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Yahoo! News - Computers Help Manage Chores on Farms

Yahoo! News - Computers Help Manage Chores on Farms: "Computers Help Manage Chores on Farms

Wed Dec 29,11:41 AM ET Business - AP

By JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press Writer
KENTON, Ohio - Darkening skies and a light morning drizzle blanketed the fields while combines harvested corn and tractor-trailers hauled away this year's crop. Even though he knew what was coming, Brian Watkins hopped out of his pickup truck and stepped into his office to check the weather forecast on his computer.

The radar map on his laptop showed a blob of yellow and green a big storm headed right his way. 'Oh man, that doesn't look very good,' he said, knowing that much of the day was going to be lost.

Although he still can't control the weather, nearly everything else is a different matter. With computerized gadgets that can steer a tractor, monitor how much corn is harvested per acre and keep fresh air flowing through the pig barn, Watkins' farm is an example of the impact modern technology has had on agriculture.

Watkins, 43, is the sixth generation of his family to farm this land about 60 miles northwest of Columbus. He and his brother, Mark, took over the operation from their father.
Watkins started farming full time 23 years ago with about 400 acres. Now the farm is a small business with 2,000 hogs and 5,000 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat, most of which is turned into feed for his pigs or sold to neighboring hog farms.

"My memory of growing up here is very different from what we do today," Watkins said.

The planter that sows corn and soybeans stretches 60 feet across and can finish 400 acres on a good day. It wasn't long ago that they were happy to get through 20 acres in a day. His Caterpillar combine can harvest 35,000 bushels per hour.

"That's what makes farms get bigger," Watkins said.

Not everyone has embraced technology and the movement toward large farming. Some environmental groups think big farms are to blame for increased water and air pollution. And some farmers believe that the advances in technology have led to the demise of family farms and a change in rural lifestyle.

But Watkins doesn't see it that way. Advancements in agriculture have eliminated a lot of back-breaking work. The hours are still long, but much time is now spent managing and marketing the business.

"I don't want to go back to using horses and old tractors," he said. "I don't want to shovel manure by hand. To me, that's ludicrous."

There's no more daily lifting of feed bags to keep the hogs nourished. A computer in the barn controls the food, water, temperature and air flow.

"One person can take care of it in two hours," Watkins said.

Some of the biggest changes have been made by gadgets that are everyday items for many.

E-mail cuts down on wasted time waiting for phone calls. Cell phones have replaced radios in the tractors and combines.

And soon, wireless Internet may allow even more access to computers. While the equipment already is in place on Watkins' farm, it can't reach all of the fields.

Sam Beiler, 32, who helps operate the farm's feed mill, installed the equipment that one day could allow computers to instantly monitor how much corn is coming off the field and send the data back to the office.

"The tractor's driving itself anyway," Beiler said. "So you might as well be checking the markets."

This past spring, Watkins planted his cornfields for the first time with a Global Positioning System that allowed his tractor to essentially drive itself.

A fixed transmitter on the farm sends signals back to the tractor that allow it to travel a straight line; a human operator still has to turn it around.

The GPS allows farmers to work longer into the night when it's more difficult to see. They can avoid planting on top of old root systems. And it reduces fatigue, Watkins said.

A memory card stores the paths already taken so he can pick up exactly where he stopped. The system also is creating a topographical map of the fields that is accurate to within an inch.

Watkins plans on combining that information with numbers gathered by yield monitors on his combines that tell him which fields are producing the most corn and soybeans.

All of that will help him decide where more drainage is needed in the fields and lead to more production.

"My grandfather knew you needed drainage for this to work," Watkins said.

The difference now is that farmers can make better decisions based on the data technology provides.

"You can see how much money you're leaving on the table," he said.

Educational free software

"A PROFESSOR IS ONE WHO TALKS IN SOMEONE ELSE'S SLEEP. " - Educational free software Page to Free Educational Software including: CONSTITUTION NOTEBOOK, vocabulary builders, programs to teach children of 11 programming, Statistical Analysis, searchable soft versions of the Bible and Koran and other cool stuff.

