One of the last steps involves the separation of ethanol from water. Researchers found a few all-silica zeolites with superior performance that contain pores
but to shun hydrogen bonding with water molecules. One of these zeolites which was synthesized and tested in University of Minnesota chemical engineering
and materials science professor Michael Tsapatsis'lab was found to be so effective that it could change the ethanol/water separation process from a multi-step distillation process to a single-step adsorptive process.
"In simple terms, this type of fuel cell works because the bacteria consume the waste materials found in the water,
the water itself becomes purified, "he says. Searching for the best bacteria"Our challenge has been to find the mechanisms
"To start with, we had to find a bacterium which was not only able to consume the waste products in the water,
Today, they have a small demonstration plant bubbling away in the lab--efficiently exploiting the bacterias'ability to purify dirty water
these core/shell particles self-assemble into a thin film upon water removal. The whole procedure takes less then 24 hours.
And it is these patterns that make the metals repel water. The material is so strongly water-repellent the water actually gets bounced off.
Then it lands on the surface again gets bounced off again and then it will just roll off from the surface said Guo professor of optics at the University of Rochester.
The difference is that to make water to roll off a Teflon coated material you need to tilt the surface to nearly a 70-degree angle before the water begins to slide off.
As the water bounces off the super-hydrophobic surfaces it also collects dust particles and takes them along for the ride.
Roughly half of the dust particles were removed with just three drops of water. It took only a dozen drops to leave the surface spotless.
In these regions collecting rain water is vital and using super-hydrophobic materials could increase the efficiency without the need to use large funnels with high-pitched angles to prevent water from sticking to the surface says Guo.
A second application could be creating latrines that are cleaner and healthier to use. Latrines are a challenge to keep clean in places with little water.
By incorporating super-hydrophobic materials a latrine could remain clean without the need for water flushing.
But challenges still remain to be addressed before these applications can become a reality Guo states.
The combination of light-absorbing properties with making metals water repellent could lead to more efficient solar absorbers--solar absorbers that don't rust
and turned them hydrophilic meaning they attract water. In fact the materials were so hydrophilic that putting them in contact with a drop of water made water run uphill.
Guo's team is now planning on focusing on increasing the speed of patterning the surfaces with the laser as well as studying how to expand this technique to other materials such as semiconductors
or dielectrics opening up the possibility of water repellent electronics. Funding was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United states Air force Office of Scientific research h
The insulin also disrupted swimming behavior in fish exposed through water contact as measured by the percentage of time spent swimming and frequency of movements.
Cone snails are abundant in most tropical marine waters especially around coral reefs. Each species makes a distinct repertoire of venom compounds mixtures that have evolved to target particular prey.
Conus geographus a cone snail that has killed dozens of people in accidental encounters traps fish by releasing a blend of immobilizing venoms into the water according to the prevailing hypothesis. The snail protrudes a stretchy mouthlike part
#Volcanic eruption on Cape verde Island A team from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences is currently conducting research to support local partners
Our team the GFZ Hazard and Risk Team HART works in close collaboration with the University of Cape verde the Volcano Observatory of the Canary islands and the German Aerospace Centre says GFZ-volcanologist Dr
when water is added. This allows specimens to be magnified physically and then imaged at a much higher resolution.
The specimen is washed then in salt-free water to induce a 100-fold expansion in volume.
and water bonding in meat, "they say. In order to screen the structure of the meat, the new approach uses x-rays at energies that are lower than normal,
"The results show that it is possible to separate meat samples from the same muscle tissue into two or three different categories based on both tenderness and water bonding,
The promising results for water activity and water bonding properties will be followed up so that the methods can be applied in the industry.
#Just add water: Engineers develop a computer that operates on water droplets The computer is nearly a decade in the making,
incubated from an idea that struck Prakash when he was a graduate student. The work combines his expertise in manipulating droplet fluid dynamics with a fundamental element of computer science--an operating clock."
Then they carefully injected into the mix individual water droplets that had been infused with tiny magnetic nanoparticles.
"Dirty water has a lot of organic matter, "Choi says.""Any type of organic material can be the source of bacteria for the bacterial metabolism."
as it allows direct fabrication of GQDS using water without surfactant or chemical solvent. GQDS were used then as emitters in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDS)
#Bacteria could help clean groundwater contaminated by uranium ore processing A team of Rutgers University scientists
Array"After the newly discovered bacteria interact with uranium compounds in water the uranium becomes immobile,
"It is dissolved no longer in the groundwater and therefore can't contaminate drinking water brought to the surface."
