#Precision farming Gains Global Foothold (Op-Ed) Lloyd Treinish leads the environmental science team in the Industry Solutions Department at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research center.
A co-developer of IBM's Deep Thunder precision agriculture system he contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
Op-Ed & Insights. Our world is getting larger and hungrier with every tick of the clock.
Indeed each second the world's population grows by two more people and by 2050 food production must increase by at least 70 percent to keep pace.
Unfortunately about half of the world's food is consumed never due to inefficiencies in the harvesting storage and delivery of crops.
Even in developed nations about 30 percent of purchased food ends up going to waste and supply-chain inefficiencies only exacerbate the problem.
Certainly weather-related events like the current and long-lasting drought in portions of the U s. add further complexity to the science of farming as resultant crop damage food supply shortages
and rising commodities prices frequently illustrate. To help reverse this sobering trend and to generate enough food to meet the ever-growing demands of a growing global population today's
and tomorrow's agribusinesses need to embrace smarter farming methods. Fortunately the technology to do so is available and working right now.
Fueling better farming is a practice known as precision agriculture which uses extensive data from a farmer's field
and the surrounding region to help predict weather conditions and optimize operations. While collecting real-time data on weather soil health of crops and air quality is important as is the availability of equipment
and labor predictive analytics can be much a smarter approach for making better farming decisions.
Precision agriculture can help farmers from Brunei to Brazil pinpoint the best time for harvesting to mitigate crop damage and loss;
determine how many workers are needed at harvest time; and show how and when to deploy delivery trucks to ensure immediate shipment an especially important factor in farmlands where the lack of paved roads can paralyze distribution.
Those and other smarter farming methods including techniques used early in the growing cycle are reducing weather-related crop damage by as much as 25 percent in some areas ensuring that fewer crops are wasted
and more food makes it to the dinner table. The development and use of those predictive analytics based techniques and technologies is limited not to mega-farms.
Small family-run fields and co-ops worldwide are also reaping better results by maximizing production and reducing waste.
According to the U s. Department of agriculture weather-related incidents cause 90 percent of all crop losses. Precision agriculture helps address that problem by improving weather forecasting
and modeling and localizing it even within a particular farm. Knowing that it will rain in Nairobi Kenya is irrelevant
if skies are clear above your farm just outside of the city. At IBM we developed a precision agriculture weather-modeling service using Deep Thunder our Big data analytics technology for local customized high-resolution and rapid weather predictions.
It gathers data from sensors placed throughout fields that measure the temperature and moisture levels in soil and surrounding air.
That information is combined with multi-spectral images of fields taken by advanced camera systems from satellites and airplanes.
The system then combines the field data with a diversity of public data from the National oceanic and atmospheric administration the National aeronautics and space administration and the U s. Geological Survey and private data from companies like Earth Networks.
A supercomputer processes the combined data and generates a four-dimensional mathematical model derived from the physics of the atmosphere.
In practical terms a farmer armed with precise weather forecasting information may choose to hold off on fertilizing an area of a farm expecting heavy rains;
With 70 percent of the world's freshwater supply already going to agriculture every drop counts.
and predicting of weather effects on transportation networks can help farmers make better decisions about which routes and methods will be fastest to transport harvested food.
and heavy rain can cause trucks to get stuck in mud. Coupling predictive analytics and modeling techniques with other sophisticated farming methods can prove to be quite beneficial
when resources like water are at a premium. For instance many farmers are now using methods like flow-through irrigation drip irrigation micro-sprinklers and more efficient use of groundwater to increase yields.
Getting more crop per drop not only improves farm productivity but provides enough return on investment to fund additional high-tech solutions.
While the days of farmers using the divining rod to find water are passed long since many farmers especially in developing countries still rely too much on guesswork in making planting irrigation and harvesting decisions.
By combining supercomputing and Big data analytics with other technological innovations even farmers with modest means can bolster production and profits.
And all of us who eat will be grateful. The views expressed are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher l
#A New Reason to Love Bottom Feeders: They Suck up Carbon Updated on Wednesday June 4 at 4 p m. ET.
