UW-Madison News Release--Nuclear Energy Projects

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/28/05

CONTACT: Todd Allen, (608) 265-4083; allen@engr.wisc.edu

RADIATION STUDIES KEY TO NUCLEAR REACTOR LIFE, RECYCLING SPENT FUEL

MADISON - Two University of Wisconsin-Madison projects to study advanced materials and fuels for current and future nuclear reactors received roughly $1 million this month under the Department of Energy Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI).

The NERI program supports research and development under three Department of Energy nuclear initiatives: Generation IV nuclear energy systems, advanced fuel cycles and nuclear hydrogen.

In one three-year project, UW-Madison nuclear engineers will study the resistance to radiation damage of oxide, carbide and nitride nuclear fuel "matrix" materials-the vessels that contain nuclear fuel. A second project will exploit recent advances in computational power and technique to develop computer models of how a reactor's structural materials behave as a result of long-term radiation exposure.

The projects were among 24 selected across the country; UW-Madison was among five universities to receive funding for multiple projects.

Matrix materials are a key element of future fast-spectrum reactors, which are capable of safely and efficiently recycling spent nuclear fuel. The nuclear fission process produces high-energy radioactive neutrons, called "fast" because of their great energy. Current thermal reactors use a moderator to reduce the neutrons' velocity, making them capable of sustaining the nuclear fission reaction using simpler fuel.

But to recycle and minimize the waste impact of the spent fuel, you need to keep those neutrons fast, says Todd Allen, an assistant professor of engineering physics. He and James Blanchard, a professor of engineering physics, are researching how proposed matrix materials hold up under a barrage of radiation.

"It's all in the context of devising new fuel forms that will allow you to efficiently recycle reactor fuel in a way that minimizes the net waste output from the entire fuel cycle," says Allen. "And the reason for looking at recycle is to limit the number of underground repositories you have to build."

Another project involves applying complex materials modeling to nuclear reactors. In it, Allen and Dane Morgan, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, will incorporate the properties of iron, chromium and nickel into more complete computer models of radiation damage in steel, a common reactor structural material.

Previously, a lack of computing power limited such models to single pure materials like copper or iron. "People have learned a lot about radiation damage," says Allen. "But you never build anything out of just copper or just iron."

The effort may lead to structural materials that are better able to withstand long-term exposure to radiation-in some cases, nearly 60 years, says Allen.

- Renee Meiller, (608) 262-2481, meiller@engr.wisc.edu
###



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UW-Madison News Release--Food Labeling Rules

Dec. 28, 2005

To: Editors, news directors
From: University Communications, (608) 262-0930, bsmattmi@wisc.edu
Re: NEW RULES ON LABELING FOOD

Millions of food allergy sufferers in the United States will have a bit of added security in 2006 under new federal rules that require clear, no-nonsense labeling of products that contain common allergy-triggering ingredients.

"The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act," passed in the summer of 2004, will officially take effect on Jan. 1 after companies were given an 18-month head start to prepare. The law targets eight food groups that cause 90 percent of all food allergies, including milk, eggs, fish, peanuts, shellfish, wheat and soybeans.

Dr. James Gern, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, can talk to reporters about the causes and prevalence of food-based allergies and the implications of these new rules. Gern is a national expert of childhood asthma and allergies and recently served on the Executive Committee, Section on Allergy and Immunology, for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Gern can be reached at (608) 263-6201, or gern@medicine.wisc.edu.

A recent Food and Drug Administration study found that one in four sampled foods failed to list peanuts or eggs as ingredients on their food labels. About 2 percent of adults and 5 percent of children in the U.S. suffer from food allergies, and they cause roughly 150 deaths and 30,000 emergency-room treatments each year.

The complete act can be found at: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/alrgact.html

###



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UW-Madison News Release--Defining the Tree of Life

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/22/05

PHOTO EDITORS:  A high-resolution headshot is available for downloading at:
http://photos.news.wisc.edu/hsview.php?id=3978

CONTACT: Sean Carroll, (608) 262-6191, sbcarrol@wisc.edu

NEW STUDY SHOWS ANIMAL FAMILY TREE LOOKING BUSHY IN PLACES

MADISON - The animal kingdom's family tree is beginning to look a little bushy.

Two decades ago, with the advent of methods to look at the family relationships of different organisms by analyzing DNA, scientists envisioned it would only be a matter of time before the various family trees for plants, animals, fungi and their kin would be resolved with genetic precision.

And while molecular methods have had enormous success in ordering some branches in the tree of life - mammals, for example - and have played a critical role in refining and correcting trees constructed on the more traditional means of the appearance of organisms, the tree of animals remains fuzzy.

Now, scientists may know why this is so. Writing this week (Dec. 23, 2005) in the journal Science, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists led by Antonis Rokas, now of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, suggests that a branch-by-branch account of animal relationships over a vast expanse of time is difficult to reconstruct because early animal evolution occurred in bunches.

"In general, we'd like to know who's related to whom, and the pattern of the branches of the tree of life," says Sean Carroll, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at UW-Madison and the senior author of the Science paper.

But 500 million years of animal history on Earth is a lot of ground to cover, Carroll laments, and now it seems that the periodic, frenetic bursts of evolution that occurred at certain times in the distant past make sorting out animal relationships - the branches on the tree - extraordinarily difficult.

"It turns out that early in the origin of many types of animals, there were a lot of branching events in a short period of time," Carroll explains. Those type of episodes at key junctures in life's history - for example, the rise of complex animals or the migration of vertebrates from the sea to land - make the animal tree look very bushy and very murky, Carroll's group reports.

In the new Wisconsin study, which was also co-authored by Dirk Krüger of UW-Madison, massive amounts of molecular data for many animals were used to try to generate a clear picture of the animal tree.

"But instead of a tree, we got a bush where many branches sprout close together," Carroll says.

The group used the same approach to resolve the family tree of fungi, organisms that originated about the same time as animals. "In contrast to the animals, the tree of fungi, resolved neatly," Rokas explains. "The difficulty we are facing in telling animal relationships apart is evolution's signature that some very interesting evolutionary stuff happened here."

It is not as if evolution of new forms of animal life occurred over night, says Carroll, a UW-Madison professor of genetics. The problem is that the resolution of branches that may have taken a few million years to sprout get washed out in the much larger context of 500 million years of animal life on Earth.

"It is hard to distinguish these events, even with boatloads of data," Carroll says. "As you go into deep time, origins are much harder to pick out. And given that there is so much data, you have to ask: why aren't you getting any resolution?"

To illustrate the problem, Carroll notes that if 500 million years from now scientists were to use current molecular techniques to construct the radiation of mammals, they would have difficulty doing so because certain branching events are a "mere" few million years apart.

Using a computer model, Rokas and colleagues simulated just that scenario: What would the mammalian radiation look like had it not happened 100 million years ago, but instead 500-600 million years ago?

"The picture we get is surprisingly similar to the one we get for the animal kingdom," says Rokas. "Certain branches are well resolved, but others looked very bushy indeed."

"As you go into deep time, these bursts of evolutionary origins become harder to resolve," Carroll explains. In addition to the complications of deep time, animal life sometimes has a tendency to explode in radiations as organisms exploit new or newly vacant ecological niches. Famous examples of such radiations include, Darwin's finches in the Galapagos and cichlid fish in African lakes.

In that respect, the results of the new study support paleontological evidence of an explosive radiation at the dawn of animal life.

To arrive at a definitive tree of life for animals, Carroll and Rokas believe, will require much more data and new techniques for extracting the information stored in the DNA record, which will enable scientists to look back in time with greater precision and distinguish the branching events that occurred as new species emerged.

"There are many, many cases where DNA has told us about species' relationships that we never would have guessed based on appearances or other characteristics.  We need this tree to understand the great story of animal evolution," Carroll says.

