Focus: Hidden - Wisconsin

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Microbes, animals, still living in frozen soils

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Discerning consumers are turning to Old World grains like spelt, emmer, and einkorn. However, reviving ancient grains in modern times isn't without its challenges. Researchers hope to learn more about how to best grow these grains on modern farms, and how to best use them in modern baking.

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An uncommon and little-studied type of cell in the lungs has been found to act like a sensor, linking the pulmonary and central nervous systems to regulate immune response in reaction to environmental cues. The cells, known as pulmonary neuroendocrine cells or PNECs, are implicated in a wide range of human lung diseases, including asthma, pulmonary hypertension, cystic fibrosis and sudden infant death syndrome, among others.

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The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second largest ice sheet in the world and it’s melting rapidly, likely driving almost a third of global sea level rise. A new study shows clouds are playing a larger role in that process than scientists previously believed.

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The moment of truth for Will Caldwell came when a car suddenly emerged from a parking lot. He was riding his bike and didn’t see it. But the lasers in the prototype “Safe Cycle” warning system did, and the handlebars vibrated in warning.

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Since 2014, the Urban Canid Project has heavily emphasized outreach and public engagement in the study of Madison’s foxes and coyotes. Its goal is to understand more about these city-dwelling relatives of dogs and help us all peacefully coexist. So far, its efforts have met success.

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Typically, organic growers plant pulse crops solely for their nitrogen-fixing ability and use them as green manure. The research compared this green manure technique to a traditional program of growing the beans to maturity for harvest and sale. This research has multiple benefits: saving money on the cost of fertilizer, and reducing the chances that excess nitrogen fertilizer will run off into nearby water bodies.

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Nutritional sciences students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee help Olympic hopeful speed skaters develop healthy eating habits that can help fuel their performance.

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The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries now has two limited edition collections of rare early jazz and blues music from Paramount Music in nearby Grafton, Wisconsin.

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Milwaukee and Wisconsin community members learn more about Latino culture with the help of the UW-Milwaukee Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

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Potting soils not “soils at all” explains soil scientist

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Creating effective bioretention systems requires understanding, and being able to design, a living system. This has been one of the issues preventing more communities from installing these green systems.The researchers evaluated soil mixtures for their ability to rapidly filter water, filter contaminants, and support plant growth.

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A new set of studies suggests that compassion — and intentionally cultivating it through training — may lead us to do more to help the wronged than to punish the wrongdoer.

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Ongoing studies of a massive volcanic field in the Andes mountains show that the rapid uplift which has raised the surface more than six feet in eight years has occurred many times during the past 10,000 years.

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Crop scientists celebrating these nutritious, sustainable beans

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There’s more to an ecosystem than the visible plants and animals. The soil underneath is alive with vital microbes. They make sure nutrients from dead plant and animal material are broken down and made useable by other plants. This completes the process of nutrient cycling and carbon storage. Scientists are learning more about how important these microbes are. But how do changes in temperature and precipitation levels affect microbes? And will that affect carbon storage?

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A study published today finds a surprising and very recent shift away from the steady relationship among species that prevailed for more than 300 million years. The study, published in the journal Nature, offers the first long-term view of how species associated with each other for half of the existence of multicellular life on Earth.

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A study of rats released today shows that blocking a type of RNA produced by what used to be called "junk DNA" can prevent a significant portion of the neural destruction that follows a stroke.

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According to a new analysis in the journal Ecological Monographs, by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues, the world’s rivers and streams pump about 10 times more methane into our atmosphere than scientists estimated in previous studies.

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Su-Chun Zhang, a pioneer in developing neurons from stem cells at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has created a specialized nerve cell that makes serotonin, a signaling chemical with a broad role in the brain.

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Rituals, war paint, beauty, and health common uses of soils

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As the drug touted as “the female Viagra” comes to market, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are learning more about how the drug, called flibanserin, affects the brain.

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Jerry S. Wolinsky, M.D., will deliver the first annual Kenneth P. Johnson Memorial Lecture at ACTRIMS Forum 2016, Feb. 18 - 20, 2016, in New Orleans. Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis is hosting its first-ever standalone forum for researchers and clinicians to share the latest developments.

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Every city has abandoned industrial sites. Encouraging life to return to these barren areas is a challenge. It requires a healthy topsoil for plants and animals to flourish. Cities, with their heavily compacted and often contaminated soils, often struggle to restore blighted spaces. Quality soil is necessary—but not abundant in cities. Enter biosolids.

