(Credit:
MIT)
From the plains of southern New Mexico, we bring you a story of headset-wearing cows. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are teaming up to remotely corral cattle using a wireless device that sends sound straight into the bovines' ears. HDTV-watching pigs can't be far behind.
The solar-powered "Ear-A-Round" is a naugahyde "helmet" held in place by the cow's ears. Atop the holster sits an electronics device hooked to sound-transmitting stereo earphones and containing a GPS unit that could let farmers monitor the animals' whereabouts from afar.
"It's a marriage between biology and electronics," said USDA research animal scientist Dean M. Anderson, who has been collaborating with MIT on the project for the last several years, but has focused on the concept of "directional virtual fencing (PDF)" for more than three decades.
"When I started, the letters 'GPS' meant nothing to me," Anderson said. "But...animal distribution on the landscape has been an age-old challenge. With free-ranging animals, you get areas on the landscape that are overused and other areas that are underused."
The patent-pending device is scheduled to be tested on about nine cows later this month at the USDA's Jornada Experimental Range in Las Cruces, N.M. Anderson noted that not all cattle in a given location will need to be fitted with the instrument--only herd leaders. The animals that will participate in the early testing are currently undergoing a sort of "IQ test for cows" that will identify herd leaders in that group, the researcher said.
... Read moreDenmark-based Agroplast wants to transform pig urine into plastic dinnerware and household items.
We all have to have dreams, I suppose.
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The company has essentially devised a way to better commercialize urea, a compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, found in urine.
Other animal waste products like manure can be inserted into the system, but pig urine is particularly interesting because it is an environmental hazard, says Peter Tøttrup, a partner at Seed Capital, a Danish venture firm that also helps the government incubate start-ups. We ran into Tøttrup at the coffee urn at the NordicGreen conference in Menlo Park, Calif., this week.
"There are 20 million pigs in Denmark, and what they do environmentally is a problem," he said.
Transforming farm waste into plastic precursors is potentially attractive over other bioplastic ideas because the feedstock effectively has no value. In fact, it has negative value because animal waste must be disposed, which costs money. Some other bioplastic companies make their resins out of corn starch.
Tøttrup claims that the process could, conceivably, result in plastics that cost a third less than conventional plastics made from fossil fuels. That's a big conceivably. Traditionally, bioplastics made of vegetable matter have cost more than fossil fuel plastics. Evaluation of the pricing will have to wait until large volumes of this stuff are made. Agroplast is going into a pilot study now, Tøttrup said.
Agroplast says its farm-friendly chemicals have other uses too. They can be used as fertilizers, as an ingredient in lotions, and "as a flavor enhancer in cigarettes," according to the company's Web site.
That puts a new spin on the good, clean taste of Kools.
HALF MOON BAY, Calif.--Chlorine is bad for you, and iodine isn't, points out Jared Franks, CEO of Ioteq, and that difference is the basis of the company's business.
The Australian company has come up with a water purification system that kills microbes with iodine rather than chlorine or ozone. Ioteq's Isan system basically immerses fruit and vegetables in iodine-soaked water, and monitors the iodine dosage.
After purification, the produce gets bagged and sent to grocery stores. The process leaves a minimal iodine residue that is not harmful to people--and it doesn't change the flavor, Franks said. Iodine is a nutrient used by the medical profession to clean germs. The residue can also be washed off.
Not only does the iodine kill microbes, it extends the shelf life of produce. Some Australian customers are able to keep cherries on store shelves for eight weeks--far longer than normal, Franks said during a presentation and a meeting at the AlwaysOn Venture Summit West here Friday.
The water in the Isan system can also be used several times, which cuts processing costs. The system sucks the iodine out of one purification cycle and sends the water back to the start of the process. With water in short supply in places like Australia and California, that's a big deal, Franks said.
While Ioteq currently sells its products to food growers, it hopes to branch into the municipal-water market, selling large-scale systems to water districts.
It has installed 150 systems so far.
Agriculture and water are often overlooked, but they are two of the growing wings of the clean-tech market. Organic produce is booming, and grocery markets and organic growers, of course, can't use chemicals to kill fungi or bacteria.
Farmers, meanwhile, have been stung by spinach recalls. Municipal-water districts are currently going through upgrades of their systems. And consumers complain about the chemical taste of tap water.
As a result, companies such as AgraQuest have devised biopesticides while others, such as Novazone, have come up with ways to disinfect harvested food with ozone.
Ioteq claims that it has an advantage over ozone systems in capital cost. Its purification systems cost only $5,000 to $15,000, less than the equipment required for ozone treatment, he said. (Novazone has said its systems cost closer to $100,000, but the throughput of the systems is different. I'll try to do a more detailed comparison later.)
Interestingly, Ioteq doesn't make much money on the hardware. Instead, the profits come from selling iodine to its installed base. The iodine market, Franks added, is fairly stable. It comes from Chile and Japan, and the price doesn't fluctuate much.
Chlorine as a chemical costs less, he admitted, but Ioteq's Isan system needs fewer chemicals to get the job done. The Isan system needs only about 30 parts per million of iodine to clean fruit. Chlorine needs about 200 parts per million.
As they say in the water business, it's a wash at that point.
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