This week we look at technology headlines in the fields of agriculture, bio-engineering, geo-engineering, the ocean, and freshwater. Enjoy the read.

Agriculture Update: Prognostication on What We’ll Grow and Eat

What will we be putting on our dining room tables in 2035? Josh Schonwald is the author of “The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food,” in which he speculates on what our menu choices will be. Among his predictions are the following:

• Cobia – a saltwater fish that grows 10 times faster than most fish that we eat today and doesn’t taste fishy.
• Barramundi – also called Asian sea bass and found in Australia and Southeast Asia, a fresh and brackish water fish that takes well to aquaculture.
• Radicchio – the purple lettuce-like green we find in salads today, genetically engineered with enhanced flavours.
• Carrots – not your typical orange ones but red, yellow and purple, engineered to add nutrients and antioxidants.
• Purslane – a weed with six times as much vitamin A as spinach, and seven times more beta carotene than carrots.
• Insects – meal worms (apparently they taste like pork rinds), silkworms (the Chinese are studying them as a food source for long space voyages), grasshoppers, and crickets. They may be yucky to you right now but they are a great source of protein and prolific breeders.
• Synthetic meat – meat grown in the lab can be engineered to be much healthier than that grown on hoof.
• Supplements – pills that replace food with a synthesized concentrated tablet. If you think this is science fiction, check out Survival Tabs.

Bio-engineering the Eye – Bionic Retinas Show Promise for Restoring Sight

There are 39 million humans on the planet who are blind. Can we engineer a technology to restore sight to many of them?

Retinal implants are not new but clinical trials of a surgical procedure, that inserts a wafer-thin 3 millimeter square microelectronic chip with 1,500 light-sensitive pixels behind the retina, is showing promise. When light enters the recipient’s eye it is read by the chip which signals the optic nerve and gets interpreted by the brain. The chip’s sensitivity can be altered through an external power unit that connects through a magnetic disc on the scalp.

Sight at 1,500 pixels doesn’t compare to normal vision but for early recipients of the implant it has given them the ability to detect light and see blurry images. One patient reported dreaming in colour again. Currently the procedure is undergoing a trial on patients with retinitis pigmentosa. Doctors hope it can be of value as well to the 8 million estimated sufferers of macular degeneration.

Geo-engineering  the Oceans May Cause More Harm Than Help

There are consequences to fooling with nature. For those who feel that we can compensate for CO2 buildup in the atmosphere and oceans, by treating ocean water with lime or iron, think again.

Liming the Ocean – At What Cost?

The idea of adding lime to the ocean has been bandied about for awhile. The theory is the lime will bind with the 2 billion tons of CO2 that the ocean absorbs annually and become limestone which will settle on the ocean floor. The added benefit is raising the ocean’s pH level to counter the acidification caused by CO2 absorption.

Finding the lime is one challenge. Another is figuring out just how much lime is needed? Of course there is an enormous cost. You can read about the idea at open source project site called Cquestrate.

Throwing Iron at the Problem – Let the Algae Bloom

The idea to seed the ocean with iron is based on creating a fertilizer for phytoplankton. Iron will make phytoplankton grow and it will consume CO2. In 2004 researchers in Germany experimented on a section of southern ocean seeding it with seven tons of iron sulphate. This led to a diatom plankton bloom which when it died sank into the ocean to a depth of 1,000 meters (3,250 feet), but not all the way to the ocean floor. So the dead phytoplankton released the CO2 back into the ocean waters rather than binding with the sea floor sediments where it would have been sequestered. Playing around with phytoplankton can cause many unintended consequences. It can impact the marine biodiversity balance and the food chain. So the study results show that seeding appears to be problematic and a poor solution to rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere and as a result the world’s oceans.

Inner Space Update: MoLab Ocean Floor Observatory to Study the Deep Ocean

Researchers at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany have launched an untethered remote seafloor observatory called MoLab designed to study the biology, chemistry, geology and topography of the ocean. MoLab’s first assignment is off the northern Norwegian coast at a depth of 220 to 350 meters where one of Europe’s most northerly cold water coral reefs is located. Cold water coral is of particular interest to scientists because the reefs are under threat because of proximity to large human coastal populations, pollutants, bottom-trawling and rising sea temperatures. The researchers will study and report on climate change impact on the coral.

