New Florence. New Renaissance.

Square Roots - STEM applied to farming

Musk (Elon's brother, Kimbal)  said the company plans to open a Square Roots "Super Farm" — with 25 climate-controlled shipping containers, cold storage, biosecurity infrastructure and everything else needed to run a vertical farm at scale — in less than three months.

Since its inception, Square Roots has grown more than 120 varieties of crops, including greens, vegetables and strawberries.

The company isn't the first of its kind. Startups like Silicon Valley's Plenty, which was founded in 2013 and is backed by Jeff Bezos, are also beginning to dominate the space.

"Environmentalists, urban farmers, architects, agronomists, and public health experts, among others, have been joining this mini revolution as they partner to work out a way to salvage a food-scarce, ultra-urbanized future," Kheir Al-Kodmany, a professor of sustainable urban design at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said in a report.

CNN

 

Tackling another Florida scourge

I have written about how tech is helping Florida with the Burmese python invasion

Then there is the invasive lionfish, also nicknamed Darwin's nightmare

From Popular Science

The lionfish first made its way from the South Pacific to the Sunshine State in the 1980s as a popular aquarium pet. It now reigns terror up and down the salty reaches of the eastern United States and Bermuda, with some places hosting hundreds of individuals in a single acre. The species also has a voracious appetite and few known predators (the venomous appendages help), making it nearly impossible to beat back.

Florida’s answer to this dilemma? A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that uses a harpoon gun to exterminate its ruffly target. The “reef sweeper” is designed to snag lionfish lurking well below the water’s surface. On land, a trained employee uses a joystick to home in on the target, almost like in a video game.

Other solutions are shown in this video.

I get by with a little help from my friends - the COVID-19 version

I am a self-confessed "glass is half-full" optimist, but in these trying times, I seek out positive humans and I am finding plenty of them.

For starters, I am grateful to the contributors to this year's Tech and my Passion series. I was planning to run one guest column a week over 6 months but I have significantly accelerated the flow. By next weekend I will have posted 25. It has been a very nice distraction for readers. And even more for me as I research each of their passions and help them improve their columns. You can see the index for this year's posts here. 

Our neighborhood and many others around the country had a Chalk the Walk day. Our paths continue to show the creativity of our young ones even a week later. Color always cheers up my FitBit.

Photo Credit Dana Schwenn Wood

More color as many neighborhoods around the country are sprucing up their gardens. Here's my wife Margaret. The neighborhood cat, Shadow supervised her keeping the prescribed six foot separation.

We went shopping at Home Depot and Lowe's for her gardening needs. Seriously, if your town's shelter-at-home rules allow, head there - their spring flower collection will cheer anyone up.  

I have been getting plenty of jokes about the economy we find ourselves in. Jokes are always welcome!

Bill Kutik shares how his neighborhood continues life while respecting social distancing guidelines.

Photo Credit - Nancy Breakstone Photography 

Talking of happy hours, my former and current analyst friends have been hosting virtual ones on Zoom.

The EIs had an appropriately titled "Very Irregular Happy Hour".

Photo Credit Ray Wang

Gartner alumni met in a "Socially Distanced Happy Hour".  This group is older than the EIs and I thought would be more somber. Nope - it was so lively you had to wonder whether we are in the middle of a global crisis. Word is getting around and many more are expected for the next one. 

photo credit Tom Austin

David Deal reminds us in this Facebook post that many people are sharing negative virus related stats on social media and that is crowding out a lot of amazing work being done by many to combat it:

"I am not advocating for people to stop sharing COVID-19 related information. Bottom line, though: if you know someone who is not taking this pandemic seriously, reach out to them and have a conversation. Facebook may not be the way to help."

Finally, my friend in Minnesota, Brad Callahan recorded this lovely song. "It's past the time for complaining...we are all in the same boat..." He will gladly work with you if you want to use creatively in a live video. You can email him here.  

