Daily Archives: June 11, 2017

Moscow is home to the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy, an enormous recreation and museum complex. One of its buildings is decked out with a spectacular exterior thats designed to look like the conductive tracks on a circuit board.

The building in question is the Pavilion of Moscow Information Technology Department, a 1,600 square meter presentation space that showcases Russias electrical achievements. Russian architectural firm Wall designed the exterior of the pavilion in 2016, according to Dezeen. The outer panels were formed out of concrete in a local factory, and house an exhibition space, business center, and childrens play area.

WALL | [] | [] | | | | 2016

WALL | [] | [] | | | | 2016

The structure is supposed to stand for another ten years, and the result is really something. The detailing adds an intriguing texture to the walls, which lends itself nicely to the purpose of the building itself: promoting the countrys technological achievements.

Excerpt from:

The walls of this Russian technology exhibit are imprinted with a circuit board design - The Verge

The fibreglass-concrete facades of this technology centre in Moscow, designed by architecture practice Wall, are imprinted with a pattern based on the conductive tracks of circuit boards.

Moscow-based Wall, astudio led by architectsArakelyan Ruben and Navasardyan Ayk, designed the Pavilion of Moscow Information Technology Departmentfor the city's exhibition centre and amusement parkVDNH.

Also known asPavilion DIT, the 1,600-square-metre temporary pavilionstands at the intersection of Kolcevaya Road and Serenevaya Alley.

It is expected to remain in place for10 years, and will be used to show off the most interesting achievements inelectronics.

Lines and circles are imprinted into the fibreglass-concrete panels that clad the building, creating thetactile facade intended to reference the circuit boards used inelectronics.

The panels, which continue onto the ground at the pavilion's entrance, were designed by Wall and made in a local factory.

These imprinted walls arewindowless, placingfurther emphasis on the pattern. This approach also helped todraw visitors towards the full-height glazing that fronts entrance points to the building.

Inside, thesingle-storey space isdivided into three parts an exhibition space, business centre and a children'szone that are separated by a recess in the building's facade.

"Thematic areas create open spaces for flexible use in the summer season, open exhibitions, lectures, workshops, kid's activities," explained thearchitects.

Other recent examples of contemporary architecture in Russia's capital city include OMA'sGarage Museum of Contemporary Art and David Adjaye'sMoscow School of Management.

Just outside the city, London-based Zaha Hadid Architects is working on a building for theSkolkovo Innovation Center, Russia's answer to Silicon Valley. The131,000-square-metreSberbank Technopark buildingreferences Hadid's well-documented interest in the Russian Avant-Garde.

Photography is by Ilya Ivanov.

Project credits:

Architects: Wall Other participants: - Product brands: GRC, Guardian, MDM

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Information technology pavilion in Moscow features circuit-board-patterned walls - Dezeen

How many screens are in the cab of a farmer's planter?

Jason Watson's has five, and he said that's typical.

"It's full of electronics," said Watson, who farms near Villa Grove.

This includes:

A screen attached to the tractor's basic controls.

A backup camera, so farmers are "able to know when a car's behind them," Watson said.

The planter monitor, which "is recording all of our skips, doubles, down force, all the things that we need to know to make adjustments to best plant the seed," Watson said.

A global positioning system for guidance. "The tractors are being driven by a satellite signal that's allowing us to stay straight," he said.

An iPad, which combines the planter monitor data with the GPS data and displays it on a map of the field.

All this technology isn't necessarily cheap, and farmers always have to weight the costs and benefits.

"The constant game with technology is making sure that you're benefiting from it enough to afford it," he said. "It's never easy. You want all the bells and whistles, and you want all the gadgets, but it's about understanding what you can do with the information and how that technology can benefit you."

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Just Askin': Technology on the farm - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

A new project by The Texas A&M Transportation Institute could soon make Texas Department of Transportation road evaluations more consistent, efficient and effective using technology similar to what is being developed for autonomous vehicles.