Regional Environmental Business and Assistance Resource Centers (REBRAC)

Regional Environmental Business and Assistance Resource Centers (REBRAC): "The Bay Area Regional Environmental Resource Assistance Center was established to assist our clients to operate in conformance with Local, State, and Federal Environmental, Health and Safety laws, regulations, ordinances and regulations."

Jane Jacobs comes back to the Village she saved

Jane Jacobs comes back to the Village she saved: "Jane Jacobs, whose ideas about how cities prosper shattered urban planning principles 40 years ago, returned to the Village last week to speak at a benefit for West Village Houses, the low-rise affordable housing complex she helped to create."

Nader Khalili

Nader Khalili - founder of Earth Architecture

"Nader Khalili, California architect/author is the world renowned Iranian-American Earth Architecture teacher and innovator of the Geltaftan Earth-and-Fire System known as Ceramic Houses, and of the Superblock construction system."

"At Cal-Earth he continues building and testing prototypes in Earth Architecture for inclusion in the Uniform Building Code. Recent work has been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Katharine Tremaine Foundation, the Rex Foundation, the Leventis Foundation, Our Ultimate Investment Foundation, the Turner Foundation, and the Flora Family Foundation."

"Geltaftan Foundation/ Cal-Earth: 10376 Shangri La Avenue, Hesperia CA 92345.
Tel: (760) 244-0614 Fax: (760) 244-2201
Email: calearth@aol.com
website: www.calearth.org "

Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/26/2004 | Designing for Generation Y

Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/26/2004 | Designing for Generation Y: "Designing for Generation Y

By Alan J. Heavens

Inquirer Real Estate Writer


The housing industry continues to put its hopes for the future - and a lot of its money - into people under 30.
The reason is obvious:
Why continue to build houses that sell now but don't have a prayer of capturing the market 10 or 20 years down the road? Why not have the people who will be buying those houses design them, and then just pull the houses off the shelf and drop them on the foundations when the time comes?
This culture's obsession with what youth thinks, justified or not, dates from the late 1960s. In a speech to the Counselors of Real Estate in February 2000, Theodore Roszak observed: 'We created the impression that youth was where it's at, that the industrial society gets younger rather than older, and that we would stay young forever.'
Once the media and marketing people latched on to the young demographic, they decided it would be with us forever, said Roszak, whose 1968 book, The Making of a Counterculture, brought to light the conflicts between youth and technocratic society.
These days, the real estate industry is focusing on Generation Y, the group born between 1979 and 1994 - which, with 73 million members, is second in size only to the 85-million-strong baby-boom generation.
'We are very research-oriented, and we will spend the time to scrutinize companies to make sure we are getting the best value for our money,' Gen Y student Paul Bonilla of Washington told a panel at the Urban Land Institute's November meeting in New York. 'We will spend extra for what we feel is right and of high value.'
'We are not scared to learn new things, and we are very tolerant of different groups,' New York grad"

Healthy Cities International Contact - English

Healthy Cities International Contact - English: "The International Healthy Cities Foundation
555 12th Street 10th Floor
Oakland, CA 94607, USA
phone: 510 642-1715 fax; 510 643-6981
e-mail:hcitiesatuclink4.berkeley.edu"

Healthy Cities International Building Leadership - English

Healthy Cities International Building Leadership - English: "Hazel Henderson believes this is the exact center of the problem: the yardsticks we have chosen to measure our 'progress' are economic ones: margin, GNP, jobs, the Dow Jones, the prime rate. Everything else -- the health of our children, clean air, the safety of our communities, the feeling of belonging, a sense of meaning -- has to compete on the same grounds, and the comparisons become absurd.
Environmental damage, stress on workers, or risk to consumers from the costs of things do not count at all in such economic measures, until they get turned into dollars by suits or regulatory action -- and then they get counted on the plus side.
A stabbing or a traffic accident actually adds to the GNP, because of the value of the emergency and medical services expended on the victim. The damage done to the victim does not have a dollar value. Similarly, an environmental disaster contributes to GNP, as does a frivolous lawsuit, or an unnecessary surgery. A low-weight premie adds much more to the GNP than does the outreach and nutritional counseling that might have prevented it.
'[GNP] values, for example, bombs and bullets since they are things that are produced for money,' says Henderson. 'It does not value the environment. It values salaries paid to teachers, but it does not value what people know -- how educated they are. It places no value on human capital, meaning people. It does not even place a value on the public infrastructure.'"