Friends, stay safe and sane!

Costco - what a difference a week makes

Love the small and big things Costco has done to protect employees and customers against coronavirus since my last visit.

They restrict total number of people in the store at any given time. You have to line up outside and wait your turn to be allowed in.

They have a board outside they regularly update to show which items are out of stock so people can turn around and not crowd store.

They have markings and staff throughout store to guide 6 foot distancing between customers.

They disinfect every cart after a customer is done. Associates had Nitrile gloves on and were walking around with spray bottles of Ecolab industrial strength disinfectant (I asked if I could buy some - they said I would need to call Ecolab)

Each checkout lane now has a Plexiglass shield - they can scan your membership card through that. Saw them disinfect the area after every couple of customers.

They have removed sit-down areas in their food court and have signs not to congregate in their furniture area.

They are rationing certain items like water, sanitizers, paper products.  

They are not matching receipts to your cart on way out - more distancing between employees and customers.

Minor inconveniences. Thank you Costco and associates for keeping the lights on!

Technology and my Passion: Tammy Powlas and Crochet

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.

This time it is Tammy Powlas, who is a respected member of the SAP Community. She is an SAP Mentor, ASUG Volunteer, CPA and certified Project Management Professional (PMP).  In her spare time, she likes to crochet and walk/hike.  You can follow her on twitter at @tpowlas.Here she writes about Crochet:

 

Let's clear up something. Crochet is not Croquet which involves hitting balls. No balls of any shape or size in this activity. Wikipedia defines Crochet as: "a process of creating textiles by using a crochet hook to interlock loops of yarn, thread, or strands of other materials.  “

The Crochet Guild of America traces the history of the activity, including how it was a lifesaver for the Irish after the Great Potato Famine and how it flourished in Victorian England. The activity has since gradually gone mainstream. In a 2017 study by the Association for Creative Industries nearly 29 million Americans listed knitting or crocheting as one of their hobbies.

Crocheting is, however, not the same as knitting; crochet uses one hook while knitting uses two needles, as Wikipedia illustrates  

I never learned how to knit; I prefer to crochet anyway. I have been crocheting since I was 6 or 7 years old.  My older sister taught me how to crochet wreaths when I was a young girl, and I still remember the pattern today.

Wreaths, along with stars make great Christmas ornaments.

Back in the day, I relied on magazines or any articles she could share to learn patterns. Today, you can learn from YouTube - here is one of granny squares, one of the first patterns I learned:

During summers as a kid, I would race home from the swimming pool with my siblings to watch the Price is Right TV show and multi-task with crochet. However, I don''t think the term multi-task had been coined then.

Even as I grew up, I never tired of crocheting.  I read where actress Julia Roberts knits while she is filming a movie as it is a “stress reliever” for her.  I feel the same about crochet.

Before I fly out on any trip, I am always grabbing my crochet bag and it reduces the stress of travel.  There is also a good feeling about creating something with your hands, a sense of achievement. Working with SAP technology by day, there is very little I can touch. Our SAP solution is hosted so I can’t touch the servers.  If I am working on a SAP report or authorization request, I don't touch the printed result.

This is where crocheting comes in.  I like the feel of the yarn, and its quality keeps improving. Yarn can come from animal-based fibers like wool, plant-based fibers like cotton, or synthetic ones like nylon. Increasingly, material science keeps evolving and you get blends of these sources. Science and technology have also had a significant improvement in the quality of dyes and the saturation of colors. 

I used to buy yarn at a local store but it closed in 2016, Now most of my yarn purchases are made online.  I miss the fun of going into the local store and seeing the yarn collection, the different colors and the feel of the yarn. But now I get to see Wheel of Fortune hostess Vanna White more often! She has her own line/brand of yarn.

There are also fewer printed crochet magazines these days, with most of them moving online (Martha Stewart has several pages) or to YouTube.  Over the years I found the local library to be helpful and would check out crochet books or DVD’s.

