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Robot Versus Slug plus other strange gardening news
Robot Versus Slug
LONDON (Reuters) - For centuries the humble slug has eaten its way through the world's vegetable patches, frustrating farmers and gardeners alike, but thanks to British scientists the great plant muncher is about to be munched.
Scientists at Britain's University of West England have developed the "SlugBot," a prototype robot capable of hunting down more than 100 slugs an hour.
It operates after dark when slugs are most active and uses their rotting bodies to generate the electricity it needs to power itself.
The SlugBot is the brainchild of engineers at the university's Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory who wanted to build the world's first fully autonomous robot.
"Slugs were chosen because they are a major pest, are reasonably plentiful, have no hard shell of skeleton, and are reasonably large," Dr. Ian Kelly, SlugBot's creator, said in a statement.
The 2-foot-high machine uses an image sensor that beams out red light to pinpoint the slugs, which emit a different infra-red wavelength from worms and snails.
It then uses a carbon fibre arm with a three fingered claw grabber to pick up the slugs and store them in a tank.
After a hard night of slug busting, the robot returns home and unloads its victims into a fermentation tank. While the SlugBot recharges, the fermentation tank turns the slug sludge into electricity.
But the robot, voted one of the best inventions of the year by Time magazine, has attracted some criticism.
One Time reader called the invention "reckless" in a letter to the magazine. "To create robots that devour flesh is to step over a line that we would be insane to cross," he said.
Gardeners were more welcoming. Adam Pasco, editor of the BBC Gardener's World magazine, told the Daily Mail: "Anything that would prove a fool-proof method of destroying slugs would be fantastic."
A spokeswoman for the university told Reuters on Wednesday there were no plans to release the SlugBot on the commercial market. "It was a proof of concept machine only," she said.
The news will disappoint Britain's farmers who spend an average 20 million pounds a year trying to eradicate the slimy creatures.
Elena
More British News
Pop the kettle on, Violet!
Green fingered Lindley woman Violet Farmary has revealed the secret of her success. She says the reason she has been able to grow giant hydrangeas is tea!
Community minded Mrs Farmary, 66, looks after the gardens in front of the maisonettes where she lives in East Street. And passers-by often stop to marvel at the massive hydrangea blooms, in red, pink and blue. The biggest is 4ft tall, with a 14.5" flower head.
Mrs Farmary said: "I've been here 36 years, and I started to grow hydrangeas then. Many people cannot pass without touching them and commenting. They are amazing. I've never seen any others as big. I look after the gardens for everyone, as some of the other residents are elderly. "She added: "I water them every day and feed them plant food. I also sprinkle the tea from old tea bags on to the soil. A friend gave me the idea years ago - and it must work when you look at the results. "I don't know if other gardeners do it, but it hits the spot for my hydrangeas!"
Denmark news this time...
Strange but True
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A Danish biotech company has developed a genetically modified flower that could help detect land mines and it hopes to have a prototype ready for use within a few years.
"We are really excited about this, even though it's early days. It has considerable potential," Simon Oestergaard, chief executive of developing company Aresa Biodetection, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
The genetically modified weed has been coded to change color when its roots come in contact with nitrogen-dioxide (NO2) evaporating from explosives buried in soil.
Within three to six weeks from being sowed over land mine infested areas the small plant, a Thale Cress, will turn a warning red whenever close to a land mine.
England again.....
More than a Beetle?
At home in Friar Park, Henley, Oxfordshire, George Harrison devoted much of his resources to restoring the garden. The house was commissioned in 1896 by a Victorian eccentric and plant enthusiast, Sir Frank Crisp, to whom Harrison the former Beatle dedicated The Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp. The centrepiece of the rock garden had been a 30ft model of the Matterhorn built from 7,000 tons of Yorkshire stone.
Crisp claimed to be a scholar of the history of gardening and planted his large collections in plots designed as replicas of renaissance and medieval gardens. Crisp was also famous for having an unrivalled collection of garden gnomes, some of which survived to feature on the cover of All Things Must Pass, Harrison’s first solo album after the Beatles split.
