The Rural Voice, 2002-12, Page 58The leading edge
Garden flower could become mining tool
A common garden plant could help
mining companies recover metals
from the soil.
Inco Ltd. of Toronto and Viridian
Resources LLC of Houston, Texas
have been testing the theory that
perennial alyssum can extract nickel
from the soil and the nickel can later
be recovered by burning the plant.
The tests have been taking place on
plots in Port Colborne on land
contaminated by a plume of pollution
deposited by a former Inco base metal
refinery on the site. The yellow -
flowering bushy plants absorb the
metal from the soil. Tests in Canada
have shown the plant can be up to two
per cent nickel. When incinerated, the
resulting ash has been tested at up to
30 per cent nickel.
The results of the tests could turn
farmers on the Indonesian island of
Sulawesi into nickel miners. They
would grow the alyssum which will
be cut and baled like hay. Because it's
a perennial crop the alyssum will
grow back.
The ability of alyssum to
concentrate nickel from the soil has
been known since the 1940s but wild
stocks of the plant have only a quarter
to a half the nickel -ash content of the
varieties being planted in Port
Colborne. The dramatic difference
has been achieved by breeding and
selecting hundreds of naturally -
occurring alyssum varieties.
University of Waterloo biologist
Bemard Glick has been experiment-
ing with "probiotics", adding bacteria
to the alyssum seeds so that when
they grow, the microbes help them
extract even more metal from the soil.
The experiments have shown the
two companies that the plants must be
harvested before they go to seed
because that's when they have the
highest metal content.
In Indonesia, natural levels of
nickel of 0.5 per cern are common. At
that concentration it's estimated the
top third of a metre of soil would
provide enough nickel for 50-100
years of mining. Because the soil goes
down many metres, regular removal
of upper levels of soil could see
nickel farming going on for centuries.
The U.S. Department of
Agriculture has done an economic
analysis of the potential yield for this
process called phytomining.
Assuming a price of $5,000 (U.S.) a
tonne for nickel, a harvested crop
would be worth $2,000 per hectare.
This goes up to $3,000 if the burning
energy can be captured for other uses.
This compares to an agricultural yield
of $50 4100 per hectare for the same
land today. The yields are often
marginal because of the high nickel
content in the soi1.0
— Source: The Globe and Mail
Clones are genetically abnormal, study sags
Cloned mice have hundreds of abnormal genes, which explains why so many
cloned animals die at, or before, birth, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology say. The process of cloning introduces the genetic mutations, and
there seems no immediate way around the problem, reported Rudolf Jaenisch and
his colleagues.
"I think this confirms suspicions that I have always had and that many others
had that cloning is a very inefficient method at this point," Jaenisch said. "It is
very irresponsible to think this method could be used for the reproductive
cloning of humans."
Researchers have known for years that cloning is difficult. Many cloned
animals that survive to birth die soon after, or develop abnormalities of the lung,
liver and other organs.
Jaenisch, working with Ryuzo Yanagimachi of the University of Hawaii who
was the first to clone mice, made dozens of cloned mice and then used a gene
chip to look at the activity of 10,000 genes. They found many abnormal genes.
While some genetic researchers have claimed their cloned livestock are normal
and healthy if they survive birth, Jaenisch believes genetic abnormalities will be
found even in these seemingly normal animals.0
— Source: Reuters News Agency
54 THE RURAL VOICE
Chicken feathers could
make faster computers
Chicken feathers and soybean
oil could lead to faster computers
according to researchers at the
University of Delaware.
Richard Wool, a chemical
engineer at the university began
looking for an ideal circuit board
to speed up computers. A perfect
circuit board would be made out
of air because the tiny wires
inplanted in a normal epoxy and
silicone circuit board react with
the background material and speed
is slowed. If a circuit board could
be made of air, there would be no
slowing of the signals. Though
making a circuit board out of air is
impossible, making one out of
feathers, which are 50 per cent air
because of their hollow fibres, is
an alternative.
Wool's team successfully
manufactured circuit boards made
out of matted chicken feathers
held together by chemically -mod-
ified soybean oil which hardens
like an epoxy. The soybean oil has
a low dielectric constant which
means it causes little interference
with the travelling electrons.
"You end up with these
beautiful circuit boards that are all
made with bio -based materials.
They are light and they're very
cheap and they have some of the
lowest dielectric constants in the
world, which promotes faster
speeds," says Wool who has a
commitment from Tyson Foods
Inc. to supply 900 million
kilograms of chicken feathers a
year if the project takes off.
Tyson Foods has licensed a
process patented by the United
States Department of Agriculture
that strips the hairs of the feather
from the quill. The hairs are used
to make the fibrous mats that are
the backbone of the plant -based
circuit boards.
Forty million bushels of
soybeans are needed to make
enough epoxy for the volume of
feathers Tyson has committed.0
— Source: Western Producer