Several years ago I read a magazine article about Adopt a Native Elder, supporting elder Navajo Native Americans who face harsh winters and food insecurity.  Caps, blankets and scarves are always welcomed. 

My sister and I were crocheting faster than we could give gifts to family and friends, so I started sending boxes of crocheted items to this charity.  I also periodically give monetary donations.   In return, I have received hand-written thank you notes from the charity, a rarity these days. 

I enjoy every crochet project but I am particularly proud of this cap which got me through Snowzilla in 2016 when we had over 30 inches of snow in Virginia.  The hat also survived several cycles in the washing machine

Finally, talking about technology, guess who got to co-star with the geeks in The Big Bang Theory? A Granny Square Afghan.

Technology and my Passion: Laura Lederman and Organic agriculture and medicine

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.

This time it is Laura Lederman who worked for brokerage firm William Blair for 22 years uncovering new technology software companies and analyzing public ones. She has since retired to Jacksonville, Florida and spends her time growing food, teaching yoga and holding meditation classes:

My Early History In Horticulture

I started gardening as a small child following my father as he worked his way through the gardens that surrounded our home. My first job was weeding, learning to differentiate between desired plants and those that needed pulling out. From there I progressed to planting seeds: digging a little hole, dropping in a seed and covering it with soil. By age seven, I was filling out the rose test panelist forms for Jackson & Perkins. Much of my free time as a child was spent as an indentured servant in the gardens. I didn't mind, it was a way to curry favor with a cold and distant father. My attempt to bring us close didn't work, but I gained a life-long passion.

My father was an outdoor gardener and I wanted living things inside and out. Age five found me transplanting oak trees and bringing them indoors (not a terribly successful venture). My brother-in-law noticed my burgeoning interest and took me to my first greenhouse, changing my life forever by showing me a world of exotic plants that grew beyond Highland Park, Illinois.

My plant studies allowed me to attend college and graduate school. With my honestly acquired skills, I got a job at the Jewel T. Foods as “the plant lady” and the only female produce worker.

Gardening methods of the Sixties and Seventies

My father was an old-fashioned gardener using every chemical one could name and many that were unpronounceable. In his mind, the more chemicals the better. He used insecticides like Diazinon that are no longer sold in the United States. They are shipped to third world countries where higher yields trump human health.

Every time he sprayed, I ran inside whilst holding my breath. Year after year, season after season, he sprayed without any protective gear, covering himself with insecticides, pesticides and fungicides, inside and out. He died at age sixty of pancreatic cancer, I blame the chemicals for his early departure.

Not only did he use every “cide” known to man, he also rototilled the soil, churning up foot after foot of earth and in the process changing the microbiome and killing soil aerators. Every living environment has a microbiome — a natural population of bacteria.  Healthy soil should have a host of bacteria that we in turn eat and absorb.  Aerators, insects and animals that churn up the soil, are also important leading to looser soils where plants have an easier time growing.

Gardening In Downtown Chicago

When I moved back to downtown Chicago as an adult, I turned our condominium into a greenhouse. Plants grew along every window, butted-up against the walls and hung from the ceilings. First time visitors would ask: “who waters the plants?”

I loved our condo, but outdoor space was limited to the tiny garden in front and a cement-covered common space out back. A few years in we found out our unit owned much of the roof —  a page of our condo document had been missing. We quickly built a five hundred square foot roof-top garden and grew everything climate and space would allow: lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, arugula, peppers, beans apples, peaches, cherries, strawberries and raspberries. We had grapes for a time, but once the fruit ripened, every bird in the neighborhood came, ate and stayed to socialize and poop.

All summer long we held dinner parties in the sky and served garden to table. Our Salads were picked fresh and served wrapped in chives and crowned with edible flowers.

