For September 19, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, When I was in graduate school at the University of Illinois I read “Arrowsmith”, Sinclair Lewis’s 1925 novel dwelling on the medical research enterprise. I was smitten by …
WN@TL Blog
The Evolution and Ecology of Carnivorous Plants
For September 12, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, Plants are stuck in one place, pretty much. Seeds & pollen & spores can move, and if you’re a roadside daylily or a chicory then corms …
The Fall of Teotihuacan–Archeology Beyond the Pyramids
For September 5, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, My Dad taught high school history, and our shelves at home included the Time Life series on Great Ages of Man. My internal timeline was already primed …
This Summer’s Breakthrough in Multi-messenger Astronomy
For August 29, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, In January 1610 Galileo turned his 20x telescope towards Jupiter and discovered moons in orbit around Jupiter—notably, the moons were not orbiting Earth. That was a …
Mapping the Springs of Wisconsin
For August 22, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, In my hometown there’s a street called Artesian Place. It runs down a hill called Bootlegger’s Knob and meets with River Road that runs parallel to …
The Year So Far in Wisconsin Insects
For August 15, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, Right after last week’s WN@TL by Dan Young on the Wisconsin Insect Research Collection, I drove over to Monona to visit my friend Ken Smith on the occasion …
The Wisconsin Insect Research Collection
For August 8, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, In Fall 1977 I took Professor Harold Willis’s course in entomology at UW-Platteville. It was a lecture/lab class, but Dr. Willis also required each of us …
Mapping Monumental Mysteries: Wisconsin’s Effigy Mounds
For August 1, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, In February 1994 I moved in to 210 Campbell Street, about four blocks south of the UW campus and three blocks north of Henry Vilas Zoo. …
Sequencing DNA at a Trillion Bases a Day
For July 25, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, Biochemists get to work with at least four types of polymers: proteins, carbohydrates (eg, starch, cellulose), lipids (eg, long chain fatty acids), and nucleic acids. Figuring …
A 100 Years of Milking Machines
For July 18, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, It is High Summer. We drive through betasseled corn canyons and past wheat fields ready for the combine or spotted with golden bales worthy of Rumpelstiltskin. The …