# # #

- Terry Devitt, (608) 262-8282, trdevitt@wisc.edu



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UW-Madison News Release--Illuminating Alzheimer's

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/21/05

CONTACT: Kathleen Gough, kmgough@ms.umanitoba.ca; Robert Julian, (608) 877-2158, rjulian@src.wisc.edu

ILLUMINATING ALZHEIMER'S: RESEARCH SHEDS LIGHT ON CREATINE'S PRESENCE IN BRAIN

MADISON - Alzheimer's disease is one of the most hauntingly destructive maladies to wreak havoc on humans. It robs children of parents and spouses of each other-with lifetimes of memories lost forever behind blank stares.

But researchers are working toward answers to the many questions that have made Alzheimer's a complex and unsolved degenerative disease and, in some cases, a death sentence.

In an article in the November Journal of Biological Chemistry, a team of Canadian and American scientists reports the first-ever finding of elevated levels of creatine-the newly discovered agent of Alzheimer's-in brain tissue. The article is available pre-press at the Journal of Biological Chemistry's Web site.

"It is the first time anyone has succeeded in detecting creatine directly in situ, in any tissue. The usual methods are to grind up a large amount of tissue and extract it in bulk," explains one of the paper's authors, Kathleen Gough, professor of chemistry at the University of Manitoba.

Gough and her colleagues, along with many others in the field, are searching tenaciously for the molecular answers that might someday lead to the end of Alzheimer's disease. Of particular note regarding the current study was the use of infrared spectroscopy as another tool that has contributed to the body of knowledge regarding Alzheimer's.

"It's the first time that we've discovered creatine in Alzheimer's disease samples that didn't appear in control samples. Nobody has ever seen this before," explains Robert Julian, an expert in infrared spectroscopy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC), the light source utilized for this project.

The key to using infrared, the researchers explain, is that it is relatively unobtrusive as compared to normal laboratory protocols used to study brain tissues, thus keeping the samples closer to being "pristine."

"Due to its small size and great solubility, creatine dissolves and would be washed away under normal tissue preparation protocols for staining. Step one in any staining process is to soak a tissue sample in an aqueous solution of formaldehyde, called formalin. This 'fixes' the proteins in place, but also washes out the small, soluble metabolites like creatine," explains Gough. "What we do is prepare the tissue without any treatment, and we look at unfixed, flash frozen tissue-nothing added or removed, except water."

Thus while the use of synchrotron radiation, a traditionally physics-focused tool for discovery, to study Alzheimer's has surprised some, it may be this application that could one day turn the tide on Alzheimer's Disease. "That's where all of this is going ultimately-is to try and find a cure," explains Julian.

Yet researchers stress that while this information sheds more light on a troubling disease and might possibly lead to improved treatment, the term "cure" simply cannot be used yet.

"It could be really important," concludes Gough. "It seems that there is an overlooked aspect of energy disturbance in Alzheimer's disease, and maybe in other diseases. But as to the detailed explanation of why (the disturbance) is there - the jury is still out."
###
- John Morgan, (608) 877-2357, jmorgan@wisc.edu



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UW-Madison News Release--The Nelson Legacy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/19/05

CONTACT:  Frances Westley, (608) 320-9870; William Bechtel, (202) 362-2249

GAYLORD NELSON'S INFLUENCE LIVES ON AT UW-MADISON INSTITUTE

MADISON - Six months after the death of one of the most popular political figures in Wisconsin's history, his influence grows stronger at the University of Wisconsin-Madison institute that bears his name.

"Gaylord Nelson defined an era of strong and standard-setting environmental legislation and of global organizing and optimism," says Frances Westley, director of UW-Madison's Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.  "We want to keep alive the spirit of dialogue and inquiry that characterized his legacy,"

Nelson, a Wisconsin native, died last July at age 89.  The former governor, three-term U.S. senator, and counselor for the non-profit Wilderness Society was an unwavering advocate for the environment.  He is most often remembered as the founder of Earth Day in 1970, but his achievements in conservation and environmental protection were much more far-reaching.

In honor of the late senator, the Nelson Institute in October launched a retrospective series of public lectures on issues such as wild land preservation that he championed for decades.  The series will culminate next April 20 - two days before the 36th anniversary of Earth Day - with a lecture by environmental advocate Lester Brown, founder of the influential Washington D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute.  Brown is now president of the Earth Policy Institute, another environmental think tank that he established in 2001.

Early next year, the Nelson Institute will announce the selection of UW-Madison's first Gaylord Nelson faculty chair, following a fund-raising campaign to establish an honorary professorship in Nelson's name.  A coinciding campaign raised money for a new Nelson Distinguished Fellowship that is awarded each year to a graduate student interested in environmental policy.

Besides hosting Lester Brown, the institute for the first time also will help coordinate Earth Day-related activities across Madison.

What next?

Several of Nelson's friends and long-time associates and the Wilderness Society have offered to support a broader Nelson Institute role in monitoring the state of the environment, observing Earth Day, and carrying on the Nelson legacy.

"The Wilderness Society has the history of producing 25 years of Earth Day statements, a talented staff, and close relationships with other environmental organizations," they wrote to Westley recently.  "The university has all the Nelson papers at its disposal, and the interdisciplinary scientific knowledge of its faculty should be a powerful force for monitoring the environment."

The group included emeritus UW-Madison professor Harold "Bud" Jordahl, Jr., of Madison, conservationist Martin Hanson of Mellen, Nelson biographer William Christofferson of Milwaukee, and attorney Jay Carlson and former Nelson aide William Bechtel, both of Washington, D.C.

"As Senator Nelson emphasized, the purpose in monitoring the environment is to involve the nation, its leaders and its people in a dialogue, which is the only way to achieve solutions to difficult public problems," they wrote.

Action is needed, the group added, "not just to venerate Senator Nelson, nor even just to educate a new generation of environmental leaders, laudable as such goals may be, but to inspire the nation to press forward to achieve Senator Nelson's lofty goals - to save our threatened resources, to develop a new environmental ethic, and to create a sustainable society."
###
- Tom Sinclair, (608) 263-5599



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UW-Madison News Release--Kong Lives!

Dec. 16, 2005

TO:  Editors, news directors
FROM: Barbara Wolff, (608) 262-8292, bjwolff@wisc.edu
RE:  KONG LIVES!

Cinematically, at least, King Kong crashes into the American imagination about every three decades, and he's wreaking havoc again in theaters starting this week.

Gregg Mitman, professor of the history of science and medical history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that the first King Kong film was inspired by an actual scientific expedition.

"Elements of the 1933 Kong movie are based on the 1926 real-life expedition of William Douglas Burden, a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History," says Mitman, an expert on how animals are portrayed in popular culture.

"Burden traveled to Indonesia to film and capture the Komodo dragon, which he thought was the closest living relative of dinosaurs," he says. "When Burden brought back two live Komodo specimens and housed them in captivity in the Bronx Zoo, they died. Meridan Cooper, producer of the 1933 film version of Kong, wrote at the time, 'I immediately thought of doing the same thing with a giant gorilla.'"

The same correspondence indicates that Burden attributed the Komodo dragon's death to civilization. "This is why Cooper chose the Empire State Building and modern airplanes to kill off Kong. They were fitting symbols of civilization and the machine age that many feared were destroying nature," Mitman says.

He adds that the film's enduring appeal (the current one adds to the 1976 version and the 1933 classic original) might be linked to the restorative properties of an unspoiled, natural landscape.

"The explorers believed that through hunting, with the camera or the gun in remote regions of the earth, following in the footsteps of Teddy Roosevelt, that their own manhood, threatened by material comfort and moral complacency, could be restored," Mitman says. "In the wilds of nature, the trappings of civilization might be shed, one's character laid bare and a more authentic self found."

Mitman is the author of "Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film" (Harvard University Press, 1999). He can be reached at (608) 262-9140, gmitman@med.wisc.edu.

