HARVEST

Engineers have demonstrated something marvelous. Almost any material can be used to create a device that continuously harvests energy from humid air.It's not a development that's ready for practical application, but it does, its creators say, transcend some of the limitations of other harvesters. All the material needs is to be pocked with nanopores less than 100 nanometers in diameter. That's around a thousandth of the width of a human hair, so easier said than done but far simpler than expected.Such material can…

Engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a technique for harvesting electricity from air humidity, dubbed the “generic Air-gen effect.” According to research published in Advanced Materials, any material with nanopores less than 100 nanometers in diameter can be utilized to continuously generate electricity.Engineers describe the “generic Air-gen effect”—nearly any material can be engineered with nanopores to harvest, cost-effective, scalable, interruption-free electricity.Researchers at the…

Consider me mildly intrigued Ever since the Harvest Moon franchise was forcibly uncoupled from the Bokujō Monogatari franchise from Marvelous, it’s had trouble finding its footing in the surprisingly competitive farm sim genre. Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley and Harvest Moon: Skytree Village attempted to mix the traditional crop-raising gameplay with a Minecraft-inspired voxel world. The results were less than stellar. Harvest Moon: Light of Hope revisited the top-down feel of the original game with mixed results,…

It is the season for harvesting Bell pepper in Northern Nigeria and farmers have already commenced the process of bagging, trading and sun-drying the farm produce. In Kano, farmers who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES complained about the spike in the prices of inputs (seeds, fertilisers and pesticides ) and the invasion of pests on their crop. Although the farmers said they have more output this year compared to last year due to training and support they received from a farmer-centred association called Sasakawa based in…

It’s a cruel irony that over 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, but it’s undrinkable. Scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have now modeled the feasibility of a hypothetical system that can capture water vapor from above the ocean surface and condense it into fresh drinking water, at a large scale.Water scarcity is an ongoing issue that’s projected to only get worse, as climate change makes dry areas even drier. The oceans, home to over 96% of all water on Earth, represents a huge…

The Winds of Anthos You can hardly swing a controller in this industry today without hitting at least three different farming sims. The genre has absolutely exploded in the years following Stardew Valley and there seems to be no shortage of developers looking to have players out there hoeing with the best of ’em. In 2022, we saw some fine farm sims, including Harvestella, the Doraemon Story of Seasons sequel, and the absolutely resplendent Wylde Flowers. Looking ahead to 2023, we have Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life,…

A Barren Boundary: Despite a largely successful harvest overall, some crops along the front line went unharvested.A satellite-based analysis indicates that nearly 27 million tons of wheat were harvested from Ukraine’s farms this year, but the country won’t reap all of the benefits.Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 fueled widespread concern about the effects on the country’s farming sector. In the early days of the crisis, food security specialists wondered if Ukrainian farmers would be able to harvest…

“Eventually, we will need to find a way to increase the supply of freshwater as conservation and recycled water from existing sources, albeit essential, will not be sufficient to meet human needs. We think our newly proposed method can do that at large scales,” said Illinois professor Praveen Kumar. The illustration shows Kumar and his co-authors’ proposed approach for capturing moisture above ocean surfaces and transporting it to land for condensation. Credit: Graphic courtesy Praveen Kumar and Scientific ReportsAn…

Harvest McDoom While “cozy” games are all the rage on the indie scene these days, perhaps one of the gold standards for relaxing, casual-grind-based gameplay is Natsume’s iconic farming series, Harvest Moon — And the franchise seems to have had something of a strange effect on YouTuber Cloudie McDoom, who woke up yesterday morning to find themselves occupying a live-action recreation of the beloved franchise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8pCxPlryaI Whilst I won’t spoil the work that has gone into this short,…

For cannabis growers who plant outdoors, turning leaves signify the fall harvest. During the month of October — colloquially known as Croptober — cultivators throughout Colorado cut down their marijuana fields, the first step in the plants’ journey to reach consumers at dispensaries. Growing outside is reminiscent of the days before cannabis was legal, when producers raised their crop in hidden fields rather than in today’s high-tech indoor operations, which come with expensive lighting apparatuses, air monitoring…