Richard Adamski and Valerie Dantoin of Seymour, Randall and Rosalie Geiger of Reedsville, David Heidel of Random Lake, Linda Hodorff of Eden, Roger Ripley of Briggsville, and Russell Schuler of Sheboygan Falls will receive Honorary Recognition awards Oct. 27 from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The awards will be presented at a banquet in the Memorial Union on the UW-Madison campus.

Humans have cultivated potatoes for millennia, but there has been great controversy about the ubiquitous vegetable’s origins. This week a team led by a USDA potato taxonomist stationed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has for the first time demonstrated a single origin in southern Peru for the cultivated potato.

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.

Dairy cattle judges from the University of Wisconsin-Madison competed at the Accelerated Genetics 12th Annual Midwest Intercollegiate Dairy Cattle Judging Contest, Sept. 18 at Viroqua, Wis. The UW-Madison team placed third overall with 2,063 points, just 1 point behind second-place Iowa State University. The University of Minnesota won the contest.

Vibrantly colored creatures from the depths of the South Pacific harbor toxins that have the potential to act as powerful cancer drugs–and CALS biochemists have defined the structure of the toxins and provided basic understanding that can be used to synthesize pharmaceuticals.

Managed grazing is becoming increasingly popular with Wisconsin dairy farmers. Grazing systems reduce labor requirements and provide environmental benefits, as the cows harvest much of their own feed and spread their own manure. In addition to these benefits, a new report from UW-Madison shows that these grazing farms are economically competitive with confinement dairy operations.

Dodge County won the first-ever Junior State 4-H Dairy Judging Contest held September 5 at the Iowa County Fair in Mineral Point. LaCrosse County finished second in the contest and Waupaca County placed third. The top two teams from each of the four Area Animal Science Days were invited to compete at this contest. Seven teams from across Wisconsin participated.

Thomas Record, a biophysical chemist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was in August named one of six 2006 Society Fellows by the Biophysical Society, a […]

The new section of the UW-Madison’s Walnut Street Greenhouses was dedicated at a ceremony Sept. 1 at the greenhouses.