###



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UW-Madison News Release--Stems Cells and Drug Delivery

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/15/05

CONTACT: Clive Svendsen, (608) 265-8668, svendsen@waisman.wisc.edu

ENGINEERED STEM CELLS SHOW PROMISE FOR SNEAKING DRUGS INTO THE BRAIN

MADISON - One of the great challenges for treating Parkinson's diseases and other neurodegenerative disorders is getting medicine to the right place in the brain.

The brain is a complex organ with many different types of cells and structures, and it is fortified with a protective barrier erected by blood vessels and glial cells - the brain's structural building blocks - that effectively blocks the delivery of most drugs from the bloodstream.

But now scientists have found a new way to sneak drugs past the blood-brain barrier by engineering and implanting progenitor brain cells derived from stem cells to produce and deliver a critical growth factor that has already shown clinical promise for treating Parkinson's disease.

Writing today in the journal Gene Therapy, University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist Clive Svendsen and his colleagues describe experiments that demonstrate that engineered human brain progenitor cells, transplanted into the brains of rats and monkeys, can effectively integrate into the brain and deliver medicine where it is needed.

The Wisconsin team obtained and grew large numbers of progenitor cells from human fetal brain tissue. They then engineered the cells to produce a growth factor known as glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF). In some small but promising clinical trials, GDNF showed a marked ability to provide relief from the debilitating symptoms of Parkinson's. But the drug, which is expensive and hard to obtain, had to be pumped directly into the brains of Parkinson's patients for it to work, as it is unable to cross the blood-brain barrier.

In an effort to develop a less invasive strategy to effectively deliver the drug to the brain, Svendsen's team implanted the GDNF secreting cells into the brains of rats and elderly primates. The cells migrated within critical areas of the brain and produced the growth factor in quantities sufficient for improving the survival and function of the defective cells at the root of Parkinson's.

"This work shows that stem cells can be used as drug delivery vehicles in the brain," says Svendsen, a professor of anatomy whose laboratory is at the UW-Madison Waisman Center.

The new Wisconsin study, whose lead author is Soshana Behrstock, depended on formative brain cells that were coaxed from blank-slate stem cells. The progenitor neural cells were genetically modified to secrete the growth factor when implanted in the striatum, a large cluster of cells in the brain that controls movement, balance and walking.

To work effectively, the cells in the striatum require dopamine, a chemical that is produced deep in the brain and that travels up nerve fibers to the striatum where it is used to keep critical cells functional. Loss of the ability to produce dopamine is the root cause of Parkinson's, a disease that afflicts about 1.5 million people in the United States.

In the new Wisconsin study, the GDNF-producing cells transplanted in the striatum of animals with a condition like Parkinson's showed not only that a critical drug could be delivered to the right place, but that the drug was delivered in a way that promoted its therapeutic potential. The researchers reported new nerve fiber growth in the striatum and the transport of the critical nerve growth factor GDNF from the striatum to the substantia niagra, the part of the brain that harbors the cells that produce dopamine.

"In Parkinson's, the striatum loses fibers," Svendsen explains. But cells in the striatum exposed to GDNF in the Wisconsin study showed an ability to recover and sprout new fibers.

"It actually seems to work better in the terminal (striatum)," Svendsen says. "The bonus is it gets transported back to the substantia niagra."

The transplanted cells, according to Behrstock, survived and continued to produce GDNF in laboratory animals for up to three months.

One hurdle that needs to be overcome before such a technique could be attempted in human patients, says Svendsen, is developing a method to switch transplanted cells on or off and thus control their drug delivery capabilities. Working with engineered cells in culture, the Wisconsin group found they could switch the cells on and off using a second drug. Doing so in animal models, however, was more difficult and the issue will need to be addressed in new experiments, according to Svendsen.

The new study, Svendsen argues, proves that progenitor cells - cells that can now be made in large quantities in the laboratory - can be crafted to help clinicians deliver drugs where they are needed most in the body. Delivering medicine to the brain, whose blood-brain barrier effectively excludes more than 70 percent of all drugs, would be an especially valuable use for the cells. Such a new method may be useful for treating a number of neurodegenerative diseases beyond Parkinson's, he says.

In addition to Svendsen and Behrstock, authors of the new Gene Therapy paper include Allison Ebert, Jacqueline McHugh, Stephen Vosberg, Elizabeth Capowski, Bernard Schneider and Derek Hei, all of UW-Madison; Jeffery Kordower of Rush University Medical Center; and Patrick Aebischer of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

# # #

- Terry Devitt, (608) 262-8282, trdevitt@wisc.edu



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UW-Madison News Release--Battling food-borne bugs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/13/05

CONTACT: Frank Denes, (608) 265-8266, denes@engr.wisc.edu

UW SCIENTISTS TEAM UP TO BATTLE FOOD-BORNE ILLNESSES

MADISON - On its journey to your dinner plate, food is vulnerable to contamination along the way.  Usually, it arrives at its final destination without picking up dangerous microbial hitchhikers-but not always.

According to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, food-borne pathogens account for 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year.  As the food industry continues to globalize, food safety is expected to remain a significant public health issue. 

In 2000, the University of Wisconsin-Madison made a commitment to help tackle this complex problem by hiring an interdisciplinary group of researchers with expertise in food safety. 

One member of the food safety team now holds patents for two promising devices that harness cold plasma-a state of matter similar to a chemically and electrically reactive gas-to kill food-borne pathogens.  The innovative devices are particularly suited for eventual use in industrial settings, such as food-processing plants. 

"Plasma technology is a very important process that is applied in industry.  It can do many things, things that often conventional chemistry cannot," says Frank Denes, associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Denes designed and holds patents on the two devices through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).

Plasma is considered the fourth state of matter, along with the more familiar forms: solid, liquid and gas.  In a nutshell, a plasma is a gas with free electrons whizzing about.  The electrons, accelerated by an electric or electromagnetic field, collide with gas atoms and molecules, fragmenting them to create reactive species, such as ions, free radicals and other excited species.  

"Plasma species interact with inorganic and organic materials and change their structure," says Denes, who is also affiliated with the Food Research Institute, the department of food science and the College of Engineering's Center for Plasma-Aided Manufacturing. 

When only a small fraction of the gas molecules are broken up into ions, or ionized, and the atomic and molecular species have low energies, it is called a cold plasma.  By comparison, hot plasma is the stuff of stars-including the sun-and is characterized by a high degree of ionization and very high energy levels. 

In the lab, cold plasma is generated by sending an electrical current through a gas.  By adjusting the type of gas, the flow of the electrical current and other factors, cold plasma can be manipulated to perform a variety of practical functions, most involving the alteration of surfaces.  Cold plasma can be used to etch, oxidize, and deposit thin layers of macromolecular structures on surfaces, among other things. "Most of the plasma research is about surface chemistry," explains Denes.

Surface chemistry alteration also explains how cold plasma kills bacterial pathogens.  As in any living cell, bacteria are enveloped by a protective outer layer that provides structural support and regulates the flow of nutrients and other molecules required for survival.  "If you expose bacteria to plasma, you alter the surface of the bacteria and it kills them," says Denes. 

Although cold plasma technology has been used for various manufacturing processes, including microelectronics, since the fluorescent light bulb was designed in the 1930s, Denes's cold plasma reactors are the first to work at atmospheric pressure.  

One device looks like a sandwich-sized block of white ceramic.  One side features over 200 circles, arranged in a grid.  Each circle houses an electrode, and when the reactor is on, they all work together to produce a constant and uniform flow of plasma.  The reactor can be suspended, electrodes pointing downward, above any surface in need of disinfection, such as a moving conveyer belt.

In collaboration with Amy Wong, a microbiologist at the Food Research Institute, Denes says they have found that the plasma treatments reduce some bacteria populations by a factor of 1,000 to 100,000.

