Ants that tend and harvest gardens of fungus have a secret weapon against the parasites that invade their crops: antibiotic-producing bacteria that the insects harbor on their bodies.

According to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, food-borne pathogens account for 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. As the food industry continues to globalize, food safety is expected to remain a significant public health issue.

The tree guard zipper is a hand tool that allows for quick and easy installation and removal of the corrugated plastic tree guards often used to protect young trees from deer and other types of trunk damage. In a field trial by the Healthy Farmers, Healthy Profits Project, the tree guard zipper was 37 percent faster at installing the guards and 27 percent faster at removing them than installing and removing by hand.

One of the isomers of conjugated linoleic acid, a group of fatty acids found in milk, is a natural regulator of the COX-2 protein, which plays a significant role in cancer and inflammatory diseases such as arthritis, according to a study published recently by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.

The strong grip and force needed to operate a manual pruner can strain arms, wrists, hands and fingers. Using an electronic pruner is more efficient than using a manual pruner, because it reduces hand fatigue and is faster. Workers who use a manual pruner hour after hour will make slower, more ragged cuts. An electronic pruner consistently produces clean cuts, and can reduce pruning time by 20 percent because it alleviates strain.

University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemists have developed an approach that allows them to measure with unprecedented accuracy the strengths of hydrogen bonds in a protein. The scientists were then able to predict the function of different versions of the protein based on structural information, a novel outcome that was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The chemical pathways by which alcohol causes neurological cell death in chick embryos overlap with the pathways that give alcohol its addictive properties, a University of Wisconsin-Madison fetal alcohol researcher announced in a study published this month in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Researchers at the Center for Eukaryotic Structural Genomics, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have received a $20 million award to fund Phase II of the Protein Structure Initiative over the next five years. Information from the PSI project, funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, will deepen our understanding of a variety of biological processes.

A regular hoe handle is about 54 to 57 inches long, and forces workers to bend to reach the ground. This strains the back, neck, shoulders and arms. The long-handled diamond hoe’s handle is nearly 6 feet long. Tests done by the University of Wisconsin’s Healthy Farmers, Healthy Profits Project found a worker using a diamond hoe was more upright, leaning forward by only eight degrees compared with fifteen degrees of forward lean when using a standard-length hoe.

“We love our milking stool!” states Tim Powers of Laws Nursery in Hastings, Minn. This past summer, Powers and his employees tried out a one-legged […]