As a family physician in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, Joel Charles, medical director at the Kickapoo Valley Medical Clinic, has seen more than his share of flooding – and the toll it takes on his patients’ mental and physical health.

The plummeting cost of renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic solar and wind has, not surprisingly, prompted more individuals and businesses to rely on them.

The Wisconsin Energy Institute will explore the potential economic benefits, environmental impacts, and sustainability implications of Wisconsin’s emerging bioeconomy at a free online event on Wednesday, Oct. 21, from 9 a.m.–12 p.m.

It’s a sweltering August day in 2019.

In 1909, the German chemist Fritz Haber sparked an agricultural revolution. Using enormous pressures and high temperatures, he had learned how to efficiently transform nitrogen, so abundant in the air, into ammonia. Artificial fertilizer was born.

An international research collaboration led by VIB-UGent Professor Wout Boerjan, and involving the U.S. Department of Energy Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, has opened up new possibilities for stably fine-tuning the amount of lignin in poplar by applying CRISPR/Cas9 technology.

Recently converted farmlands aren’t as productive as traditional food cropping systems, but cultivating bioenergy feedstocks could provide alternative revenue sources for farmers, reduced competition with food production, and better maintenance of water quality due to soil fixation by root systems.