Engineers from Harper Adams University in Shropshire are working on machines that can autonomously plant seeds, weed, water and spray without a farmer needing to venture into the field.
Professor Blackmore said: âI am trying develop a completely new agricultural mechanisation system based on small smart machines.
Dr. Holger #Strohm â #Negative #HealthEffect Of #Radioactive #Heavy #Metal #Plutonium #Poison From #Fukushima; #BioConcentration Into #Humans, Then #Recycling Through #Cremation And Medical #Waste #Incineration Through DNA Of Future #Generations http://www.agreenroadjournal.com/2013/08/dr-holger-strohm-fuâŠ12000.html
Todayâs Sputnik moment is Chinaâs rapid growth as an economic and technological superpower. In 2017 alone, China has outpaced the United States in renewable energy efforts and has become the standard-bearer in combating climate change and advocacy for globalization. Similarly, China is rapidly moving towards taking the lead in technology from the United States and is looking at quantum computing and artificial intelligence as areas for growth to do so.
The Verge recently published an article citing Alphabet chief executive officer Eric Schmidtâs perspective that the United States is falling behind when it comes to research and development in artificial intelligence, particularly compared to the rapid pace of innovation that China has set in the field. Schmidt, who is also the chair of the Defense Innovation Advisory Board, gave those remarks as part of a discussion at The Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Summit held by The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a nonprofit think tank dedicated to research and analysis on how the United States can make informed policy-making decisions on national security and defense.
Following a $200 million investment this summer â the largest agriculture-tech funding round in history â vertical farming startup Plenty is expanding beyond its Bay Area roots.
The company is opening a second farm in the greater Seattle area, Plenty CEO Matt Barnard told Business Insider. Located in Kent, Washington, the 100,000-square-foot warehouse facility will grow 4.5 million pounds of greens annually, which is enough to feed around 183,600 Americans, according to the USDA.
The new farm will officially start production in spring 2018. Instead of growing outdoors, Plenty grows its crops on glowing, LED-lit 20-foot-tall towers inside a former electronics distribution center in South San Francisco. The towers do not require soil, pesticides, or even natural sunlight.
A two-in-one solar bio-battery and solar panel has been created by researchers who printed living cyanobacteria and circuitry onto paper.
Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic micro-organisms that have been on Earth for billions of years. They are thought to be the primary reason why the Earthâs atmosphere is oxygen rich.
Now, a team has demonstrated that cyanobacteria could be used as an ink and printed from an inkjet printer in precise patterns onto electrically conductive carbon nanotubes, which were also inkjet-printed onto the piece of paper. The team showed that the cyanobacteria survived the printing process and were able to perform photosynthesis so that small amounts of electrical energy could be harvested over a period of 100 hours.
I was thinking about this thing, and the one in Iceland. Maybe we could build giant blimps in the atmosphere of Venus, it would carry that machine on its belly, and on the back of the blimp super advanced solar panels. Then inside of the blimp the CO2 could be mixed into liquid crystals or something like that and be dropped like rain down on the surface, to eventually terraform it.
Global Engineering â a phrase that describes steadying the worldâs climate with technical solutions. A Swiss company has received EU funding to develop a machine that captures CO2. Can it really make a difference?
Humanity has sought to make the Earthâs oceans potable for thousands of years. The Norse tale of Utgarda-Loki tells of Odin being tricked into drinking from a horn connected to the sea, while Exodus 15:22â26 of the Bible likely describes Moses desalinating the water of Marah:
When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, âWhat shall we drink?â And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.
Continue reading “Seawater desalination will quench the thirst of a parched planet” »
PROFITABLY recycling waste is always a good idea. And the Allen Institute for Brain Science, in Seattle, has found a way to recycle what is perhaps the most valuable waste of allâliving human brain tissue. Understandably, few people are willing to donate parts of their brains to science while they are still alive. But, by collaborating with seven local neurosurgeons, the instituteâs chief scientist, Christof Koch, and his colleagues, have managed to round up specimens of healthy tissue removed by those surgeons in order to get to unhealthy parts beyond them, which needed surgical ministration. Normally, such tissue would be disposed of as waste. Instead, Dr Koch is making good use of it.
The repository the cells from these samples end up in is a part of a wider project, the Allen Cell Types Database. The first data from the newly collected human brain cells were released on October 25th. The Allen database, which is open for anyone to search, thus now includes information on the shape, electrical activity and gene activity of individual human neurons. The electrical data are from 300 live neurons of various types, taken from 36 people. The shapes (see picture for example) are from 100 of these neurons. The gene-expression data come from 16,000 neurons, though those cells are post-mortem samples.
The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe. Because it is more complicated than animal brains in ways that (say) human livers are not more complicated than animal livers, using animal brains as analogues of human ones is never going to be satisfactory. Dr Kochâs new database may therefore help explain what is special about human brains. That will assist understanding of brain diseases and disorders. It may also shed light on one of his particular interests, the nature of consciousness.
Continue reading “The first data from a repository of living human brain cells” »
