A. victoria’s Secret

Scientists are busy in the United Kingdom. A university professor in England believes fuel-cell-driven cars of the future could be powered by hazelnut shells, New Scientist magazine says. He claims that burning the shells could produce the hydrogen needed to generate an electric current for electric and hybrid cars.

At the same time, researchers at Edinburgh University say they have pioneered a genetically modified “super potato” that glows when it needs water. They injected potato plants with a fluorescence gene borrowed from the luminous jellyfish Aequorea victoria, which causes the potato leaves to glow green when dehydrated.

Neither group is bashful about touting its discoveries. Murat Dogru of the University of Newcastle says a year’s supply of hazelnut shells from Turkey, the world’s biggest producer of hazelnuts, would produce enough hydrogen “to allow 1,000 of today’s prototype hydrogen-fueled BMWs to travel 32,500 kilometers [20,190 miles] each,” New Scientist reports.

That’s nothing compared with glow-in-the-dark potatoes. “This is an agriculture of the future,” their developer, Anthony Trewavas, told Reuters. The potatoes are not intended to be eaten but would act as “sentinels,” planted beside the commercial crop to alert a farmer that the rest of the field needed watering.

The glow is barely visible to the naked eye but can be detected with a small hand-held device. Field trials are to start this year, though Trewavas predicts it could take some 20 years before the plants are commonly used.

Hole-Scale Adjustment

And from one of our favorite Web sites, News of the Weird (https://www.newsoftheweird.com): The U.S. Department of Agriculture is now formally considering (following a public comment period that ended in September) new regulations that would reduce the minimum diameter of the holes in Grade A Swiss cheese from 11/16 of an inch in diameter to 3/8 of an inch. The dairy industry said it could provide the cheese more efficiently if the holes were smaller.