Scientists had witnessed previously decreasing concentrations of uranium in groundwater when iron-breathing bacteria were active,
What Kerkhof is optimistic about is the potential for these bacteria to mitigate the specific groundwater pollution problem in Rifle.
Scientists at first expected the groundwater to flush into the Colorado river and carry the dissolved uranium with it,
he said there's potentially a lot of water to be concerned about. And the problem could spread beyond traditional places such as ore processing sites."
"so places like the Middle east that are experiencing war could be exposed to high levels of uranium in the groundwater
Cutting out one of the islands--the one that contained the milk-utilization genes--reduced the genome by about 5 percent.
#Sediment makes it harder for baby Nemo to breathe easy Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral reef Studies at James Cook University have discovered that suspended sediment damages fish gills
and are increasing in coastal waters worldwide, "says study co-author, Dr Amelia Wenger.""Fish gills are in direct contact with their environment
For the study, the researchers simulated sediment conditions frequently found on inshore reefs on the Great barrier reef,
but they say the problem isn't limited to Australian waters. Coastal oceans affected by suspended sediment tend to overlap critical fish habitats and nurseries.
The research highlights the need for the continued protection of these crucial habitats. Juvenile reef fish are exposed often to sediment as they swim in open waters before settling on a chosen reef.
During this critical developmental stage they need great amounts of oxygen but damage to their gills makes it hard for them to get it."
and reef ecosystems,"adds Dr Wenger. Exposure of clownfish larvae to suspended sediment levels found on the Great barrier reef:
Impacts on gill structure and microbiome by Sybille Hess, Amelia Wenger, Tracy Ainsworth and Jodie L. Rummer is published in the journal, Nature Scientific Reports s
#Single-catalyst water splitter produces clean-burning hydrogen 24/7 Array'We have developed a low-voltage, single-catalyst water splitter that continuously generates hydrogen and oxygen for more than 200 hours,
an exciting world-record performance,'said study co-author Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and of photon science at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
In an engineering first, Cui and his colleagues used lithium-ion battery technology to create one low-cost catalyst that is capable of driving the entire water-splitting reaction.'
'Our hope is that this technique will lead to the discovery of new catalysts for other reactions beyond water splitting.'
As an alternative, scientists have been trying to develop a cheap and efficient way to extract pure hydrogen from water.
A conventional water-splitting device consists of two electrodes submerged in a water-based electrolyte.
But in 2014, Stanford chemist Hongjie Dai developed a water splitter made of inexpensive nickel and iron that runs on an ordinary 1. 5-volt battery.
'Our water splitter is unique, because we only use one catalyst, nickel-iron oxide, for both electrodes,'said graduate student Haotian Wang,
'This bifunctional catalyst can split water continuously for more than a week with a steady input of just 1. 5 volts of electricity.
That's an unprecedented water-splitting efficiency of 82 percent at room temperature.''In conventional water splitters, the hydrogen and oxygen catalysts often require different electrolytes with different phone acidic,
one alkaline--to remain stable and active.''For practical water splitting, an expensive barrier is needed to separate the two electrolytes,
adding to the cost of the device, 'Wang said.''But our single-catalyst water splitter operates efficiently in one electrolyte with a uniform ph.'Wang
and his colleagues discovered that nickel-iron oxide, which is cheap and easy to produce,
'We built a conventional water splitter with two benchmark catalysts, one platinum and one iridium,
'At first the device only needed 1. 56 volts of electricity to split water, but within 30 hours we had to increase the voltage nearly 40 percent.
interconnected grain boundaries that become active sites for the water-splitting catalytic reaction, 'Cui said.'
water-soluble QDS in the July 1 issue of the journal Green Chemistry. This is the first example of engineers harnessing nature's unique ability to achieve cost effective and scalable manufacturing of QDS using a bacterial process.
The solution yields extracellular, water-soluble quantum dots from low-cost precursors at ambient temperatures and pressure.
Scientists thought the iron had entered the ocean from hot, mineral-rich water released at mid-ocean vents that then precipitated to the ocean floor.
Now Johnson and Li who is currently at Nanjing University in China, show that half of the iron in banded iron was metabolized by ancient bacteria living along the continental shelves.
and gave us an independent measure of the amount coming from shallow continental waters that carried an isotopic signature of life."
