Lignin makes up about a quarter of plant biomass and is the most abundant source of renewable aromatics on Earth. Aromatics are materials with six carbon rings usually derived from petroleum that are the building blocks for a wide array from products - from plastics to pharmaceuticals.

Conventional wisdom in biofuels research holds that carbon efficiency is the most important factor for determining promising strategies for the production of biofuels. For researchers, this means that the more carbon in the crop that ends up as carbon in the fuel, the better.

University of Wisconsin-Madison materials engineers have made a surprising discovery that could dramatically improve the lifetime of solar energy harvesting devices.   

National parks in the U.S. are more vulnerable to climate change than the rest of the country, according to a study out today [Sept.

University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers secured three grants totaling $3 million to advance high-risk, high-reward and interdisciplinary research into quantum physics and technology, the National Science Foundation announced today, Sept. 24.

A process invented at UW–Madison is now removing phosphorus at Madison’s regional sewage treatment plant. Like many other advances from the colleges of agriculture and engineering, this one is designed to reduce the cost and environmental consequences of wastewater treatment.

Large-scale data centers — the massive warehouses full of mainframe computers that form the information backbones of companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon — will soon account for as much as one-fifth of electric power use in the United States.