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Half of all stars are in binaries — pairs of stars that orbit each other. Half of binary stars orbit so close that gravitational interaction significantly affects their evolution and demise. Today, scientists led by Robert Mathieu, a professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his former student Natalie Gosnell confirmed one of the possible explanations for a common group of exceptions: the blue stragglers.

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Not every virus wants to go viral — at least, not immediately. Some want to slip in quietly. Hide. Wait for the perfect opportunity to attack. In order to do so, the virus has to find a way to enter the cells of the human body without tripping the alarm, and stay there without notice. It’s how HIV works, and also how viruses in the herpesvirus family, like human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), do their business.

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Thanks to a new method for making interspecies yeast hybrids in the lab, the makers of beer, wine, biofuels and other products that depend on yeasts may soon have many more strains of the microorganism to work with.

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French fry lovers, beware! You may be exposed to a chemical more commonly associated with heavy industry than crispy fried potatoes. Fortunately, researchers are finding ways to reduce that exposure.

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Soil gives us artistic beauty and cultural richness

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Urban environments struggle with contaminated water running off, causing pollution and algal blooms. In response, cities often use natural landscapes of soil, grasses, and trees. These biofiltration systems capture and filter the runoff. Australian researchers measured how well tree species grew when watered with stormwater, and how well they took extra nutrients out of the stormwater.

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A new opportunity for improving the health and supply of lakes, waterways and groundwater has emerged from a recent study in the journal Ecosphere by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Water Sustainability and Climate Project.

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Soils can store carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere

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R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and longtime student of the regulation and ethics of biotechnology, was named co-chair of a study committee established Nov. 12 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to look into the implications of a faster, easier and more precise method for "editing" genes.

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Urbanization is known to degrade the quality of soil. Researchers compared the soil under residential prairie gardens to the soil under the adjacent lawns to see if there were any differences.

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“Blink and you’ll miss it” isn’t only for eyelids. The human brain also blinks, dropping a few frames of visual information here and there. Those lapses of attention come fast — maybe just once every tenth of a second. But some people may be missing more than others, according to psychologists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have created a molecular structure that attaches to a molecule on highly aggressive brain cancer and causes tumors to light up in a scanning machine. In mouse models of human brain cancer, their tag is easily seen in a PET scanner, which is commonly used to detect cancer.

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A University of Wisconsin-Madison physician and her research team have shown that a heart medication can prevent ovarian damage and improve survival in adolescent mice after chemotherapy. The treatment also increased the number of their healthy offspring.

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Manure management is serious business for a meat-hungry world. A single cow, depending on its size, can generate between 43 and 120 pounds of manure a day. Cow manure can be a low-cost fertilizer for farmers’ crops. But manure can also host antimicrobial resistant bacteria. Researchers have been testing creative ways to target antimicrobial resistance genes in manure.

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The Mississippi River has long had its explorers. From de Soto to Marquette, Lewis and Clark to Clemens, the fourth largest river in the world has for centuries inspired enchantment. Today, Luke Loken, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology (CFL), and John Crawford, a CFL graduate, are Mississippi River explorers of a more modern sort. They have embarked on a journey to learn more about the chemistry of its waters, using technology they invented.

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Drawing inspiration from an insect's multi-faceted eye, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have created miniature lenses with vast range of vision. Their new approach created the first-ever flexible Fresnel zone plate microlenses with a wide field of view — a development that could allow everything from surgical scopes to security cameras to capture a broader perspective at a fraction of the size required by conventional lenses.

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Good farming and property management keys to prevention

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Couples raising a child with developmental disabilities do not face a higher risk of divorce if they have larger families, according to a new study by researchers from the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Inspired by mammals’ eyes, University of Wisconsin–Madison electrical engineers have created the fastest, most responsive flexible silicon phototransistor ever made.

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Piled Higher and Deeper - an analogy for PhD

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The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee worked with area teens to develop an app that gives them information on more than 250 things to do outside of school hours.

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[Faculty members at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are working with veterans to produce Shakespeare’s plays as a way of dealing with trauma and engaging with others.

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In the recent sci-fi hit, The Martian, the main character, astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon), manages to grow potatoes on the planet with a mix of ingenuity, science, and a bit of Hollywood make-believe. Could it work?