I first met UW-Madison’s Soil Scientist Francisco Arriaga this summer at an Uplands Watershed Group Farm Tour in Spring Green. He demonstrated how to do a water infiltration test and, standing in a large pit, showed the difference in soils between a conventionally farmed plot and a no-tilled one with a cover crop.
A broad-based new scholarship will help the majority of new first-year students who choose University of Wisconsin-Stout, Chancellor Bob Meyer announced Monday, Sept. 10.
A better understanding of the data and images gathered by the drone-borne instruments could lead to new ways for cranberry growers to detect insects and disease weeks sooner than traditional scouting forays on the ground.
Rain and flooding has brought out the mosquitoes in southern Wisconsin. UW-Madison entomologist Susan Paskewitz says they bring two concerns with them — disease and the nuisance factor.
Quoted: “The facility is going to be one of the premiere dairy education and research centers in the nation,” Blank said. “And most importantly, it’s going to be a hub for discovery and innovation for Wisconsin’s dairy industry, working closely with our faculty and our students.”
In a two page letter, Summers lays out the University’s financial picture, saying “despite cutting $2.5 million from our budget last year, our additional decline in enrollment has only increased our ongoing structural deficit.”
Quoted: “I think we have a very important mission for the state and for the university,” Poulsen says. “We are investing in our staff because they are the scientific minds and the people who get the testing in and done, and the customer service done.”
The launch of construction and renovation for UW-Madison’s Babcock Hall Dairy Plant and Center for Dairy Research was marked with a celebration in the Lake Mendota Room of Dejope Hall on Sept. 7.
WRAP began at UW-Madison in 1940 to foster creativity in rural areas. Now part of Continuing Studies, WRAP partners with the nonprofit Wisconsin Regional Artists Association (WRAA) to showcase artists in rural and urban areas statewide.
Candee made the decision to take a gap year because she didn’t get into the only college she applied to in 2017 during her senior year of high school — UW-Madison.
For three years, Sanford has been honing an energy-miser, continuous flow method to remove mint oil from tons of mint plants. Today, the standard extraction procedure involves injecting steam through a tub-load of chopped mint, in a two-hour process.
The event focused largely on “news you can use” for Wisconsin farmers. Andrew Stammer, for example, director of the UW Soil and Forage Analysis Laboratory located at the Marshfield Agricultural Research Station, described soil-sampling protocols for farmers who apply fertilizer in strips along the crop row.
The combined $200 million is part of the university’s ongoing $3.2 billion All Ways Forward fundraising campaign. Foxconn’s funding will primarily support a new building for the College of Engineering on the UW-Madison campus, while any facilities related to the FIRST initiative are still to be determined, the representative said, noting that “there is no predetermined list” of university departments that will have access to the interdisciplinary program. Foxconn’s contributions will also help provide opportunities for internships and applied learning in campus labs.
A research trial was initiated in fall 2017 at the UW-Arlington Agricultural Research Station. The research team assessed the impact of delayed grain harvest on the yield and test weight of soft red winter wheat.
Gard made a stop in Wausau Thursday to talk about his off season projects and what’s next for Badgers Basketball.
Four projects would be funded by increases in student fees, including a new field house and soccer facility at UW-La Crosse; a new UW-Madison natatorium and recreational center; and a new UW-Stevens Point student health center.
“It makes the physical work of a dairy farm more manageable by a family unit,” says Douglas Reinemann, professor of biological engineering systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For parents of very young children, sending your little ones off to school for the first time can be scary. But there are things you can do to prepare, said Beth Graue, chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UW-Madison, who has been teaching since 1990.
The school announced it will present its Honorary Recognition Awards to Daphne & Lloyd Holterman, Anna Maenner and David Rhoda, and its Distinguished Alumni Award to Timothy Young. Each will be recognized during a special ceremony on October 25.
This month, chancellors at UW-Madison and five other UW campuses asked the board to restore the coverage, saying four Big Ten campuses offer it.
