Silicon Valley looks to disrupt food stamps
As state and federal efforts to upgrade the civic infrastructure have faltered, the private and nonprofit sectors see an opportunity to provide "time-saving hacks" for recipients of food stamps and other public services, reports Wired. "There is an endless variety of apps designed to manage life for the upper middle class, but low-income Americans—a group that spends a disproportionate amount of its budget on basic necessities—don’t benefit from the same time-saving hacks," says Wired. "With a user base of nearly 43 million Americans, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food stamps, is ripe for innovation."
Soon, we will use smartphones to scan produce for pesticides
With 700 million pounds of pesticide used every year, inventors are trying to create a new generation of pesticide-detectors, cheap enough for the public to afford, says Modern Farmer. One Belgian research team has developed a machine that can “smell” pesticides.