Word: plantings
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...there are few sure things in Afghan commerce. Not even a powerful international brand like Coca-Cola is guaranteed success. In September, Habib Gulzar Non-Alcoholic Beverages, Coke's franchisee in Afghanistan, opened a $25 million dollar bottling plant on the outskirts of Kabul. The modern facility-the first such factory to open since the fall of the Taliban-is large enough to produce 40,000 cases of soda a day. But the factory is operating at less than 20% of its capacity. Asked to estimate when the investment might be recouped, Salman Rawn, country manager for Coca-Cola Afghanistan...
Their company, Aresa, a Copenhagen-based biotech start-up, has genetically modified a common weed called thale-cress so that its leaves turn red when the plant comes in contact with nitrogen dioxide - a compound that naturally leaches into the soil from unexploded land mines made from plastic and held together by leaky rubber seals. Aresa is growing large patches of the stuff on old army shooting ranges that have been seeded with land mines...
...disparate machines to communicate? For decades, that has been a costly challenge for anyone operating an oil refinery, pulp mill or processing plant. Sensors measuring temperature, pressure and dozens of other things that govern how smoothly a process is running have long been linked via expensive wiring, if at all. Installing new sensors has traditionally called for retrofitting a factory with new wiring whose installation can cost 10 times what the measurement gauge itself does. Many new devices can't be wired into a central system because of the way factories are laid out, so data are often gathered...
...comes Dust Networks. To connect sensors in factories, commercial buildings or any type of processing plant, the four- year-old start-up developed a small wireless hub that relays measurements along a daisy chain of stations to pool collected data. In what is called a mesh network, each station passes along data to the nearest available station, using any one of many communication channels. The mesh network solves the problem faced by other wireless systems in factory settings: being blocked by giant metal structures. The system uses so little power that stations can go 10 years without a battery change...
...deal on this particular planet. So is medicine, where no breakthrough is small, whether it's Amorfix's blood test for mad cow disease or HealthSTATS' wristwatch-like device that measures blood pressure. Either one could save your life. And speaking of lifesaving, how about Aresa's landmine-detecting plant? Not as hip as Technorati, a Web-search wonder, but in war's bloody wake, this is one weed that will be appreciated...