#New Water-Saving Technologies Help Weather Drought but More Innovation Is needed Here in California, people are cheering from one end of the state to the other.
But unlike today, very stringent water restrictions much more severe than any now in placewere impacting residences as well as commercial facilities.
For instance, some households in Marin county, just north of San francisco, were restricted to 44 gallons of water per person per day0 gallons less per day than normal usage.
Businesses and commercial facilities were asked to reduce water consumption by 57 percent. While many complied,
Water use soon returned to normal. But just 10 years later, the state was hit with another very dry period,
These innovations not only reduce water consumption but have helped people in California and around the country become much more conscious of their water consumption.
Leadership, Planning, New Technologies Public and business leaders over the years have developed ong-termwater conservation programs for California residents
and have been so successful that many areas of the state are using about the same amount of water today as they were 10 and 20 years ago, even with population growth.
We also have many new water reducing technologies today that were likely not even considered 40 years ago.
or similar devices to restrict the amount of water released from faucets. Today, the installation of aerators is one of the most significant and inexpensive steps a commercial facility can take to reduce water consumption.
The typical faucet releases about three gallons of water per minute; with an aerator installed,
this can be reduced to as much as 0. 5 gallons per minute. In the 1970s, 80s,
and early 90s, toilets typically used more than three gallons of water per flush, sometimes as much as five.
and the country early two billion gallons per day across the countryand save a family of four, on average, $2, 000 in water bills over the lifetime of the toilets, according to the EPA.
urinals used 2. 5 to more than three gallons of water per flush. Now low flow urinal systems release about one gallon of water,
and no-water urinals use none whatsoever. Here in California and around the country, they are found in office buildings and schools, even very high-end hotels.
Finally, for commercial facilities with landscaping, automatic drip-type irrigation systems another new technology are helping consumers
and building owners reduce water consumption considerably. With these systems, spray heads are eliminated and water is delivered directly to the roots of plants and vegetation.
Some of these systems also come with ainand soil moisture sensors so that irrigation is released only when and as needed.
Each gateway incorporates Wind River Intelligent Device Platform software with Mcafee security features connected to Intel s Hadoop distribution in the cloud.
if he could add water and make them work again.####Freeze-drying is a pretty common thing to do in pharmaceuticals.
if he could freeze-dry the whole packageâ##the gene circuit instructions the enzymes that power the reactions the cellular machinery that builds proteinsâ##then add water
#Iron-rich biochar filters arsenic from water Biochar may be a fast inexpensive and easy way to remove arsenicâ one of the world s most common pollutantsâ from water.
As reported in the journal Water Research Gao ground wood chips that were heated then in nitrogen gas but not burned.
or coagulants to water using membranes to filter it out or using an ion exchange process.
#Team makes spiny neurons without stem cells Washington University in St louis rightoriginal Studyposted by Julia Evangelou Strait-WUSTL on October 30 2014scientists have figured outâ#howâ#to convert human skin cells
or NIR-IIA, involves injecting water-soluble carbon nanotubes into a live mouse bloodstream. The researchers then shine a near-infrared laser over the rodent skull.
and hydrogel water-based polymer gel that provides structural supporthus learingthe tissue but leaving its three-dimensional architecture intact for study.
and other agents often used in pharmaceuticals that help a material become more water-soluble
leaving behind all the brain structures embedded in the firm water-based gel, or hydrogel. This is called electrophoretic CLARITY.
The majority of study participants live in the Sacramento Valley Central Valley and the greater San francisco bay Area.
when they come into contact with different materials such as air, water, or biological tissue. For instance, when you put your ear on a railroad track,
and then force out water, says Brendan Watson, a graduate student at Rice university who helped create the hydrogel.
these polymers slowly start to expel water and shrink down until theye one-half or one-third the size.
the Keck Center Nanobiology Training program of the Gulf coast Consortia and the Baylor College of Medicine Medical scientist Training program supported the research.
however, has been 98 percent successful in locating worldwide populations to their correct geographic regions, right down to their village and island of origin.
Sardinia and Oceania To demonstrate how accurate GPS predictions are, Elhaik and his colleagues analyzed data from 10 villages in Sardinia and over 20 islands in Oceania.
With people from Oceania, the method had almost 90 percent success in tracing islanders exactly to their island. his is a significant improvement compared to the alternative SPA tool that placed Oceanians in India,
and evolution of the species studied. t is the profoundly diverse nature of insects that has presented insurmountable problems for scientists reconstructing relationships says Gavin Svenson curator and head of invertebrate zoology
and as catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) a process used in fuel cells to pull hydrogen from water.
and a lot of edge as though the material had drilled bore holes all the way through. he new film catalyzes the separation of hydrogen from water
when chemicals appear in water and in what concentration#all without electronics. The device could be used to detect unknown sources of contaminations in streams.
The other end of each tube is open to the environment allowing chemicals dissolved in the water to seep into the capsule.
In the field engineers would throw the capsule into the water upstream of the contamination
and concentration of chemical reactions in water Tang hopes to dramatically miniaturize the time capsule. Ultimately she would like to make chemical sensors the size of the period in this sentence
#Iron-rich biochar filters arsenic from water Biochar may be a fast inexpensive and easy way to remove arsenic one of the world s most common pollutants from water.