#Eco-friendly oil spill solution developed An eco-friendly biodegradable green'herding'agent that can be used to clean up light crude oil spills on water has been developed by researchers.
Derived from the plant-based small molecule phytol abundant in the marine environment, the new substance would potentially replace chemical herders currently in use,
City College of New york researchers led by chemist George John have developed an eco-friendly biodegradable green"herding"agent that can be used to clean up light crude oil spills on water.
Derived from the plant-based small molecule phytol abundant in the marine environment the new substance would potentially replace chemical herders currently in use.
and hence remain in the marine ecosystem for years.""""Our goal was to develop an eco-friendly herding molecule as an alternative to the current silicone-based polymers,
such as seawater, reduce the surface tension. In the case of oil spills, when they are added along the periphery of an oil spill slick,
a doctoral student in Matyjaszewski's lab."The pores can hold large amounts of water, but if you remove this water to study them,
the pores collapse and you can't map them.""He and his collaborators were able to characterize the 3dom hydrogels using an indirect electron microscopy method.
"Sea mammals and bats use high-frequency sound for echolocation and communication, but humans just haven't fully exploited that before, in my opinion,
as well as ready-to-eat or raw sea foods and meats products, to investigate whether LED illumination can effectively kill pathogenic bacteria without deterioration of food products,
When mixed with a few tablespoons of water and swallowed these particles attach themselves to potassium ions in the lower part of the colon,
"Arrayunfortunately, the addition of nanodiamonds did not address the material's aversion to water. The simulations showed that water suppresses the formation of scrolls by increasing the adhesion of graphene to the surface.
While this greatly limits the hybrid material's potential applications, its ability to maintain superlubricity in dry environments is a significant breakthrough in itself.
For their part, the Argonne team will continue its computational studies to look for ways to overcome the barrier presented by water."
if we can incorporate something hydrophobic that would keep water out, "Sankaranarayanan said.""As long as you can repel water,
the graphene nanoscrolls could potentially work in humid environments as well.""Arraythe team's groundbreaking nanoscroll discovery would not have been possible without a supercomputer like Mira.
--and protein-appended molecules that form water channels that transfer water at the rate of natural membranes,
"The researchers developed a second-generation synthetic water channel that improves on earlier attempts to mimic aquaporins--natural water channel proteins--by being more stable and easier to manufacture.
"We were surprised to see transport rates approaching the'holy grail'number of a billion water molecules per channel per second,
"The researchers consider that the PAP membranes are an order of magnitude better than the first-generation artificial water channels reported to date.
Conditions were so bad in New hampshire that the town of Alton called off its annual ice carnival.
The paper noted a gulf between global efforts to reduce the climate impacts of deforestation, and the dearth of a global response to the climate impacts of food production.
#California's Drought Is Part of a Much Bigger Water Crisis Why do I keep hearing about the California drought,
if it's the Colorado river that we're"killing"?"Pretty much every state west of the Rockies has been facing a water shortage of one kind or another in recent years.
California's is a severe, but relatively short-term, drought. But the Colorado river basinhich provides critical water supplies for seven states including Californias the victim of a slower-burning catastrophe entering its 16th year.
Wyoming, Colorado, New mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and California all share water from the Colorado river, a hugely important water resource that sustains 40 million people in those states, supports 15 percent of the nation's food supply,
and fills two of largest water reserves in the country. The severe shortages of rain and snowfall have hurt California's $46 billion agricultural industry
and helped raise national awareness of the longer-term shortages that are affecting the entire Colorado river basin.
But while the two problems have commonalities and have some effect on one another, they're not exactly the same thing.
Just how bad is the drought in California right now? Most of California is experiencing"extreme to exceptional drought,
and ordered cities and towns to cut water use by as much as 36 percent. Those who don't comply with the cuts will face fines,
while water shortages are making firefighters'jobs even harder. And a little bit of rain won't help.
"Killing the Colorado"has shown that people are entitled to more water from the Colorado than has flowed through it, on average, over the last 110 years.
Meanwhile much of the water is lost, overused or wasted, stressing both the Colorado system, and trickling down to California,
Explosive urban growth matched with the steady planting of water-thirsty crops which use the majority of the water don't help.
Arcane laws actually encourage farmers to take even more water from the Colorado river and from California's rivers than they actually need,
and federal subsidies encourage farmers to plant some of the crops that use the most water.
