WN@TL Blog

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.  …

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 …

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 …