The MoLab is the first of its kind and capable of studying an area of the ocean bottom several square kilometers in size. It is modular consisting of a central communications hub using acoustic signals to capture and synchronize data transmitted from multi-sensor equipped satellite monitoring stations. The MoLab also comes with on board cameras with the ability to relay images to receivers on the surface or onshore. With no tether to a surface vessel MoLab can be moved around and serviced by submersibles.

Water Update: Mobile Phone Technology Contributing to Smart Water Pumps

Fresh, clean water in Africa is a rare commodity. When found in wells it has to be pumped out of the ground usually by hand. But as many as one-third of these hand pumps are not working. With access to clean  water a daily challenge for up to 276 million rural Africans, this represents a significant problem. How significant? Studies have shown that unimproved water access is contributing to 1.5 million child deaths annually.

Hand collecting water is a challenge for the women and children of Africa. It is estimated they spend 40 billion hours and 448 million lost school days pursuing this essential resource. In arid and semi-arid areas a failed water pump usually means the abandonment of the water source.

That’s why researchers from the United Kingdom have been working in Kenya and Zambia to develop a prototype data transmitter that talks to mobile phones and that can be fitted on water pumps. When the hand pump starts to break down the transmitter can alert engineers on their mobile phones and they can then go out and service the pumps before they completely break down. Called the Smart Hand Pump, the technology is undergoing a trial in 70 Kenyan villages this August. If the trial succeeds in Kenya, the developers plan to introduce the technology next to Malawi, South Sudan and Zambia.

If you uncover an interesting technology news story please send it to me. If you are interested in being a guest columnist at Techso Mogro, let me know your area of expertise and send along a writing sample. Thanks for dropping by.

This is a world far removed from when James Martin wrote “The Wired Society” in the 1970s. In Martin’s world computers filled half a room, down-sized from from even bigger systems that spawned our modern computer age. For Martin his wired society meant computers with smart programs that could be accessed by terminal for human interaction. Martin’s world didn’t include networks of personal computers, server farms, super computers and non-computer devices all wired together, all able to talk to each other in a seamless world. His world didn’t include the Internet.

The Internet is the disruptive technology that has set off a revolution in communications. Having come a long way from its roots in the early 1980s when only a handful of researchers at two universities could interconnect, the Internet of today reveals some amazing statistics:

Current Users = 2.7 billion

Percentage of the world’s population with Internet access = 33%

Number of websites worldwide = 530 million

Number of blogs (like this one) worldwide = 181 million

If you have an email account then you are one in 3.4 billion.

Other interesting email statistics:

Number of wireless email users 2011 = 531 million

Estimated number of wireless email users by 2015 = 1.2 billion

Number of emails average Internet users send or receive each day = 110

Number of spam emails received per user per day = 13 (approximately 17% of daily emails)

Annual spam email contribution to greenhouse gases = 20 million tons

Initially the Internet connected university computer networks together but with the development of the Worldwide Web and web browsers this technology moved from the realm of academics to  the public domain. Today the Internet connects much more than computers and includes devices like phones, smart meters, refrigerators, televisions, thermostats, watches, music players, automobiles and more. In fact, any technology using a computer chip that includes wireless or wired communication can be an Internet device.

Mobile Internet connections represent the fastest growing segment with billions of devices talking to each other. And in the near future those numbers will increase geometrically. Forecasters predict:

+10 billion devices by 2016 (almost 3 billion more than the human population of the planet)

24 billion devices by 2020

Here are some examples of what these devices are and will be doing:

• Environmental monitoring of soil, water and air in forests and farms
• Sensors embedded in the exterior and interior of buildings to optimize energy and lighting
• Remote monitoring of power generation systems from photovoltaics to wind farms to detect outages and balance energy flow to the power grid
• Monitoring machine operations check in on vibration, power usage and other key indicators to optimize predictive maintenance and ensure up time
• Mobile applications for personal communications devices that can serve to monitor and report on smog levels or ground-level ozone, traffic conditions, and other in situation events in real time
• Measuring, monitoring and regulating temperature in cold storage appliances in a wide variety of industries
• Vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity to optimize traffic flow on congested routes
• Vehicle-to-facility connectivity to point out where parking spaces can be located
• Remote monitoring of patients in their own homes to alert health professionals to a life threatening situation

In every way the Internet has had a disruptive impact. Some would argue it has all been positive. But for many the disruption has been negative. Just ask people in  publishing, music, film, television, and the arts and they will have stories to tell about how the Internet has created enormous headaches for their business.