A top state lawmaker is questioning how a new proposal for a science building at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire vaulted over high-priority building projects that have waited in line for years.
UW-Platteville Chancellor Dennis Shields updated the Sauk County Board on Tuesday about the campuses’ ongoing integration. He said the partnership could bring collaborative programs in agriculture, hospitality and business to the University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County.
Plans for a new academic and research chemistry and biochemistry building are among the UW System’s capital project requests in its 2019-21 biennial budget.
A proposed project would mean the end for the current science building, Phillips Hall, which is more than 50 years old. Assistant Chancellor for Facilities Mike Rindo told News 18 a study was done that showed it wasn’t feasible functionally or structurally to renovate the current Phillips Hall.
In recent days, we learned that UW-Madison scientists in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, along with their colleagues at the University of California, Davis and Mars Inc., discovered indigenous varieties of corn capable of cooperating with bacteria to fix up to 80% of the nitrogen that the crop needs.
Eau Claire County’s UW-Extension says the purchase may help Wisconsin milk producers, who have been struggling with low prices and recent tariffs from export markets like Mexico and China, get back on their feet.
Also last month, chancellors from UW-Madison and five other UW campuses asked the insurance board to reconsider the exemption, saying in a letter that the lack of coverage “jeopardizes our ability to attract top academic and research talent and puts us at a serious disadvantage retaining our LGBTQ employees.”
Quoted: “They are part of us now, so we need to figure out which of those degrees we roll out first and other things we have to do to become a real partner in this community,” Miller added.
Quoted: “For us, that does create some challenges as far as how we pay for what we do,” Gow said. “We do have inflationary cost increases. I don’t know how realistic it is to continue that forever.”
UW System leaders won’t seek any tuition or student fee increases in the next state budget but will consider asking Gov. Scott Walker for an additional $107 million in state aid to help meet Republican-imposed performance goals and increase access to high-demand programs.
Dan and Iris Levitis lost two babies to miscarriage. His research explores why it happened.
Farmers in a small area of southern Mexico knew that a variety of corn grown in the area was special. But a group of researchers — including a contingent from the University of Wisconsin-Madison — believe the corn could ultimately transform the way the largest crop in America and the world is grown.
In the 21st century, nearly a century after its founding in the 1930s, the institution balances Wisconsin’s tradition of ecological research with public outreach, citizen-science projects, and hosting visitors, whether they want to learn more about prairie ecosystems or just enjoy the scenery.
Nationwide, the number of CSA farms fell from more than 12,000 in 2012 to about 7,000 in 2015, said Lydia Zepeda, a consumer science professor at UW-Madison.
Quoted: “I think it’s a symptom of the legislative process becoming less participatory,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center.
Activities by UW System campuses and organizations create or support about 167,000 jobs each year, or one out of every 20 worker in the state, the report shows. And UW System’s economic activity brings in $1.1 billion in state and local taxes every year.
Quoted: “This is a year of transition. A lot of work is happening behind the scenes. But it should be invisible to our listeners and viewers,” says Purcell. “Over the next year, we are figuring out how to move [public media] under the UW-Madison umbrella. In a sense, we’re coming home. But in a sense, we’ve never left.”
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have helped discover a corn variety that could reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizer farmers need to spread.The tropical variety of corn has been grown in Oaxaca, Mexico for thousands of years. Because the area’s soils have little nitrogen, the corn has adapted over the years, developing a system for taking nitrogen out of the air.
The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Foundation will auction off one of two biodigesters this month to pay off creditors as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
She has also been selected as artist-in-residence at Isle Royale National Park, Michigan’s Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, and UW-Madison Center for Limnology Research Station at Trout Lake.
“It may be the case that some of that equipment simply can’t be fixed anymore,” said Mark Stephenson of UW-Madison’s Center for Dairy Profitability in a Wisconsin Public Radio story. “Any one or two years, you can get by not replacing it. But four years? Some equipment is going to have to be replaced.”
