Sustainable Agricuture for the Future

A recent report by National Public Radio Facing planetary enemy number one agriculture describes the future global impact of agriculture on global patterns of land use.  Agriculture currently covers 40% of the land in the world and uses nearly 2/3rds of the water.  During the next 40 years the demand for food is expected to double.  Jonathan Foley is the Director of the Institute on the Environment at the U of MN.  He advises governments and NGO's on developing sustainable agricultural processes.  He advocates a new kind of agriculture called Terraculture. His major question is "How do we feed the world without destroying it?"

                       
                        Jonathan Foley's talk on "The Other Inconvenient Truth"  from September, 2011

We can compare Haiti and the Dominican Republic and look at two possible futures. The two countries share the same island.  Haiti is completely deforested and in abject poverty.  The Dominican Republic is the exact opposite because of different land use. We are fortunate that we have the opportunity to have some say in our future.

This image taken at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is from oglhaiti.wordpress.com

For more background information on the subject read  Jared Diamond's book Collapse.  He devotes a chapter 11 to the history of land use in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  Deforestation is often a major contributor to the destruction of a culture.  He also looks at the causes for other societal collapses throughout history.

                                             Why Societies Collapse TED talk October, 2008

Bed bug information source

In response to increased public concerns about bed bugs, the U of MN Entomology Department has set up a website.  It includes resources on dealing with bed bugs for students, travelers, landlords, tenants and pest management professionals.  Bedbugs have increasingly become more resistant to chemical treatment and the strategies for pest management have changed to using elevated temperatures to kill the organisms.  More  information on this is available from the University of Nebraska Extension Service.

Update:  The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that residents of Elsie Mason Manor and Ligutti Towers in Polk County, Iowa have been granted class action status in a lawsuit.  The suit claims that exposures to bed bugs were knowingly covered up by the managers of the assisted living residence for two years.  

Sustainable Neighborhood Design workshop

The University of Minnesota is hosting a Sustainable Neighborhood Design Workshop on November 5th on the St. Paul Campus in Rapson Hall.  The day long event is free and open to the public but does require advanced registration.  The conference will focus on designing sustainable neighborhoods and what we've learned from the past 15 years.  More information is available at Sustainable Neighborhoods.

Steven Jobs 2005 Stanford commencement speech

In June of 2005, Steven Jobs gave the commencement address at Stanford University. This British Guardian article link contains the text of the speech with additional commentary.     He describes his background going up, why it happened to work out for him to drop out of school.  He ended up taking a class in calligraphy which ended up being very important when picking out the fonts and spacing for the word processing interface for Apple computer.  He also talks about why being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him.  He met his wife, he founded Pixar and it allowed him to continue to focus on what he loves.  He also discusses how the reality of death helps him make the big choices in life.  Each morning he asks himself "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"  If he he has to answer "No" to many days in a row then he has to make a change.  He encouraged the Stanford graduates to follow their heart.

I appreciate Steven Job's contribution to technology and the creative energy at Pixar.  His story of serendipity with respect to the calligraphy class continually shows up in the biographies of successful people. Continually learning and developing skills seemingly unrelated to the current task at hand often has benefits 10 to 20 years later.

                                            This is a video of his June, 2011 speech. 

Orange goo in Alaskan waters

During August of 2011 a mysterious orange goo washed up on Kavalina, Alaska's shoreline.  Scientists have now determined that an orange rust Urediniospore is the cause.  Jennifer Frazer's blog post The mystery rust of Kivalina, Alaska provides an excellent background discussion on the topic.  She illustrates the complexity of the rust life cycle noting that there are 5 reproductive structures produced by a particular rust organism.  I had only recalled four from my mycology class.  The complex lifestyle makes for some impressive detective work to link these various structures into one organism.

Rust spores from Alaskan waters

Battling bad science

In this September 2011 talk, Ben Goldacre describes how companies withhold data from trials to manipulate the results from the remaining data. He describes it as taking away half the results from a coin tossing trial and convincing people that you have a two headed coin. He also describes trials that eliminate controls for the placebo effect.  The placebo effect is stronger for two sugar pills than one.  The placebo effect is even stronger when you inject salt water than when you give sugar pills.   You can view his talk on Battling bad science by clicking the hyper link.

Green Roofs

Green roof technology is a classic case of unintended consequences especially if it is not designed properly. The green roofs can look visually pleasing and reduce storm water runoff.  However, an improperly designed green roof allows the roots of the plants to penetrate the roof membrane and allows water to infiltrate the building.  With a three to five inch rain fall event this can result in water damages from 1/4 million to a million plus in US dollars.  Retrofitting an existing roof requires an assessment of the load bearing capacity of the existing roof.  A properly designed system makes it physically impossible for the plants on the roof to contact the roof membrane.  In this darkly humorous article Seeing red over green roofs by By Joseph Lstiburek, he outlines problems and design considerations for green roof technology.  As with all new technologies it is best to learn as much about the design and maintenance of the system before installing it.  

Plant growth on a roof - an unintentional green roof  Photo -N.Carlson

Bacteria producing diesel

This is an interesting article on using waste carbon dioxide from a gas or coal fired plant and converting it into diesel using bacteria.  Algae is another organism that being used for the same purpose.  It will be interesting to see how the pilot plant in New Mexico will work.  This is a link to a video and news report.

More information at http://www.jouleunlimited.com/why-solar-fuel/overview

Slime Mold

I recently came across a very good article on slime mold.  I've worked with one of the species Dictyostelium discoides. Researchers are using the organisms for several purposes including understanding decision making and using it as a way of plotting out roads in an urban area.  These ancient creatures change from single cell organisms to multicellular creatures capable of producing spores or moving like a slug.  This is a link to the slime mold article.



                                                   http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurie-knight/ 

       Laurie Knight has an excellent collection of photos including some very nice insect pictures.

Patent reform

Congress passed and the President signed Patent Reform Act 2011 for the US.  This is important as it is one of the ways the US secures money from the rest of the world for its intellectual property.  The world mapper  has data from 2002 which graphically illustrates the countries where  most of the patents granted.  Japan and South Korea are two of the other countries with a large number of patents.  Note the lack of patents in South America, Africa and the Middle East.