Retirement

My life in Wall Street was fast-paced and stressful. I ran on adrenaline for decades. Laura 2.0 is a much healthier woman, partly because we grow most of our food. We relocated to Florida where one can garden twelve months out of the year — if you are not overly sensitive to heat.

Unlike my father, I am the most organic of gardeners. I try to use plants to amend the soil, growing legumes to add nitrogen and other plants like comfrey to accumulate potassium and calcium. I grow red amaranth to take care of bugs, something I discovered purely by accident. My first year in Florida, I planted the grain and noticed the leaves were eaten to the spine. Curiously, none of the other plants touched. Amaranth is the preferred food of all Florida’s bugs.  

Also differently from my father, I do not till the soil below some two to four inches, leaving the microbiome strong and healthy. We in turn eat the plants leading to strong human microbiomes.

How technology helps me

In the olden days, my father perused seed catalogs and traveled to local nurseries to get what he needed. Occasionally, another hobbyist would share seeds. Today, I use my keyboard to source plants and trees from all over the world from Chinese water chestnuts to Korean Ginseng. I type in what I am looking for, scroll down and click. My garden contains plants from all over the world.

All I grow are open pollinated (OP) heirlooms.  Heirlooms are old-time varieties that have been passed down for generations, or at least fifty years.  Open pollination refers to vegetables that either self pollinate or the process is done naturally through insects and the wind. Using OP varieties allows we to save seeds. Each season I let the plants bolt, or go to seed and collect them once dried out by the sun. You can find me walking around Jacksonville handing out homemade free packets.

Online I found like-minded seed savers and organizations. My favorite is Seed Savers Exchange, it traces many of its seeds back one hundred years or more to where in the world and who grew them. Oddly enough, Etsy  known more for handmade and vintage items, has unusual plants I cannot find anywhere else.

Finding how to grow things in the internet age is easy. While my father literally had gardening encyclopedias to refer to, I can use Google to pretty much find out how to grow anything. The University of Florida is a great online resource. It outlines what and when to grow by state region.

An old technology made new is hydroponics, growing in water instead of soil. This is particularly helpful in Florida where it gets so hot. Hydroponic towers, like the ones I use take 1/9 the amount of water when compared to soil gardening.

Graduated to Herbal Medicine

My most recent venture is herbal medicine. One of our greenhouses holds 100 different herbs from Astragalus to Za'atar and everything in-between. While I still use text books, I heavily augment my learning with herbal forums, blogs and the like.

Herbal medicine is gaining traction in the United States. I have stumbled upon (just though Google searches) universities that have cataloged herbs and their medicinal value. One of my favorites is at Penn State.

Two of my preferred sites to buy medicinal plants are The Growers Exchange and Strictly Medicinal.

With the Covid-19 virus causing worldwide havoc, my studies of herbal medicine couldn't be more timely.  Currently our refrigerator is stocked homemade with anti-viral and stress reduction teas. If we were to get the virus, eucalyptus, menthol, mint, elderberries ...and the list literally goes on and on, would help us heal more quickly.

Feel free to follow my adventures in gardening, hydroponics, meditation and yoga on my Facebook page Mat Seed and Spoon.

Technology and my Passion: Mary Keith and Birding

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.

This time it is Mary Keith, who is President of the Tampa Audubon Society. She has been birding most of her life. She grew up in rural Pennsylvania where most weekends were spent in the state parks and woods. She has lived and birded in Florida since 1992. Her degrees have nothing to do with birds (Chemistry and Food Science), but they have supported a life of work around the world where she managed to watch birds as well. She is retired from the University of Florida Extension Service and now has more time to lead bird walks for the Tampa Audubon Society, watch birds, monitor eagle nests and wading bird colonies, count Florida Scrub-Jays, help organize the Florida Birding and Nature Festival, and participate in Christmas Bird Counts: 

For years I said that I was working as a dietitian to support my birding habit. Then I retired, and now most of my time is spent somehow related to birding.  And I’m crazier busy than ever! 

