Skip to main content

July 31, 2024

Top Stories

Research

Can Thunderstorms Spoil Milk?

Gastro Obscura

By 1927, Edward Holyoke Farrington was presenting this explanation as a matter of fact in A Guide to Quality in Dairy Products, published by the University of Wisconsin. “A thick, sultry atmosphere usually precedes thunder showers and provides favorable conditions for the growth of milk-souring bacteria,” Farrington wrote. He also noted another significant factor: “the condition of the milk cans.” If milk is stored in unsanitized vessels that already harbor bacterial cultures, it will curdle even faster when exposed to the warm, wet air bacteria love. “No effect from thunder and lightning on milk and cream will be noticed,” Farrington assured readers, so long as the milk was chilled, and “if the cows are clean, the milk cans are clean, and all the utensils carefully sterilized.”

Higher Education/System

Campus life

Community

Can Dane County’s long push for regional transit get out of neutral?

The Capital Times

Madison is one of the most populous areas of the country where the local transit agency is run entirely by a city, according to Chris McCahill, managing director of the State Smart Transportation Initiative housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Madison Metro is not necessarily in a sustainable position, especially as we face population growth,” McCahill said. “But that is true of all major transit agencies across the country.”

City of Madison adjusts large item disposal for August moving days

WKOW-TV 27

Most leases expire around Aug. 15, and the move-in-move-out period affects communities beyond the downtown area. The city estimates nearly 35,000 UW students live in the neighborhoods on campus. Every year, the moving period generates over 1 million pounds of garbage that crews work to collect, large items requiring the most effort.

Health

Athletics

MLB commissioner emeritus Bud Selig celebrates his 90th birthday

WTMJ

While a sophomore at UW-Madison, Selig traveled down the road back to his hometown to ensure he was in-person to see the debut of Milwaukee’s first MLB squad, a 10-inning thriller ending with a Billy Bruton home run and a 3-2 Milwaukee Braves win over St. Louis.

“I teach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as Marquette Law School and Arizona State University. And then at night, I still find myself in front of a television set watching every game of baseball I can. It really has been a remarkable journey.”

Opinion

Business/Technology

State task force recommends using AI technology in classrooms, support for businesses

Wisconsin Public Radio

Somesh Jha, a computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison researching artificial intelligence, said the rapid development of AI is expected to lead to more efficiencies in the workplace. But he said it could also lead to job losses in some industries, as well as lead to the creation of new jobs.

He praised the task force for taking on “questions, like, ‘okay, what are we doing now that can be done much more efficiently using AI? And what new positions which we might need, given that new capability?’”

UW Experts in the News

What’s wrong with ‘The Most Studied Lake in the World’?

Madison Magazine

On a sunny fall morning, as he strolled to work along the Howard Temin Lakeshore Path near the Memorial Union, Jake Vander Zanden looked into the water and noticed something you don’t typically see in October: the beginnings of an algae bloom. The director of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Limnology was both fascinated and concerned.

“That’s really unusual — even for Lake Mendota, which has a lot of algae blooms — to see significant blooms late in the season,” Vander Zanden says. “We’ve been seeing that more lately.”

UW-Madison Related