What a Great Vintage of Hydrogen You Have

October 09, 2009

Over the summer, Penn State scientists developed a microbial fuel cell in the lab that uses bacteria to desalinate waste water and generate electricity, methane, or hydrogen. Now the method is taking root in wine country.

When the Napa Wine Company heard about environmental engineering professor Bruce Logan's research, they thought the waste water from their operations could be ideal for a larger-scale experiment. Logan's impressive reactor arrived at their winery last month (video), was inoculated, and is now in the preliminary stages of hydrogen production.

"The nice thing about hydrogen is it's a very clean fuel," Logan told me. "You can put it in a fuel cell." Ultimately he thinks the hydrogen could even be used to power machinery at the winery, although for now it's simply being vented. If all goes well, imagine waste water treatment plants becoming super-efficient power plants that make commercially-processed hydrogen. Being such a fan of useful bacteria, my hope is that Logan's method opens new doors for energy production at agricultural sites. Cheers, little guys!

Photo: Professor Logan with the reactor. Credit: Courtesy of Bruce Logan.

Superscanner is Superfast and Superfriendly

October 02, 2009

About a month ago, the University of Nottingham got the world's most advanced CT scanner with X-ray and 3-D imaging capabilities. Since then, scientists there have been loading all kinds of things into the machine.

Sacha Mooney, an associate professor in soil physics at the 
University of Nottingham, engaged an interdisciplinary group at the university to get the Nanotom scanner made by General Electric's Sensing and Inspection Technologies. I wondered why this was such a big deal. Can't you just put soil and other materials in a hospital scanner?

Mooney says that's exactly what he used to do earlier in his career, when the local hospital let him scan soil after hours. But the resolution wasn't high enough to see microstructures. Meanwhile, high-res scanners require small samples, meaning the materials have to be cut apart first. Larger-scale 3-D scanners exist but can take hours per scan, Mooney says. The Nanotom can do the two-stage scanning process in mere minutes.

The photobooth-sized scanner has enough space to accommodate a sample up to about the size of a one-liter bottle. Mooney says that one of the chaps from the Built Environment school is planning to scan sustainable materials to find out how well they perform, including heat retention.

The scanner can also illuminate how different soils and seeds bred to be drought-resistant interact. "We can actually see the water inside the plant," Mooney says. "We can almost watch roots growing in the soil."

The scientists are even working with a chocolate company that's interested in what causes their product to shrink and crack. Soil is great and all, but if you ask me what merits a superscanner, it's definitely chocolate science.

Images: The scanner shows a worm's eye view of a root (top) and the inside of a candy bar (bottom). Courtesy of Sacha Mooney.

Wide Angle: Arming Soybeans Against Pests

September 28, 2009

To a soybean plant, an aphid is a lot like a mosquito. What if we could help soybean plants fight back...and win? Scientists in Iowa might have found a way that doesn't involve pesticides.

W. Allen Miller, a professor of plant pathology at Iowa State University, and his colleague, entomology professor Bryony Bonning, have been studying a plant virus that aphids eat but just passes through them. The scientists are working on adding a gene to soybeans with the protein coat from the virus attached to an aphid toxin, so that when aphids feed on the plant, they die. The gene wouldn't affect humans.

"Something else could feed on the plant and they would not be targeted by this," Miller says. "It would be a very specific resistance approach." The scientists have preliminary data but need to do more control experiments to prove that their technique works.

In Iowa, soybean crops lost to aphids could top $250 million if nothing is done, according to research from the university. Iowa's soybean growers already shell out more than $65 million annually for pesticides, which can also kill aphids' natural predators.

"The last few years there have been crop dusters flying around," Miller says. "The only reason is the soybean aphids. If you had plants that are resistant, you wouldn’t have to do this."

Photo: Beyond bug spray--Students get swarmed with soybean aphids on the ISU campus. Credit: Logan Gaedke for Iowa State Daily.

GET MORE OF THE WIDE ANGLE
It's all about the genes:

News: Genetic Science Hub

Video: Genetic Test for Embryos

Top 10: Promising Gene Therapies

Blog: Engineering Law-Friendly Hemp

HowStuffWorks: Can Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Wipe Out Malaria?

Scientists, This Spud's For You

September 25, 2009

Potato fans can breathe a sigh of relief. An international team of scientists is closing in on the entire potato genome, helping to ensure that our crops will be safe long into the future.

Earlier this month scientists cracked the genome for the potato blight that caused the Irish Potato Famine. Now, the Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium has published a draft sequence covering 95 percent of the potato genome, a process that began in 2006. The potato genome is about a quarter the size of our human one.

This genome is especially helpful for potato breeders looking to identify traits such as drought tolerance and disease resistance. Michigan State University scientists were among the 39 consortium participants, and according to their site the typical American eats 119 pounds of potatoes annually. That sounds wrong, and yet so right. Maybe we've got potatoes in our genes.

Image: Mapping the DNA of tuber skin color. Credit: MPI for Plant Breeding Research.

Wide Angle: Engineering Law-Friendly Hemp

September 24, 2009

Plant biology professors at the University of Minnesota have identified which genes in Cannabis produce the drug part, a key discovery that could lead to legal hemp production in the United States.

Hemp and marijuana are two varieties of Cannabis--marijuana contains a lot of the drug tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) while hemp contains a small amount, but law enforcement has trouble telling them apart so all Cannabis is illegal stateside.

The university's David Marks and George Weiblen might have a solution. "THC is concentrated in these tiny hairs that cover the flowers of the plant," Weiblen says. "We did not know whether the drugs were produced in the hairs or elsewhere in the plant and transported. We now know that the drugs are produced in the hairs." Their discovery was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

Hemp is more durable than cotton and thrives in the Midwestern climate. Hemp farming flourished there until other fibers gained popularity and strict drug laws were passed. If the scientists can secure funding, the next step is to engineer a hairless hemp variety that law enforcement can quickly identify as drug-free. Or the U.S. could adopt legislation similar to Canada's, where hemp production is legal.

Here's a short video with more details on the research:

Photo: This is where the drugs come from. Credit: David Marks.

Agribike Sends Seeds to Spinning Class

June 26, 2009

Just when I thought I'd seen one of the best bike inventions ever--the bicilavadora--another group of students has come up with one that turns agricultural labor into a fun ride.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, drought-resistant sorghum and millet are choice food staples. The problem: threshing the seeds from the stalk or "panicle" is a work-intensive process, requiring women and children to beat the grains with a giant mortar and pestle for hours every day in order to produce just enough to eat. A team of home-schooled high school students from Bridgewater, New Jersey, created a better way.

The Teen Technology Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam--a 501(c)(3)--worked with Jeff Dahlberg, a research director for the National Sorghum Producers to build a simple human-powered threshing machine that beats the stick hands down. The students were inspired by the rotating brushes inside a vacuum cleaner. A stationary bike component rotates a thresher drum, which is dotted with pegs that effectively shear the seeds from the panicle. Air blows through, sending the lighter material up and the heavier seeds down through a chute into a bucket.

Initial results were great: the bike produced 13 kilograms per hour compared to the traditional method's five. And it required far less energy to operate, too. Eleventh-grader David Schmidt told me at EurekaFest that the team is thinking about how the bike, which cost roughly $100 to build, could be made from indigenous materials. "You don't need [these] pedals," he says. "You could use wood."

Here's a short video I shot that shows it in action:

Photo: Pedals Pass the Pestle. Credit: Alyssa Danigelis.