The Internet has provided a conduit for unparalleled social interaction. It has changed the way we learn, the way we do research, the way we write. Here’s another interesting statistic:

Number of Internet searches conducted each minute = 4 million

Most of those searches are done on Google, a search engine website that I use every day when developing the content for articles like the one you are reading now.

Even compiled knowledge sources have changed with Encyclopedia Britannica ending its print editions to become an online service in the hope that it can stave off the impact of a publicly assembled set of knowledge to be found in Wikipedia.

The Rise of the Social Internet

The phenomena of social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn represent a dramatic change in the way humans interact on this planet. Today social and the Internet are one whether you are “friending” someone on Facebook, “linking” to someone on LinkedIn or selecting a date or life mate on eHarmony or Match.com.

Just how powerful is “social” on the Internet today? Match.com states that in one in five young people are getting hooked up on dates through Internet sites. Getting hitched has gone electronic. And what is the volume of “social” on the Internet today? Here is a snapshot of the month of March 2012 for Facebook, the largest social network on the planet, the third biggest human organization, only smaller than China and India. The statistics are staggering:

901 million members (expected to hit one billion by year end)

740 billion minutes on the site throughout the month

Daily uploads and sharing of 300 million photographs

Postings liked or commented on amounting to 3.2 billion daily

More than half the members during the month connected using mobile devices.

More than 80% of members were not from North America

Communication on the site was in 70 different languages

For the world of business LinkedIn represented a professional alternative to the “social” aspects of Facebook. And its numbers although a fraction in comparison represent the power of Internet connectivity for business-to-business relationship building. Here are a few LinkedIn facts for the month of March 2012:

New members joined at a rate of 2 per second

Total membership exceeded 161 million representing 200 nations or territories

More than 2 million companies had LinkedIn pages

For the world the implications of Internet connectivity through wireless devices combined with social networks represents a paradigm shift in the balance of power. For governments the challenge has become one of responsiveness. Can nations move as fast as people in the event of an issue or cause that attracts a response within the online social community? Will the online interconnectedness break down national barriers and lead to a reorganized world? Will web-based technology change the way we interact with the natural world? Will citizen scientists police and report on corporate violators of the environment shaming them to act more responsibly? Will citizens ignore their national governments in the name of a cause? Will “Arab Springs” turn into “North American springs” like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and will this become the means by which change happens.

In Part 2 of this topic we will look at where we are headed on the Internet and the worldwide web and just how altered our world will be by 2100.

Every digital alarm clock contains rare earths in phosphors plus boron, copper, gold and quartz.

Your television contains 35 different minerals, your computer 30.

Today we use silver more in electronics than in jewellery.

Every year 51% of all the copper consumed in the United States goes into house construction.

And a final example, one Toyota Prius motor and battery require 23 kilograms (50 pounds) of rare earths.

Are we running out of mineral resources? No. What we are running out of is easily accessible ones. We’ve managed to find over the last 10,000 years, and particularly in the last 200 years all the low-hanging fruit, to borrow an agricultural term.

In the 21st century we no longer walk along the edge of cliff or a long a river’s edge and strike gold, nickel, iron, or zinc. Today we deploy sophisticated discovery technologies to help find what remains hidden beneath the surface of the Earth. The demand for minerals takes us to the sea floor, the Arctic  and other remote areas that are environmentally sensitive or, for the purposes of extraction, technologically challenging.

Demand for Minerals of All Kinds Continues to Climb

In this section we have compiled two lists. One contains mining statistics on the most recognizable mineral resources. The second contains rare earth minerals.

Humanity mines a staggering amount of mineral wealth from the planet each year. These 2010 statistics (unless otherwise indicated) reveal just how much we extract:

1. Bauxite – 177,000,000 metric tons (2006)
2. Beryllium – 190 metric tons
3. Copper – 16,200,000 metric tons
4. Gold – 2,500 metric tons
5. Iron – 1,600,000,000 metric tons (2009)
6. Lead – 4,100,000 metric tons
7. Magnesium – 5,580,000 metric tons
8. Molybdenum – 234,000 metric tons
9. Nickel – 1,445,600 metric tons
10. Palladium – 197 metric tons
11. Platinum – 183 metric tons
12. Silver – 22,200 metric tons
13. Titanium – 6,300,000 metric tons
14. Uranium – 53,600 metric tons
15. Zinc – 12,000,000 metric