Slickhead fish don't have many champions. They're watery-muscled bottom feeders (that's not an insult)
Yet in U k. waters the abundant but undesirable creatures often fill fishing nets and trawls much to the displeasure of fishermen.
and the University of Southampton laughing. But Trueman has another serious reason to be fond of the ugly fish:
-and-trade scheme this amount of CO2 equates to 8-14 million British pounds ($13-23 million) per year in carbon credits the researchers estimated.
One of the things that we really wanted to be able to do was show that these slightly obscure animals actually perform a service that has an economic value
Many scientists have assumed that bottom feeders get most of their energy from tiny particles of organic matter that settle on the seafloor.
instead that at least half or more of all the fish living on the seafloor might get their energy from animals that migrate each day between the surface and deep water like jellyfish cephalopods and small fish.
which are natural tracers of the flow of energy through ecosystems Trueman explained. From an animal's isotope levels scientists can partially reconstruct its diet and place in the food web.
and carbon dioxide are driving climate change. Natural carbon sinks like forests and oceans are critical for helping soak up some of these gases.
However the amount of carbon that deep-sea fish trap is compared miniscule with the emissions released into the atmosphere by humans.
The paper may have more relevance for our understanding of biogeochemical cycles internal to the oceans.
Even so as fishing energy and mining operations move into deeper waters Trueman said researchers will need to understand how bottom feeders which may play an important
but unappreciated role in marine ecosystems can be managed properly conserved and exploited. The research was detailed in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Editor's note:
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+.+Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.+Original article on Live Science e
#'Roboclam'Digging Machine As Fast as Natural Burrowers A robot that can dig quickly and deeply into mud or wet sand could one day help lay underwater cables,
low-power systems to move through soil,"said Amos Winter, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT."
because they can move through more than a kilometer of soil with the energy of an AA battery."
and in the razor clam's natural environment in the mudflats off the coast of Gloucester, Mass.
a Massachusetts-based company that builds and operates robotic underwater vehicles for defense, commercial and scientific purposes.
The Roboclam could anchor Bluefin Robotics'vehicles when they need to remain stationary in a current,
blow up underwater mines or set sensors in the ocean.""The research was published online today (April 8) in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics s
#Why Does Less Meat Mean Less Heat?(Op-Ed) Josh Balk is food policy director at The Humane Society of the United states (HSUS.
After long focusing on fuel economy and energy production environmentalists and scientists are now promoting a diet of more plants and less meat to slow climate change but why?
According to the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations global animal agriculture produces vast amounts of crops to feed billions of farm animals long before they are consumed themselves.
The scope of animal agriculture s impact on climate change has for decades been underestimated. The raising and slaughtering of farm animals is just one component.
Raising animals for food also includes feed-crop production which requires extensive water energy and chemical use as well as energy for transporting that feed live animals and animal products.
The total process for bringing such vast quantities of meat egg and dairy products to our plates comes at a substantial cost to the environment.
As a result of animal agriculture's impact on climate change organizations like the Natural resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club support eating more plant-based meals.
The power of making such a subtle change in our lives is remarkable. A Carnegie mellon University study found that eating plant-based meals even just one day a week reduces more greenhouse gases than eating exclusively local foods every day (a practice some people admirably
though mistakenly think leads to a major environmental impact due to the reduced travel miles to transport the food).
Americans are taking note: Figures from the U s. Department of agriculture and the National Agricultural Statistics Service show that our meat consumption is at its lowest level in years.
About a half-billion fewer animals are now being raised for food than just several years ago reducing animal agriculture's global impact.
This is the result of countless people choosing to reduce their meat consumption and participating in efforts like Meatless Monday becoming flexitarian or
what New york times columnist Mark Bittman calls Vegan Before 6. According to Gallup millions of Americans also have become vegetarian or vegan.
Dietary strategies have taken hold that further this impact such as the Three Rs endorsed by The HSUS:
Reducing or replacing consumption of animal products while refining diets (switching to products from sources that adhere to higher animal-welfare standards).
This growing movement includes former President Bill clinton and former Vice president Al gore both of whom are now eating primarily a plant-based diet.
and has said on his blog: As an environmentalist I think our global consumption of meat is far too high.