In this month’s episode of Field Notes, Susan Knight of UW-Madison’s Trout Lake Station talks about that annoying summer problem, “Swimmer’s Itch” and how we can avoid it.
An indigenous variety of corn in Mexico fixes nitrogen from the air instead of getting the nitrogen from synthetic fertilizers. Researchers believe cross-breeding this trait into conventional corn varieties could reduce fertilizer use.
Dado is currently attending UW-Madison, where she’s majoring in dairy science and life communications. Her career goal is to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture or other government agencies on trade policy.
A recent international study found that a variety of maize native to southern Mexico’s Sierra Mixe region can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and reduce the use of chemical fertilizers, the Mexican government said on Thursday.
A University of Wisconsin researcher is hoping to use the traits from a variety of corn found in the Mexican mountains to reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizer.Jean-Michel Ané tells Brownfield the giant corn can stand more than 16 feet tall and unlike most corn, it can fix much of its own nitrogen similar to legumes. “Right before tasseling, that corn gets 40-50 percent of its nitrogen from the air.”
Now, after over a decade of field research and genetic analysis, the team has published their work in the journal PLOS Biology. If the nitrogen-fixing trait could be bred into conventional corn, allowing it to produce even a portion of its own nitrogen, it could reduce the cost of farming, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt one of the major pollutants in lakes, rivers and the ocean. In other words, it could lead to a second nitrogen revolution.
Quoted: “The dead zone conditions are really driven by excess nutrients coming into the bay and a lot of those are coming from agricultural run-off. And we actually here in the lower bay, Green Bay, receive about one-third of all the nutrients for all of Lake Michigan,” says Julia Noordyk, Wisconsin Sea Grant Water Quality Specialist.
Farmers market vendors and consumers are on the rise according to a new survey released by the University of Wisconsin- Extension Office.
UW-Madison astronomy graduate students give a presentation at 8:30 pm, then will be setting up their telescope for viewing and to answer questions.
Wisconsin is home to an estimated 308 farmers markets of all sizes and geographical locations. And now researchers from UW-Madison and UW-Extension have taken a dive into the numbers and issues that farmers markets face.
At a towering 16’ tall, corn native to Oaxaca, Mexico grows up to 10 aerial roots [compared to two in a typical plant] that secrete gel to help nitrogen-fixing bacteria survive. If scientists find a way to make this commercially available, it could be a game-changer for corn grown for grain and silage.
Quoted: “We see over $1 billion in economic activity in these counties when we add up the infrastructure that’s out there and all the commerce that occurs between the production, the processing and the selling of the product,” said Jerry Clark, Chippewa County Agriculture Agent with UW-Extension.
He says addiction and behavioral health resources are somewhat limited and addiction specialists are relatively uncommon in Wisconsin and the U.S. That’s why UW-Madison and UW Health are setting up a new hotline that Wisconsin doctors can call to consult with addiction specialists.
Klondike Cheese Co. is expanding production as it enters its second century of cheesemaking, under the leadership of six Master Cheesemakers certified by UW–Madison’s Center for Dairy Research.
Mark Stephenson, director of UW-Madison’s Center for Dairy Profitability, told Wisconsin Public Radio that farmers had avoided making large purchases during the past few years of low commodity prices.
Ankur Desai, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead researcher for CHEESHEAD19, said meteorologists can use the findings as an extra element to provide more accurate predictions.
The UW System has until the end of August to submit plans to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee on ways to improve security.
Farmers’ market managers in Wisconsin, along with other people who support farmers’ markets, expressed interest in learning more about what practices and features are common across the state. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the UW-Madison College of Agricultural & Life Sciences conducted a survey in 2017 to help answer their questions.
Judging teams from across the state battled during the State 4-H Livestock Judging Contest held July 23 at the Stock Pavilion at UW-Madison. This annual venue allows the top junior and senior county 4-H Livestock judging teams the opportunity to apply their skills in evaluating beef, swine, sheep and meat goat classes in hopes of qualifying for a national livestock judging event this fall.
