Conservation farming techniques can maintain crop yields and at the same time protect against soil degradation. Researchers practiced the tenets of soil conservation while growing pulses over a 12- year-experiment.
Cell membranes stand up to significant amounts of stretching and bending, but only recently have scientists started to fully appreciate the useful organization and functions that result from all that stress. A multidisciplinary group working within the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is trying to recreate aspects of those broad design principles in synthetic systems comprised of simple membranes and complex fluids.
pH of soil affects the soil health – and your plants’ health, too
A University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist has inserted a genetic switch into nerve cells so a patient can alter their activity by taking designer drugs that would not affect any other cell. The cells in question are neurons and make the neurotransmitter dopamine, whose deficiency is the culprit in the widespread movement disorder Parkinson's disease.
Mai Shoua Xiong, who was honored as Wisconsin's elementary teacher of the year, focuses on the diverse and multilingual students in her first grade classroom.
Like many would-be parents, Katie Brenner was advised to select the optimum time for conception based on blood and/or urine tests. Brenner developed a quick, saliva-based method for measuring progesterone and estrogen and sending the results to a smart device.
A team of researchers examined the impact of intellectual property protection of seeds in a new study. They found intellectual property protection benefits both plant breeders and society.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who studies the most common genetic intellectual disability has used an experimental drug to reverse — in mice — damage from the mutation that causes the syndrome. The condition, called fragile X, has devastating effects on intellectual abilities.
A machine-learning algorithm created by a A research team has created an algorithm that improves the accuracy of dating past events by a factor of up to 300. The mathematical research, led by two UWM physicists, is featured in the journal Nature.
In 1442, 50 years before Columbus “sailed the ocean blue,” Shinto priests in Japan began keeping records of the annual freeze dates of a nearby lake. Along a Finnish river, starting in 1693, local merchants recorded the date the ice broke up each spring. These observations are among the oldest inland water ice records in human history, and now they are contributing to modern understanding of climate change.
Silatronix, a University of Wisconsin-Madison startup that has invented a safer electrolyte for the lithium-ion batteries used in phones, laptops and tablets, says its formulation has survived several years of evaluation and is now moving into pilot production at a major Japanese battery manufacturer.
High-frequency antennas transmit radio waves across vast distances and even over mountain ranges using very little energy, making them ideal for military communications. These devices, however, have one big problem: They need to be huge to operate efficiently. Instead of adding more bulk, UW-Madison engineers are working to increase the effective size of antennas by turning the military vehicles that carry them into transmitters — using the structures that support the antennas themselves to help broadcast signals.
Most materials, too, are capable of being only one thing at a time, but a team of engineers and physicists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have created an entirely new material in which completely contradictory properties can coexist.
One secret to creating the world's fastest silicon-based flexible transistors: a very, very tiny knife. Working in collaboration with colleagues around the country, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have pioneered a unique method that could allow manufacturers to easily and cheaply fabricate high-performance transistors with wireless capabilities on huge rolls of flexible plastic.
Cows in Brazil might start bellowing "leguuume" rather than "moo." Researchers there found tree legumes in a silvopastural system provide an important and affordable source of nitrogen to replenish the soil.
Today's imaging technologies allow highly sensitive cameras to detect even the faintest glimmers of light. Unfortunately, however, highly sensitive pieces of optical equipment are also highly susceptible to damage. Intense light beams overwhelm devices designed to detect single photons.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) have developed one of the first mouse models for the study of Zika virus. The model will allow researchers to better understand how the virus causes disease and aid in the development of antiviral compounds and vaccines.
Speakers from the forefront of the scientific and production-based issues of industrial hemp
People who often mix their media consumption — texting while watching TV, or listening to music while reading — are not known for being able to hold their attention on one task. But sharpening their focus may be as simple as breathing. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have shown that heavy media multitaskers benefited from a short meditation exercise in which they sat quietly counting their breaths.
A pair of papers from a UW-Madison geoscience lab shed light on a curious group of bacteria that use iron in much the same way that animals use oxygen: to soak up electrons during biochemical reactions. When organisms — whether bacteria or animal — oxidize carbohydrates, electrons must go somewhere.
Combining the best features of a lobster and an African fish, University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers have created an artificial eye that can see in the dark. And their fishy false eyes could help search-and-rescue robots or surgical scopes make dim surroundings seem bright as day.
How soil testing is done in the future may change to include microbial content
New field research measured how far common bacteria—including Salmonella and E. coli—are likely to travel downwind from manure application sites. Proper spacing can ensure food safety.
Research shows extraordinary commitment to science and soil physics and support of soil physicists
Fruit flies in the lab of John Pool, in the genetics department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, happily eat a noni fruit that is normally toxic to fly species. Pool is probing the genetic basis for this ability, which may explain how insects adapt to new foods — a line of research that could apply to agricultural pests.