And former George w bush and Sarah Palin speechwriter Matthew Scully is vegan writing in his book Dominion regarding farm animal production
I know a crime against nature when I see one. While there is certainly much public
and corporate policy work to be done to address global climate change it's heartening to see leaders
whether it s a Meatless Monday or any other day we'd spare more than one billion animals from the horrors of factory farms
With more people sharing our mutual responsibility to reduce carbon footprints by shifting to plant-based meals we have reason to be hopeful for our planet's future.
Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates and become part of the discussion on Facebook Twitter and Google+.
+The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
The team developed flexible sheets of light sensors, containing a temperature-sensitive dye, that can automatically sense
"These devices are capable of producing black-and-white patterns that spontaneously match those of the surroundings, without user input or external measurement,
researchers from the University of Houston and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created cephalopod-inspired materials that can sense
They developed flexible sheets consisting of color-changing elements on top of a white reflective surface with moving devices and light sensors.
the tiny pigment-containing and light-reflecting organs in cephalopods. The reflective background is like leucophores (white chromatophores found in some cephalopod species;
and the light sensor acts like structures that contain opsins, which are involved light-sensitive receptors in vision.
I"(for University of Illinois). Systems like this one could lead to adaptive camouflage technology that can be tuned to its environment,
and integrated into electronics for a variety of applications, from military to industrial uses, the researchers said d
#Shrilk: Bug-Inspired'Plastic'Made from Shrimp Shells If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then insects have a lot to be flattered about.
From cameras to robots bugs have inspired already a lot of technology and now two scientists working at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering are looking to replace plastic with a new material based on the hard shells of insects.
They call their material Shrilk. Traditional plastics are the children of oil. They are derived from the petrochemical process.
Some take thousands of years to naturally degrade and disappear back into Earth s environment.
But bug parts break down in only a year or two. Many insects like houseflies and beetles have rigid exoskeletons.
So do ocean dwelling distant relatives like shrimp. It's why they make such a loud crunching sound
The exoskeleton is made out of cuticle a composite of the natural polymer chitin and silklike strands of a rubbery substance called resilin.
This extends its potential uses beyond consumer plastics and into medical sutures scaffolds and protective burn coverings that dissolve over time Making Shrilk required carefully analyzing the chemistry of insect chitin.
Hard insect exoskeletons are made from layers of polysaccharide polymer and a protein in a plywoodlike structure.
Insects use this relatively simple recipe to create hard shells and pliable joints. Shrilk uses a structurally strong polysaccharide made from shrimp shells called chitosan
The U s. Food and Drug Administration has approved already Shrilk's ingredients which would make it easier to use for medical purposes.
but work on Shrilk continues in the lab exploring ways to use the material in moist environments (it becomes flexible
#Facial recognition Tech Can Read Your Emotions If someone is described as smiling but not with their eyes that person is likely faking the smile.
New software by California-based company Emotient can do just that. Using a simple digital camera Emotient's software can analyze a human face
and determine whether that person is feeling joy sadness surprise anger fear disgust contempt or any combination of those seven emotions.
The company's software called Facet can reconnect those dots by accurately reading the emotions registering on a person's face in a single photograph or video frame.
All it needs is a resolution of at least 40 by 40 pixels. Smile Secrets: 5 Things Your Grin Reveals About You Using Facet on a video sequence produces even more interesting results
because the software can track the fluctuations and strengths of emotion over time and even capture microexpressions or little flickers of emotion that pass over people's faces before they can control themselves
The software can also pick up on other subtle facial signs that a human might miss.
In these types of cases the software does need images clearer than 40 pixels but the required resolution is still within a common webcam's capabilities.
Medical applications So what are some uses for software that can identify human emotions based on facial expressions?
Facet's applications are incredibly far-reaching from treating children with autism to play-testing video games.
Recognizing other people's emotions based on their facial expressions is a challenge for many people who have an autism spectrum disorder particularly children.
As a research professor at the University of California San diego's Machine Perception Lab Bartlett has been studying the use of facial recognition software to help people with autism for several years. 5 Controversial Mental health Treatments
Using an earlier version of Facet's software for example Bartlett and her colleagues created a game in
which players are asked to mimic the facial expressions of a cartoonish character on the screen. Using Emotient's software the game assesses the player's success in recreating that expression and returns a score.
