L&S News  Author: David Tenenbaum

A study now online in the February issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters links the rise in oxygen to a rapid increase in the burial of sediment containing large amounts of carbon-rich organic matter.

The key, says study co-author Shanan Peters, a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is to recognize that sediment storage blocks the oxidation of carbon.

Hugh H. Iltis, a noted University of Wisconsin–Madison plant geographer, educator, conservationist and mentor to botany students from across the Americas, died in Madison on Dec. 19.

Passionate, articulate, informed, Iltis was opinionated, sometimes argumentative, but always a fearless defender of the natural world he revered. Having recognized early the accelerating rate of ecological destruction in the mid-20th century, he helped found the Wisconsin branch of the Nature Conservancy in 1960 and inspired other projects in Wisconsin, Hawaii and Mexico.

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is hosting a project designed to explore women’s existing roles in African peacemaking and to see what lessons can be gleaned from their mostly informal initiatives.

University of Wisconsin–Madison ecologists have played a key role in a petition filed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Friday seeking emergency Endangered Species Act protection for the Venus flytrap.

Plenty of apps are born over a cup of joe or a glass of wine or beer. Find out how an app for rating microbrews inspired a GPS-based geology app that serves both amateurs and professionals.

As scientists continue finding evidence for life in the ocean more than 3 billion years ago, those ancient fossils pose a paradox that raises questions about whether there was more land mass than previously thought.

An international team of scientists has discovered microscopic crystals telling of unimaginable pressures and temperatures when an asteroid formed Meteor Crater in northern Arizona some 49,000 years ago.

Alex Kubicek brings Understory, a maker of weather station networks, back to Madison.

A chemistry lab has found a pair of catalysts that oxidize alcohols with significantly better energy efficiency.