A study in the Journal of Environmental Quality examined methods for recovering phosphorus from wastewater using mathematical modeling. . The study showed that a typical wastewater treatment plant could reclaim approximately 490 tons of phosphorus in the form of struvite each year.
As with rivers, civilizations across the world rise and fall. Sometimes, the rise and fall of rivers has something to do with it. At Cahokia, the largest prehistoric settlement in the Americas north of Mexico, new evidence suggests that major flood events in the Mississippi River valley are tied to the cultural center’s emergence and ultimately, to its decline.
Strength, stability, water drainage and other factors important.
Houses, schools, and more depend on soils.
A new study from a multidisciplinary team, published April 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes a powerful new model to help decision makers maximize the cost-effectiveness of barrier removal projects that also restore migratory fish habitat.
In celebration of the International Year of Soil 2015 (IYS), the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) is coordinating a series of activities throughout to educate the public about the importance of soil. April’s theme is “Soils Clean and Capture Water”. In SSSA’s April 15 Soils Matter blog post, experts explain how scientists are looking to tap a different water source for agriculture: “green water”.
A medication commonly taken for Type II diabetes, which is being found in freshwater systems worldwide, has been shown to cause intersex in fish –male fish that produce eggs.
Soil scientists have struggled with accurately measuring water flow through soil for years. Even the smallest soil details can sway water’s path from the straight, sequential line gravity alone might demand. These minute differences contribute to water’s “preferential flow.” For farmers’ crops dependent on moisture, or chemical spills needing containment, preferential flow can be a matter of life or death.
Six years ago at this time, Laura Ling was imprisoned in North Korea. Chosen as Carthage College’s 2015 Commencement speaker, she’ll share reflections from those terrifying months and other lessons she has gleaned from a career as an award-winning broadcast journalist.
Scientists today demonstrated the potential for softwoods to process more easily into pulp and paper if engineered to incorporate a key feature of hardwoods. The finding, published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could improve the economics of the pulp, paper and biofuels industries and reduce those industries’ environmental impact.
In a move that could improve the energy storage of everything from portable electronics to electric microgrids, University of Wisconsin–Madison and Brookhaven National Laboratory researchers have developed a novel X-ray imaging technique to visualize and study the electrochemical reactions in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries containing a new type of material, iron fluoride.
For a generation motivated by technology and fast-moving information, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has created an energy-tracking app to make reducing day-to-day energy usage more accessible.
Since lasers were invented in 1960, they have penetrated countless scientific, industrial and recreational fields: from eye surgery to DVD players, from cutting steel to triggering ignition in missile stages. That last use is a target market for Alfalight, a University of Wisconsin-Madison spinoff that set out in 1999 to use patented technology to make lasers for the telecommunications industry.
A company with deep roots at UW-Madison wants to make blood sampling less painful and more convenient. Tasso Inc. is perfecting a device the size of a pingpong ball that extracts a small sample while held against the skin for two minutes.
Take a material that is a focus of interest in the quest for advanced solar cells. Discover a “freshman chemistry level” technique for growing that material into high-efficiency, ultra-small lasers. The result, disclosed today [Monday, April 13] in Nature Materials, is a shortcut to lasers that are extremely efficient and able to create many colors of light.
‘Luchadora’es una nueva obra teatral escrita por un miembro de la facultad de la Universidad de Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), con raíces en Wisconsin y Texas.
Play tells a Latino family's story -- from Texas to Milwaukee -- as a young girl explores the history behind a wrestling mask.
Managing nitrogen levels in soils has created debate over the decades. Recently, a group of scientists, industry representatives, farmers, and government and non-government organization members met to discuss managing nitrogen on farms with the goal of “Mo Fo Lo Po:” more food, low pollution.