The second device decontaminates water and other fluids.  The device looks like a large glass jug that holds about 1 liter, fitted with specialized caps that house the electrical gadgetry needed to produce a plasma.

As liquids swirl inside the reactor, cold plasma inactivates the contaminants.  Wong found that within 20 seconds, the reactor inactivates high concentrations of bacteria, killing up to 100,000 colony-forming units per milliliter of liquid. 

With their increased ease of use and effective disinfection capabilities, the new atmospheric-pressure cold plasma reactors may end up playing an important role in the delivery of safe food products to dinner plates around the world, Denes says. 
###
- Nicole Miller, (608) 262-4384, nemiller2@wisc.edu



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UW-Madison News Release--Krabbe's Disease Advance

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

12/12/05

PHOTO EDITORS: A headshot is available for downloading at

http://photos.news.wisc.edu/hsview.php?id=1909

CONTACT: Ian Duncan, (608) 263-9828, duncani@svm.vetmed.wisc.edu; Yoichi Kondo, kondoy@ svm.vetmed.wisc.edu

NEW UW STUDY OFFERS STRATEGY FOR TREATMENT OF FATAL NERVOUS SYSTEM DISORDER

MADISON - Working with mice, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have developed the basis for a therapeutic strategy that could provide hope for children afflicted with Krabbe's disease, a fatal nervous system disorder.

Writing this week (Dec. 12, 2005) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team of researchers at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine describes experiments that effectively promoted the ability of defective cells to take up and utilize an enzyme that is essential for the maintenance of a critical sheathing of nerve fibers.

The work centers on devising strategies to treat inherited diseases of the nervous system in which cells fail to maintain myelin, a protective sheathing that envelops nerve fibers and acts like the insulation on an electric wire. Myelin ensures the effective transmission of the signals routinely conducted by the nervous system. For those afflicted with Krabbe's disease, the loss of myelin results in arrested motor and mental development, seizures, paralysis and, ultimately, death.

The Wisconsin experiments, led by Ian Duncan, a UW-Madison professor of medical sciences who is an expert on diseases of myelin, explored how cells obtained from a mouse model of Krabbe's disease could be reinvigorated by replacing a missing enzyme, and thus allow the healthy maintenance of myelin.

In the case of Krabbe's disease, myelination begins normally in early development. But the absence in myelin-forming cells of a key enzyme known as galactocerebrosidase leads to the death of the cells and, subsequently, the loss of myelin.

"Our hypothesis was that if you provided the (flawed) myelinating cells with the enzyme, the cells would maintain the myelin as healthy cells would," says Duncan, the senior author of the PNAS paper who planned and conducted the experiments with lead author Yoichi Kondo, a postdoctoral fellow working in Duncan's lab.

Simply supplying the enzyme directly to the brain and spinal cord is complicated by a natural barrier - the blood-brain barrier - that makes the delivery of agents like the enzyme to the brain difficult.

"To eliminate the barrier, we changed the paradigm by transplanting enzyme-deficient cells into the brain and spinal cord of another type of mouse which can provide the enzyme," explains Duncan.

The Wisconsin group isolated progenitor cells from the mouse model of Krabbe's disease. Transplanting the cells to the brain and spinal cord of another type of mouse that lacks any myelin, the group observed that the implanted cells took up the enzyme from the host cells and sparked widespread and persistent myelination of the brain and spinal cord.

"The donor cells are stable and survive and, biochemically, enzyme levels in the graft were restored to normal," says Kondo.

Enzyme replacement therapy, Duncan notes, is not a new idea for treating such inherited demyelinating diseases. For example, work by other groups involving transplants of bone marrow and umbilical cord blood in Krabbe's patients have been attempted with some success.

But no one knew if the missing enzyme could be replaced in key cells known as oligodendrocytes, thus allowing maintenance of stable myelin throughout the nervous system.

"This experimental strategy proves that oligodendrocytes can survive and maintain myelin when transplanted into an environment where the missing enzyme is available," says Kondo.

Krabbe's disease is perhaps best known to the public through the efforts of Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly, whose late son Hunter was afflicted with the disease and who established a foundation, Hunter's Hope, to promote awareness and research. The new study was funded by Hunter's Hope.

Krabbe's disease is one of a number of diseases caused by the inability to produce and maintain myelin. It afflicts about 1 in every 100,000 people and treatment options are limited at best.

The new work, the authors emphasize, provides proof of principle for a new therapeutic strategy, but any therapy developed on the group's new insights will require further study.

In addition to Duncan and Kondo, authors of the PNAS paper include David A. Wenger of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and Vittorio Gallo of the Children's National Medical Center in Washington.

# # #

- Terry Devitt (608) 262-8282, trdevitt@wisc.edu



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UW-Madison News Release--Online Stress Relief

Dec. 9, 2005

TO: Editors, news directors
FROM: Jonathan Zarov, (608) 265-9058, jzarov@wisc.edu
RE: HEALTH SERVICE OFFERS A DOSE OF ONLINE STRESS RELIEF

MADISON - As college students race toward the end of the year and final exams loom, stress levels soar.

Urgent mental health requests can always be accommodated by counselors at University Health Services (UHS), but students don't necessarily need an appointment to find relief from semester-end pressures. The UHS Web site features a section on  "End of the Year Stress Resources and Tips" at http://www.uhs.wisc.edu/display_news.jsp?id=199&cat_id

One new resource stands out: relaxation exercises posted as MP3s. These are easily downloadable and can help ease students' stress without taking up a chunk of valuable study or sleep time. The exercises were recorded by Rob Sepich, a counselor at UHS Counseling and Consultation Services who specializes in stress reduction.

"These are the kinds of exercises I use with students in my office," says Sepich. "Having the files posted on the Web makes them available to everyone, without an appointment. Students can listen off the Web or download them to their iPods or other devices."

Sample the files at http://forms.uhs.wisc.edu/relaxation.php

To contact Rob Sepich, call 265-2536 or email rtsepich@wisc.edu. Any UW-Madison student concerned about their own mental health, or that of another student, can call for mental health crisis services any time of day or night at 265-5600.
###



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UW-Madison News Release--Prepare for Flu Season

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/08/05

CONTACT: Kathy Poi, (608) 262-1885, kmpoi@wisc.edu; Jonathan Zarov, (608) 265-9058, jzarov@wisc.edu

SHOTS, PREVENTION ENCOURAGED FOR FLU SEASON

MADISON - Flu season is officially under way in Wisconsin, and members of the university community are encouraged to get vaccinated and practice common sense prevention steps to avoid illness this winter.

Already, more than 4,000 students and 2,800 faculty and staff members have taken advantage of vaccination opportunities. UW-Madison has also launched a Web site, http://www.news.wisc.edu/flu/, to keep campus abreast of the latest news, research and resources on influenza.

"Vaccination and prevention are the most effective measures we can take to keep the campus healthy," says Kathy Poi, director of University Health Services (UHS). "This year, unlike last, we anticipate no shortages of vaccine."

Although the series of on-campus faculty and staff vaccination clinics has ended, it isn't too late to receive a shot. Flu season typically runs from November to March.

Faculty and staff are encouraged to contact their private health care providers for more information about walk-in clinics or appointments. Members of Dean, Physicians Plus, Unity and Group Health Cooperative plans are eligible to receive the vaccination for free at their home clinic. Members are advised to call ahead to check schedules and availability.

UHS is providing free influenza vaccinations for all UW-Madison students. The shots are given on a walk-in basis - no appointment necessary - at UHS' 1552 University Ave. location, now through the end of the semester. Flu shot hours are 9 a.m.- 4:45 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Influenza is a highly contagious respiratory illness that can cause fever, chills, cough, sore throat, headache and muscle aches. It often means a week or more of missed classes or job time.

