A University of Wisconsin-Madison team scored 2,074 points to finish high team overall for the third year in a row at the Southern Intercollegiate Dairy […]

History was made, disaster was averted, and most of the several hundred spectators stayed dry at the first Wisconsin Giant Pumpkin Regatta, held on a brilliant October Sunday at the docks of the Memorial Union on the UW-Madison campus.

Wisconsin’s lakes and waterways, along with our nation’s helicopter crews in Iraq, are better off thanks to the work of Gary Bubenzer. Bubenzer’s efforts on behalf of his students, the UW-Madison, the environment and the engineering profession have earned him the Distinguished Service Award for 2005 from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

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.