Pruning, watering and planting steps for long-term success
UWM Professor Paru Shah discusses the role of minority voters in the 2016 presidential campaign, and how the “minority vote” is not a monolithic entity.
It may be called canine influenza, but Sandra Newbury, clinical assistant professor and director of the Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, has confirmed that the virus that sickened a large number of dogs in the Midwest last year has now infected a group of cats in the region.
More than 120,000 young athletes experience a sports-related head injury each year. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Medical College of Wisconsin have created a free smartphone app that helps diagnose and track the treatment of head injuries among young athletes.
Taking time to make a proper hole and a little pruning can earn you healthier plants
A changing climate and reduced snow cover across the north is squeezing the snowshoe hare out of its historic range, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Most of us think nothing of rainfall or where it goes, unless it leads to flooding or landslides. But soil scientists have been studying how water moves across or through water soil for decades. Daniel Hirmas, a professor at University of Kansas, and his team may be taking the study of “soil hydrology” to some exciting new territory. Territory that may help soil scientists manage water resources better.
Umcompacted sides and soil lead to more robust plants
What does it mean to be science literate? How science literate is the American public? How do we stack up against other countries? What are the civic implications of a public with limited knowledge of science and how it works? How is science literacy measured? These and other questions are under the microscope of a 12-member National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel.
Healthy soil is the foundation for a healthy America
Jack P. Hailman, professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and well-known experimentalist and animal behaviorist, died at home on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. He was 79. Hailman’s UW-Madison career spanned 30 years, over which time he mentored and supported numerous colleagues, undergraduates and graduate students; edited the top journals in his field; and weaved together scientific disciplines that in his era were sometimes at odds.
“If you ask an ordinary person, ‘What is glass?’ they will point to a window, but glass is a much broader category of materials,” says Mark Ediger, a UW-Madison professor of chemistry.
Researchers use satellite imagery and elevation data to better understand where an endangered plant grows, saving time, labor and money. They can also identify potential new habitats.
UWM paleontologist Stephen Dornbos is on an international research team that has found fossilized multicellular marine algae, or seaweed, dating back more than 555 million years, ranking among the oldest examples of multicellular life on Earth.
A changing climate is altering the ability of Rocky Mountain forests to recover from wildfire, according to a new study published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography. When warm, dry conditions lead to drought in the years following fires, it impedes the growth and establishment of vulnerable new post-fire seedlings. The study also shows that forest recovery has been negatively affected by increased distances between burned areas and the sources of seeds that typically replace trees lost to fire.
A new study shows the economic and ecological impact of invasive species in the Great Lakes has been dramatically underestimated. In fact, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a single non-native species in a single inland lake has racked up $80 million to $163 million in damage.
There is a sense among those who pay attention to youth and high school athletics that more and more young athletes today are focusing on excelling at a single sport instead of playing a variety. Perhaps surprisingly, though, little research has been conducted on the prevalence of sports specialization in high school athletes — and what that might mean for these competitors’ health.
In one of the first studies to "read" the genetic activity inside individual brain cells, University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist Xinyu Zhao has identified the genetic machinery that causes maturation in a young nerve cell.
Ten images and two videos by University of Wisconsin-Madison students, faculty and staff have been named winners of the 2016 Cool Science Image contest.
Researchers recently released 40 varieties of early-flowering sorghum bred for use in cooler, more temperate areas. These early-flowering varieties of sorghum are critical for the spread of the crop to more new locations.
Chemical use can leads unhealthy soil, fertilizer getting in watersheds, etc.
Common blight is a devastating bacterial disease. It greatly reduces the yield and quality of bean crops across the world. Conventional breeding techniques can be used to generate cultivars of common bean that are resistant to the common blight. But it remains challenging to breed cultivars of common bean that combine the desired high yield and quality with resistance to diseases.
A few years ago, a global team of scientists parlayed decades of research into the discovery of the Higgs boson. A humble software program called HTCondor churned away in the background, helping analyze data gathered from billions of particle collisions. Cut to 2016, and HTCondor is on to a new collision: helping scientists detect gravitational waves caused 1.3 billion years ago by a collision between two black holes 30 times larger than our sun.
A Madison startup company that is only 14 months old has installed computerized monitors to track weightlifting by the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh football team. The company that developed and built the monitors, WeightUp Solutions of Madison, was founded by Daniel Litvak, who is now a computer science senior at UW-Madison.
In the world of Web apps, simple, intuitive and visual are the operative words. And an emerging app from the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery’s Field Day Lab called Siftr seems to be hitting all the right notes. “The vision is to create a clearinghouse for the creation of citizen science projects,” explains David Gagnon, who serves as the program director for the Field Day Lab
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