Tag: agriculture
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Sygenta to Build U.S. Genetics Research Facility
Sygenta, in Basel, Switzerland says it will build a new biotechnology research facility adjacent to its current campus in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The $71 million facility is expected to be operational in the second half of 2012. The company says the new labs will focus on discovering and developing new genetic characteristics for…
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Ethanol By-Product Reprocessing Expands to Pilot Stage
A process developed by engineers at Iowa State University in Ames to turn by-products of corn ethanol into into animal feed has moved from the lab to a pilot plant. The process, called MycoMeal, developed by engineering professor Hans van Leeuwen and his team, has two patents pending and won several industry and academic awards.…
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Wireless Sensor Network Developed to Monitor Forests
Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems (IMS) in Duisburg, Germany have installed a wireless sensor system for micro-climatic monitoring on the grounds of the Northwest German Forestry Testing Facility in Göttingen. The IMS team believes the network can provide a very detailed picture about the environmental conditions on the site, without…
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Partnership to Discover Cancer Drugs from Natural Products
University of Mississippi’s National Center for Natural Products Research (NCNPR) in Oxford has formed a partnership to search and test for cancer drugs with the university’s Medical Center Cancer Institute in Jackson. Under the agreement, NCNPR will develop anti-cancer compounds for further development and testing by the Cancer Institute. At the NCNPR, researchers collect plants…
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Initiative Aims to Improve Honey Bee Health
An initiative led by several universities and supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks to establish a nationwide network to monitor and maintain honey bee health. The program, called the Bee Informed Partnership, is funded by a $5 million grant from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Beekeeping is not only an industry…
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Study: Local Food Can Improve Oregon’s Health, Create Jobs
A new study suggests that proposed legislation in Oregon that offers incentives to deliver fresh local food to schools would help improve the health of the state’s residents and create hundreds of new farm-industry jobs. The study was funded by a grant from the Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation…
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Software Helps Farmers Determine Pesticide Spray Dates
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has developed software that helps farmers decide on the best days to spray pesticides on their fields. The software was developed by USDA’s Agricultural Research Service at its Fort Collins, Colorado research facility. The software, called PhenologyMMS (Modular Modeling System), was developed by agronomist Greg McMaster and plant science technician…
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U.K. to Fund Sustainable Biofuel By-Product R&D
A consortium of research funding councils and industry in the U.K. will finance new ways of extracting valuable chemicals from the by-products of brewing grains for ethanol. This call for proposals aims to challenge researchers to find processes that yield chemicals which would otherwise be produced from fossil fuels. The project comes under the Integrated…
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Grants Awarded for Biomass Research and Development
The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy have awarded a new series of grants for research on the production of biofuels and related bio-based products from a variety of biomass sources. The eight project awards — four recipients in the private sector and four university or federal lab projects — total $47 million. Funding is…
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One Nation, Under Geeks
Review: Geek Nation by Angela Saini. Hodder & Stoughton (3 Mar 2011). Science writer Angela Saini describes the rise of science and engineering in India in her new book Geek Nation. But if you’re looking for a triumphant Indian victory march you may be disappointed. The book instead offers a sophisticated and nuanced analysis of…