And, as Propublica has reported, it seems that"the engineering that made settling the West possible may have reached the bounds of its potential"eaning that even the big dams
and canals we built to ferry all this water may now be causing more harm than good.
Water use policieserhaps more than natureave caused the water crisis in the West. As the former Arizona governor and U s. Secretary of the interior Bruce Babbitt told Propublica:"
"There is enough water in the West but there are all kinds of agriculture efficiencies that have not been put into place."
"While there are mixed views on whether climate change can be blamed for California's drought, a recent National oceanic and atmospheric administration (NOAA) reportfound climate change was not the cause.
Global warming has caused excessive heat that may have worsened the drought's effects, but it isn't necessarily to blame for the lack of rain.
But in both California and the larger Colorado river basin mismanagement of the water supply has left the West more vulnerable to both short and long-term changes in climate.
When officials divvied up rights to Colorado river water nearly a century ago, it happened to be a wetter period than usual.
The states vastly overestimated the river's annual flow. Today, the river's reserves are especially low
and states are stillclaiming the same amount of water from the Colorado river that they always have hich is 1. 4 trillion gallons a year more than the river actually produces.
This sort of oversubscription is similar in California, where historic water rights give many farms first rights to California's streams and rivers,
and haven't been adjusted as the state's population has increased and its cities have grown. Waiton't we all have equal water rights?
when it comes to water."("Yuhas made the unfortunate mistake of complaining on social media that he
and his neighbors deserve more water because they pay more property taxes, and"should not be forced togolf on brown lawns,
To the uninitiated,"water law"is arcane and confusingence the need for, yes, water lawyers.
Sometimes, water law seems to defy common sense. For instance, in Colorado, if you put a barrel in your yard to collect rainwater for your plants,
under water law,"nearly every drop is spoken for.""But the underlying rule of water in the West is that the first people to show up
and claim it were the first people to get it, and everyone who came after took a place further back in line.
Called"prior appropriation,"this remains the dominant thread in Western water issues, more than 100 years later.
So where is all this water going? For all of the warnings people in the West get about taking shorter showers and turning off sprinklers,
the fact remains that agriculture uses the most water, by far. Farming and agriculture use more than 70 percent of the water that flows from the Colorado river to the seven river basin states.
In addition to those crops, cotton is one of the thirstiest crops a farmer can grow, especially in a desert.
many of the crops that use less water entitle farmers to fewer federal subsidies, and so farmers don't have much of an incentive to switch crops.
On top of subsidies,"Use it or Lose it"clauses in state water laws actually encourage farmers to flood their fields with much more water than they need
lest they lose the right to that amount of water in the future. Urban development is also a big factor.
For all its problems, Las vegas pioneered ways to save water and incentivize efficiency more than a decade ago that Los angeles is only beginning to adopt today.
What is California doing to address its water problems? Is it working? Californians do seem to be answering the call to use less water in their daily lives after Gov. Jerry brown imposed cutbacks in March.
The state's"water czar,"Felicia Marcus, continues to crack down on water waste, and creative ad campaigns are finding varying degrees of success. The state has cut deliveries of water to farmers through the state and federal aqueduct systems,
and is now beginning to tackle the tough tasks of reforming water rights and curtailing some of the state's most senior users.
The federal government is also sending millions of dollars in"drought aid""and local counties are exploring how to desalinate ocean water to replenish water supplies.
Some enterprising individuals are even proposing to revive old plans to tow icebergs or haul water down from Alaska.
Meanwhile, like any prolonged crisis, the drought is drawing out the best and worst in people.
Some people are conscientiously conserving water in their homes in little waysy not washing their cars
or by capturing shower water from inside for their gardens outside, for instance. The drought has inspired also innovation in water conservation for restaurants, pools and lawns.
Meanwhile, others have been caught stealing water from their neighbors and drought-shaming campaigns have multiplied online. To the extent that climate change exacerbates the drought
The Los angeles Department of Water and Power is now also selling its stake in the Navajo Generating station to invest in clean energy alternatives,
though the plant (which generates more climate-warming gases than almost any other plant in the nation) will continue pumping Colorado river water to Arizona.
Will California cutbacks alleviate the larger Colorado river problem? California uses almost one-third of the entire Colorado river flow,
having a larger share than any other Colorado river basin state. California gets 16 percent of its surface waterater that comes from snowpack, streams and riversrom the Colorado river via two huge aqueducts.