Yahoo! News - Avocado Oil, Taco Grease Fuel Eco-Bus

Yahoo! News - Avocado Oil, Taco Grease Fuel Eco-Bus
Merry Christmas to The Second and Third World from the First! - God Bless Us, Everyone!

Since I am afraid the article will dissappear from the ephemeral interneet ... here is the whole story.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Ecologists toured Mexico City taco stands and sushi bars on Wednesday to refuel an old school bus with waste cooking oil that will power the next leg of a green-awareness tour from California to Costa Rica.

The bus, which ran on avocado oil during a week-long drive down from the U.S. border, is being used to prove that vehicles can run on recycled fuels that pollute less than gasoline as it chugs around oil refineries, factories and eateries collecting vegetable oil.

"We're running low, we have to score some oil today," said environmentalist Zak Zaidman as crew members called around the greasiest-sounding eateries in the city's phone directory.

"We have two Japanese restaurants that have lined up a gallon or two and we are trying some taco stands. And we hope to hear back from a restaurant where we had dinner last night."

The eye-catching 1974 white American bus is loaded with tanks that can carry 350 gallons of oil. Its diesel engine has been modified to run on the more viscous food oil.

Headed for Guatemala, El Salvador (news - web sites), Honduras, Nicaragua and lastly Costa Rica, it left San Francisco on Dec. 1 with 150 gallons of waste oil from local Chinese and taco restaurants.

It next filled up with used frying oil -- still hot -- from a Mexican restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, and a load of avocado oil from a refinery across the border in Sonora, Mexico.

"We are probably down to about 75 gallons so it would be good to score a lot. If we can't get it all at once we'll just get it little by little. We can just go to a restaurant, see what's in their grease trap, and pick it up," Zaidman said.

WASTE OIL EVERYWHERE

Vegetable oil is carbon-neutral, meaning when burned it releases the same amount of carbon as the plant it came from sucked in during its life, unlike much dirtier fossil fuels.

"Oil is a nonrenewable resource and our atmosphere is a finite container for our pollution," Zaidman said.

"When you look at all the waste oil thrown away by restaurants and companies that fry chips and stuff, there's tons that could be salvaged."

Crops like soybeans can also be grown for biofuels -- seen as a transitional energy source that Zaidman said could cover 10 percent of fuel needs, including for things like industry and tractors, for 30 to 40 years. "What with pollution and wars over oil, a lot of people want to get off petroleum," he said.

His group, who notes the diesel engine was actually invented to run on peanut oil, hopes to take its Sustainable Solutions Caravan tour, now in its second year, to Europe in 2005.

The bus uses biodiesel, a nontoxic fuel made from vegetable oil, alcohol and lye, to start off its engine until it is hot enough to heat up the food oil and reduce its viscosity.
NOTE: OPPORTUNITY FOR INNOVATION)

A trickle of green-minded U.S. car users is going to pumping stations for biodiesel, which works with a normal engine but emits exhaust fumes that smell like fried food.

To convert a diesel engine to run on food oil costs around $400, a much cheaper option than fuel cell cars on the market.

Zaidman said there is no effect on engine efficiency.

Hero of Alexandria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hero of Alexandria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hero of Alexandria
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Hero (or Heron) of Alexandria (c. 10–c. 70) was a Greek engineer and geometer. His most famous invention was the first documented steam engine, the aeolipile. He is said to have been a follower of the Atomists. Some of his ideas were derived from the works of Ctesibius.

A number of references mention dates around 150 BC, but these are inconsistent with the dates of his publications and inventions. This may be due to a misinterpretation of the phrase "first century".

Hero is credited with inventing many feedback control devices using water, fire and compressed air in various combinations, and the first type of analogue computer programming via intricate systems of geared spindles studded with pegs and wound with ropes connected to weights (trays of sand emptying over time) used to operate his automatic theaters that included automatic doors and multiple changing scenes of moving figures accompanied by lighting and sound effects.