Although getting a flu shot is a big step toward an illness-free winter, it doesn't protect against colds or all strains of the flu. From UHS to UW Health physicians to Wisconsin's Department of Health and Family Services to the national Centers for Disease Control, experts agree on the preventative measures listed below. 

- Carry a pack of tissues with you, and cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze.

- Avoid coughing into your hands. The crook of your elbow will do if you don't have tissues.

- Cold and flu germs thrive on your hands, where they are easily spread to others. Wash your hands often with soap and water, or use an alcohol-based gel, especially after coughing or sneezing. This will help keep those around you from getting sick. 

- Don't skimp on sleep. Your body needs that time to recharge - a regular sleeping pattern can improve your body's effectiveness in resisting germs when they come your way.

- Other good habits, such as exercising moderately, managing stress, drinking plenty of water and eating good food, will help you stay healthy in the winter and throughout the year.

- Avoid crowds and keep your distance from people whom you know are ill.

- If you do get sick, stay home from class or work and get some rest. Avoid contact with the frail, very young and elderly.

For those suffering from the flu, additional information is available at

http://www.uhs.wisc.edu/display_story.jsp?id=440&cat_id=38
###
- John Lucas, (608) 262-8287, jplucas@wisc.edu



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UW-Madison News Release--Influenza Experts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/08/05

CONTACT: John Lucas, (608) 262-8287, jplucas@wisc.edu

UW-MADISON EXPERTS AVAILABLE ON INFLUENZA TOPICS

MADISON - With Wisconsin entering the traditional season for influenza and the wider world preparing for the possibility of a global influenza pandemic, issues of prevention, vaccination and public health are constantly in the headlines. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has experts that can offer useful perspectives to media on range of related issues.

The experts include:

- Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a professor in the department of pathobiological sciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine, (608) 265-4925, kawaokay@svm.vetmed.wisc.edu. Kawaoka is an international authority on influenza research and vaccine issues. His most recent research has helped detail why some viruses are more pathogenic than others and how vaccine production might be improved.

- Dennis Maki, Ovid O. Meyer Professor of Medicine; head, section of infectious diseases, department of medicine, (608) 279-7330 (cell), dgmaki@medicine.wisc.edu. Maki is an international expert on the control of emerging and infectious diseases and has written extensively on the threat of avian influenza.

- Donald P. Moynihan, La Follette School of Public Affairs assistant professor, (608) 263-6633, dmoynihan@lafollette.wisc.edu. Moynihan has research and teaching interests in performance management, homeland security, citizen participation and public budgeting and can discuss how state and federal officials need to cooperate on a high level to effectively respond to pandemic situations.

- Kathleen M. Poi, executive director, University Health Services; clinical professor, nursing, (608) 262-1885, kmpoi@wisc.edu. In addition to managing vaccination efforts for students, Poi also is working with state and local officials to prepare a pandemic response plan for the university community. She also is a resource on flu prevention.

- Craig M. Roberts, clinical assistant professor, population health sciences; team manager/epidemiologist, community health and epidemiology, University Health Services, (608) 262-6720, cmrober1@wisc.edu. Roberts is an expert on public health and epidemiology, communicable diseases, immunizations and flu prevention.

- Edward Friedman, professor of political science, (608) 263-2272, friedman@polisci.wisc.edu. He is an expert in U.S. relations in East Asia (especially Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong) and Chinese politics.

- Paul Hutchcroft, associate professor of political science, (608) 263-2279, hutchcroft@polisci.wisc.edu. He can provide a broad perspective involving politics and national issues in the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand.

- Christopher W. Olsen, professor, pathobiological sciences, (608) 265-8681,

olsenc@svm.vetmed.wisc.edu. Olsen can discuss influenza viruses in animals or people and zoonotic diseases transmissible from animals and people.

- Jonathan L. Temte, associate professor of family medicine, (608) 263-3111, jon.temte@fammed.wisc.edu. Temte specializes in the study of influenza, common viral infections in primary care, bioterrorism, seasonal patterns of disease and vaccine issues.

- Al Gunther, professor of life sciences communication, (608) 262-1506, agunther@wisc.edu. Gunther deals with the perceived influence of media on major events. He can discuss how media coverage can potentially affect public policy and whether media coverage accurately represents a major event.
###



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UW-Madison News Release--Projects Enhance Nonprofits

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/7/05

CONTACT: Fred Bradley, 262-3863, fbradley@wisc.edu; Katherine Loving, 263-5714, kaloving@wisc.edu

UW-MADISON EPICS COURSE OFFERS EXPERTISE TO NONPROFITS

MADISON - As exam time rolls around, University of Wisconsin-Madison students in the e-Projects in Community Service (ePICS) course won't be studying textbooks or writing take-home finals.

They'll be presenting their semester's work to real-world clients, twelve nonprofit organizations for whom students have designed Web sites, built Web-based information systems, created logos, developed marketing materials and produced videos.

These business and technology projects will be on display, and students will be on hand to discuss their work, at the fall 2005 ePICS Expo on Monday, Dec. 12 from 4:30-6:30 p.m. in the Engineering Centers Building on campus.  The event is open to the public and free parking is available in Lot 17 after 4:30 p.m.

Dubbed "Real World 101" by students, ePICS brings together approximately 100 students each semester from engineering, journalism, business, and art to work on interdisciplinary teams. Each team is assigned to work with one of twelve nonprofit "client" organizations.

"We know there's a great demand among nonprofit organizations for these services," says materials science professor Fred Bradley. "(This program) allows us to meet these community needs while our students practice professional skills and develop a commitment to active citizenship."

Projects students have worked on this semester include:

- An updated Web site and marketing materials targeting young people for the Wisconsin Community Fund;

- Revised recruitment materials with Spanish translations and a new Web site for the Grassroots Leadership College;

- A Web site redesign and marketing materials for Independent Living, Inc.;

- An interactive video and web site on domestic violence within deaf and hearing impaired communities, and a logo and marketing materials for Deaf Unity, a new initiative from the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services.

The ePICS course runs with support from faculty and staff at UW-Madison, as well as many volunteers.  Former ePICS students, retired professionals, young alumni, and former clients serve as advisors for student teams.  "Our volunteers really enrich the program," said Bradley. "EPICS is a model for lifelong learning."

For information about corporate or community volunteer opportunities with ePICS, or information on becoming a client organization, attend the Expo or contact Katherine Loving at kaloving@wisc.edu or 263-5714.

###



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UW-Madison News Release--Dancing Bacteria

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/07/05

CONTACT: Mike Graham, 608-265-3780, graham@engr.wisc.edu

DANCING BACTERIA? UW ENGINEERS EXPLORE MICROBIAL CHOREOGRAPHY

MADISON - Birds fly together in flocks. Fish swim together in schools. Everyone has seen the beautiful, seemingly choreographed motions these collections of organisms can exhibit.

But surely bacteria, which have no eyes or brain, cannot behave in such a coordinated way. In fact, they do, and researchers are beginning to learn how.

Bacteria are well known to interact with one another through chemical signals - they can "smell" one another, and their behavior and growth may change if they have many neighbors. Chemical signaling between bacteria enables cooperative behavior of a bacterial population; one example of this is "cell swarming," where colonies of bacteria grown in a petri dish form complex and beautiful patterns.

More recently, experiments in several laboratories have shown that bacteria swimming in a drop of water also form patterns-jets and whirls that are much larger than the bacteria themselves, and that stir the fluid in ways that an individual swimming bacterium cannot. A key question then is: How do the swimming bacteria interact to form these patterns? 

Reporting in the November 11 issue of Physical Review Letters, Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor Mike Graham's group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed a model that offers a partial answer to this question. In this model, each bacterium pushes fluid around as it swims, and simultaneously is buffeted like a boat on a wavy sea by the fluid motions generated by all the other swimming bacteria.

