Waste heat from low temperature geothermal resources, industrial, municipal district heating services, and combined heat and power (CHP) systems is a valuable resource that can be dissipated in open field heated agricultural systems. Since 2008 the authors have been developing and field testing an energy intensive year-round shallow soil warming technology. Heated green roof test beds in New York City and heated gardens in Iceland are analogous to heated sidewalks. Heat dissipation rates for the test beds varied from 0.086 - 0.336 kW/m(2), depending upon working fluid temperatures, weather conditions, soil types, soil depths and moisture content. Plant growth increases of 20% and growing season prolongation are documented when a soil temperature of 25-30 degrees C is maintained continually at a depth of 8 cm. This enables the survival of cultivars that normally thrive in more than two United States Department of Agriculture climate zones to the south. This coincidentally mirrors some global climate changes predictive models. The authors have developed a basic 5 x10 square meter module based on their 10 years of experience, which can be used alone or combined for larger installations. Construction guidelines, thermal projections, and expected plant growth results are provided for both urban and municipal installations.

Iceland’s harsh climate limits the number of harvestable cultivars that can be grown outdoors. While Icelandic heated greenhouses enable a larger variety of crops to be grown, their upkeep is labor and resource intensive, and the associated costs can be prohibitive. Professor Robert Dell, Director of the Laboratory for Energy Reclamation and Innovation (LERI) at the Cooper Union has developed an intensive cascade utilization system using waste steam condensate and hot water as a working fluid that creates an outdoor shallow network of plastic pipes for heating garden soil. This research and development, which began in 2007 in New York City and 2009 in Iceland, compares plant growth between heated and control gardens. Previous studies’ test beds used municipal district heated wastewater, waste fluid from a geothermal heated swimming pool, and waste hot water from a traditional heated greenhouse. This paper analyzes the results of enhanced outdoor crop production using a new small-scale, high yield garden from the 2019 growing season at the Agricultural University of Iceland (Landbúnaðarháskóli Islands). The plants studied include turnips, zucchinis, tomatoes, oregano, and a variety of peppers. A plant growth index was developed for analytical purposes. It takes the weighted average of measurements of plant height and the two widest stem spread diameters to quantify growth before the harvest. The plants in heated gardens grew approximately 45% taller and wider on average than those in unheated beds.

Norway conducts operations on a variety of structures in the North Sea; e. g. oilrigs, monopole windmills, subsea trees. These structures often require subsea installation, observation, and maintenance. A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) can assist in these operations. Automation of intended motion is the desired goal. This paper researches the motion of an ROV induced by the motion of the robotic manipulators, motor torques, and added mass of fluid. This project builds upon a previous project that had one robotic arm; this time, there are two, but the method is unchanged. Furthermore, this work explores both the patterns in addressing such challenges, and an improved integration scheme. This research uses the Moving Frame Method (MFM) to carry out this project. In fact, this paper demonstrates the ease with which the MFM is extensible. Notable is that this work represents an international collaboration between an engineering school in Norway and one in the US. This work invites further research into improved numerical methods, solid/fluid interaction and the design of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). AUVs beckon an era of Artificial Intelligence when machines think, communicate and learn. Rapidly deployable software implementations will be essential to this task.