Load Bearing Backpack Machine

In the poorer nations of the world, hundreds of millions of people earn their living moving things. Moving luggage. Moving cargo. Moving the harvest to the market. Moving water. Moving bricks to the construction yard You name it, they'll haul it. It makes them enough to get by. In rich nations like mine, vehicles usually perform this function.
An Indian inventor has come up with a machine that attaches to the porter's body and allows him or her to more comfortable haul of the load like a backpack. Postures improve, and the load the porter can carry increases, which in theory could mean higher profits. The invention also removes much of the medical risks of portering, which will hopefully mean far fewer ruined lives.
The best thing is that this invention is exceptionally cheap. It can be made for a few cents of bamboo...or plastic. It can also readily be reconfigured to a luggage carrier for the airport crowd, or an over-the-head carrier for small but fragile cargo like eggs. (which it will keep perfectly balanced so there's no chance of an expensive spill)

Old Computers are Poisoning Asia

Uh oh. Why are old computers poisoning Asia? Economic reasons. They're taking apart old, unwanted computers for their valuable minerals, which they sell.
Discovery news is reporting on the dismantling in India, and Worldwatch reports on the Chinese Conditions. They're both frantically unsoldering components as fast as they can, as the components contain valuable copper, gold, and aluminum. Worthless components, like silicon and lead, are discarded. Some of it vaporizes, and the local air is contaminated with smoke. People in the area have traces of many metals in their blood, some of which are poisonous.
As much as this leads to suffering, the local people are encouraging it, as it's paying them more than traditional area jobs, and this allows them to send their children to school, so that they earn far more money. In a little bit of time, India and China will be so rich as to not bother with this, and will likely send on their e-waste to poorer countries like Cambodia, or Somolia. (Both China and India have massive electronics industries, and an increasing demand for electronics as they industrialize.)

Kerela's Coconut Problem

Kerela, in southern India, is an interesting place. Coconuts are everywhere, everyone has names out of the bible (due to the influence of an early Christian church that came proselytizing around the 2nd century AD), and now, it's offering money to automate the coconut harvest.
Apparently, young Kerelans now aspire to white collar jobs in the city, and labor for coconut harvesting is so rare that coconuts are rotting on the tree. They need a new coconut picking machine, one that could operate from the ground, or better yet, remotely from a distant office. It will need to be able to reach up 30 meters (About 100 feet?), it must be inexpensive to build and operate, because Kerela is a tropical area where mechanical breakdowns are constant, and it must be very mobile, because coconut plantations are mind-bogglingly huge.
The prize is a million Rupees. It sounds like a lot, but after the exchange rate, it's about $22,000. However, the immediate cash prize isn't the most lucrative part. The most lucrative part is that every coconut plantation in Kerela will want to buy your machine, probably a whole bunch of them for each farm. That adds up to some serious Rupee.
For my own attempt at it, I'm glad that they don't want full automation of this, because that would make it a million times more complex. I'm thinking a cart that has a control panel on one end, a telescoping claw at the other, and a large basket in between. When an "extend" button is pressed on the control panel, the claw's arm expands upwards, with twenty sections of about five feet each, for the maximum height. The claw would be raised up to the coconut, then a "close" button would clench the coconut. One could then pull it down by mechanical force by lowering the arm. When the claw returns to earth-level, it can be opened, and the coconut put in the basket. Next coconut. When it's time to move on to the next tree, a small electric motor can be operated from the control panel to push little wheels in the direction one wishes to go.
Here's a crappy illustration of how I see it driving about...

And here's how I see it picking a coconut:


Tomorrow, we return to insurance discussions already in progress.