The Nelson Institute Blog

UW-Madison has submitted its mobile application for accreditation of the university’s Human Research Protection Program (HRPP), a program designed to ensure the protection of the rights and welfare of individuals recruited to participate in research conducted at UW-Madison. The accreditation includes the campus’s four Institutional Review Boards (IRBs).

By pursuing accreditation of its HRPP, UW-Madison furthers its goal of applying the highest ethical standards in its protection of human research participants, in addition to ensuring compliance with federal regulations. For further details, see news release.

1) 2007 Morris K. Udall Undergraduate Scholarship

-Emily J. Heim, Udall Scholar
-Benjamin W. Dickey, Udall Honorable Mention

The Morris K. Udall Foundation annually awards about 80 scholarships to continuing undergraduates who demonstrate leadership potential, academic achievement, and a commitment to a career in the environment, health care or tribal public policy. This year’s Udall Scholars will assemble in Tucson, Arizona, this August to receive their awards and to meet policy-makers and community leaders in environmental fields, tribal health care, and governance.

2) Theodore Herfurth and Teddy Kubly Awards for Initiative and Efficiency

-Julie M. Curti, Herfurth-Kubly Award Winner

The Theodore Herfurth and Teddy Kubly Awards for Initiative and Efficiency, supported by the Theodore Herfurth and Teddy Kubly family, are awarded to a senior man and senior woman who made the maximum use of their time at UW–Madison, demonstrating productivity in the classroom and the community. The awards are among the oldest presented at the university; the Herfurth award for a senior man was introduced in 1928, followed by the Kubly award for a senior woman in 1943.

3) Holstrom Environmental Scholarship

-Julianna M. Arntzen, Holstrom Scholar
-Jenna Guensburg, Holstrom Scholar

The Holstrom Environmental Scholarships were created with funding from Carleton and Mary Beth Holstrom of Pipersville, PA. The award provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to get involved in a meaningful way in the research enterprise and to foster collaborative research between undergraduate students and faculty or instructional academic staff members.

4) 2006 Annie’s Environmental Studies Scholarship

-Catherine C. Collentine, 2006 Scholar

Annie’s Environmental Studies Scholarship is an award program that assists undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in environmental advocacy and who are devoting their studies to environmentally-related fields.

Could kites help solve water shortages around the world?

Three UW-Madison graduate students will split a $7,000 cash prize for devising an environmentally friendly technology and business plan with that premise as the bottom line.

M.B.A. students Robert Creighton and Sean Ebert, and Arnav Anand, who is earning an M.S. in industrial engineering, devised the scheme, which they presented on April 20 as part of the G. Steven Burrill Technology Business Plan Competition, sponsored by the University of Wisconsin School of Business.

The trio took second place out of 10 entries in the overall contest and received the first Nelson Institute Award for Sustainability in Entrepreneurship. Their product, called WindLift, would use power generated by kites to pump water from deep underground in areas of the world that now rely mostly on diesel-powered or manual pumps.

Initiated in 1998, the annual Burrill competition encourages cross-functional student teams of UW-Madison students to develop and present technology-based business plans.

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Below, from left, award winners Arnav Anand, Sean Ebert, and Robert Creighton. To view their 22-minute presentation, visit the Burill Technology Business Plan Competition Media Site and click on the WindLift link.

In an article for the New York Times titled “You Are What You Grow,” Michael Pollan looks at Twinkies and carrots, and asks, “So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?” Read his answer, and consider the policy implications, here.

The CNA Corporation, working with a military advisory panel of retired U.S. generals and admirals, has released a report on the implications of climate change for national and international conflict / security. NPR’s Morning Edition reports the story, and summarizes the panel’s findings and recommendations.

Thomas L. Friedman on renaming green in the New York Times: The Power of Green

Peter Nowak and Nicholas Balster will be honored by UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences next month. Nowak, a professor of rural sociology and environmental studies, will receive the college’s Robert G.F. and Hazel T. Spitze Land Grant Faculty Award for Excellence, while Balster, an assistant professor of soil science and environmental studies, will receive the Jung Teaching Award. The awards will be presented at a ceremony May 2 in the Biochemistry Building.

Governor Jim Doyle has appointed Professor Jonathan Foley to a state Task Force on Global Warming whose creation was announced today on the UW-Madison campus. Foley directs the Nelson Institute’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. Doyle also announced the establishment of a state Office of Energy Independence. See news release.

By Chad Monfreda for Worldchanging.com.

Somebody call a plumber! The Mississippi River Basin needs fixing.

Industrial agriculture is rupturing the basin’s 3.2 million km2 of plumbing, leaking nitrates into the Gulf of Mexico, topsoil into waterways, and in general wreaking ecological havoc over an area that spans 41% of lower US and 1/8 of North America.

Industrial agriculture undoubtedly feeds a lot of mouths. But it also causes problems that are too complex, cover too vast an area, and involve too many people for there to be a single answer.

Our plumber won’t come from any particular government agency, green technology, or grassroots push. In fact, the solution won’t come from any one plumber at all but a dexterous and resourceful guild. They will be artisans with an impressive toolbox, and when the pipe wrench is missing will know who can loan another. And most of all, our plumbers will be skilled at putting the broken basin back together again, without making a fetish of the old ways.

The Mississippi River Basin has deteriorated over the last 50 years as industrial agriculture severed the links binding people and livestock, land and water, farmers and customers. In an essay titled The Vegetable-Industrial Complex, Michael Pollan, paraphrasing Wendell Berry, puts it best:

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