Clearing grasslands to make way for biofuels may seem counterproductive, but University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers show in a study today (April 2, 2015) that crops, including the corn and soy commonly used for biofuels, expanded onto 7 million acres of new land in the U.S. over a recent four-year period, replacing millions of acres of grasslands.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have developed a modeling tool to help local communities better understand their vulnerabilities to large storms stoked by climate change.
Argentina might seem a long way to go for an environmental engineer seeking to better understand land use in Wisconsin. But there are some surprising parallels between the two countries' histories of land use and ecohydrology that could help farmers and officials make better groundwater decisions.
Research has discovered a role for prolactin, the hormone that stimulates milk production in nursing mothers, in the bond between parents. The study on cotton-top tamarins found a link between prolactin levels and sexual activity and cuddling among paired adults. Although this was a first for prolactin, it has previously been found for oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates childbirth and is linked to a range of pleasurable emotions.
A spinoff called Cellectar Biosciences is developing molecules that bind to more than 60 types of cancer. Several are being tested in early-stage clinical trials, including one for brain cancer. These custom-made molecules can carry either a "flag" that shines brightly in standard medical scanners or a bit of radiation to kill the targeted cancer cells.
Even during a good year, soybean farmers nationwide are, in essence, taking a loss. That's because changes in weather patterns have been eating into their profits and taking quite a bite: $11 billion over the past 20 years, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison agronomists published last month in Nature Plants.
A new center will advance the hunt for elusive gravitational waves in space using a unique method – monitoring changes in the arrival times of radio signals from pulsars, the universe’s most stable natural clocks.
An Ebola whole virus vaccine, constructed using a novel experimental platform, has been shown to effectively protect monkeys exposed to the often fatal virus. The vaccine, described today (March 26, 2015) in the journal Science, was developed by a group led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a University of Wisconsin-Madison expert on avian influenza, Ebola and other viruses of medical importance.
Lead researcher Atsushi Nakao’s study is the first to investigate the soil’s physical and chemical properties in rice fields around the Fukushima site. The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Quality, examined factors affecting soil-to-plant transfer of radioactive cesium (radiocesium) in the Fukushima area.
A team of chemists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has set the stage for more efficient and sturdier portable electronic devices and possibly a new generation of solar cells based on organic materials.
Soil performs physical, biological and chemical cleaning of water.
As more animal shelters, primate centers and zoos start to play music for their charges, it’s still not clear whether and how human music affects animals. Now, a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that while cats ignore our music, they are highly responsive to “music” written especially for them. The study is online at Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
In a study published March 9 in Nature Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison chemistry Professor Kyoung-Shin Choi presents a new approach to combine solar energy conversion and biomass conversion, two important research areas for renewable energy.
With exploding consumer demand for Greek yogurt, production is up. That’s great for food companies’ bottom lines, but it also leaves them dealing with a lot more acid whey, a problematic byproduct of the Greek yogurt-making process. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are developing a way to transform this trash into treasure.
A new study published today [Monday, March 2, 2015] in Nature Plants shows that hungry, plant-eating insects may limit the ability of forests to take up elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, reducing their capacity to slow human-driven climate change.
Two UW-Madison graduate students are working to introduce highly productive kits for farming mealworms to regions such as sub-Saharan Africa where eating insects is already culturally palatable. They are just practicing what they are beginning to preach: insects, and mealworms in particular, are an overlooked, healthful, economically viable and sustainable source of nutrition for people.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) have identified the biological mechanism that may give some cancer cells the ability to form tumors in dogs. The recent study uncovered an association between the increased expression of a particular gene in tumor cells and more aggressive behavior in a form of canine bone cancer. It may also have implications for human cancers by detailing a new pathway for tumor formation.
Soil is the ultimate source of the nutrients our bodies need.
Is there a life for compact discs in the age of the cloud? No, and yes, is the answer from Murfie, a Madison business founded by two UW-Madison alumni that is now in its fourth year of operation. No: It’s a hassle to juggle discs. Yes: Ownership of the disc gives you the right to play its music through a cloud-connected device in your car, home, office or pocket. Murfie’s business is encoding music from customers’ CDs onto its hard drives, and then playing them through any device a customer owns.
