Stories indexed under: College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

Total: 240   RSS feed

• Potato blight reveals some secrets as genome is decoded Sept. 9, 2009 Late blight caused the 19th century famine that sparked a wave of emigration from Ireland to the United States, but the disease has also infected tomatoes and potatoes this year. Potatoes, the world's fourth-largest food crop, were raised on 65,500 acres in Wisconsin in 2007. If a potato field is not treated with pesticide, late blight can destroy the crop in a few days.
• Science and media disconnect? Maybe not, says a new study Sept. 9, 2009 The prevailing wisdom among many scientists and scientific organizations is that, as a rule, scientists are press shy, and those who aren't are mavericks.
• Chancellor's lecture launches Year of the Humanities Sept. 8, 2009 A lecture that delves into the songs and sexuality of ancient Greek drinking parties and a talk on the 1989 German revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall are just two events that will mark the Year of the Humanities on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
• Late blight won't affect availability or quality of Wisconsin's potato crop Sept. 8, 2009 News about late blight has raised concerns among retailers, processors and other users about the availability and quality of stored potatoes in Wisconsin this winter, reports A.J. Bussan, University of Wisconsin-Madison extension vegetable specialist. But Bussan doesn't think that either quality or quantity will be a problem.
• Babcock Hall Dairy Store serves up a sweet job Sept. 3, 2009 Imagine receiving your undergraduate degree and then immediately being put in charge of an ice cream shop that serves more than 400 customers every day and employs two dozen workers during the peak season.
• Late blight pathogen spreads to state's potato crop Aug. 19, 2009 The plant pathogen best known for causing the Irish potato famine - Phytophthora infestans - was just discovered in two commercial potato fields in two separate Wisconsin counties. Before this, the outbreak of late blight, as the disease is known, had been confined to tomato plants.
• Mass communications students and faculty reap bumper crop of awards Aug. 6, 2009 Graduate students and faculty in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Joint Program in Mass Communications landed several awards - the most in recent memory - at a national conference for journalism educators this week.
• Irrigation system manages stormwater July 29, 2009 This summer, Doug Soldat is saving for a not-so-rainy day. The UW-Madison soil scientist is banking rainwater, up to 8,000 gallons of it, enough to keep the lawn at UW-Madison's O.J. Noer Turfgrass Research and Education Facility lush through the driest weeks of summer.
• Curiosities: Why do onions make us cry when we cut them? July 27, 2009
• Curiosities: Are there more geese in Wisconsin than there used to be? July 27, 2009
• UW-Madison symposium addresses science's holiest grail: building life from scratch July 23, 2009 While at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, biochemist Har Gobind Khorana helped crack the genetic code, completing a set of experiments that garnered him a Nobel Prize in 1968.
• Keeping it local: UW-Madison diners get 'homegrown' veggies July 21, 2009 A new local food initiative on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus is starting very close to home.
• Scientists and public differ on views about nanotechnology regulation June 19, 2009 When it comes to regulating nanotechnology - a burgeoning global industry with wide-ranging potential applications - a new study led by professors Dietram Scheufele at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Elizabeth Corley at Arizona State University (ASU) reveals that the views of U.S. nanoscientists differ from those of the general public.
• Nutritious, mouse-eared waffle carries UW-Madison team to food contest finals May 27, 2009 It's a challenge that parents face every day: Make healthy food taste good so their kids will actually eat it. A University of Wisconsin-Madison food development team has done just that, and on Monday, June 8, they'll head to Disneyland to showcase their creation before a panel of industry judges.
• Composting project takes a bite out of campus food waste May 26, 2009 At restaurants and cafeterias, consumers have grown accustomed to seeing a line of waste containers for recycling glass, plastic and paper items. Important as those bins are for reducing the burden on landfills, they overlook a major source of waste: the food left on diners' plates.
• Cyclists pedal for pledges to support UW School for Beginning Farmers May 11, 2009 Friends of the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers (WSBDF) will be pedaling for pledges when they wheel out of Dane County's Lake Farm Park on Friday, June 12, for the sixth annual Ride to Farm.
• Songs raise awareness about aquatic invasive species May 5, 2009 A new initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is using music to raise public awareness about aquatic invasive species in the state.
• WAA honors food science professor with Outreach Excellence Award April 27, 2009 The Wisconsin Alumni Association (WAA) has selected University of Wisconsin-Madison food science professor Richard Hartel as the 2009 recipient of the Ken and Linda Ciriacks Alumni Outreach Excellence Award.
• As ticks expand, new areas may become prone to Lyme disease April 27, 2009 Last summer, after returning home from a walk in Madison's Dudgeon-Monroe neighborhood, Susan Paskewitz was astonished to find a deer tick crawling up her dog's hind leg. It was the first time Paskewitz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist, had collected a tick in the city. Within the month, she learned of two other such cases.
• Ideology, religion trump other factors when it comes to supporting gay marriage April 16, 2009 During the past few weeks, several states have shifted their policies in favor of civil unions and gay marriage. These policy changes are to some degree shaped by shifts in public attitudes toward gay marriage. Where do these opinion shifts come from?