Farm field monitor takes innovation prize

Kelly Caylor IMG_8176 - Version 2

Kelly Caylor

An agricultural/environmental sensing monitor designed by Kelly Caylor and his team took third prize in the Keller Center’s 10th Annual Innovation Forum last week at Princeton University. PulsePod, a combination of hardware and software, provides in-field monitoring of crop health, microclimate, water and nutrients — information that is currently not easily available to farmers. The device communicates securely with Internet-based computers that store data and perform analysis that helps farmers to optimize their resources, said Caylor, associate professor in civil and environmental engineering and director of the ENV program. His team includes Adam Wolf, an associate research scholar in ecology and environmental biology, and Ben Siegfried, a Princeton alumnus and technical assistant in civil and environmental engineering. First and second prizes in the competition, which is for University researchers to present potentially marketable discoveries, went to Mark Esposito, for an enzyme-blocking method to stop the spread of cancer and to Blake Johnson for his 3-D printed personalized nerve regeneration technology.

CNN’s Bill Weir explores world’s threatened wonders

PBS is running “Earth a New Wild,” a engaging series in which the conservation biologist M. Sanjayan reveals opportunities for sustaining biological diversity and dynamics even as human population and consumption pressures rise.

Now comes “The Wonder List,” an eight-part CNN series on Sundays at 10 p.m. Eastern…The films get behind the caricatured representations of cultural and environmental disruption that are all too common in ultra-compressed television reports. Bill Weir conveys intelligence, humor and humanity. Philip Bloom’s videography is stunning. — Andrew C. Revkin, NYT.

Is the environment a moral cause?

Where liberals view environmental issues as matters of right and wrong, conservatives generally do not….People think quite differently when they are morally engaged with an issue. In such cases people are more likely to eschew a sober cost-benefit analysis, opting instead to take action because it is the right thing to do. Put simply, we’re more likely to contribute to a cause when we feel ethically compelled to. – Robb Willer, NYT

At the launch

“When I see this crowd – and the diversity of the crowd  – it’s obvious that food and agriculture are maybe the most compelling example of an academic or intellectual discipline that has a role to play in every department and every division on campus.”

– Kelly Caylor, Professor, CEE; Director, ENV Program

 

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