Latest Inventions

posted by admin on Jul 11

If you farmland is flooded - how can you still grow crops?

Well there is one solution that will no doubt help millions of people all across the globe in these times of climate change and rising sea levels - a floating farm!

Many communities around the world inhabit wetland areas and have developed raised housing and methods of transport and livelihoods that make the most of existing circumstances - but growing crops on water?

That really is something quite amazing - and sustainable!

The Idea:
Well, areas of India and Bangladesh for example have annual flooding - but it’s lasting longer and longer these days - and coming when it’s not expected, ruining crops and homes, and leaving farmland underwater and families without anyway to feed themselves.

So, why not farm on the water itself?  Well it’s not as difficult as you might think, and as this is only a temporary solution it doesn’t need to be highly advanced and permanent.

Basically you can build up layers of floating vegetation mixed with fertiliser and stabilizers and you have a raised bed for growing anything.  And as long as you tether it to your home or river bank - you can grow your crops! 

Even if the water levels rise again - your crops do too, so they are not destroyed!  And when the water finally falls back to earth - your crops are already on a bed of fertile compost!

When the water level falls, you can transplant your seeds back into the now fertile soil (enriched with sediment from upstream) and grow them to maturity.  Maybe you could even sell the excess at a local market increasing your income.

The Implementation:
A small charity called Practical Action is working with communities in Bangladesh and has already helped hundreds of families do just this.

Their solutions are simple and cheap to construct for the local communities as they are made from local ‘ingredients’ and are not huge in size.  For example they base their ‘raised beds’ on an initial layer of water hyacinths strengthened with a layer of bamboo strips on top, then bound in place by a further layer of water hyacinth on top so the roots create a sturdy platform.

On top of this solid base is a layer of animal dung and earth - both plentiful in the area - in which to grow the actual crops.  And watering them is not a problem!

The Future?
This is already a lifeline to so many people in Asia, but it could help with innovations across the globe.  If the future is to bring more flooding and adverse weather to many countries - it’s great to know that there are people out there already working on the solutions.

Some of these recent inventions in areas that are already experiencing problems can be the basis for future inventions and inventors to plan for similar scenarios.  Planning for crops that can grow on water could lead to new crops, new farming methods and new lifestyles.

It could also be the first step towards living on water and building flood resistant homes, crops and energy stations!

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posted by admin on Jun 12

Your searches may go up into space - but your local services and community can get the benefits.

I have used directory enquiries and service and product listings before on the Internet - but why not start using these to promote and recruit your local workers, friends and businesses - and maybe even yourself!

It’s all ‘eco’ this and ‘emissions’ that these days - so why not take advantage of the online services and websites that are trying to cater for these new lifestyles and get your business promoted closer to home - or find a great builder/plumber/handyman that you can trust!

Imagine if you could find a local builder down the road that everyone loves - or a babysitter around the corner that everyone trusts?  When you are new to an area, you can’t normally get your hands on this kind of information for months or even years.

Just Moved To Edinburgh?
I mean - say you just moved to a new city and needed a good car mechanic - you normally have 2 choices: 1) pick one at random that you live close to and hope for the best, or 2) trust a local you bump into in town to give you good advice!

However these days - you can check a website that has got years and years of recommendations on it - so you aren’t just down to guess work and good luck.  You can actually use a trusted source that has been regularly updated and improved over the years: so type in Edinburgh MOT into a website like TouchLocal.com (a local business online directory) for example, and it will come up with all the recommendations from past customers.

And of course you can have your say too.  Why not let everyone know that you received great service in a out-of-town restaurant?  Or that you got some great advice from a local shop owner in town.  Have your say and make sure other new residents get a fair deal too!

Is It All Listing After Listing?
No.  These days you can get information from all sorts of mobile sources - like the Twitter directory enquiry service that Touch Local also offer - to save you thumbing through giant yellow pages and the like. 

For example, you can just tweet something like Caterer In Chiswick or Edinburgh Accountant to their given Twitter account and instantly receive a contact name and number for what you want that second! No more searching for ages for 1 then finding 3!

Local doesn’t have to mean slow and old-fashioned these days.  Local means community spirit and loyalty.  And these great community supported sites are the way forward in today’s eco climate.

They also offer other services on their site to hold this all together like an ‘expert’ Q & A section where you can ask any questions to local ‘experts’ - or apply to become and expert yourself!  Also there is a messaging service and a sort of social networking area where you can stay in contact with other people in your community for advice or just chatting between friends and colleagues.

These types of sites could be great way to add eco credentials to your business as well as getting your services recommended to a wider audience of supporting and life long clients!

Think Business - Think Local

posted by admin on Apr 16

You will probably be reading this in the sunshine at last - and maybe a little sunburned like me!

We have plenty of articles from our readers this month regarding latest inventions, new products and technology - so lets get straight to it; the first article this April is from Suhani.

This is for all the ladies out there who want to find their best look without using bag after bag of cotton balls! Take a look at the video in this article for a great new software application: Digital Cosmetic Mirror – the future of beauty treatments. It could also be seen as a ‘green’ invention too for all the make-up it could save!

The next article is a nice short summary of some of the newest (and most lifelike) robots that have been invented recently - with a few snaps too, so join Ava Jones for her article on the 10 Real-Life Robots You Won’t Believe Exist!

Staying with technology, Steve Patterson short article brings to my attention the ‘Nook’, a Kindle-like gadget that is apparently kicking up a bit of a storm! So take a quick look at Nook Production Increased to Meet Demand for more info.

For those of you who like to stay at home and enjoy the best home theater systems, then maybe have a look at Steve Faber’s post about the New TiVO Premier XL DVR Gives Even More of Everything.

