Given the number of human pharmaceuticals and hormones that make their way into wastewater, some people are concerned about how well treatment plants that turn sewage into reusable water remove these chemicals. New research shows that wastewater treatment plants that employ a combination of purifying techniques followed by reverse osmosis do a good job of removing chemicals that may elicit health effects.

Wisconsin’s dairy industry is in the midst of major restructuring, brought on by changes in national and international competition, new federal marketing and pricing programs, and challenges of mature production and processing infrastructures. If the state’s dairy industry is to prosper and expand, it must find new ways to produce milk at prices competitive with other regions of the country and the world, and do that while protecting environmental quality and enhancing agriculture’s natural-resource base.

Mosquito abatement usually means one thing: blasting the pesky critters with pesticides. Those pesticides, although highly effective, can impair other organisms in the environment. Que Lan, insect physiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her colleagues in the entomology department are working on a new, more targeted approach to mosquito control: inhibiting their ability to metabolize cholesterol.

According to a 1999 mandate, all jurisdictions in Wisconsin must have a comprehensive land-use plan by 2010-or risk losing some local authority. While assembling the required plan is no small task, it may have become a little easier, thanks to a web-based toolkit from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

AgrAbility of Wisconsin, housed in the Ag Engineering Building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a partnership between the UW Cooperative Extension Service and Easter Seals Wisconsin. It provides resources to farmers with disabilities who want to continue farming.

Bugs have gotten a bad rap, says Jenny Jandt, coordinator of the UW-Madison Insect Ambassadors. That’s why her cortege of student ambassadors is willing to take their show on the road to spread good will for animals dear to their hearts: insects.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist is one of the few who eagerly await the year’s first yellow jackets. He studies how communities of wasps behave, interact and communicate.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison bacteriology professor has created a web-based textbook from 30 years’ worth of lecture notes, making a wealth of information — written in an easy-to-understand style — about everything from anthrax to whooping cough available for students, teachers, scientists and information seekers from around the world.

There are only 27 programs in the country, they only graduate on average a handful of students every year, and the graduates have a 100-percent job-placement rate six weeks after they receive their degrees. The program is genetic counseling and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is at the forefront of training genetic counselors to meet the growing demand for such specialists in the healthcare field.

On his potato collecting and identifying treks to the mountains of South America over the past 17 years, University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher David Spooner has had more than his share of adventures. He has ridden horses to remote collection sites, been surprised by sudden mountain storms, and experienced harrowing plane landings on Andean mountaintops. But to the man commonly referred to as the country’s leading potato taxonomist, it’s all in a day’s work.