For a soldier who suffered a spinal cord injury on the battlefield, the promise of regenerative medicine is to fully repair the resulting limb paralysis. But that hope is still years from reality. Not only powerful, but efficient. Studying diseases in lab-created tissue may help reduce the price tag — now roughly $1.8 billion — for bringing a new drug to market, which is one of the reasons Ashton received a National Science Found...

  Borrowing from nature is an age-old theme in science. Form and function go hand-in-hand in the natural world and the structures created by plants and animals are only rarely improved on by humans.

Manufacturing industries rely on the efforts of factory employees who work daily to make, package, prepare and deliver the products we find on our shelves. That’s a lot of physical effort, and the strain can lead to various injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome or tendonitis in the wrists, arms and shoulders. Risk of injury is hard on workers, and can create costs to employers for workers’ compensation, lost time and reduced p...

With tornado season fast approaching or already underway in vulnerable states throughout the U.S., supercomputer simulations are giving meteorologists unprecedented insight into the structure of monstrous thunderstorms and tornadoes. One such recent simulation recreates a tornado-producing supercell thunderstorm that left a path of destruction over the central Great Plains in 2011.

In an abandoned gold m­­­ine one mile beneath Lead, South Dakota, the cosmos quiets down enough to potentially hear the faint whispers of the universe’s most elusive material — dark matter. Shielded from the deluge of cosmic rays constantly showering the Earth’s surface, and scrubbed of noisy radioactive metals and gasses, the mine, scientists think, will be the ideal setting for the most sensitive dark matter e...

  Middle, high school and home school students will compete in the Wisconsin Crystal Growing contest, from March 1 to April 30.

Organised by the Molecular Structure Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Chemistry, the Wisconsin Crystal Growing Competition is now accepting registrations for its annual statewide contest among middle school, high school, and home schooled students. From March 1 to April 30, participating students will work to grow large and high quality crystals from safe, common materials.

The prospect of regenerating bone lost to cancer or trauma is a step closer to the clinic as University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists have identified two proteins found in bone marrow as key regulators of the master cells responsible for making new bone. In a study published online in the journal Stem Cell Reports, a team of UW–Madison scientists reports that the proteins govern the activity of mesenchymal stem cells &mdas...

A patient preparing for cancer treatment that uses radiation has plenty to worry about. Getting the right treatment every time — just the right dose in just the right place — should be taken for granted. And yet in radiotherapy, as in every other human activity, errors happen. Tracking down and eliminating errors in a way that simultaneously prevents further problems is the stock-in-trade of the Center for the Assessment of Radio...

  Striking electron microscope pictures from inside the brains of mice suggest what happens in our own brain every day: Our synapses – the junctions between nerve cells – grow strong and large during the stimulation of daytime, then shrink by nearly 20% while we sleep, creating room for more growth and learning the next day.

A partnership including University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers has been named one of 10 proving grounds for driverless cars and trucks by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The future of transportation undoubtedly includes vehicles that operate with little or no input from human operators, according to Peter Rafferty, a program manager at UW–Madison’s Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory (TOPS).

University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers have developed methods to observe gene editing in action, and they’re putting those capabilities to work to improve genetic engineering techniques. “Ultimately, the knowledge we gain from this project has the potential to set the foundation for new preclinical platforms in precision medicine,” says Krishanu Saha, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at UW–Mad...

  After spending months in space, quietly orbiting the Earth, the next-generation geosynchronous satellite has broken its silence and sent back its first images. On Jan. 23, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the GOES-16 “first light” true-colour images of Earth in high resolution.

A UW–Madison Microbiome Initiative comes with $1 million in grant funding administered by the vice chancellor for research and graduate education to support interdisciplinary research, infrastructure, and research community enhancements related to the microbiome. “Microbiome science has the potential to revolutionise areas such as health care, agriculture, biomanufacturing, environmental management, and more,” says Marsha M...

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have developed a novel strategy to reprogram cells from one type to another in a more efficient and less biased manner than previous methods. The ability to convert cells from one type to another holds great promise for engineering cells and tissues for therapeutic application, and the new Wisconsin study could help speed research and bring the technology to the clinic faster.

The second most-produced organic chemical in the world, propene is a key component of plastics found in consumer goods such as electronics, clothing and food packaging. For years, oil refineries have produced an abundance of the compound through the “steam cracking” process that converts oil-derived naptha into useful components. In the last decade, however, many U.S. refineries have instead moved toward shale gas cracking as dom...

Brad Postle’s lab, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is challenging the idea that working memory remembers things through sustained brain activity. They caught brains tucking less-important information away somewhere beyond the reach of the tools that typically monitor brain activity — and then they snapped that information back into active attention with magnets. Their latest study will be published in the journal&nb...

For James Steele, moving from the small fermenters where microbes make cheese, wine and beer to the multimillion-gallon tanks where corn is converted to ethanol was a natural progression. Steele, the University of Wisconsin–Madison Winder-Bascom professor of food science, specialises in food, beverage and biofuel fermentation. Understanding how bacteria and yeast convert biomass into products has been his stock-in-trade for more than 3...

Computer chips in development at the University of Wisconsin–Madison could make future computers more efficient and powerful by combining tasks usually kept separate by design. Jing Li, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UW–Madison, is creating computer chips that can be configured to perform complex calculations and store massive amounts of information within the same integrated unit — and com...

The prospect of creating artery “banks” available for cardiovascular surgery, bypassing the need to harvest vessels from the patient, could transform treatment of many common heart and vascular ailments. But it’s a big leap from concept to reality. The Morgridge Institute for Research and the University of Wisconsin–Madison will address both the engineering and biomedical hurdles in this process through a five ye...