By Lindsay Grace/The Conversation

Video games are often blamed for unemployment, violence and addiction – including by partisan politicians raising moral concerns. It might feel like something new, a sidecar to technology. But fears about the effects of recreational games on society as a whole are centuries old. History shows a cycle of apprehension and acceptance about games that is very like events of modern times.
One of the earliest known written descriptions of games, for example, comes from the Dialogues of the Buddha, which dates back to the fifth century B.C. and purports to record the actual words of the Buddha himself. In them, he is reported to say that “some recluses . . . while living on food provided by the faithful, continue addicted to games and recreations; that is to say . . . games on boards with eight or with 10, rows of squares.”

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Posted on October 10, 2019

By The Illinois Department of Agriculture

The Illinois Department of Agriculture recently wrapped up its Industry Dairy Tour, which highlighted the state’s dairy industry to foreign market buyers.
Twenty-two farmers and agribusiness owners from Mexico, Guatemala and Thailand took part in the three-day tour, making stops in Highland, Greenville, Champaign, Mansfield and Naperville before the final stop in Chicago.
The dairy tour takes place every other year and gives foreign buyers a chance to purchase embryos, semen, cattle and other Illinois dairy products.

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Posted on October 9, 2019

By Technomic

Dessert is a dining mainstay, with 41% of consumers eating dessert after a meal at least once a week, Technomic’s 2019 Dessert Consumer Trend Report reveals.
Operators continue to streamline menus across all mealparts though and, as such, dessert menus have shrunk over the past two years in terms of number of items offered at both limited-service and full-service restaurants.

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Posted on October 3, 2019

By Jake Walsh/WisContext

The vast majority of what happens under the surface of lakes goes unrecorded, meaning potentially important ecological stories are often lost to history. These stories are the currency scientists use to better understand natural resources in Wisconsin, yet they slip away in even the most highly monitored places.
Madison’s Lake Mendota, championed as the most well-studied in the world, is one such case. Since the late 1970s the lake has been sampled roughly 15 times per year as part of routine monitoring that has yielded major advances in ecological understanding. Interpreted another way: In this best-case scenario, there are 350 days per year that Lake Mendota goes unsampled, not to mention the lake’s condition prior to routine monitoring.
However, scientists have access to at least some of the lake’s history thanks to the sediments that settle onto its bed, quietly keeping a record of its past. Each layer of sediment builds on the last, collecting dead, decaying organisms and discarded matter, all of which can be used to examine the ecological history of lakes, much like tree-rings or ice cores. Using these natural archives, researchers can fill the gaps in long-term monitoring data to better understand Wisconsin’s lakes.

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Posted on October 2, 2019