View the depiction of the model at: http://www.engr.wisc.edu/news/headlines/pics/phi0_012_25.mov

There are no other interactions between the bacteria in this model: They cannot smell, feel or see one another, says Graham. This model might be expected to just predict random, uncoordinated swimming of the bacteria, and indeed at low concentrations this is exactly what occurs.

As concentration increases, however, there suddenly comes a point where the swimmers no longer move randomly, but organize into large whirls containing tens to hundreds of bacteria that all move together for a while before swimming off to join another whirl, Graham says. The model thus demonstrates that not only chemical interactions, but also fluid-mechanical interactions between bacteria can lead to large-scale coordinated motions and patterns. 

"These results, as well as the experimental observations that motivated them, have potentially important implications for understanding how bacteria feed and sample their environment," Graham says. "They may also suggest a novel strategy for mixing fluids, by the addition of living or artificial swimming micromachines, in microscale devices where conventional approaches to mixing are ineffective."

The research is supported by the National Science Foundation through the UW-Madison Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center.
###



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UW-Madison News Release--Helping Katrina's Displaced Pets

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/07/05

PHOTO EDITORS: Images of the school's veterinary relief efforts can be obtained by contacting SVM Communications Director Tania Banak.

CONTACT: Tania Banak, (608) 263-6914, banakt@svm.vetmed.wisc.edu

HURRICANE KATRINA AFTERMATH: VETERINARY SCHOOL FACULTY, STAFF CONTINUE TO HELP

MADISON - While most people watched in horror as news details of Hurricane Katrina unfolded and perhaps donated money to the rescue efforts, a few dedicated souls traveled south to help.

They brought back tales of destruction, along with numerous animals that needed foster care or adoptive homes, opening the doors for folks back home to help, too.  And from personal experience, they know which groups are still out in the trenches, helping with ongoing recovery efforts and still in need of donations.

"I was so appalled that people had to choose between their pets and safety," says Sandra Colrud, another veterinary technician from the veterinary medical school who made the trip south.

Colrud and two other veterinary technicians from the school, Robin Sereno and Tracie Melahn, used vacation time to volunteer for the animal rescue efforts in the hurricane's aftermath. They were dispatched to St. Bernard's Parish, about two miles from the New Orleans French Quarter. Tracey Hageny, a veterinary medical student, arranged the timing of her trip so that she wouldn't miss any exams. She helped at an animal shelter in Hattiesburg, Miss.

Joe Foerner, an adjunct large-animal surgeon at the school, drove to Louisiana five days after Hurricane Katrina with 22,000 pounds of supplies loaded into two horse trailers. He was responding to a colleague who informed him the hurricane left him with no equipment, and so many animals. "They had nothing," Foerner says.

All were shocked at the amount of devastation they saw.

"There was caked mud over everything," says Sereno. "We were working near the oil refineries. We were seeing a lot of animals with chemical burns on their foot pads from the chemicals and pollution. I'm not sure what toxins were in that mud, but I threw my clothes away afterwards."

The veterinary medical school volunteers worked for organizations that were overseeing the animal rescue efforts, including the Humane Society of the United States, the Rural Area Veterinary Services and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

They brought back tales of roaming animals fighting each other for food. Temporary shelters, supplemented by donated pet crates, served as holding pens. Volunteers scoured damaged homes and attempted to capture the frightened, disoriented animals they found.

"I had to turn off emotionally," Hageny says. "If I got bogged down in individual animals, I would have been a blubbering mess."

The need continues. Animal rescue groups continue their work in the area, and many animals still need homes because their former owners are no longer able to care for them. Hageny and Sereno relocated some of the animals to Madison.

Sereno would love to find a good home for Beauregard, a black Labrador retriever mix. She brought him back because he needed special nursing care for severe bite wounds on his hind legs from another dog.

She also recommends that individuals interested in helping visit the Web sites of organizations that are still on location:  The Mutt Shack, http://muttshack.org, and St. Bernard Parish Animal Control, www.sbpanimal.homestead.com. She plans to return to Louisiana to provide additional help in January.

If you would like to help, visit the Web sites suggested by Sereno, or the Web site of the Shelter from the Storm animal rescue group represented by Hageny at www.shelterfromthestorm.petfinder.org. Many Katrina cats, especially, need homes.

Other ways to help include donating air miles so more experienced personnel can be brought on location to help rescue the remaining animals; donate to help rebuild the destroyed St. Bernard Parish animal shelter; or donate funds to help with spaying/neutering, immunizing, and medical assistance through Shelter From the Storm.
###



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UW-Madison News Release--Physicians and Job Satisfaction

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/06/05

CONTACT: John Beasley, (608) 263-7373, John.Beasley@fammed.wisc.edu; Ben-Tzion Karsh, (608) 262-3002, bkarsh@engr.wisc.edu

STUDY: JOB SATISFACTION VARIES BETWEEN INDEPENDENT AND ORGANIZATION-HIRED DOCTORS

MADISON - Wisconsin family physicians employed by large health care organizations are less happy on the job and more likely to want to leave than those in independent practice, according to a study published in today's (Dec. 6, 2005) issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.

A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison industrial and systems engineering Professor Ben-Tzion Karsh and family medicine Emeritus Professor John Beasley surveyed hundreds of family doctors throughout Wisconsin about their job satisfaction, including their perceived ability to achieve professional goals and their working relationships with other doctors. The researchers found striking differences between doctors working for health maintenance organizations (HMOs), hospitals and other large institutions and those employed independently in smaller, physician-owned groups.

"What was most telling for us is that people who worked as independents were not only more satisfied in general with being a doctor, but also enjoyed some other very tangible benefits," says Karsh. "For example, the independents were more satisfied with the amount of family time they had and with their ability to influence management decisions. They even felt they were able to deliver a higher quality of care to their patients."

In addition to patient care, physician job satisfaction can impact the relationships between doctors and other health care professionals, such as nurses, says Beasley.

A long-time family physician with ties to many doctors around the state, Beasley began discussing these matters with Karsh when the two met in 1999. Many factors known to affect work life quality relate to issues of control, says Karsh, such as the inability to limit workload or balance home and work responsibilities.

Because of the medical profession's strong tradition of independence, says Beasley, "we don't usually think about doctors having those types of problems. But I thought, now that so many physicians are working for these large organizations, maybe they're starting to feel more like everyday employees whose activities are directed chiefly by management. So, we became very interested in whether the organizations doctors work for influence their perceptions of their working conditions, and how likely they are to leave their organizations."

Based on the scientific literature and on focus groups conducted with family doctors and nurses to identify specific concerns, the team developed a comprehensive set of survey questions. Nearly 1,500 members of the Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians, or 90 percent of the state's family doctors, were sent the survey and asked to respond. In the end, 47 percent, or more than 700, did. Thirteen percent of those in the sample worked independently and 87 percent for large health care organizations.

"The survey simply stated, 'We're interested in learning more about how you feel about your work,' and that was it," says Karsh. "That was part of what was so compelling about the differences we observed. They came out very naturally."

The greatest disparities the team found were in perceived influence over management decisions and quality of working relationships within groups. Independents, the study's statistical analysis showed, were more satisfied with both, suggesting that doctors at large organizations may lack social support and control over their situations relative to their independent peers.

While most people willingly accept a certain lack of freedom on the job, doctors are unique in this regard, says Karsh. "There is almost no other profession that holds such strong expectations of autonomy," he says. "And that creates a major conflict when you impose a management structure."

Beasley and Karsh plan to conduct follow-up studies to identify specific organizational factors, such as leadership style, workplace culture or communication structures, which HMOs and hospitals could potentially adjust to improve the work lives of their employees. The overall goal is better health care.

"My primary interest is in science that makes it possible for doctors and nurses to perform at their peak levels. And John's primary interest is in making things good for the patient," says Karsh. "So, by collaborating, we can really tackle the full picture."