Green based technologies help cities manage storm water
When Edgar Spalding crunches data on Wisconsin corn, the numbers boggle the mind. Four million acres are planted annually, with 30,000 seeds planted per acre, producing about 120 billion seedlings sprouting skyward each May. With help from the Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC), Spalding is applying this astronomical sense of scale to our understanding of corn. Spalding uses the HTC capabilities pioneered by Miron Livny, Morgridge Institute for Research chief technology officer, to quantify the incredibly complex process of corn growth from seed to vigorous seedling — not just one at a time, but over thousands of samples.
Su-Chun Zhang, a professor of neuroscience and neurology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Waisman Center, and his research team have published a unique model for learning more about the role of human astrocytes in the Journal of Clinical Investigation today. The findings may lay a foundation for the treatment of a number of neurodegenerative diseases, including ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and debilitating spinal cord injuries.
As thesis writing approached, University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student Veronica Berns faced a conundrum. She knew how hard it was to describe her work to friends and family — indeed, anybody outside the tight clan of structural chemists. And that was particularly true since she concentrated on a category of should-be-impossible structures called “quasicrystals.” However, Berns liked drawing and using “normal, English-language words,” and so about a year before graduation, she opted to accompany her traditional Ph.D. thesis with a comic book version, “Atomic Size Matters.”
Dressmaker Hedy Strnad vanished during the Holocaust. Now, people worldwide will be able to learn her story, thanks to a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Jewish Museum Milwaukee. The digital exhibit, the first developed by UWM’s Digital Humanities Lab, is at http://liblamp.uwm.edu/omeka/A/.
Prekindergarten students in the Madison Metropolitan School District took part in a study assessing a new curriculum meant to promote social, emotional and academic skills, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) at the Waisman Center. Researchers found that kids who had participated in the curriculum earned higher marks in academic performance measures and showed greater improvements in areas that predict future success than kids who had not. The results were recently published in the journal Developmental Psychology.
A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers has developed a new tool to help engineers better gauge the overall yield, efficiency and costs associated with scaling solar-fuel production processes up into large-scale refineries.
In a new study to evaluate the Brazilian Soy Moratorium, published today (Jan. 22, 2015) in Science, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Holly Gibbs and colleagues across the U.S. and Brazil show that the moratorium helped to drastically reduce the amount of deforestation linked to soy production in the region and was much better at curbing it than governmental policy alone.
Pelizaeus Merzbacher disease, or PMD, is a devastating neurological condition that, in its most severe form, kills infants weeks after birth. Thirty years ago, UW-Madison neuroscientist Ian Duncan noticed a genetic mutation in dogs that was practically identical to the disease in humans. Now, in the online edition of the journal Neurobiology of Disease, Duncan has laid out the results of his marathon pursuit of PMD.
Some industrial robots are hulking, highly specialized pieces of machinery that are cordoned off by cages from human factory workers. But manufacturers have also begun experimenting with a new generation of “cobots” designed to work side-by-side with humans, and University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are playing an important role in making these human-robot collaborations more natural and efficient.
Manufacturers have begun experimenting with a new generation of “cobots” designed to work side-by-side with humans, and UW-Madison researchers are playing an important role in making these human-robot collaborations more natural and efficient. Bilge Mutlu, an assistant professor of computer sciences, is working with counterparts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to determine best practices for effectively integrating human-robot teams within manufacturing environments. Their research is funded by a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of its National Robotics Initiative program.
There are many ways urban residents can help their soil get healthy and work well
Preschool teachers who work with bilingual or multilingual children in five states across the country, and as many as 13 additional states, soon will begin using new learning tools and receiving specialized training developed and provided by WIDA, an international nonprofit specializing in English and Spanish language development based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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