Insulin injection, if you’ve never done it, takes two hands. One hand holds the insulin injector. The other hand pinches the skin, to form a bulge so the hormone enters fat under the skin while avoiding muscle, where it can be absorbed quickly enough to cause a seizure. Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas that regulates sugar in the blood.

Biochemists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have created the first atlas that maps where molecular tools that can switch genes on and off will bind to the human genome. It is a development they say could enable these tools to be targeted to specific parts of an individual’s genome for use in precision medicine, developing therapies and treating disease. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy...

Organ transplantation has come a long way from its early days in the mid-twentieth century. But even with major medical advances, there’s still an admittedly familiar factor at play: ice. Just prior to transplantation, an organ is reconstructed and prepared in the sterile operating room during what is known as the “backbench procedure.” As surgeons prepare the organ, it stays cooled and preserved in a hypothermic state in a...

Leaders of the University of Wisconsin–Madison lab that first transformed human stem cells into brain cells have started a company that produces and sells specialised neurons to drug researchers. BrainXell develops neurons from stem cells in its Madison lab, then freezes them for shipment. Once thawed in the customer’s lab, the cells undergo a final step of specialisation and become neurons like those found in the spinal cord or ...

Flooring can be made from any number of sustainable materials, making it, generally, an eco-friendly feature in homes and businesses alike. Now, however, flooring could be even more “green,” thanks to an inexpensive, simple method developed by University of Wisconsin–Madison materials engineers that allows them to convert footsteps into usable electricity.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin­–Madison and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) have found a way to nearly double the efficiency with which a commonly used industrial yeast strain converts plant sugars to biofuel. The newly engineered “super yeast” could boost the economics of making ethanol, specialty biofuels and bioproducts.

In 2014, when University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers announced in the journal Nature Communications that they had developed transparent sensors for use in imaging the brain, researchers around the world took notice. Then the requests came flooding in. “So many research groups started asking us for these devices that we couldn’t keep up,” says Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma, the Lynn H. Matthias Professor and Vilas Distinguish...

  Research projects statewide, from electronics to optics and medicine, are set to benefit from a new system coming to UW–Madison that will use electron beam lithography (EBL), a specialised technique for creating extremely fine patterns — in some cases more than 5,000 times narrower than the diameter of a human hair.

As solar cells produce a greater proportion of total electric power, a fundamental limitation remains: the dark of night when solar cells go to sleep. Lithium-ion batteries, the commonplace batteries used in everything from hybrid vehicles to laptop computers, are too expensive a solution to use on something as massive as the electric grid. Song Jin, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has a better idea: in...

The promise of stem cells to treat cardiovascular disease may soon be a step closer to clinical application as scientists from three institutions seek to perfect and test three-dimensional “heart patches” in a large animal model. In theory, the heart patches, engineered tissue composed of the several different types of cells that make up heart muscle, would be implanted to replace diseased or damaged tissue and would perform all ...

The University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Engineering is the home of a unique machine capable of milling in three dimensions with nanometer precision. The machine, called the ROBONANO α-0iB, is the first of its kind in North America, and offers the sort of advanced technological capabilities that represent the future of advanced manufacturing.

  Computer chip makers continuously strive to pack more transistors in less space, yet as the size of those transistors approaches the atomic scale, there are physical limits on how small they are able to make the patterns for the circuitry.

For decades, scientists have tried to harness the unique properties of carbon nanotubes to create high-performance electronics that are faster or consume less power — resulting in longer battery life, faster wireless communication and faster processing speeds for devices like smartphones and laptops. But a number of challenges have impeded the development of high-performance transistors made of carbon nanotubes, tiny cylinders made of ...

University of Wisconsin—Madison engineers have created high-performance, micro-scale solar cells that outshine comparable devices in key performance measures. The miniature solar panels could power myriad personal devices — wearable medical sensors, smartwatches, even autofocusing contact lenses. Large, rooftop photovoltaic arrays generate electricity from charges moving vertically.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Alzheimer’s researchers have identified a scientific approach that may help predict which older adults are more likely to develop cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease well before the onset of dementia. This approach – which statistically analyses a panel of biomarkers – could help identify people most likely to benefit from drugs or other interventions to slow the progress of the d...

The Morgridge Institute for Research and University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are working to optimise a camera capable of a slick optical trick: Snapping pictures around corners. The imaging project, supported by a new $4.4 million grant from the U.S. Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will work over four years to explore the limitations and potential applications of scattered-light technology that c...

Open air is getting crowded. Signals streaming back and forth from smart devices stretch existing fourth-generation wireless networks almost to their limits. As demands on these systems increase, University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers aim to open new frontiers in cutting-edge wireless communications. Their research is part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative announced to develop the next-gen wireless technologies.

University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers recently used powerful computers to quickly and accurately develop the world's largest computed database of information about an important materials-mixing process called diffusion. Led by Dane Morgan, Harvey D. Spangler Professor in materials science and engineering at UW-Madison, the researchers published details of their advance in the journal Scientific Data.

An exhaustive look at how bacteria hold their ground and avoid getting pushed around by their environment shows how dozens of genes aid the essential job of protecting cells from popping when tensions run high. For centuries, biologists have considered cells the irreducible unit of life, and cells require various types of envelopes to contain the chemical conditions life demands. When cells lose their mechanical properties, they rupture and die, ...

Modern tools like microwave ovens and X-ray machines that are powered by intense, focused beams of electrons are ubiquitous, but many of the materials in those devices have remained largely unchanged for decades. Now, electrical and materials engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have identified a substance that could vastly improve the technology.