Tag Archives: innovation

nitrogen fixing bacteria as an alternative to fertilizer

Leave a reply

The invention of nitrogen fertilizer is a key reason the Earth is able to support so many humans, but it has also taken a huge toll on our natural water bodies and climate. Grist has an interesting article on the possibility of using nitrogen-fixing bacteria, either naturally occurring or genetically engineered, on a much wider range of crops and on a much larger scale to help solve this problem.

A pack of startups is racing to market with a means of fixing nitrogen without polluting the Earth. One of them, Pivot Bio, just garnered a $70 million vote of confidence in a funding round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the coalition of big-name billionaires — Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson — hoping to power climate change-beating innovation…

Next year, Pivot plans to start getting farmers nitrogen-fixing bacteria — which efficiently delivers fertilizer to crops, no fossil fuels required. Farmers will spritz seeds with a liquid probiotic as they bury them in the ground. Another startup, Azotic Technologies based in England, is racing to bring a different bacterium to market around the same time. Intrinsyx Bio — a spin-off from a company that supplies NASA with bacteria and other critters for experiments — plans to put yet another bacterium on the market in 2020. And at least one other, the Bayer-backed Joyn Bio, is just ramping up. If any of them is able to provide a viable alternative to the international fertilizer industry, it could be the most significant environmental breakthrough since Haber figured out a way to synthetically release nitrogen from its natural bonds.

So this could be a big deal. Of course, I can’t help thinking of Donella Meadows talking about “layers of limits”. Remove one layer and continue to grow and expand, and you will eventually bump up against the next one.

 

September 2018 in Review

Leave a reply

Most frightening stories:

Most hopeful stories:

  • The Suzuki and Kodaly methods are two ways of teaching music to young children that may actually help them think later in life. Training in jazz improvisation may also be good for young brains in a slightly different way.
  • There are some bright ideas for trying to improve construction productivity, which has languished for decades. Most involve some form of offsite fabrication.
  • In energy news, there’s a big idea to produce half the world’s electricity from sunlight in the Sahara desert. Another idea for collecting solar energy in otherwise (ecologically) wasted space is solar roadways, and there are a few prototypes around the world but this doesn’t seem to be a magic bullet so far. Another big idea is long-term storage of energy to smooth out fluctuations in supply and demand over months or even years.

Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:

artificial spider silk

Leave a reply

Artificial spider silk is an alternative to carbon fiber.

Amsilk is located in Martinsried, Germany, and owned by twins Andreas and Thomas Strüngmann. The Strüngmann brothers made their fortunes with Hexal, a generic drugmaker, and the company’s fibers came from research by Thomas Scheibel, a biomaterials professor at the University of Bayreuth.

The fibers are made by genetically modifying E.coli bacteria to produce spider silk proteins. These purified proteins are then dried into a silk powder, which can be put into textiles, cosmetics or used as the basis for lightweight composites.

Amsilk calls it “Biosteel” and says synthetic silk is resistant, flexible and soft, giving it an advantage over carbon fiber for use in implants and prosthetics, or even aviation. “The disadvantage of carbon is that aircraft are often grounded after a bump because parts have to be replaced,” said Amsilk boss Jens Klein. Minor damage to carbon fiber can be a big problem whereas Biosteel may be able to take the knock and remain in use.

 

long-term energy storage

Leave a reply

Vox talks about long-term energy storage, which could theoretically smooth out energy supply and demand fluctuations over periods of days or months rather than hours as today’s batteries do. Some of the ideas include thermal storage, flow batteries, electrolysis combined with fuel cells, and pumping water underground at high pressure.

rating news

Leave a reply

I have an idea that maybe others have already thought of, but I haven’t seen it proposed (or implemented) in exactly the form i am thinking of. With all the newfound concern over “fake news”, misinformation, and disinformation, alongside good-old-fashioned government and corporate propaganda (which to its consternation is having some trouble competing with the former), I don’t see why news stories couldn’t be rated or certified as reliable by independent third parties. That is, you could pull up a news story from any of a number of outlets and see that it has the stamp of approval of a particular organization, say the Associated Press or the United Nations. Sites like Politifact and Snopes sort of do this now, but they aren’t rating individual stories. Any organization could create its own rating system, but at least people could choose a rating system they trusted and then either filter their search results or simply have the ratings they are interested in displayed, perhaps in a browser plug-in. It wouldn’t be perfect because it would give people way of filtering so they only hear what they want to hear, but at least we would be doing this explicitly rather than having hidden, amoral, profit-seeking algorithms decide behind the scenes what we see or don’t see.