Ideas and Inventions of Heron of Alexandria include:
Automating Temple doors to move with the use of water counter-wieghts controlled by the temple fires and an Omen machine with a singing bird under the control of the priest - a total scam but his bird warble-sound design for the bird song was great, the lowering of a bell piped to open ended whistle pipes topped with another inverted bell shape, as this metal construct was lowered into a container of water the warble is a long whistle followed by a warble and a shift final whistle - amazingly. He may have also been the inventor of the "Teraballista" a mechanized high power rapid-fire crossbow used to guard the Roman Emipres outer borders.

compressed-air fountain
siphons
automated puppet theatres
machine for threading wooden screws
steam turbine (50/62/70) (aeolipile)
density of air
water organ or hydraulic organ
odometer

Web Survey on Attitudes Toward Aging Research

Web Survey on Attitudes Toward Aging Research I love this Article. It shows that the internet audience is not representative of the general population. In this case in terms of it's health expectations and views of aging and the capacity of science.

Living Tree Paper | Pulp & Paper Facts

Living Tree Paper | Pulp & Paper Facts Interesting facts about the ecology and costs of paper production in the present...

for example "

• Producing pulp and paper casts a long ecological shadow beyond its impacts on the world's forests. Converting trees into paper uses large amounts of water, energy and chemicals and can generate vast amounts of air and water pollution.
  
  
• The pulp and paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy, accounting for 4 percent of all the world's energy use.
  
  
• The pulp and paper industry uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry."

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF GENERAL MEDICAL SCIENCES GRANTS

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH/NIH- NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF GENERAL MEDICAL SCIENCES
"Biomedical research includes such areas as cell biology, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, genetics, etc., and behavioral research as well as the more quantitative areas such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computer sciences, necessary to analyze biological phenomena. The MARC Undergraduate Student Training in Academic Research (U-STAR) program supports institutional training grants for underrepresented minority junior and senior honors students in any of the above cited science areas to improve their preparation for graduate training in the biomedical/behavioral sciences."

Donald J. Miller, P.E. - Civil/Sanitary Engineer

AIA SF 2004 Design Awards - The Green Award

AIA SF 2004 Design Awards
Green Design Award
Project The Audubon Center at Debs Park
Location Los Angeles, California
Architect EHDD Architecture
Design Team Chuck Davis; Glennis Briggs; Robert Aydlett; Mark Miksis; Simone Goldfeder

An urban environmental education center that brings nature to East Los Angeles children, the Audubon Center at Debs Park is the first project in the United States to be rated LEED 2.0 Platinum. There is a high level of sustainability in nearly every aspect of design, including restoration of the native landscape, passive energy-conservation strategies, materials selection, off-the-grid 100% solar power, onsite stormwater detention, and onsite wastewater treatment and dispersal systems.

American Gazette - A Committee of Correspondence' Journal

American Gazette - A Committee of Correspondence' Journal A model of the old meeting of the minds using a new technology...

Dictionary.com/euthenics

Dictionary.com/euthenics
eu·then·ics ( P ) Pronunciation Key (y-thnks)
n. (used with a sing. verb)
The study of the improvement of human functioning and well-being by improvement of living conditions.
[From Greek euthenein, to flourish.]

This is my great Interest: Euthenics. This great and worthy study combines my great interests in Health, Public Health, Psychology, Sociology and Architecture. The Health and Sociological implications of the architectural landscape we have built for ourselves is only now becoming evident in the hospitals, prisons and welfare roles of "The Great America". Let us not hope that that phrase joins the rolls of the fallen empires of history, Egyptian, Roman, Ottoman and Soviet. I mention the Soviet empire because it's implosion was faster and more dramatic than any of the other empires before it. It also exemplifies two of the greatest evils of Empires: An entrenched and excessively expensive bureaucracy and an excessively centrally controlled economy... Beware America. It could happen here.

USDA presentation on BIOGAS

USDA Presentation on Environmentally Beneficial Energy Potential of Biogas The USDA also asked for Priority to Biomass Projects 4% financing of the USDA budget!

Mentions BioDiesel, Cogeneration, and Pollution control.

