A MANICURED GOLF COURSE may be the last place you’d expect to find old tires, let alone the end products of sewage treatment. But in fact, greens and fairways are a great place to recycle a variety of castoffs.

Researchers at UW-Madison’s O.J. Noer turfgrass facility have shown that putting a layer of shredded tires under a golf green can help keep fertilizers out of groundwater.

Golf courses can recycle effluent, too. Some golf courses in the Southwest are using effluent wastewater to irrigate turf, which has benefits for both turf and groundwater. “Right now, nutrients in effluent are discharged into surface water,” says CALS soil scientist Doug Soldat, who has been testing wastewater irrigation to see how suitable it is for Wisconsin’s conditions. “Plants have the opportunity to take out the nitrogen and phosphorus, and they’re very efficient at cleaning that up.” In fact, CALS was involved in this work as early as the 1920s, when Oyvind Juul Noer, the namesake of CALS’ modern turfgrass facility, pioneered technology to manufacture fertilizer from sewage sludge. The product of that research, marketed under the name Milorganite, has been used on U.S. golf courses since 1925.

Even course sites can be recycled. Several new golf developments have sprouted in land that can’t be used for much else, including former industrial sites, abandoned strip mines and gravel pits.

Sidebar to: Do these genes make me look Fat?

Our bodies store fat in adipose cells, a connective tissue that stockpiles fats from the foods we eat and makes them available later when we need energy. Found under the skin and around internal organs, these cells keep the body warm and provide soft tissue between the body’s inner machinery—but you can have too much of a good thing. Although the number of adipose cells in our bodies doesn’t change much, their size can. Immature adipose cells contain hardly any fat at all, but adult ones can become swollen with glistening oil droplets, making them some of the largest cells in the body. When we consume more energy than we burn off—especially when the energy comes from foods rich in saturated fats and carbohydrates—it causes adipose cells to soak up more fat and grow in size. On the other hand, exercise or diet restrictions can have the opposite effect, shrinking adipose cells, and thus, our waistlines.

Sometimes it is difficult to tell what beginning biochemistry students struggle with more: the weight of their subject or the weight of their textbook. At six pounds and 1,100 pages, Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry is a backbreaking lesson that budding life scientists don’t soon forget.

David Nelson’s office is stacked with versions of a biochemistry textbook he co-authored with Michael Cox. The book has been translated into 12 languages.

David Nelson’s office is stacked with versions of a biochemistry textbook he co-authored with Michael Cox. The book has been translated into 12 languages.“It’s a classic,” says Dean Molly Jahn. “It was truly the flagship text when I was a student.”

It still is—thanks largely to the efforts of biochemistry professors David Nelson and Michael Cox. The pair have edited the textbook since original author Albert Lehninger died in 1986, ushering four new editions to press, the latest of which appeared this spring. The book remains one of the most heavily used introductory texts in the field, and it has been translated into 12 languages.

But when modern students are more likely to hit Google than crack a mammoth text in search of information, even standbys like Lehninger are having to adapt to avoid extinction. Science textbooks are now accompanied by web sites and CDs full of interactive features, designed to build upon the lessons imparted through the flat reality of print. The newest Lehninger edition, for example, has an online component with rotating molecule models and “living” line graphs, which allow students to change data and observe the effect.

All of which raises the question: Do students still need the book?

“I think it’s getting harder and harder to justify,” says Monica Theis BS’79 MS’88, a lecturer in food science who co-authors Introduction to Foodservice, a 700-page primer on the food industry. “These books are expensive, and it really makes me wonder if I should be requiring them.”

Theis says she uses her textbook less in her classes than she once did. Instead, she posts readings online and brings in current examples to spark discussion. At the same time, she thinks textbooks offer an organizing device that can help students filter and apply fundamental knowledge. If she were to drop the text entirely, she says, her course “might be messy.”

Nelson agrees. “The value of writing (the textbook) is that a good book really does help students learn,” he says. “If I thought the book wasn’t having that effect, I wouldn’t touch it.”

But after hauling Lehninger around all day, some students might not want to touch it, either. And that ultimately may drive change in textbooks. “There’s a lot more we can do to make these books more accessible and less intimidating,” says Nelson. “I would imagine they’re going to look very different in the future.”

—Michael Penn