3D model builder for construction sites

Leave a reply

Here’s a technology to build 3D (digital) models of what is happening on construction sites over time using data from cameras mounted on workers’ helmets. If you have a 3D model of what is supposed to be built ahead of time, you can imagine this providing the chance to compare what is being built to what was planned, giving you the ability to catch and correct mistakes in real time.

August 2018 in Review

Leave a reply

Most frightening stories:

  • In certain provinces with insurgent activity, the Chinese government is reportedly combining surveillance and social media technologies to score people and send those with low scores to re-education camps, from which it is unclear if anyone returns.
  • Noam Chomsky doesn’t love Trump, but points out that climate change and/or nuclear weapons are still existential threats and that more mainstream leaders and media outlets have failed just as miserably to address them as Trump has. In related news, the climate may be headed for a catastrophic tipping point and while attention is mostly elsewhere, a fundamentalist takeover of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is still one of the more serious risks out there.
  • The U.S. government is apparently very worried about a severe cyber attack. Also, a talented 11-year-old can hack a voting machine.

Most hopeful stories:

Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:

construction productivity

Leave a reply

The construction industry has languished in terms of productivity growth for decades. But there are ideas, some of which are mentioned in this white paper from UK firm Balfour Beatty. Many are organized around the idea of prefabricating as many components as possible offset, then bringing them in for assembly. Another way of looking at it is that construction is basically a form of (inefficient, risky and very site-specific) manufacturing, and can try to learn some lessons from other manufacturing industries.

…we know this is an industry that lives on thin margins, is plagued by time and cost overruns and inherently operates in one of the higher risk environments of any sector – risk in terms of cost, time and, above all, human safety. But do we also think of this as an industry with one of the largest opportunities of any sector to transform its model? Can we think of many industries where the size of the prize is to shift 25% of current output to a solution that radically improves speed, quality and safety – all while creating (not destroying) jobs?

Today a new generation of industrialised construction methods, including offsite and modular building techniques, are increasingly being recognised as the best way for the UK construction industry to boost productivity and plug skills shortages. And moving to these methods drives better outcomes for all stakeholders: for the customer, reducing onsite construction times and waste; for the construction supply chain, by improving quality, repeatability (and
therefore output) of infrastructure; for the workforce above all, by raising safety performance and securing long-term employment.

 

Capitalism without Capital

Leave a reply

Bill Gates reviews Capitalism without Capital, a new book about “intangible” products and services.

They start by defining intangible assets as “something you can’t touch.” It sounds obvious, but it’s an important distinction because intangible industries work differently than tangible industries. Products you can’t touch have a very different set of dynamics in terms of competition and risk and how you value the companies that make them…

What the book reinforced for me is that lawmakers need to adjust their economic policymaking to reflect these new realities. For example, the tools many countries use to measure intangible assets are behind the times, so they’re getting an incomplete picture of the economy. The U.S. didn’t include software in GDP calculations until 1999. Even today, GDP doesn’t count investment in things like market research, branding, and training—intangible assets that companies are spending huge amounts of money on.

Measurement isn’t the only area where we’re falling behind—there are a number of big questions that lots of countries should be debating right now. Are trademark and patent laws too strict or too generous? Does competition policy need to be updated? How, if at all, should taxation policies change? What is the best way to stimulate an economy in a world where capitalism happens without the capital? We need really smart thinkers and brilliant economists digging into all of these questions. Capitalism Without Capital is the first book I’ve seen that tackles them in depth, and I think it should be required reading for policymakers.

Recently I was reading something suggesting that countries should keep a balance sheet, which keeps track of stocks, in addition to GDP, which is more like an income statement keeping track of flows. This seems right to me. Spending on education and training adds to the stock of human capital at some rate, but efficiency may vary and the stock is also being depleted at the same time. Drawing down natural capital increases income on the short term but comes at the expense of the long term. Research and development are a little different because they affect the pace of progress, or at least improve the odds of the gamble.