This game helps children with autism recognize other people's emotions through their facial expressions as well as teaches them how to make facial expressions that express their own feelings.
Facial-expression recognition and facial-movement recognition are intertwined very closely said Bartlett. That's the way the brain works.
It's not that you have one brain that does the recognition and one that does movement;
it's a network that feeds on itself. Building that facial muscle memory also helps players recognize their own emotions
#It's easy to speculate on how software that can recognize the emotions behind human facial expressions
Instead Bartlett said Emotient is now working on among other things the software's potential for identifying
but with Facet doctors could make more accurate depression diagnoses and also determine whether their patients are responding well to their medication Bartlett said.
Email#jscharr@technewsdaily. com#or follow her#@Jillscharr. Follow us@livescience#Facebook#&#Google+.+Original article on#Live Science n
#Hemopurifier FDA Approved to Filter Ebola Out of Blood in Clinical Study Aethlon Medical, a San diego, CA firm,
with up to 10 hospitals cleared to participate. The company is currently studying the device for treating Hepatitis C with patients on chronic dialysis,
and the Ebola study is based on its protocol l
#Medgadget@CES 2015: ADAMM Intelligent Asthma Management Wearable Walking through expansive, smoke-filled casinos, traversing the miles and miles of exhibitors,
and wading through the crowds too close for comfort, this editor was afraid his asthma might flare up as he made his way around CES in Las vegas last week.
Perhaps if he were wearing a smart sensing patch called ADAMM, asthma would be the least of his worries.
ADAMM (Automated Device for Asthma Monitoring and Management) is an upcoming wearable developed by Rochester, NY based Health care Originals.
Measuring about the diameter of a hockey puck, this smart patch can not only tell when the wearer is experiencing an asthma attack by measuring heart rate,
ADAMM transmits its data wirelessly to a mobile app, where it can remind the wearer to take their medication,
he explained that pediatrics is a huge opportunity for the company. Children aren always able to perceive
if their asthma is starting to flare up, and even then, they often lack the discipline to use their inhaler.
ADAMM can help ensure that parents can monitor for asthma flare-ups, even when they are away from their kids.
#German bank and EU offers funding to Chile mining power plant State owned German bank Kfw has said it is to advance a#100 million loan ($123 million),
to help provide funding for Chile first solar-thermal power plant which will supply electricity to the mining industry.
The German bank announced an advancement of its loan in a statement today, the funding represents around 10%of the total investment that is estimated to be required for the power plant project.
In addition, Germany environment ministry is set to support the project with interest subsidies and consultancy for the build as part of its global development policies.
The plant is set to be built by Abengoa SA (ABG) a Spanish company that offers global renewable energy solutions. his project will help prove the economic operation of concentrated solar power technology in the Earth sunbelt,
German Environment minister Barbara Hendricks said. ecause it can store energy, this technology is suited also for basic electricity supply and therefore highly innovative.
Furthermore, the European commission will provide a further#15 million euros, to be given to Kfw through its Latin american Investment programme.
The project is hoped to ease strain on Chile energy sector and improve efficiencies in the country mining industry;
at present it is estimated that mines operated in the country contributed to around a third of the nation total power consumption.
Chile lacks extensive fossil-fuels to support such ongoing energy consumption by industry that is necessary for its economy
and therefore has invested in renewable energy resources and innovative technologies to improve efficiency. The plant is expected to be operational by 2017
and begin supplying mining operations with power n
#Cyanide storage for mining wins overall 2014 ICHEME Global Award Technology to produce cyanide on-site at mines for metal extraction was crowned last night the overall winner of the 2014
Institute of Chemical Engineers (ICHEME) Global Awards. The Synergen Nacn Plant has been developed in a joint venture between Synergen Met,
an Australian mining technology firm established to produce this technology, and engineers at the University of Queensland.
Christopher Dunks, managing director of Synergen Met, accepted the award on behalf of the project team. his award validates the importance of our site based cyanide production unit
and the paradigm shift it generates for the supply of cyanide to the global mining community,
says Dunks. t also validates the important impact it will have affected on communities by mines and the impact of removing cyanide from transport networks.
