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43 Proposals Submitted in Response to SHIC’s 2024 Plan of Work Competitive Call Under Review

The Executive Director of the Swine Health Information Center reports 43 research proposals submitted in response to its 2024 Plan of Work Competitive Call for proposals are now under review.

In January the Swine Health Information Center issued a formal request for research proposals to address 11 of 36 research priorities and topics outlined in its 2024 Plan of Work.

SHIC Executive Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder says the call received an outstanding response.

Quote-Dr. Megan Niederwerder-Swine Health Information Center:

We received a total of 43 proposals across 21 different institutions both in the U.S. and in Canada.These included academic institutions, government institutions as well as private institutions.We received a great proposal response and a lot of diversity and breadth of topics that are being covered.
Most of these topics and proposals have a timeline of between six to twelve months and a budget between 50 thousand to 150 thousand.

The proposals are currently undergoing review for aspects of the proposals such as the value to pork producers, the cost effectiveness of the technology that's being investigated, the chance of success as well as the experimental design or methodology regarding the conclusions of the proposals.We're also looking at cost budget justification as the time frame being justified.

Dr. Niederwerder says the proposals are now being evaluated by a task force made up of Swine Health Information Center Working Group members, other swine sector stakeholders such as pork producers, swine veterinarians, academic faculty members, allied industries and private company representatives. She expects that evaluation to be completed by the end of this month.Full details can be found at swinehealth.org.

Source : Farmscape.ca

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Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.