manure
Latest
ICYMI: Poop fuel, magnet-attached spherical tires and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-182793{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-182793, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-182793{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-182793").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: UCLA's biofuels lab is doing interesting work with manure protein, to see if supply of a better kind of alternative fuel can be produced on an industrial scale. Goodyear is out with crazy futuristic prototype tires that would connect to a car with magnets, be 3D printed, totally beach-ball round, include foam sponges inside the grooves to help with traction on water, and more. A Swedish musician spent a year constructing a marble music machine that is absolutely stunning to see in action. And even though this video has made the rounds before, the Japanese company that created it is still riding high so we wanted to include it. It's a tomato-headed, 18-pound robot backpack that automatically feeds you tomatoes while you run. As always, please share any interesting science or tech videos, anytime! Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag to @mskerryd.
ShitExpress will send poop in a box anywhere in exchange for Bitcoins
You can find absolutely anything on the internet, and services that send poop on your behalf to people who've incurred your hatred are old news. This new startup called ShitExpress, however, offers something its older rivals can't: the ability to accept Bitcoins for total anonymity. No credit card means no paper trail. And, if you take great care to make sure you browse the internet anonymously, nobody will find out it's your doing. For the Bitcoin equivalent of $17, the company will send horse manure (more types will be added in the future, as should be expected from a respected poop delivery service) anywhere in the world for you.
Scientists extract clean water from cow pies
The planet's 1.5 billion cows are (innocently) an environmental scourge thanks to the copious amounts of horrible greenhouse gases they disgorge. Scientists from Michigan State U have flopped that around, however, and figured out how to turn the resulting manure into something good for the planet: fresh water. By running the poop through a so-called anaerobic digester and reverse osmosis system, they got pure H2O out the other side. The average bovine produces about 10,000 gallons of "raw materials" a year and scientists can transform at least half of that into water (the other half becomes energy and fertilizer). The final product is intended for livestock and not human consumption, but maybe all it needs is some good marketing.
Daily Update for September 24, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Spreading manure: There's an app for that
In the 5-plus years since the App Store launched, it seems like there's been an app for almost everything. Today we get one step closer to removing that "almost" qualifier with the release of an app that allows dairy farmers to calculate how much manure they need to spread. No, that's not a joke. The folks at DairyNZ Limited have released an app called FDE Calculator ("FDE" stands for Farm Dairy Effluent Spreading") that helps a farmer work out the nutrient loads in the manure he is spreading on his land. And though it's relatively easy to poke fun at an app that helps you spread $#!t (kind of like Twitter), the FDE Calculator is actually a very valuable tool to farmers since it can help them save a lot of money. As DairyNZ marketing manager Andrew Fraser explained told the New Zealand Herald, "Potassium, for example, is one of the nutrients that's in effluent so if you aren't spreading it thinly and widely, then you end up having to buy more potassium from your fertiliser supplier than you actually need." The FDE Calculator is a free download. Get spreading. A TUAW hat tip to Chris S. for sending us the New Zealand Herald link.
HP data center fueled by hopes, dreams and... cow dung
We've seen data centers use excess heat for greener purposes, but how's about injecting a little green into the other side of that equation? HP Labs is on that very wavelength, going so far as to publish details on how these centers could be partially powered by none other than cow manure. Yeah, cowpies. The essential thought process went a little something like this: "Data centers need a lot of energy. Dairy farms create a lot of methane. Let's make it happen." Purportedly, 10,000 dairy cows could "fulfill the power requirements of a 1-megawatt data center -- the equivalent of a medium-sized data center -- with power left over to support other needs on the farm," and heat generated by the data center could "be used to increase the efficiency of the anaerobic digestion of animal waste." The stomach-twisting details can be found beyond the break, but we can't be held responsible for any images you conjure up. Remember -- once your third eye sees it, you can't un-see it. [Thanks, Bob]
