a battered ball of yarn than the famous double helix. To study it, scientists generally are forced to work with collections of molecules floating in solution, and there is no easy way to precisely single out individual molecules for study.
Peering backward in time to an instant after the big bang, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have devised an approach that may help unlock the hidden shapes of alternate dimensions of the universe.
Climate experts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are available to comment on a major international report on global climate change that will be released Friday, Feb. 2.
In an advance that could lead to composite materials with virtually limitless performance capabilities, a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist has dispelled a 50-year-old theoretical notion that composite materials must be made only of "stable" individual materials to be stable overall.
In a study of non-human primates infected with the influenza virus that killed 50 million people in 1918, an international team of scientists has found a critical clue to how the virus killed so quickly and efficiently.
In a global economy where good jobs demand innovative thinking, American education must move beyond its "skill and drill" curriculum and embrace creative learning technologies, such as computer and video games, to prepare young people for the world of global competition. So argues David Williamson Shaffer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison education science professor and author of the new book "How Computer Games Help Children Learn" (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Breast cancer patients who pray in online support groups can obtain mental health benefits, according to a new study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center of Excellence in Cancer Communications Research that was funded by the National Cancer Institute.
New research from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) and Scripps Research Institute shows how the astonishingly powerful botulinum toxin uses a unique navigational strategy to latch onto nerve cells, the first step in inactivating them.
Look at your window - not out it, but at it. Though the window glass looks clear, if you could peer inside the pane you would see a surprising molecular mess, with tiny particles jumbled together any which way.
Working with a common form of brewer's yeast, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have uncovered novel functions of a key protein that allow it to act as a master regulatory switch -- a control that determines gene activity and that, when malfunctioning in humans, may contribute to serious neurological disorders.
The new University of Wisconsin-Madison Energy Institute is leveraging several renowned UW-Madison energy education and research programs in its unique, multidisciplinary approach to understanding and addressing key global energy issues.
By comparing influenza viruses found in birds with those of the avian virus that have also infected human hosts, researchers have identified key genetic changes required for pandemic strains of bird flu.
While millions of young people use the Internet to build expansive social networks, most political campaigns never manage to take the training wheels off the technology, using it mainly for tightly controlled, one-way communication.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison program that has helped Wisconsin apple growers reduce pesticide use without sacrificing fruit quality has a new name and a broader mission.
The nation's first poverty research center, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Institute for Research on Poverty, next month marks 40 years of studying why Americans live in poverty and what can be done to end it.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Google announced an agreement today to expand access to hundreds of thousands of public and historical books and documents from more than 7.2 million holdings at the UW-Madison Libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society Library.
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded the University of Wisconsin-Madison Language Institute and the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) a three-year, $345,000 grant to launch the "National Online Less Commonly Taught Languages Teacher Training Initiative."
A failed experiment turned out to be anything but for bacteriologist Marcin Filutowicz. As he was puzzling out why what should have been a routine procedure wouldn't work, he made a discovery that led to the creation of a new biological tool for destroying bacterial pathogens - one that doesn't appear to trigger antibiotic resistance.
Opening a new front in the war against flu, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have reported the discovery of a novel compound that confers broad protection against influenza viruses, including deadly avian influenza.
In an ongoing bid to grow more corn, farmers in the U.S. Corn Belt are planting seeds much earlier today than they did 30 years ago, a new study has found.
A researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health has discovered a new part of the complicated mechanism that governs the formation of blood vessels, or angiogenesis.
Kevin Shinners wants farmers to put less energy into harvesting and handling biofuel crops - less fuel, less time and less labor. As a field machinery specialist, Shinners has worked to improve the efficiency of harvesting forage for animals. Harvesting biomass crops poses similar challenges, he says.
Mixing up a batch of ethanol from alfalfa or switchgrass isn't nearly as efficient as creating it from corn, but that doesn't mean growing grass crops for fuel won't pay, says Paul Weimer.
The world's most widely used organic insecticide, a plucky bacterium known as Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt for short, requires the assistance of other microbes to perform its insect-slaying work, a new study has found.
University of Wisconsin-Madison computer scientists will play a central role in the expansion of a national "Open Science Grid" (OSG), an interconnected computing infrastructure that provides scientists with a massive infusion of computing power and storage capacity to solve large, data-intensive challenges in science.
Mark Harrower, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is devoted to giving people powerful new tools to improve map-making.