USDA, DOE TEAM UP TO PRODUCE BIOENERGY

USDA, DOE TEAM UP TO PRODUCE BIOENERGY

WASHINGTON, July 31, 2002-A microturbine generator that runs on methane biogas from animal manure will be evaluated as a source of electricity and heat for a research dairy farm in a cooperative project of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Bio-Power and the National Energy Technology Laboratory. The microturbine system could generate as much as 26 kilowatts (kw) of electricity and approximately 400,000 British thermal units (btu) per hour of heat for small dairy operations of less than 250 cows.

“This project is an example of the positive partnership between USDA and DOE to combine resources and capabilities to develop renewable energy for on-farm use, while also addressing an animal waste management issue,” said Rodney J. Brown, deputy under secretary for research, education and economics. “A system that operates efficiently and is cost-effective would provide an alternative energy source for dairy farmers and help them to lower their operating costs.”

Natural Resources Defense Council

Natural Resources Defense Council - "EPA's New Stealth Campaign to Kill Regulation of Harmful Air Pollutants": Volitale Organic Compounds like Acetone & now TBAC (tertiary butyl acetate)

BAD SCIENCE is no basis for HEALTH POLICY!!!

"The Exceptions: Acetone and TBAC

In 1995 EPA unaccountably exempted a compound, acetone, which is more reactive than ethane on a per-molecule basis. To reach this insupportable decision, the agency focused on the fact that a gram of acetone forms less ozone than a gram of ethane. In other words, EPA changed its units from per-molecule to per-gram for this particular reactivity analysis.

The change is baseless. Reactivity depends solely on the number of molecules available for a reaction, not the weight of those molecules. Changing units enabled the agency to place fewer molecules of the heavier acetone in its imaginary reaction chamber (because one gram of acetone comprises fewer molecules than one gram of the lighter ethane), thus generating fewer imaginary molecules of ozone. Voila! Acetone appears less reactive than ethane.

In late 1999, the agency again proposed adopting this flawed per-gram approach to assessing reactivity, this time to exempt TBAC from VOC regulations. The TBAC proposal came in response to a petition submitted on behalf of the chemical's manufacturer, Lyondell, by the company's attorneys at Latham & Watkins - a group that included Jeffrey Holmstead, then a chemical industry lobbyist and now EPA assistant administrator for air. (Holmstead recused himself from the TBAC matter when he joined the agency.)

Responding to Lyondell's petition at a meeting of EPA officials and Lyondell representatives, John Seitz, then-director of EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, noted that the "reactivity per mole[cule] basis is the correct technical basis for comparing compounds to ethane for exemption purposes," and that "exempting TBAC on a gram basis" in reliance on the acetone rule "would be perpetrating an error." (Docket item III-E-04, summary of August 9, 2000, meeting.) The proposed TBAC rule made the same point: "[T]he per-mole[cule] basis is the proper scientific basis to use in comparing reactivity to ethane for decisions concerning negligible reactivity." (Air Quality: Revision to Definition of Volatile Organic Compounds - Exclusion of t-Butyl Acetate, 64 Fed. Reg. 52,731, 52,734.)

EPA even acknowledged the flaws in its reasoning in last week's final rule. The agency conceded that a " 'reactivity per mole[cule]' comparison is more consistent" with historical practice and "arguably more environmentally protective than a 'reactivity per [gram]' comparison" and admitted that using a reactivity-per-molecule approach would preclude an exemption for TBAC (which is 50 percent more reactive than ethane on a per-molecule basis). (Revision to Definition of Volatile Organic Compounds - Exclusion of t-Butyl Acetate, http://www.epa.gov/airlinks/pdfs/tbac.pdf, at 6, 13 (TBAC Exemption)).

In the end, however, EPA granted Lyondell's request that TBAC be exempted from VOC limits without providing any rationale, let alone a scientifically defensible one, for using a per-gram reactivity approach. As a result, public exposure to TBAC and TBAC-created smog will no longer be regulated. "

Public Citizen�

Public Citizen Unveils Alternative State Energy Plan
Texas Energy Planning Council's Proposal Is Lacking, Consumer Advocacy Group Says: Texas "Environmentalists" team up with Economic Interests, Health concerns and religious organizations to influence the State Energy Plan...

"Texas has been blessed with abundant wind, solar and other renewable energy,' said Bee Moorhead, director of the statewide religious network Texas Impact. 'Developing these clean, efficient sources of energy can make a real difference in the health and well-being of all Texans.'"