Buzz

The Paris Air Show, held every June, draws the biggest names in the aviation and aerospace industries. Start-ups from Ohio rarely make an appearance, but this year one from Kent did, reports Kent Patch.

Thanks to a partnership with Ohio Aerospace Institute, Anderson Aerospace President Richard Anderson and Senior Vice President Matthew Flannery attended the 2011 show.

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Jamming carbon deep underground has long been a proposed solution to our emissions problems, but it's expensive and rarely used. Now we can use the Earth's heat to make that gas work for us, reports Fast Company.

The publication reports on a geothermal project that includes Akron-based Echogen Power Systems, which is designing a turbine for the process.

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The Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded the University of Dayton Research Institute a $24.5-million contract to test, evaluate and develop polymer materials and paints, following up on a contract that had expired in June, reports the Dayton Daily News.

The deal continues UDRI's 10-year operation for the Air Force, under various contracts, of coatings technology, testing and erosion analysis laboratories on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

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Companies could get a discount on electricity if they meet benchmarks for new hiring or investment under a plan being considered by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, reports the Columbus Dispatch.

The plan, which supporters hope will encourage job growth, offers electricity discounts of up to 20 percent, most of which would phase out over five years. That amount would largely be offset by a charge on other electricity customers.

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The owners of Ohio Commerce Park -- where ground was broken for construction of the $28-million Anderson-Dubose warehouse that will serve McDonald's -- are exploring ways to capitalize on the rich Marcellus and Utica shale natural gas deposits in the region, reports the Youngstown Business Journal.

Spiro Bakeris, co-owner of the industrial park, says the park is considering various companies involved in shale activity, which is expected to increase after Chesapeake Energy Corp.'s recent announcement that the discovery of a major new liquids-rich play in the Utica Shale formation could add as much as $20 billion to the company's value.

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Colleges and universities are flooding into the Interstate 75 corridor between Cincinnati and Dayton, competing for a growing number of students as higher education increasingly becomes a necessity for employment, reports the Dayton Daily News.

The boom is part of a trend throughout the region and the state. Enrollments at regional campuses and community colleges, which often serve older students at multiple locations, leapt from 74,000 in 2000 to 252,000 in 2010, according to Ohio Board of Regents data.

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With 55 percent of Ohio's total agriculture exports coming from soybeans, a free trade agreement proposal with Panama, South Korea and Colombia is getting high praise from Ohio growers and the Ohio Soybean Association, reports the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette.

The 2010 bean crop was one of the most profitable on record in Ohio, and soybeans were the second-largest commodity in the U.S. in terms of annual acreage and value, with 78 million acres planted and a market value of almost $39 billion in 2010, the association says.

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The Kasich administration has formally begun efforts to determine whether "leveraging" the Ohio Turnpike would be an effective way to generate new revenue for state coffers, reports the Toledo Blade.

In a joint statement from the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Office of Management and Budget, the administration said an "adviser team" would work with those two agencies to "determine the true value of the Ohio Turnpike and the preferred option for leveraging the turnpike as a state asset."

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Work by University of Cincinnati researchers to create a fast feedback sensor for the presence and levels of heavy metals -- specifically manganese -- in humans is published in the August issue of Biomedical Microdevices, reports MicrOHscope.

The article describes the development of a low-cost, disposable lab-on-a-chip sensor that detects highly electronegative heavy metals more quickly than current technology generally available in health-care settings. It's envisioned that the new UC sensor technology will be used in point-of-care devices that provide needed feedback within about ten minutes.

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