The study was funded by the Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians and the UW-Madison Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement. Its other authors include research program manager Mary Ellen Hagenauer and Professor of Family Medicine Lucille Marchand of UW-Madison, and Francois Sainfort of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
###
- Madeline Fisher, (608) 265-8592, mmfisher@engr.wisc.edu



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UW-Madison News Release--Protecting Wild Lands

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/06/05

Contact: Tom Sinclair, 263-5599, tksincla@wisc.edu

CONSERVATIONIST DOMBECK TO SPEAK ON WILD LANDS PROTECTION

MADISON - A Wisconsin conservationist who headed two of the U.S. government's largest land management agencies during the 1990s will lecture on wilderness preservation at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 13, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Michael Dombeck, now professor of global environmental management at UW-Stevens Point and a UW System global conservation fellow, will speak on "Keeping Our Wild Lands Wild" at the Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium, 816 State Street.  His talk, free and open to the public, is the second in a series honoring the late Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson.

Before returning to his home state in 2001, Dombeck spent a quarter-century managing federal lands and natural resources for the U.S. government, including three years (1994-97) as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management and four years (1997-2001) as chief of the U.S. Forest Service.  Together, the two agencies oversee nearly 500 million acres of public land.

A steadfast advocate of land stewardship, Dombeck is best known for championing watershed health and restoration, sustainable forest ecosystem management, sound forest roads and roadless area protection while in Washington, D.C.  For his achievements, he received the Presidential Rank - Distinguished Executive Award, the highest honor for federal service.  He also has received the Audubon Medal and the Lady Bird Johnson Conservation Award.

Dombeck has authored, co-authored, and edited more than 200 popular and scholarly publications, including, most recently, the book, "From Conquest to Conservation: Our Public Lands Legacy" (Island Press, 2003).  The lecture is sponsored by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, with support from the Holstrom Environmental Endowment.  For more information, contact Tom Sinclair, 263-5599, tksincla@wisc.edu.
###



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UW-Madison News Release--Climate Change and Snow

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/05/05

PHOTO EDITORS: High-resolution images are available for downloading at:
http://www.news.wisc.edu/newsphotos/snowMelt.html

CONTACT: Stephen Vavrus, (608) 265-5279, sjvavrus@wisc.edu

SCIENTIST MEASURES ROLE OF SCIENCE'S COOLEST PLAYER: THE SNOW

SAN FRANCISCO - What would the Earth be like if one fine day all the snow melted away?

Obviously, it would be a much warmer place. But what's interesting is how much warmer, says Stephen Vavrus, an associate scientist at the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Working with computer-generated simulations, Vavrus found that in the absence of snow cover, global temperatures would likely spike by about eight-tenths of a degree Celsius. That increase represents as much as a third of the warming that climate change experts have predicted, should levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases double.

"This was not just a what-if question," says Vavrus, whose work comes amidst mounting reports on the steady melt of Arctic ice.  "I wanted to quantify the influence of global snow cover on the present-day climate because that has relevance for the type of climate changes we are expecting in the future." Vavrus will discuss his findings today during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (Dec. 5-9, 2005).

Vavrus, a climate modeling specialist, digitally simulated a snow-free world, and measured the impact of missing snow cover on a range of climatic variables including soil temperatures, cloud cover, atmospheric circulation patterns and soil moisture levels.

Aside from his temperature-related projections, Vavrus also made the counterintuitive finding that in the absence of snow, total regions of permafrost-the permanently frozen soil of the cold north-are likely to expand in area. Without the insulating effect of snow, in other words, soils in colder regions of the world are in fact likely to get much colder. The surprising result has implications for the health of permafrost-associated ecosystems, and may influence decisions in the field of construction.

Already, permafrost changes have triggered structural problems in Alaskan buildings and roadways, says Vavrus, and "there's every reason to think we'll see even stronger effects in the future," he adds.

In forthcoming simulations, Vavrus plans to continue exploring the effects of both nearby and faraway snow cover on local climate conditions.

# # #
- Paroma Basu, (608) 262-9772, basu1@wisc.edu



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Madison, WI 53706

Phone: (608) 262-3571
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UW-Madison News Release--Cloudy Science

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/05/05

PHOTO EDITORS: A high-resolution image is available for downloading at:
http://www.news.wisc.edu/newsphotos/clouds.html

CONTACT: Steven Ackerman, (608) 263-3647, stevea@ssec.wisc.edu

WHAT IS A CLOUD? SCIENTISTS STILL SEARCHING FOR A CLEAR-SKY DEFINITION

SAN FRANCISCO - All through the ages, humans have dreamily gazed at those shape-shifting cotton-balls floating gently across the sky-the clouds.

Atmospheric scientists-Earth's professional cloud-gazers-have learned a great deal about clouds over the decades, particularly with the advent of satellites during the 1960s and 70s. But despite years of research and the emergence of increasingly sophisticated tools, scientists are still at odds over one of the most basic issues of all: how to define a cloud.

"The problem is that what we define a cloud as depends on the type of instrument we're using to define it," says atmospheric scientist Steven Ackerman, the director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It's an issue Ackerman will discuss today (Dec. 8, 2005) at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which runs Dec. 5-9.

It is critical to define and measure clouds accurately, notes Ackerman, because their patterns and formations play an important role in shaping both weather forecasts and longer-term climate predictions. Clouds are also a crucial part of Earth's hydrological and energy cycles, both regulating atmospheric precipitation and determining how much solar energy reaches the Earth.

A number of issues, however, make measurements of planetary cloud cover a very "fuzzy" matter, Ackerman says. Orbiting satellites, for instance, make different types of cloud observations from space. In one approach - known as "active sensing" - satellites discern the presence of clouds by directing energy of varying wavelengths at successive sections of the atmosphere.

The problem, says Ackerman, is that varying that energy threshold by just 3-4 percent can significantly alter cloud cover measurements. Different satellites also introduce variation, with readings differing by up to 5-10 percent between instruments. "It's like assigning grades," says Ackerman. "If you score 90 and above you get an A; but what if someone gets 89.8 and gets a B? Is that fair? Well that's the same problem with measuring clouds."

Cirrus clouds - wispy, long formations that almost look like smoke - are particularly problematic to define.  As these clouds taper off into nothingness, scientists often struggle to define the point at which they cease to be clouds, says Ackerman. Furthermore, as satellites scan consecutive blocks of the atmosphere, making readings can get pretty tricky, he adds. "An [observation] area may contain different types of clouds or may be half-full of cloud or packed with thick cloud-so then we're asking: is that a cloud or not a cloud?"

Over the years, scientists have periodically gathered to refine the science of cloud measurements. It may be time again for that larger discussion, says Ackerman.

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- Paroma Basu, (608) 262-9772, basu1@wisc.edu



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University Communications
University of Wisconsin-Madison
27 Bascom Hall
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Madison, WI 53706

Phone: (608) 262-3571
Fax: (608) 262-2331

UW-Madison News Release--Agriculture Dominates Land

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/05/05

PHOTO EDITORS: High-resolution images are available for downloading at:
http://www.news.wisc.edu/newsphotos/landUse.html

CONTACT: Navin Ramankutty, (608) 265-0604, nramanku@wisc.edu; Jon Foley, (608) 265-9119, jfoley@wisc.edu.

NEW MAPS REVEAL TRUE EXTENT OF HUMAN FOOTPRINT ON EARTH

SAN FRANCISCO - As global populations swell, farmers are cultivating more and more land in a desperate bid to keep pace with the ever-intensifying needs of humans.

As a result, agricultural activity now dominates more than a third of the Earth's landscape and has emerged as one of the central forces of global environmental change, say scientists at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Navin Ramankutty, an assistant scientist at SAGE, says, "the real question is: how can we continue to produce food from the land while preventing negative environmental consequences such as deforestation, water pollution and soil erosion?"

