“It started over beer in a meeting in China in 1998,” said professor John Valley. In Beijing that year, Valley met with Simon Wilde, who was able to provide him and a graduate student with what they needed: “the oldest oxygen on earth [that they] could find.”
A prevalent health problem in the developing countries of the tropics and subtropics is helminth or parasitic worm transmission. Among the most common parasites is a hookworm or a nematode roundworm with hooked mouthparts known to cause tissue obstruction, anemia and infestation in the stomach.
Participating in any archeological expedition requires a lot of skill and expertise in order for it to be successful. However, a dig that recently took place in northeastern South Africa had an especially unique qualification for any potential archeologists or excavators—the ability to squeeze through a tiny space called the International Postbox and repel down into a cavern named The Cradle of Humankind for its remarkable contents approximately 30 meters below.
Dear Ms. Scientist,
Poverty can cause a lot of challenges for a child. Parents in poverty tend to be out working most of the time, and they’re stressed by inconsistent income when they aren’t working. The social support network of parents tends to be smaller. Stress accumulates and indirectly passes down to the children. Children of poorly educated parents hear fewer words and tend to receive commands rather than questions. There are fewer books in poor households. Nutrition, hygeine and sleep can also be negatively affected by poverty.
Buried deep within one and a half miles of dark, clear Antarctic ice lies IceCube. After seven years of construction, the IceCube detector was completed in 2010: one cubic-kilometer of ice instrumented with over 5,000 optical sensors.
Dear Ms. Scientist,
University of Wisconsin-Madison senior Joshua Shutter is one of 14 students in the nation in 2014 to receive the Churchill Scholarship for his research in chemistry.
“Sesame Street.” “Blue’s Clues.” “Dora the Explorer.” These television programs aim to teach children by providing an early exposure to learning. As effective as they are in increasing a child’s ability to learn, interacting with the screen media has proven to be a better way to educate children at the age of two to three years old—a finding reported by Dr. Heather Kirkorian, a researcher at University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology.
When I decided to write about UW’s Housing sustainability projects, I didn’t expect to get a two for one during my interview, but indeed that is what I got. The program manager for sustainability is a brand new position in the housing department, acting as a testament to the importance of sustainability on this campus, and Laura Shere is the first person to hold this esteemed title.
Dear Ms. Scientist,
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is home to the Plasma dynamo experiment led by physics professor Cary Forest and his colleagues. This experiment has been designed to study plasma physics, which is the study of plasma state of matter. Plasma is a matter different from solids, liquids and normal gases in that it is a highly ionized gas composed of ions, electrons and neutral particles.
Impulsivity —a tendency to act without forethought—is one of the defining characteristics of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. Impulsive people struggle with waiting for rewards, or taking delayed gratification. Thus, they have trouble successfully setting and achieving long-term goals.
Dane County Humane Society is a non-profit organization with a mission to help both animals and people to learn how to assist animals in need. Seven thousand animals of many species, shapes and sizes enter the doors of Dane Country Humane Society every year. They provide wildlife rehabilitation, stray animal holding, adoption service and spay and neutering services to animals from the southern Wisconsin area.
Artificial Intelligence is defined as the ability for a machine such as a computer to perform functions analogous to learning and decision making. This past summer undergraduates Anjali Narayan-Chen and Liqi Xu taught the computer how to play Angry Birds. Angry birds is a popular game where using a slingshot, the player shoots wingless birds to kill pigs. And like other games, there are several levels of difficulty, different sizes and colors of birds, and different obstacles. With each game, new birds and special abilities can be activated by the player.
On a cold, windy Sunday afternoon in September this year, the ground floor lobby of Union South was filled with students discussing homework and munching pizza. However just two floors above, a dance group in the Northwoods room was getting their groove on. As the minutes ticked by, a crew member yelled, “Only five minutes to go, guys. Let’s shoot the final sequence.” A single take, and it was over!
Have you ever had a concussion or any other head-related injury resulting in a permanent or temporary change in cognition? Concussions and other Traumatic Brain Injuries are one of the most serious public health problems in the United States. TBIs occur when a force to the head causes the brain to strike the inside of the skull resulting in swelling and sometimes even bleeding in the brain. These injuries are extremely common in falls, car accidents and many sports-related injuries.
Invasive species are one of the most important issues facing aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems today. No self-respecting ecologist would say otherwise.
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