Health is the issue for Delmy Martin, who lists many gadgets that can help you to eat better, get healthy, keep fit and generally have fun doing it! So take a look at some of the links in 25 Fitness Gadgets that Can Improve Your Health, and maybe try a few yourself!

Whereas Madeleine Begun Kane is becoming distracted by the whole ‘must know’ nature of the internet at the moment - and I have included her little limerick because it sums up what the internet means to a lot of people these days! Feed Needs. Whereas Heather Sanders wants us to learn more about the newest social site, with her The Educator’s Guide to Using Google Buzz.

And finally, the obligatory ‘apps’ post - but this one from Allisin Jonanson has a twist: its not about the iPhone! Take a look at her 25 Essential Android Apps for Science Nuts.

Now, get back out there into the sunshine!

posted by admin on Jan 22

The New NEFF CircoSteam oven is certainly looking like a healthy option in the kitchen!

We all cook with steam on the hob, usually in great towers - but steam cooking in an oven is really going to change the way we prepare healthy food!  I have only just found someone who owns one and it’s the first time I had heard of them!

The appliance is basically a compact oven - like a combination microwave if you like - that offers to steam your food without all the steam escaping around your kitchen!

Why Steam?
It is well known through the world of healthy eating and weight loss, that steamed food is better for you in terms of the nutrients it keeps and the lack of other ingredients like cooking oil needed to help cook it.

Baking, roasting and frying usually include some preparation with fats or oils which are absorbed by the food, as well as being heated so high and sometimes for a considerable time that they dry out and or become soaked in fatty materials.

Boiling is seen as a cooking practice that removes or destroys valuable vitamins and minerals from the food.  The food is thrown around the pan under a lot of pressure and reduces many fleshy ingredients to a mush - think of over-cooked sprouts!

And all these alternatives can result in the food you are cooking being completely destroyed if cooked too long - either burnt to a crisp or reduced to a slush.

Benefits Of A Steam Oven:
Well, not so with a steam oven.  None of the above is true at all with steam cooking and the list that follows highlights the benefits:

• Nutrients remain in the food during cooking
• The food retains all of it’s moisture during cooking
• You don’t need fats or oils to cook with steam
• You can’t burn your food when steam cooking
• You can’t turn food into a mush when steam cooking
• You can never overcook food you are cooking with steam

There are also further advantages of a steam oven over the regular stack of pans and commercial steamers:

• Steam cookers retain all the steam inside themselves rather than filling your kitchen
• These combination cookers take up no more space on your counter - it’s built in to your microwave ’space’
• The huge internal size allows more food to be steamed at the same time - so the whole meal could be steamed rather than just the vegetables.
• There are about 50 pre-programmed settings for everything you are likely to cook - so it’s so easy to use.

So, if you are considering a new small oven or combination microwave - then take a look at this alternative.  And just so you know - it received an A rating for energy use - so can reduce your energy bills while you reduce your waistline too!

posted by admin on Jan 19

Biofuels hit hard criticism when they were competing with human crops, but things might change…..

People are starting to look at waste materials and invasive plants as potential sources of biofuel - rather than using what could have been food for humans.

With the world population soaring and food shortages the world over - it was time to move biofuels forward so to utilise a more sustainable and non-competitive source - and 2 such examples have recently been publicised.

Bracken:
This plant grows virtually everywhere.  Whether it’s in open fields, heathlands, moorlands and mountains.  It is also a worldwide genera and has the widest distribution of any other fern.

Nobody likes it growing on their land (apart from National Parks) as it is very dominant in the landscape and nothing really eats it either (as it is carcinogenic) - so it just spreads across a landscape stealing the light from any other young or low-lying plants.  And a it won’t let grass grow beneath it - the mountains sides and valleys can’t be used for grazing as there is nothing for the sheep or cattle to eat and farmers pay a lot of money to get it cut and removed from their land every year as it is.

It turns the land into a very green wasteland in terms of human needs - and at one time the British Government had an eradication program in place to deal with it’s excessive growth!

However, it is actually because it grows itself very well, and grows back every year - even if cut back when fully grown, it seems like the perfect crop to start working on for sustainable fuels.

The only problem is of course that it usually grows in places that are not easy to get to with modern farm machinery.

Old Yeast:
We all know that there is always going to be whisky in Scotland - so what can we do with all the natural waste materials?

As with the bracken - waste materials from whisky plants costs a lot of money to dispose of - so why not find a way to either use that waste, or find a way to sell it as a product.

Distillery waste (yeasty materials) will be fed into an anaerobic digester to create methane gas - a biogas.  The idea is that if all the distilleries in the area do this - they could power themselves without the need to draw on other energy sources from elsewhere. 

I know it isn’t going to power homes and other businesses - or the whole country, but if these large commercial buildings can fully power themselves using their own waste products, then less energy will have to be created from other sources and shipped or piped to them.

The Future:
Can you imagine if warehouses could generate their own energy from all the waste cardboard they get through, or supermarkets could create biogas from all the food they throw away being bio-digested. 

Even huge offices and sky-scrapers could be creating biogas from all the waste created by their workers - basically, they would be powering themselves!

New technologies are allowing smaller scale operations which were just not viable in the past - they just were not cost effective before we understood how our waste was affecting the environment.  But now companies have to be more environmentally responsible and to also pay to process and dispose of their own waste - they are starting to think about spending that money on alternative services - green services.

And, there must still be plenty of waste products that could be used for fuel or energy - just waiting to be discovered.  Certain things are always going to be needed by people - so why not use the left-overs constructively?