An interesting example of innovative low-power sensing technology

According to the MIT news, researchers at MIT have created a sensors using carbon nanotubes that can tell grocers just how ripe their fruit is.  This is an interesting example of innovative low-power sensor technology that will help enable a revolution in applications of information technology to business (as I describe in this article in Technology Review).

Here are the first few paragraphs of the article:

Every year, U.S. supermarkets lose roughly 10 percent of their fruits and vegetables to spoilage, according to the Department of Agriculture. To help combat those losses, MIT chemistry professor Timothy Swager and his students have built a new sensor that could help grocers and food distributors better monitor their produce.

The new sensors, described in the journal Angewandte Chemie, can detect tiny amounts of ethylene, a gas that promotes ripening in plants. Swager envisions the inexpensive sensors attached to cardboard boxes of produce and scanned with a handheld device that would reveal the contents’ ripeness. That way, grocers would know when to put certain items on sale to move them before they get too ripe.

“If we can create equipment that will help grocery stores manage things more precisely, and maybe lower their losses by 30 percent, that would be huge,” says Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry.

This example is one way that information technology can help us better match energy services demanded with those supplied, as I describe Chapter 6 of Cold Cash, Cool Climate.

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