Category: Research

Dear Editor: Trust is in short supply these days for many good reasons, but in the case of the experiment to kill carp in Lake Wingra, the public should place its trust in our lake researchers. I can think of few risk/reward situations where one could be more assured that trust was well placed.

New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that dairy cows give more milk if they get extra lighting during the winter months. According to Scott Sanford, an outreach specialist in Biological Systems Engineering, the increase in production is an average or four pounds a day for each cow.

A fish-killing pesticide might be needed to clear carp out of an experimental structure in Lake Wingra next spring. But if the public is dead set against it, scientists working on the project will go to Plan B to reduce the huge number of carp in the small Madison lake.

A spray-on road de-icer caused a crash that left westbound Beltline traffic tied up for more than an hour Wednesday morning, town of Madison police said.

A UW-Madison road safety researcher said Wednesday the question of de-icer causing cars to slip is “intriguing,” but to his knowledge, it hasn’t been studied. Similar crashes on a treated road three years ago in Dane County may soon spark a lawsuit.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 – Congress has cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, an engine for research in science and technology, just two years after endorsing a plan to double the amount given to the agency.

…Friends of Starkweather Creek helped get $180,000 for creek improvement projects into the city of Madison budget that was approved earlier this month. A new analysis of the creek, from scientific and social perspectives, will be developed by UW-Madison students as part of a multi-disciplinary project in the water resources management program. The efforts could be a last chance to head off further urban pollution of the creek as major development projects are built at the creek’s upper reaches.

First it was dairy production, now it’s stem cell research. California is beating us again.

Proposition 71, a $3 billion bond issue pushed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, won 59 percent of the vote on Nov. 2. California will invest $300 million a year for 10 years to create the Institute for Regenerative Medicine to advance embryonic stem cell research.

UW-Madison will play host to more than a dozen events exploring the issues that surround HIV and AIDS this week as part of World Aids Day on Wednesday.

Lake Wingra could be cleaner with fewer carp if a demonstration “exclosure” project planned for the small Madison lake is successful.

What gives? First, Gov. Jim Doyle grandly proclaimed his intention to shower $750 million or so on UW-Madison research – then turned around and pilloried UW officials for not cutting their budget request to his satisfaction.

Many a frustrated birder has griped about the difficulty of telling the neotropical black-chinned tanager from its neighbor, the blue-winged tanager. “It’s just slight color variation on the back,” said Robert Bleiweiss, a zoologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But new research shows the visual differences are greater than those that meet the birder’s eye. Indeed, if you hold them up to an ultraviolet light, the bird species become recognizably different.