So, what about my birding? My parents were botanists and we were always out in the woods and parks.  I lived in South America before there were any bird books or field guides available.  So while I saw lots of birds I have no idea now what they were.  I learned some names, in the local language and forgot them long ago.  I remember seeing wrens in Machu Picchu, and screamers (yes, real birds!) in northern Argentina.  My food science degrees gave me the opportunity to travel and work around the world, always looking for birds. But the first place I lived overseas where I had an actual bird book was in Kenya in 1990.  Now I have 2 shelves full of field guides to other countries. At last count, I have been on birding trips in 35 countries. May be more.

Why not flowers? They’re colorful but stay in one place. Or butterflies? They’re colorful, and they move around.  But birds? They are just endlessly fascinating! Yes, most of them are colorful, and they fly around.  They also change their colors with the seasons. Many migrate, from country to country, continent to continent!  Every year they fly thousands of miles to spend the winter someplace else.  Then they fly back again, to the same country, same county, often same back yard that they left from!  We still don't know how they do that.  You might find them in forests in one country, and mangroves in another. Their songs during breeding season can be completely different from their chirps when they’re on their winter grounds.  And for all the thousands of books now written about them, there is still so much we do not know.  As I often say when asked about a bird's behavior “We haven’t taught them to read,  English or anything else.  So they haven’t read our books to find out what they’re supposed to do. They just keep on doing what they like, and it’s up to us figure them out.”

Sure a couple of you are wondering, Mary, how many bird species have you seen? At least a thousand, likely twice as many. And Mary, do you have a favorite? It is a Swallow-tailed Kite. First time I saw them, six were grabbing dragonflies from the air and gliding through a glitter-fall of sparkling dragonfly wings! I melted! (Vinnie: Jim Caldwell who wrote about his camerawork in this series here kindly shared a photo of one below)

As for the technology part, I’m trying to keep up with the rush of new developments.  For years we just had binoculars.  Heavy, many made for the military. Now they are light, fit your hand, with exacting optics.  A few include a digital camera to take a photo of what you’re looking at. Augmented reality binoculars are coming next. Spotting ‘scopes are the same, smaller, lighter, and brighter.  Some can clip on to your mobile phone. Optics envy leads to better views, and many purchases!

When Roger Tory Peterson published his first bird field guide in 1934, it became much easier for the casual onlooker to identify birds. Now we have apps!  I bought an iPod and loaded it with BirdJam in 2004.  It was one of the earliest versions of electronic bird song identification. Now our cell phones have apps like Merlin, Audubon and others.  They have photos, not paintings, of the birds, with seasonal range maps showing when the bird is likely to be in an area.  They have songs, not just one variety but those breeding, non-breeding, contact calls and more.  Take a photo, upload it, and  the app will help you ID what you’re looking at. This by the way is the photo I took of a Great Egret displaying its breeding plumage. The one on my head above is a Florida scrub-jay They only live in Florida, nowhere else in the world! Our own special bird.

Technology is also helping track annual migrations. Radar tracks clouds of migrating birds. Transmitters that attach to legs, wings, or feathers, by clip, backpack, glue or surgical implant, some weighing as little as half a gram, allow science to track birds around the world.  A shorebird that nests in the high Arctic was tracked as it flew nonstop to islands south of New Zealand.  Several months later it went back by way of Korea!

Science has attached magnets to birds’ heads, to learn that some use the Earth’s magnetic field to guide themselves.  Tiny eyeglasses have shown that some use polarized light for direction, some hunt by UV light, and some use UV to differentiate between male and female. Who knew?!

