Subscription Center
Aug 25, 2009 | 4
Twenty percent of watermelons never make it to the picnic table. Rather, one in every five is left to ripen and rot in the field, rejected for even the slightest of cosmetic imperfections. But U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers may have found a way to elevate these outcasts to an even higher calling than the summer BBQ: biofuel production.
"As consumers, we would not choose that [misshapen or blemished] watermelon if we were in the supermarket," says Wayne Fish of the USDA's Agriculture Research Service's South Central Agricultural Research Laboratory in Lane, Okla., and lead author of a paper on the fruity biofuels idea published today in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels. "So the growers won't even pick them."
See what we're tweeting about
David_Bressan Die Felsmalereien von Ughtasar (Armenien) http://t.co/dqVQ5PToyE David_Bressan A letter from Marie C.C. Stopes (1880-1958), women´s rights activist but also palaeobotanist http://t.co/u3XgVUcGJi
notscientific Build the Human Body: teaching anatomy by adopting a build-it-yourself approach. Review by @GrrlScientist http://t.co/PM14ZScma8 #scilogs
Deadline: Jul 30 2013
Reward: $100,000 USD
The Seeker desires a method for producing pseudoephedrine products in such a way that it will be extremely difficult for clandestine che
Deadline: Jul 25 2013
Reward: Varies
This challenge provides an opportunity for Solvers to build a web-based or mobile “app” to explore data relationships in scholarly conte
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
