Green Options » MSU

Robot Fish to Better Monitor Water Quality

Zachary Shahan — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:32:10 +0000

An ecologist and an engineer at Michigan State University are working together to create robot fish that can better monitor various factors in aquatic environments.

Combining the brilliance of nature with some top-notch engineering, these two scientists are on to something and getting the funding for it.

The researchers are breaking ground with this and looking to raise water monitoring to another level.

Poop Power - Turning Farm Waste into Fuel

Becky Striepe — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:00:51 +0000

[image credit: Jelle at Flickr under a Creative Commons license]

Researchers at Michigan State University are working on technology that could help small farms transform animal waste from pollutant to fuel. Through funding from both public and anonymous, private sources, MSU is planning an Anaerobic Digestion Research and Education Center. The Center will test methods for efficiently using bacteria to turn animal waste into biogas, which farms can in turn use in place of fossil fuels for things like electricity and heat. The aim is to make this an affordable option for small- to mid-sized farms. This technology simultaneously addresses two issues that farmers face: farm waste management and increased energy prices.

Gene from Cow’s Stomach Engineered to Create More Affordable Biofuel

Carol Gulyas — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:31:10 +0000

As we pointed out in an earlier posting, one of the problems with biofuels such as corn-based ethanol is that they are diverting food crops from food source to fuel source. Miriam Sticklen, a crop and soil scientist from Michigan State University, announced this week that she has used an enzyme from a cow’s stomach to create a new strain of corn.

This new kind of corn, in an ideal scenario, would allow the kernels to be used as food, while the (formerly) wasted part of the corn plant could be converted to biofuel. A gene from a cow’s stomach, one of the most effective digesters of plant sugars in the world, is implanted into a corn cell using genetic engineering, fundamentally changing the corn plant. As reported in Biofuels Journal: