Acres of Ice automated Ladakh's ice stupas, draining pipes before they freeze and crack
A sensor-controlled ice reservoir drains its pipe when frost threatens and sprays in timed bursts, so farmers no longer camp out at night.
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500 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDWalla Walla farmers built salted bee beds that house 18 million native alkali bees
Honey bees cheat on alfalfa, so growers engineered nesting soil for a native bee that pollinates it properly.
Read the caseU.S. Cellular hired a farmer's draft horses to deliver antennas to 200 Wisconsin towers
When mud and snow stopped trucks reaching remote Wisconsin cell towers, U.S. Cellular's logistics contractor brought in a farmer's draft horses.
Read the caseThermify's HeatHub heats an Essex home with a shed full of paying customers' computers
Data clients pay for the electricity, so waste heat from 500+ mini-computers warms the house cheaply.
Read the caseTeleTracking ran NHS hospital beds like a control tower — 15 extra beds a day
A NHS trust swapped pencil-and-paper bed tracking for wristbands, a control room and pinged porters — freeing 15 beds a day and £2.1m a year.
Read the caseSleeping Giants tweeted brands screenshots of their ads on Breitbart (interview)
A copywriter's anonymous account showed advertisers where programmatic ads had landed and asked publicly; in a 2018 interview he says 4,000+ pulled out.
Read the caseSenegal farmers now keep Guiera shrubs in fields, and millet yields doubled in trials
A shrub farmers were once told to rip out lifts deep water to crops and mulches the soil.
Read the caseSainsbury's fitted F1-style aerofoils to open chillers to keep cold air in
A wing-shaped strip from Williams guides air into a curtain, cutting refrigeration costs up to 15%.
Read the caseRooted School paid students $50 a week to fix attendance (interview with its founder)
Rooted School Foundation's randomized trial of no-strings $50 weekly debit-card payments raised attendance by 1.23 days a semester, per its founder.
Read the casePort of Hueneme borrowed banana boats and their chassis to take cargo diverted from LA
With no chassis of its own, a small California port let Del Monte and Chiquita carry other shippers' furniture and toys on their ships, and imports doubled.
Read the casePhifer's free on-site clinic cut its health spend and funded a summer camp
An Alabama screen maker made primary care and prescriptions free, steering workers to top-rated specialists.
Read the caseStanford's Paperfuge turned a button-on-string toy into a 20-cent centrifuge
After tops and yo-yos failed, a whirligig of paper and string reached 125,000 rpm with no electricity.
Read the caseOregon Trail's creators gave the code away — it sold 65M copies anyway (interview)
In a Slate interview, Don Rawitsch recalls typing his classroom game into MECC's free share library, then publishing the source code — and never earning a cent.
Read the caseOctopus and UK Power Networks gave free electricity at midday to soak up wasted solar
A 2023 pilot offered free power in a two-hour window when solar farms were being told to switch off; users ran four times their usual load.
Read the caseChewang Norphel froze Ladakh's wasted winter water into ice walls for spring irrigation
A leaking garden tap inspired stepped ice reservoirs that melt just when April sowing needs water.
Read the caseNHS trusts used Amazon Wish Lists as a ready-made donation shop for ward basics
In April 2020, 10+ NHS trusts listed toiletries, thermometers and toys on Amazon Wish Lists so the public could buy exactly what named wards needed.
Read the caseMaryland paid up to $90 an acre for cover crops, tiered by pollution cut
Payments scaled with nutrient savings got over half of Eastern Shore corn fields planted, versus under 3% in Iowa.
Read the caseApple's Chris Espinosa let Steve Jobs design the Mac calculator himself, in 10 minutes
Tired of daily critiques, a 21-year-old exposed every visual parameter as a menu and let Jobs tune it.
Read the caseIRRI crossed a tall Indonesian rice with a Chinese dwarf to make high-yield IR8
A short plant puts more energy into grain and doesn't topple under fertiliser, doubling rice yields.
Read the caseHuawei's P30 Pro turned the zoom lens sideways to fit 5x optical zoom in a phone
A mirror bends light 90 degrees so the zoom lens lies flat along the phone body.
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