After Crisp’s death, the garden had fallen derelict, his alabaster topped Matterhorn devoid of plants. When Harrison bought the 120 room house, an extravagant piece of Gothic revival architecture with turrets, towers and gargoyles, for £200,000 in 1971, he set about restoring the 30 acres of gardens with their network of subterranean passageways, waterfalls, lakes and the five caverns where the gnomes were displayed.
Nude Gardeners
Women's naked farming ritual brings rain August 16 2002
Some 200 women in Nepal who ploughed their fields naked in a desperate attempt to bring rain to their drought-stricken region were rewarded as the monsoon began shortly afterwards, a report said yesterday.
The women had last week locked their husbands inside their houses and then stripped off to till their fields at midnight in a bid to appease the Hindu god of rain, Indra.
The superstitious women were trying to bring showers to the far western Banke district, where the monsoon had failed to materialise and farmers had been unable to plant rice.
Days after the naked ploughing, it began raining in western parts of the country and it seemed the rain god Indra was finally appeased, the Nepali-language daily, Nepal Samacharpatra said.
Local official Rajesh Kumar Mahato from the neighbouring Dhangadhi district told the newspaper some places in the region had 197mm of rainfall at the weekend.
The ritual had worked so well that excessive rainfall caused roads to become flooded.
And in the US this time....
Nude Gardeners
In August 1996 Robert Norton, 73, was arrested for at
least the 13th time since 1981 on public nudity charges while out working in his yard in Pekin, Ill. And in Brooksville, Fla., in August, Carolyn Sparks, 48, received a citation for raking topless in her front yard. (In November, a jury said her behaviour did not amount to disorderly conduct.)
Garden Robot
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Tired of mowing the lawn? New Zealand researchers say they have a device that could make your neighbors green with envy.
It's a lawnmower operated via the Internet. The robotic grass cutter is controlled through a web page which monitors the mower by a small camera on the side of a house. "What our technology allows us to do is to control lawnmowers and other robotic devices while people are away at work," Massey University's Glen Bright told Reuters.
The electric mower, smaller and more compact than a normal mower, moves in a sequence across the grass, stopping in places that require trimming. It motors out once during the day and then again at night with the computer directing its every move.
The mower should be up and trimming by the end of the year and commercially available soon after that, Bright said. The device needs physical boundaries to navigate but by the end of the year it will be able to self-navigate and adjust to different grass heights as well as carrying out gardening tasks such as soil testing, he said.
The mower was developed in collaboration with lawnmower and chainsaw company Husqvarna, part of the Sweden-based AB Electrolux home appliance maker.
Some compost pile!
Call it a blooming of goodwill. Call it what you may. But Los Angeles County officials aren't going to have Tim Dundon's 40-foot-high compost heap in Altadena demolished any time soon.
Local officials have granted a reprieve to a four-story-high compost pile in Los Angeles County. Over the years they have tried to get the 27-year-old, 40-foot pile of decomposed mulch, kitchen waste and dung demolished, but relented last week after a meeting with the heap’s creator, Tim Dundon, and his supporters.
The impressive pile dwarfs Mr. Dundon’s home in Altadena and nourishes his beloved one acre jungle of cactuses, azaleas, and banana trees, reports the Los Angeles times. “Everyone in the community loves this place, and we're hoping to find a way to keep it,” said the deputy county supervisor, Kathryn Barger.
Dundon, an eccentric folk hero in the Altadena hills, said he was delighted. "I think everybody sees the benefits of this super-cosmic pile being here," he declared after the meeting. "Pressure from the public and press is paying off." Los Angeles Times .
Bone meal bonanza!
Researchers at the University of Arkansas have found that performing yard work at least once a week appears to be one of the best ways to build and maintain healthy bones. Using a complex method of statistical analysis, they found that women aged fifty and over who worked in the garden and those who lifted weights had comparable bone density. The results are considered important, says The Hartford Courant, because exercise is an effective way to prevent the bone loss disease osteoporosis, many women at greatest risk have a hard time choosing and sticking to a regimen.
