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Category Science & Technology

Curiosities: How long can bacteria live outside humans?

August 10, 2009

Bacteria have vastly different survival abilities, says Jeri Barak, an assistant professor of plant pathology at UW–Madison. Many species normally live in soil…

Curiosities: How many galaxies have humans discovered?

August 3, 2009

“We don’t know,” says Ed Churchwell, professor of astronomy. “We know it’s a very large number.” It’s in the hundreds of billions, Churchwell…

Curiosities: Does a dark-colored car heat up more in the sun than a light-colored car?

July 27, 2009

The external color does not significantly affect how much the inside of a car heats up in the sun, says Sanford Klein, director of…

Curiosities: Why do cats hate water?

July 27, 2009

Because we teach them to hate it. There are plenty of cats that love water, according to Sandi Sawchuk, a clinical instructor at the…

Curiosities: Why do onions make us cry when we cut them?

July 27, 2009

Chopping onions unleashes a “chemical defense that onion plants have to protect themselves against insects and microbes,” says UW–Madison horticulture professor Irwin Goldman. We’re…

Curiosities: Are there more geese in Wisconsin than there used to be?

July 27, 2009

The number of Canada geese in Wisconsin is very much on the rise, increasing exponentially since standardized bird counts began in 1966, according to…

Software tool helps Web developers identify seizure-causing content

July 22, 2009

In 1997, an episode of the popular Pok�mon cartoon gained worldwide attention when more than 800 Japanese children with photosensitive seizure conditions were admitted to the hospital after viewing the cartoon or the subsequent news coverage of it.

‘Motion picture’ of past warming paves way for snapshots of future climate change

July 16, 2009

By accurately modeling Earth's last major global warming - and answering pressing questions about its causes - scientists led by University of Wisconsin–Madison and National Center for Atmospheric Research climatologists are unraveling the intricacies of the kind of abrupt climate shifts that may occur in the future.