Our second list assigns different rare earths to different manufactured products of our Industrial Age. Rare earths have been used in manufacturing since the first incandescent lightbulb. Today you find them in flat screen televisions, cellphones, wind turbines, airplanes, automobiles and satellites. Here’s a sample of where, how and how much we use annually:

1. 48,000 metric tons of rare earths are used in permanent magnets including Neodymium, Praseodymium, Dysprosium, Terbium, and Samarium.
2. 35,000 metric tons get used in Nickel Metal Hydride Batteries including Lanthanum,  Cerium, Praseodymium, and Neodymium.
3. 28,500 metric tons are used to make catalytic converters containing Cerium, Lanthanum, Praseodymium, and Neodymium.
4. 13,000 metric tons are used in flourescent lightbulbs and paints including Europium, Yttrium, Terbium, Lanthanum, Dysprosium, Cerium, Praseodymium, and Gadolinium.
5. 30,500 metric tons are used in polishing powders for the finishing of jewellery, marble, ceramics and other products. These rare earths include Cerium, Lanthanum, and Neodymium.
6. 11,000 metric tons are added to glass including Cerium, Lanthanum, Neodymium, Erbium, Gadolinium, and Ytterbium.

Between the minerals on these two lists, when we add the numbers up we can see just how huge a part minerals play in our technology-based society. In fact, on average, per capita use of newly mined minerals in the United States in 2010 amounted to 7,400 kilograms (almost 17,000  pounds).

Keeping Up with Mineral Demand is Getting Tougher

Discovering a mother lode in the past was often accidental. I remember the story told to us in high school about the discovery of  the vast deposit of nickel and copper in Sudbury, Ontario in the 19th century. During survey work in Northern Ontario associated with the building of the new Canadian Pacific Railroad a worker noted a deflection on a compass needle when in the Sudbury area.  Years later when the railway was under construction copper and nickel surface samples were unearthed. Eventually the area was opened to mining and today, Sudbury represents one of the richest sources of nickel and copper on Earth.

Mineral deposits are seldom found through surface surveys anymore. Instead we rely on a range of technologies to uncover hidden resources. These include remote sensing technologies such as:

• Ground and Aerial Magnetic Surveys – measure the magnetic intensity of an ore body close to the surface of the earth.
• Gravimetric Surveys – study individual geological structures where an overlay of sedimentary rocks hides a potential ore body discovery.
• Electromagnetic Surveys – measure the electromagnetic properties of hidden ore bodies to determine their mineral properties.
• Radiometric Surveys – detect and map radioactive materials such as uranium, thorium, potassium and rare earths.
• Resistivity Surveys – involves transmitting a current into the ground to detect subsurface hydrogeology and ore bodies.
• Audio Frequency Magnetic Surveys – measure natural alternating magnetic fields using sound.
• Ground Penetrating Radar – is used to some degree for mineral exploration but more for mining development to establish bedrock depth, location of sand and gravel deposits, and assess the stability and quality of rock formations.
• Neutron Activation Analysis – can be used in a laboratory or on location to detect halogens, antimony, rare earth elements, gold, platinum, uranium, and thorium in rock samples.
• Seismic Reflection – uses seismic feedback from controlled explosions or other vibration sources to map underground features.

Other techniques involve on site exploration teams of geologists, engineers, botanists, chemists and  mining specialists. Techniques deployed include:

• Geochemical Prospecting – can be strategic covering thousands of square kilometers or tactical involving smaller areas with high mineral potential. The chemistry of the rock and soil are measured looking for a halo effect of trace mineral elements. Sampling is mapped to a grid to display geochemical concentrations of  mineral elements.
• Geobotanical Prospecting  – is a form of geochemical prospecting that identifies plant species known to co-exist with chemicals associated with mineral elements or measures the trace-element content of plants within a strategic or tactical area. Patterns are detected to outline dispersion from a central mineral source.
• Trenching and Sampling – done  on site following positive results from remote sensing, geochemical and geobotanical prospecting. Just as it sounds, trenching involves digging a shallow trench in identified tactical areas to collect samples of underlying rocks for testing.
• Core Drilling – is used to identify minerals by analyzing samples from drilling activity. Drilling is also done within mines to test the quality of potential mineral seams.

In our next blog we will look at mineral extraction technologies being deployed in the 21st century.