To better understand that crucial trade-off, Ramankutty and other SAGE researchers are tracking the changing patterns of agricultural land use around the world, including a look at related factors such as global crop yields and fertilizer use. Distilling that information into computer-generated maps, the scientists will present their early findings during the fall meeting (Dec. 5-9, 2005) of the American Geophysical Union.

"In the act of making these maps we are asking: where is the human footprint on the Earth?" says Amato Evan, a SAGE researcher who merged available census and satellite data to create visuals reflecting the reach of pasture and croplands worldwide. Chad Monfreda, a graduate student at SAGE, is similarly mapping the location, range and yields of over 150 individual crops reared around the planet.

The exercise is already beginning to cast light on some emerging trends. Countries such as Argentina and Brazil, for instance, have increasingly cleared forests to grow soybean, a legume that has never been a traditional crop of Latin America. Scientists say the surge in soybean production there has a lot to do with the booming demand for soy all the way at the other end of the world - in China. Meanwhile, Monfreda notes, long-time soybean farmers in the U.S. - the world's top soybean producer - are growing increasingly insecure about their place in the global market.

But scientists risk missing important regional and local trends by taking only a global approach to land use change. "There is still a large 'disconnect' between global, top-down views of changing planetary conditions, and the local, bottom-up perspective of how humans affect and live in a changing environment," says Jonathan Foley, director of SAGE.

To help bridge that gap, SAGE researchers are working towards a new "Earth Collaboratory," an unprecedented Internet-based data bank that would simultaneously draw on the knowledge of global scientists, local environmentalists and everyday citizens. Adds Foley: "[The Collaboratory] will truly be a brave new experiment that effectively bridges science, decision-making and real-world environmental practice - collectively envisioning a new way to live sustainably."

For more on SAGE's work on global land use and land cover, visit www.sage.wisc.edu/iamdata.

# # #

- Paroma Basu, (608) 262-9772, basu1@wisc.edu



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University Communications
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Madison, WI 53706

Phone: (608) 262-3571
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UW-Madison News Release--TV News and Health

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
03/08/06

CONTACT: Kara Gavin, University of Michigan Health System, (734) 764-2220, kegavin@umich.edu; Dennis Chaptman, University of Wisconsin-Madison Communications, (608) 262-9406, dchaptman@wisc.edu

VIEWER BEWARE: STUDY FINDS LOCAL TV NEWS COVERS HEALTH A LOT, BUT NOT ALWAYS WELL

MADISON - Local television newscasts, where most Americans get most of their news, are packed with medical stories and health information. But the first-ever national study of that coverage finds many problems with it, and sees room for improvement by both TV stations and the health experts whose work fills the news.

In the March issue of the American Journal of Managed Care, researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison report results from an in-depth analysis of health coverage on local TV newscasts from across the country.

In all, health and medical stories comprised 11 percent of the news portion of late-evening newscasts in the one-month period studied, with 1,799 such stories carried on 2,795 broadcasts captured from the representative sample of 122 stations in the nation's top 50 media markets.

The average story was 33 seconds long, and most did not give specifics about the source of the information presented. Items about specific diseases tended not to contain recommendations for viewers, or information about how common the disease was - which could help put the news into perspective with other health issues.

But most disturbing, the study's authors say, were the egregious errors contained in a small minority of studies - errors that could have led to serious consequences.

For instance, a story that aired on several stations reported on lemon juice's effect on sperm and speculated about, or presented as fact, the use of lemon juice as an effective contraceptive, and its potential effect on preventing sexual transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Despite the fact that the study was done in a research lab, nearly all the stories failed to mention that it had not involved humans. Even more alarming, one of the stations misinterpreted the study altogether and stated that lemon juice may be a substitute for "costly" HIV medications.

"Egregious errors such as these can actually harm the public," says lead author James Pribble, a lecturer in the department of emergency medicine at the U-M Medical School, who began the study as a U-M Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar.

"The key here is the focus on local news," says co-author Ken Goldstein, a UW-Madison professor of political science. "Local TV news is the single greatest source of information for the majority of Americans - whether it be politics or health - and understanding what sorts of health information people are being exposed to demands that we analyze the content of this most prevalent source."

Thousands of hours of local news broadcasts were recorded and compiled by Newslab, a unique UW-Madison facility directed by Goldstein that was originally developed to study TV coverage of political campaigns. The new study is the first time Newslab has been used to study a non-political topic, and the first exhaustive study of health coverage on local TV. Most studies of health and medical coverage have focused on newspapers and national network television shows.

The study focused on broadcasts from October 2002, which had been stored in Newslab's servers for analysis pertaining to elections held that November. They offered a gold mine of health stories.

Each story was viewed by two trained study staff, who noted the story's subject matter, length and other characteristics, and wrote descriptive summaries. Then, a physician or other health professional viewed each story and categorized it according to the medical condition discussed. The researchers also looked for patterns in the stories carried on different stations, for example items about a single new research study that appeared on multiple newscasts.

The two most common specific health topics for stories were breast cancer and West Nile Virus. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, an occasion that many TV stations use to focus on breast health issues. And many areas of the country were experiencing an ongoing outbreak of West Nile Virus infections at the time.

But the coverage of these two topics highlights some of the problems found throughout the study, Pribble says. For example, breast cancer got far more coverage than lung cancer, which is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States; only five stories focused on lung cancer. And 40 of the breast cancer stories focused on one study about the effectiveness of teaching women to examine their breasts for signs of cancer. But those stories often contained conflicting messages with introductory statements such as "breast self-exams are a waste of time" followed by recommendations at the conclusion of the story that encouraged women to continue performing breast self-exams.

Meanwhile, most of the West Nile stories didn't put the disease into perspective by comparing its prevalence and severity with that of other, much more common and deadly, infectious diseases. In fact, stories about West Nile made up more than half of all stories about infectious diseases carried by local newscasts in the study period. At the same time, 82 percent of the West Nile stories failed to tell viewers how to prevent the mosquito bites that transmit the virus, or what to do if bitten.

Pribble and Goldstein don't blame just the newscast producers and reporters for these problems. They emphasize that public health authorities, clinical experts and researchers must give reporters information, interviews and pre-taped video that meet the demands of TV newscasts, which must tell stories quickly, visually and in language that's understandable to non-experts. At the same time, the authors say, they should help reporters put individual news items into perspective, and help them understand what health and medical topics have the most bearing on the public's health.

"The fact that one of the most-covered stories in the study was about the removal of warts using duct tape, a topic which has questionable public health value, and that the story originated in a press release from a renowned medical journal, shows that we in the health community have work to do," says Pribble. "The onus is on health care providers, organizations and agencies to provide information in a helpful way that will help local TV reporters cover health and medicine better."

Goldstein hopes that further studies using the Newslab's digital recordings of local TV news will help both broadcasters and health experts understand how to improve the health information that reaches the public. Such analysis can be important for improving communications in a public health crisis, as well as the day-to-day flow of information from newly published health studies, new government recommendations, and innovations in medical care made available by doctors and hospitals.

Goldstein and Pribble are currently studying how local news covered health in 2004, and are also looking at the coverage of health issues on local Spanish-language television. UW-Madison is currently pursuing funding for further data collection and studies in 2006.

For more information on Newslab, visit www.polisci.wisc.edu/newslab.

The study was funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Newslab's original funding was from the Pew Charitable Trusts. In addition to Pribble and Goldstein, the new study's authors are: senior author and RWJ Clinical Scholars Program co-director Joel Howell, a professor at the U-M Medical School and School of Public Health; Erika F. Fowler of Newslab; and Matthew J. Greenberg and Stacey K. Noel of the U-M department of emergency medicine.

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University Communications
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Madison, WI 53706

Phone: (608) 262-3571
Fax: (608) 262-2331

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