The project is among a number of innovative studies being overseen by TxDOT's Office of Research and Technology Implementation.

Paul Carlson, head of TTI's Traffic Operations and Roadway Safety Division, said the monitoring system would replace the agency's current method of evaluating roads by eye -- a practice he said often lends itself to subjectivity and inconsistency.

"The idea is to add low-cost sensors to TxDOT vehicles so that they essentially act like robotic eyes, looking at the infrastructure, providing infrastructure information and condition assessment information," Carlson said. "[Right now] TxDOT employees have to drive their roadways twice per year doing windshield inspections, driving down the road and judging what needs to be rehabilitated and what needs to be maintained. ... This provides a much more objective way for that to be done with consistency across the board."

TxDOT RTI project manager Chris Glancy said while the technology is still in the testing phase, it already is garnering attention from department employees across the state.

"Every time I show district personnel the project, they want to implement it locally," Glancy said in a statement. "This is an example of what we expect to be many future innovative opportunities to utilize new vehicle technologies to improve safety and efficiency of many of the field operations that the department must undertake to effectively maintain our transportation system."

Carlson said the technology is now in the field for testing to measure accuracy and the cost-benefit of the system. He said four fleet vehicles of TxDOT's Bryan District already have been equipped with the system, and 26 are scheduled for installation across the state by the end of the year.

Should the system prove successful, Carlson said the technology could provide transportation officials with a more timely and cost-efficient way to get the most out of the "limited dollars" in maintenance funding they receive each year.

Carlson said the "unobtrusive" technology is designed to cost less than $1,000 per vehicle.

In addition to its potential cost-saving benefits, Carlson said the monitoring system is automatic and connected to a cloud service in which data is collected and analytics are compiled.

"The idea is that we provide the TxDOT personnel with no additional duties," Carlson said. "[The drivers] just go do their normal work."

He said the information then would be available to officials in the form of a "near-real-time map" of road conditions.

Carlson said in addition to its potential use in TxDOT vehicles across the state, the technology could also be commercialized and marketed to other state transportation agencies as well.

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TTI project using technology to improve road-evaluation process - Bryan-College Station Eagle

Nebraska farmers to learn about agricultural technology The Olympian Nebraska farmers, ranchers and other agricultural professionals will gather in Kearney to learn about changing technology and how to prepare for tough economic times. The Nebraska Farm Bureau, University of Nebraska and KRVN Rural Radio Network will ... and more »

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Nebraska farmers to learn about agricultural technology - The Olympian

Paula Heikell, For the Sun-News 8:45 a.m. MT June 11, 2017

Wes Richins, right, owner of SCALE Ag Services, talks with his team and Garrett Salopek,left, about the different application for the Phytech dendrometer,system, which help monitor the micro-variations of trunk radius with in there microns, helping farmers gauge water usage in orchards. Wednesday Mary 24, 2017.(Photo: Josh Bachman/Sun-News)Buy Photo

LAS CRUCES -Imagine being able to individually monitor every single plant across many fields of crops to determine its specific water and nutrient needs on a given day; or recycling thousands of gallons of agricultural waste water back into 100 percent pure drinking water. These are the things that Wes Richins, owner of SCALE Ag Services of Las Cruces, thinks about as hes developing products to help his agricultural customers be successful.

Richins has spent his life in agriculture. After growing up on a farm, he earned an agricultural business degree at New Mexico State University, worked at WR Grace, and spent 18 years at Agriliance (now WinField) before launching his own agricultural supply business. Eleven years later, hes built a thriving company that sells macro- and micro-nutrients, soil amendments, seeds and other products to farms throughout the western U.S. and internationally.

However, Richins focus is not limited to supplies. Hes also on the constant lookout to find next-generation techniques and tools to help his customers address emerging trends that can impact their business.