I have stacks of little black books, lists of what I saw when and in which country.  Now that’s digital too. And it’s not just for my record keeping.  From Cornell U, eBird.org is probably the largest citizen science project in the world. With a cell phone app (see video below) I can track and upload what I see.  Included on the page is a record of where I was and where I walked while reporting, by map, minutes and miles.  I can report a bird on a nest or a juvenile 100 miles from its nest and upload photos as proof.  Tens of thousands of eBirders are reporting around the world. Using eBird data, science is watching the falling numbers of birds, tracking their migrations day by day, seeing where they are for study, or finding out where they end up after being blown off course by a storm. I can watch moving maps as migrating birds fly north.  If I travel to a new place I can use eBird to find the best local place to go, or find a bird that I’ve never seen.  Some Subaru owners can now link their eBird and get immediate directions from the navigation system in the car to get there.

Recently it has been suggested that in the future eBird will be able to ask me for more information about a bird I reported.  The apps will evolve into gaming and social media communities.  I’ll be able, singly or in a team, to ‘compete’ with others to find new or the most birds.

Millions of birds die colliding with lighted skyscrapers or moving wind turbines.  We’ll be able to recognize in advance when a migration is coming and turn off the lights, or slow the spin.  AI and Wi-Fi connected bird feeders could be able to identify the birds at the feeders and report who, where, how many and how often they’re feeding. You would think drones would be good for birding. Today, they actually risk birds more than help capture better images. Another area for technologists to innovate.

The sky’s the limit!

Tiny nuclear plants

An experimental nuclear reactor in Idaho could be the first of its kind in the United States: a commercial reactor providing power using fuel that reduces nuclear waste. The small power plant could power about 1,000 homes and can run almost autonomously for 20 years.

This project comes from Oklo, that claims its reactor would be the “first ever” one to generate power through nuclear waste. But Oklo is just one of many groups working on ways to make localized and safer nuclear power as a bridge between the energy status quo and a more carbon neutral future.

Popular Mechanics

 

 

Bell rethinks the helicopter tail rotor

Sinusas said his team chose the four-fan array because a single larger electric rotor would be heavier and less responsive, with more sluggish changes in speed. Smaller electric fans are also quieter, which was the primary motivation for developing the system. “Noise has always been there, but it really hasn’t been a priority to reduce it until recently,” he added. “We’re at the point where locations are banning helicopter flights because of the noise levels, and that prompted us to ask how we can solve this.”

Converting the tail rotor to an all-electric system solves other problems. It improves stability because the rotors don’t need to be constantly in motion, unlike a conventional tail rotor. The pilot can actually turn the fans off in forward flight, as the vertical fin they’re embedded within stabilizes the aircraft. (Conventional tail rotors are only needed for hovering and low-speed flight, but they run constantly because of the link to the main engine.) Also, because the system is fly-by-wire, meaning controlled electrically rather than through mechanical linkages, the computer can control the fans. This can potentially eliminate the need for the pilot to have to use the pedals at all. An automated version of the EDAT would thus be a form of autopilot.

Finally, the system will help with the current rush toward the electrification of aircraft, particularly air taxis being developed by Bell and dozens of other companies. “It’s certainly a stepping stone toward electrification, and easier than doing it with a full aircraft with a completely new powertrain,” Sinusas noted. It also should be easier to certify than a fresh helicopter design—less than a year versus several years—because only the anti-torque system is changing and being electrified.

Wired

Walmart's take on healthcare

Visitors to the Calhoun Walmart can also get a $30 medical checkup or a $25 teeth cleaning, or talk about their anxieties with a counselor for $1 a minute.

Prices for those services and more are clearly listed on bright digital billboards in a cozy waiting room inside a new Walmart Health center. Walk-ins are welcome, but most appointments are booked online beforehand. No insurance? No problem. Need a lab test on a Sunday? Sure thing.

Walmart “care hosts” take customers from the waiting area to one of 12 care rooms in the 6,500-square-foot facility. Afterward, patients are steered to the in-store pharmacy. While they wait for their prescriptions, they can visit the produce section and grab some veggies recommended by the doctor. Later, there’s even a free Zumba class in the community room.

BusinessWeek