I usually take January and July off for programming Linux, but this July the tropical weather is seriously killing me so I can't even steady a mouse over an editor. Instead I made an effort to find some scientists in Minnesota interested in advanced biofuels. Plant growth is as out of control as mosquitoes, and forest fire smoke from Montana to California now covers the Great Plains. The leading scientists at the U I've found are Iranian Physics Ph.D. student Taher Ghasimakbari, and profs. Shri Ramaswami and Bo Hu from BBE. I've been pushing the technologies they are working on for 25 years regarding climate and agriculture. This is how the internet worked, too, when Mark Dayton was commissioner of energy and economic development and Rudy Perpich was the brainpower state governor and the U was all supercomputers. It looks like you will be buying farm and energy technology from Asia now, just like modern electronics. Iznogoud wrote: > Rick, I did not edit out your reponses with any purpose other than keeping it > brief. (I also take every opportunity to do "top-posting" to keep the list > spiced up!) > > I have some friends who are doing "precision agriculture" research and they > are using computer vision to assess the health of crops and to do targeted > administration of nutrients and other chemicals. They fly drones to collect > images, process them in near real-time, etc, etc. All this is heavily leveraging > on Linux, and there are cameras with R-Pis on board the drones, etc. Then there > is the coputer vision part that uses libraries and other custom software that > essentially runs on our favourite OS. > > There are two companies, I hear, that are interested in using the technology > locally. I do not know the people involved beyong the UofM researchers. > > I am more interested in aquaponics and in that type of automation, and I am > largely against grain-agriculture, which is very damaging to the environment. > (I am not soliciting a discussion or argument on this topic.) > > > On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 08:30:31PM -0500, Rick Engebretson wrote: >> I'll resume my linux advocacy in spite of your editing. >> >> Many farmers now rely on GPS and computer control of every square foot >> of cropland. That's a lot of linux. And the crops aren't Darwin's idea >> of evolution. Automation is on a fast growth track. >> >> Cars are more than a little intelligent these days. With major changes >> to drive train and fuels. That, too, is a lot of linux. Energy systems >> is Elon Musk's interest. >> >> If you hadn't cut out my postings it would be clear, all I'm trying to >> do is shift some focus to these actual linux science topics. Science too >> easily gets deleted from political discussion. >> > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >