New Mexico State University may have found a use for those "ground beef patties" that only those of us growing up with in nose-shot of a farm can fully appreciate. I've since moved away from the rural environment, and just in time, too, as I've since learned that several of the farmers in my home town have switched from plain manure, to a liquid varriety...nothing like 200 acres of bovine diarrhea punching you in the face every morning.
Now, however, several researchers at NMSU may have found a way of hastening the decomposition process of manure, thereby releasing it's bountiful load of methane in a controlled setting. The methane produced can be used for many purposes, but obviously the most enticing is burning it and producing electricity. Several ranchers have already adopted a similar, though much less technical, process, with limited results (I tried to find the link to this, but haven't yet...if any one has it, let me know).
The other ranchers heap the dung into a tent-like structure, and just siphon off the CH4 as it's produced. While better than letting it sour the neighbors' opinions of you, it just takes too long for the manure to decompose naturally.
Enter NMSU; they refer to their device as the "digester" (could they have thought of a less appealing name?), and the grant they just received ($321,000) could get the first viable processor up and running. Coincidentally, the herd they plan on "taming" consists of 320,000 cows, so a buck a head isn't too shabby. Those 320,000 cows produce 2.6 MILLION tons of manure anually (I did the math, that's a little over 8 tons per cow per year, busy little guys, huh?). As a nice benefit (well, this is really the whole reason they're going through all this trouble), the turds can run 40-70 homes a year. I think I'm going to adopt this, but on a smaller scale; I'll get one cow, train her to poop in a bucket, and just use the goods to run my computer. Maybe someday they'll use genetic engineering to just produce a cow with a 110V socket in it's butt. Eliminate the middleman...now THAT'D be progress!