For a glimpse into the future of urban farming, take a look inside a Hell’s Kitchen high school campus, a former public school in the Bronx, or even a nearby prison on Rikers Island. Either way, you’ll see the hand of Cornell University horticulture specialist Philson Warner at work. Warner … [continued]
A new piece of thin film manufacturing equipment with the unlikely name of Viper (TM) could help bring solar energy to the masses. Viper (TM) was developed by Sencera, a North Carolina company that got its start supplying thin film hardware for manufacturing transistors and integrated circuits.
If you don’t know what DARPA is, you will soon. The Defense Advanced Research Group invented the internet back in 1969, and now it has set its sights on geoengineering a cure for global warming. What does that mean? For one thing, it means that a communications network originally designed … [continued]
For the past eight years, NOAA has been collecting data from inexpensive instruments attached to lobster pots, in a little-known program called eMOLT. Lobsters don’t have the sex appeal of NOAA’s newest recruit, the Virgin Galactic, but the information has helped in the understanding of ocean circulation in the Gulf … [continued]
First there was the Life Straw. Then there was the Aquaduct Tricycle. Now ordinary sand could provide an answer to one of the thorniest problems of the future: how to purify drinking water for the many millions of people who don’t have access to a clean, disease-free source — and … [continued]
When it comes to methane gas emissions and the impact on global warming, one’s thoughts naturally turn to the barrage of untreated manure unleashed by factory farms. Methane is also an issue for small farms, especially the growing number of start-ups with little spare cash to invest in equipment. To … [continued]
Bokashi is a ramped-up, high-speed composting method first developed in Japan. What gives it the muscle that ordinary compost lacks? Think of the difference between wine and grape juice, and that’s the key to a fine bokashi.
If good things come in small packages, then a $70,000 small-business grant from the U.S. EPA could rock the fast food world. The pea sized grant will go to develop a low cost pollution control retrofit for commercial underfired charbroilers like the one at your local burger joint. Innova Tech, … [continued]
Corn is beginning to seem more and more like the has-been-that-never-was of the biofuel feedstock scene. An inedible, weedy-looking plant called crambe is the latest competitor to come along and stick a fork in it. Never heard of crambe? Then you haven’t been spending enough time in North Dakota.
We’re already harvesting methane from sewage and spreading treated sewage solids on farms and open space, so it’s not a stretch to imagine running our cars on biofuel from sewage, too. Specifically, running our cars on sewage grease. An enormous amount of grease enters our sewer systems – about 495 … [continued]