A Phytech dendrometer, set up by SCALE Ag Services, is pictured here in on of the pecan orchards owned by Frank Paul Salopek and Sons Farms. The hardware helps monitor the micro-variations of trunk radius within there microns, helping farmers gauge water usage in orchards. Wednesday May 24, 2017.(Photo: Josh Bachman/Sun-News)

Most recently, Richins has added crop stress monitoring technology to the SCALE Ags product line, partly inspired by his own farming experience. Wed planted some seed and when the yield didnt turn out as expected, the supplier told us it was because of water management, he said. That aggravated me; from everything I could see, we had good water management. I got to thinking there had to be a better way to view and manage whats happening in the field.

After doing some research, he found and became a distributor for PhyTech, a plant monitoring system that uses sensors to capture individual plant data and upload it in a real-time data stream to the farmer. The data helps to determine how much water, nutrition and light is needed for specific plants, if theyre stressed, and what they need for the best growing conditions. The system even has a component that will predict the next weeks weather conditions, said Heather Bedale, SCALE Ags PhyTech product manager.

SCALE Ag began selling the PhyTech system in Februaryto customers in the southwest U.S. and Mexico.

Heather Bedale, with SCALE Ag Services, explains how the Phytech system collects data from the dendrometer sensors on the pecan trees in the Frank Paul Salopek and Sons farms orchard and sends it to a cloud database system where the Salopeks can review how much moister is in the soil and trees. Wednesday May 23, 2017.(Photo: Josh Bachman/Sun-News)

Richins also believes that water management is going to become one, if not the most crucial element that farmers will be dealing with in the future, and hes already investing resources to understand what that will specifically mean to his customers and their community. Water management tools that help plant utilization of water and nutrients are going to be ever more important as time goes on, he said.

With this in mind, he is working closely with Enviro Water Minerals Company, an El Paso-based firm that has developed new technology to reclaim agricultural waste water and turn it into drinking water. EWCs first plant, which is about to go online, will return 2.2 million gallons of drinking water to the city that they didnt have, he said. and with PhyTech, we will be to enhance the utilization of the water assets we have today.

Wes Richins, owner of Scale Ag Services, holds a Phytech dendrometer, a water monitoring system. Wednesday May 24, 2017.(Photo: Josh Bachman/Sun-News)

Another benefit of the reclamation process is that it extracts elements such as high-grade gypsum out of the reclaimed waste water that can be reused in farming. The process is yielding nearly 99.9 percent pure gypsum, which can be used as a fertilizer and a salt mitigation product in the fields, said Richins. So were taking a product that was being disposed of and reclaiming it, so it can be applied to the soil to make it healthier.

He is also working to bring humic acid, another product used for salt mitigation and increasing micro-nutrient availability in soil, to his customers. We also have a sugar alcohol system developed by Brandt, he said, Its like taking a hypodermic needle and sticking it into a leaf so the nutrients are rapidly metabolized in the plant with no energy loss.

Richins takes a farmers first focus in everything he considers. He wants his customers to know that they wont get cookie cutter answers when they call SCALE Ag for help. He has built a team of agricultural specialists who have in-depth knowledge to address a range of issues. One such expert is Beland, who brings a masters degree in agricultural biology and statistics, and considerable research experience to the company. Another is Derek Davidson, who grew up on Silver Farms in San Miguel and earned an agriculture degree at NMSU before joining Scale Ag.

We spend a lot of time talking to individual farmers, Richins said. We want them to know that were here to do the research and help them find the right solution for their specific needs.

Paula Heikell is a freelance writer who can be reached at paula@wordwell.net.

For more information:

SCALE Ag Services, LLC 961 Sand Castle Avenue Las Cruces, NM 88012

Contact: Heather Bedale

Phone: 575-382-1642

Read or Share this story: http://www.lcsun-news.com/story/money/industries/2017/06/11/leveraging-science-technology-helps-farmers-thrive/375386001/

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Leveraging science, technology helps farmers thrive - Las Cruces Sun-News