Sodium cyanide is highly toxic but vital for extracting metals such as gold from its ore. Currently sodium cyanide is transported to and from a site,
but the researchers developed a modular, self-contained, plasma-based unit to generate sodium cyanide at the mine itself.
This technology eliminates the need to transport, store or handle both solid and liquid sodium cyanide.
Not only is it much safer, the researchers say it is up to 50%cheaper for mine operators.
The plant is around the size of a 40 foot shipping container making it transportable with the use of on-site machinery.
and has been in operation at a gold mine in Australia since 2014 i
#New water-spray technology reduces coal dust by 60%Technology that has been in development by Southern Illinois University (SIU) researchers for over four years is now ready to be sold.
Following a successful patent application for an individually tailored dust control system to limit the build up of coal dust in minerslungs.
This accumulation of dust causes respiratory problems and is one of the primary long term dangers of coal mining.
Professor of Mining at SIU, Paul Chugh estimates that this advancement may reduce coal dust levels nywhere from 40 to 60 per cent The technology is free of chemicals
and efficiency Tool and equipment management systems using radio-frequency identification (RFID), provided by Toolhound Inc,
. is improving efficiency, security and productivity at a Canadian diamond mine. According to a company statement, the unnamed mining operation was facing a security challenge as its tools are utilised 24/7,
which required constant access to the store housing valuable equipment and it had been determined that having a full time staffing of the room was impractical.
The solution provided was an installation of a kiosk with a fully automated inventory system with
which mining operatives can checkout and return tools or equipment using a radio scanning technology,
with each individual responsible for the equipment they take. racking metal tools that are covered typically in dirt requires quick and reliable RFID technology,
particularly when there is no tool attendant on site to verify the checkout process, said Dean Perry, president of Toolhound.
He continued to say that the technology rovides real-time tool tracking and management for convenient access without sacrificing security, reducing tool loss and increasing productivity.
All tools and handheld equipment are tagged with both RFID-on-metal tags and standard RFID tags which the inventory system can scan.
The kiosk has an inventory scanner and a touch screen monitor to allow miners to interact with the system;
according to the company worker simply scans their badge and chooses whether they are checking out
or returning inventorythe worker confirms that the list of scanned items matches their inventory to ensure accountability.
The implementation of the technology has improved security as tools can only be accessed using company ID badges, with each worker accountable for their inventories.
The technology has increased efficiency as more tools are available, with no expenditure on full-time security staff to operate a tool store required
#ABB#s MIDAS Library technology released Swiss power and automation technology group ABB has released a new technology that is designed to help engineers easily resolve electrical problems in mines right from their control room.
The new technology is called the System 800xa mining integrated distribution automation system (MIDAS) Library and features an enhanced substation control
and monitoring platform that provides the team with real-time analytics including graphical status interlocks and measurement and phasor diagrams.
The system is particularly innovative because the operator can monitor and gain access to the entire electrical infrastructure of the mine from a single workstation and a single software package.
The company said in a statement: The MIDAS Library also makes it simple for engineers to deal with intelligent electronic devices (IEDS) for protection and control of the electrical system.
A right-click of the mouse brings up a full suite of technical information including manuals information on the devices parameters and its role in the wider system.
And as the IEDS can be connected to the automation system by Ethernet one team can control substations in many different and distant locations o
#New 3-D microscope could benefit mining A University of Utah team discovered a method for turning a small,
$40 needle into a 3-D microscope capable of taking images up to 70 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Designed by Rajesh Menon, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and graduate student Ganghun Kim, the microscope technique works when an LED light is illuminated
and guided through a fiberoptic needle or cannula. Returned pictures are reconstructed into 3-D images using algorithms developed by Menon and Kim. nlike miniature microscopes,
our approach does not use optics, Menon says. t primarily computational. He says this approach will allow researchers
The microscope was designed originally for the lab of Nobel prize-winning U human genetics professor, Mario R. Capecchi,
large field-of-view and implantable features will allow researchers to use this in fields ranging from biochemistry to mining. b
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