The California Aqueduct runs beneath mountains into Riverside County and eventually toward Los angeles, providing a substantial supply for both L a. and San diego. The All-American Canal moves water along the tail-end of the Colorado river near the Mexican border, nourishing one of the state's most valuable agriculture areas,
Imperial County, where a large proportion of the nation's winter fruits and vegetables are grown. Of the seven basin states, California holds the most senior legal rights to the Colorado,
which entitle it to keep drawing water even as Lake Mead runs dry and the rest of the Colorado river states suffer through shortages.
That means in the short term, not much that California does will change the situation on the Colorado,
unless it were to voluntarily surrender more of its entitlement to the river. But should Colorado river shortages worsen to the point that the states ever re-negotiate that division of water
a reduction of California's Colorado river water rights could have a brutal impact on California's remaining supplies.
Officials in California, like every other state in the region, are now facing a"new normal,
"as nature places new limits on the state's previously unchecked growth. I don't live in California or the West,
so water shortages there affect food supply everywhere. Calculations by the Pacific Institute indicate that, by eating food grown in California,
each American indirectly uses more than 300 gallons of the state's water each week. Almonds, which require a comparatively huge amount of water to produce,
have become the most visible scapegoat for an enormous problem of which they are only one small part.
One almond takes almost an entire gallon of water to produceut so does a tiny slice of cantaloupe
In fact, some of the biggest"water hogs,"indirectly, are meat and Dairy cows and chickens and other animals eat a lot of crops,
which in turn require a lot of water. So it takes 86 gallons of water to make just 1. 75 ounces of beef.
Some research has suggested that the country's meat industries create such a high demand for water-thirsty feed crops, that if every American ate meat one less day a week,
it could save as much water as flows through the Colorado river in an entire year. Regardless
if the water crisis gets worse, Americans across the country can expect the cost of their food to go up,
and some of it, perhaps, to not be available at all. Power prices may also rise as hydroelectric plants have difficulty generating with low water flowsnd to the extent that very complicated power distribution affects a larger region,
consumers far away from the Colorado river basin might feel the pinch. Finally, California and the rest of the Colorado river basin amount to the world's seventh largest economy,
and contribute significantly to the country's GDP. When California struggles economically the nation is close behind.
For more on this story, read how federal dollars are financing the water crisis in the West,
how Las vegas'water chief preached conservation while backing growth and all about the power plant that's fueling America's drought.
Suits and Spooks London-May 6-7, 2015download Free Security Resources from the Securityweek White paper Libraryciso Forum-Half moon Bay, CA-May 20, 201 1
both X-37bs could fit inside the payload bay of NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiter.
or injecting water or other liquids into the plasma sheath to make it more permeable to radio signals,
and tasting room in Denver's River North neighborhood e
#Smart oven knows what is inside and how to cook it For those who just can get their heads around the intricacies of home cooking,
sanitation and as rust-free metals Scientists at the University of Rochester have used lasers to transform metals into extremely water repellent,
And it is these patterns that make the metals repel water. he material is so strongly water-repellent,
the water actually gets bounced off. Then it lands on the surface again, gets bounced off again,
you need to tilt the surface to nearly a 70-degree angle before the water begins to slide off.
As the water bounces off the super-hydrophobic surfaces, it also collects dust particles and takes them along for the ride.
Roughly half of the dust particles were removed with just three drops of water. It took only a dozen drops to leave the surface spotless.
collecting rain water is vital and using super-hydrophobic materials could increase the efficiency without the need to use large funnels with high-pitched angles to prevent water from sticking to the surface,
says Guo. second application could be creating latrines that are cleaner and healthier to use.
Latrines are a challenge to keep clean in places with little water. By incorporating super-hydrophobic materials
a latrine could remain clean without the need for water flushing. But challenges still remain to be addressed before these applications can become a reality, Guo states.
The combination of light-absorbing properties with making metals water repellent could lead to more efficient solar absorbers solar absorbers that don rust
meaning they attract water. In fact, the materials were so hydrophilic that putting them in contact with a drop of water made water run phill.
Guo team is now planning on focusing on increasing the speed of patterning the surfaces with the laser,
as well as studying how to expand this technique to other materials such as semiconductors or dielectrics, opening up the possibility of water repellent electronics.
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