Tech Roundup - October 29, 2021

Fri, 10/29/2021

Welcome to ‘Tech Roundup,’ where we highlight some of the most significant tech news items from Nebraska and the surrounding area. If you have a news item you would like to see in the Roundup, please email neil.rutledge@unl.edu.


 

Local/Regional 

Nebraska's largest solar farm planned east of Lincoln is looking to clear final zoning hurdles

Lincoln Journal Star

  • Residents of an area east of Lincoln are prepared to pitch a last-ditch battle to keep thousands of solar panels from going up near their backyards.
  • Ranger Power wants to build a solar farm of up to 250 megawatts, which would be the largest ever built in the state. It would be spread out over about 2,800 acres in an area stretching roughly from 120th to 190th streets and from O Street to Havelock Avenue.
  • Ranger Power is now looking to amend its city special permit to add more land, while at the same time seeking approval of a county special permit to accommodate that part of the project. Public hearings on both applications are scheduled Wednesday before the Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Commission.

 

ADM plans to make jet fuel at Nebraska ethanol plant

Kearney Hub

  • Archer Daniels Midland's Columbus dry mill is part of a plan the company announced Monday to turn ethanol into sustainable jet fuel.
  • ADM said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with a company called Gevo Inc. to transform ethanol into sustainable jet fuel and other renewable hydrocarbon fuels.
  • According to terms of the deal, Colorado-based Gevo would use its processing technology to turn about 900 million gallons of ethanol produced at ADM’s dry mills in Columbus and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as well as its Decatur, Illinois, complex into about 500 million gallons of sustainable, low-carbon fuels for aviation and other industries.

 

Supply chain crunches affecting agriculture — from farm to table

Nebraska Today

  • Just as consumers are feeling the supply chain headaches, so too are farmers, food processors and shelf stockers. Nearly everything from fertilizer for fields, feed ingredients for livestock to harvesting fresh produce has been impacted by shortages that have slowed the supply chain to a crawl.
  • “What we are experiencing currently is a perfect storm, as we are having both supply shocks and demand shocks simultaneously in several different industries,” said Erkut Sönmez, associate professor of supply chain management and analytics at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. “The disruptions to the agricultural supply chains are more apparent and important compared to other supply chains. On one side, we have a shortage of food supply while people are looking for food, and on the other, we have food actually rotting or going bad in containers in some parts of the world.”

 

Expert: Rise in ransomware attacks likely linked to increased telecommuting

Lincoln Journal Star

  • A ransomware attack last weekend that affected the operations of a major broadcasting company that owns several Nebraska TV stations is the latest in what experts say is a sharp rise in such attacks.
  • Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns TV stations in the Omaha, Lincoln and Kearney-Hastings markets, was the victim of an attack in which "certain servers and workstations in its environment were encrypted with ransomware, and ... certain office and operational networks were disrupted," the company said in a statement.
  • The ransomware attack on Sinclair comes on the heels of one a few weeks ago that targeted Lincoln's Sandhills Global. That attack crippled most operations of the information-processing company and rendered its online equipment auction sites inoperable for several days.

 

Husker researchers join NSF I-Corps program

Nebraska Today

  • Three Nebraska teams joined the National Science Foundation’s 2021 Innovation Corps. During the program, researchers learned entrepreneurship concepts, explored technology commercialization and conducted 100 interviews with prospective customers.
  • Nebraska’s Li Tan, Daniel Schachtman and Michael Sealy served as the faculty leads for the three I-Corps teams, which also included graduate students and business mentors.

 

9-year-old Omaha boy creates financial literacy app

North Platte Telegraph

  • Atharv Manayamkath, a fourth-grader at Loveland Elementary School, has spent the past year and a half learning how to code and creating a financial education app called FinWIZZ.
  • Atharv’s FinWIZZ app, which is available on the Google Play Store, is designed to teach young people about finance and addresses budgeting, saving, spending, debt and investing. Atharv said he also included quizzes and games to make it fun.

 

Hardscrabble plants stake large territory amid toxic soils

Nebraska Today

  • According to a recent study led by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Melissa Whitman and Sabrina Russo, that hardscrabble plants found on nutrient deficient soils with high degree toxins might also grant the ultramafic species an elevational versatility and stress tolerance that could prove favorable amid ongoing climate change.
  • Whitman and Russo said the findings suggest that, in evolving tolerance to the severe resource limitations imposed by take-no-prisoners soil, ultramafic species may also better contend with similar stressors thrown at them by high altitudes, climate and other factors. That spillover resilience may have widened the breadth of ecological niches they can successfully adapt to, enabling them to expand their geographic ranges in the process.

 

Many issues causing problems in getting products to consumers

Nebraska Today

  • Historic backlogs in ports, shortages of truck drivers and other laborers and an inability to get raw materials quickly are just a few of the issues causing the current supply chain bottlenecks and headaches for shoppers searching for the perfect gift.
  • Along with bottlenecks squeezing the system, consumers — leaving behind their pandemic-induced trepidation — are buying at higher numbers, too. The National Retail Federation is reporting that September sales of goods were up 13.9 percent over the same time last year.
  • Jennifer Ryan studies supply chains and understands the complexities of trying to make supply meet demand. The professor and chair of supply chain management and analytics at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln sat down with Nebraska Today to help explain what’s happening, what consumers can expect, and how these current issues may give way to better, more flexible chains in the future.

 

Regional Startup Spotlight

Lincoln construction startup hits jackpot with $30 million venture capital infusion

Lincoln Journal Star

  • A Lincoln company that created a photo app to help contractors document their projects has received one of the largest-ever venture capital investments for a local company.
  • CompanyCam announced Tuesday that it closed a $30 million Series B round of financing led by New York-based private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners. Other companies that participated in the round included JMI Equity and WndrCo.

 

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