As reported in the journal Water Research Gao ground wood chips that were heated then in nitrogen gas but not burned.
or coagulants to water using membranes to filter it out or using an ion exchange process.
#Biochar changes how water flows through soil Rice university rightoriginal Studyposted by Jade Boyd-Rice on September 25 2014new research could help settle the debate about one of biochar s biggest benefits#its seemingly contradictory ability
or biochar to soil to both boost crop yields and counter global climate change the study offers the first detailed explanation for this mystery. nderstanding the controls on water movement through biochar-amended soils is critical
and gardening buffs took off after archaeological studies found that biochar added to soils in the Amazon more than 1000 years ago was still improving the water-and nutrient-holding abilities of those poor soils today.
either increase or decrease the amount of water that soil holds but it has been tough for experts to explain why this occurs due partly to conflicting results from many different field tests.
In the new study biogeochemists at Rice conducted side-by-side tests of the water-holding ability of three soil types#sand clay and topsoil#both with and without added biochar.
For scientific studies it is critical to make sure you re comparing apples to apples. arnes says the team chose to make its comparison with simple relatively homogenous soil materials to compare results to established hydrologic models that relate water flow to a soil s physical properties like bulk density
but in fact researchers have found that biochar-amended sand holds water longer. tudy coauthor Brandon Dugan assistant professor of Earth science at Rice says e hypothesize that this is likely due to the presence of two flow paths
for water through soil-biochar mixtures. One pathway is between the soil and biochar grains
and a second pathway is water moving through the biochar itself. arnes says the highly porous structure of biochar makes each of these pathways more tortuous than the pathway that water would take through sand alone.
and further slow the movement of water. y adding our results to the growing body of literature we show that
just as the water level rises between the hills when it rains. his is how a conductive material is formed from an initial isolator
when it stops raining the water has formed a lake from which the individual hilltops emerge like islands.
This is exactly what Varlet observed when experimenting with the double layer of graphene: at a low water level there are three independent but equivalent lakes.
When the water level increases the three lakes join to form a large ocean. he topology has changed altogethervarlet concludes.
In other words this is how a doughnut is transformed into an apple. Until now scientists have lacked the right material to be able to demonstrate a Lifshitz transition in an experiment.
because the setup is sealed. he nanotube electrolyte solution could be protected from oxygen and water which would have caused precipitation of the nanotubeshe says. t turns out that this is not a showstopper
and turn it into a mineral which prevents the toxic material from leaching into groundwater.
The device harvests energy in any location where these temperature changes naturally occur powering sensors that can check for water leaks
or inside a wall and sensors would be tuned to check for water leaks. Similarly when used inside a bridge the sensors could detect any cracks forming or structural deficiencies.
#AAA BATTERY powers cheap water splitter A new device uses a regular AAA BATTERY to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The battery sends an electric current through two electrodes that split liquid water into hydrogen and oxygen gas.
Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive and abundant nickel
and iron. sing nickel and iron which are cheap materials we were able to make the electrocatalysts active enough to split water at room temperature with a single 1. 5-volt batterysays Hongjie Dai a chemistry
professor at Stanford university. his is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low.
or iridium to achieve that voltage. n addition to producing hydrogen the new water splitter could be used to make chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide an important industrial chemical according to Dai.
Fuel cell technology is essentially water splitting in reverse. A fuel cell combines stored hydrogen gas with oxygen from the air to produce electricity
The only byproduct is water unlike gasoline combustion which emits carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas. Most of these vehicles will run on fuel manufactured at large industrial plants that produce hydrogen by combining very hot steam and natural gas an energy-intensive process that releases carbon dioxide as a byproduct.
Splitting water to make hydrogen requires no fossil fuels and emits no greenhouse gases. But scientists have yet to develop an affordable active water splitter with catalysts capable of working at industrial scales. t s been a constant pursuit for decades to make low-cost electrocatalysts with high activity
and long durabilitydai says. hen we found out that a nickel-based catalyst is as effective as platinum it came as a complete surprise. tanford graduate student Ming Gong co-lead author of the study made the discovery. ing discovered a nickel-metal
but we still don t fully understand the science behind it. he nickel/nickel-oxide catalyst significantly lowers the voltage required to split water which
That goal is achievable based on my most recent resultshe researchers also plan to develop a water splitter than runs on electricity produced by solar energy. ydrogen is an ideal fuel for powering vehicles buildings
After depositing copper foams on an electrode the researchers set up experiments to see what kinds of products would be produced in an electrochemical reaction with CO2 in water.
or NIR-IIA involves injectingâ water-soluble carbon nanotubes into a live mouse s bloodstream. The researchers then shine a near-infrared laser over the rodent s skull.
and hydrogel#a water-based polymer gel that provides structural support #thus learingthe tissue but leaving its three-dimensional architecture intact for study.
In October 2004 excavation of fragmentary skeletal remains from the island of Flores in Indonesia yielded
but will have less of an environmental impact such as varieties that require less water fertilizer and pesticides. ardy high-yield crops will become increasingly vital for human survival as the world faces the environmental effects of climate change and an ever-growing global population.
and the pitcher a thirsty bird finds a vessel of water but when he tries to drink from it he finds that the water level is too low.
Not strong enough to knock over the pitcher the bird drops pebbles into it one at a time until the water level rises enough for him to drink his fill.
Highlighting the value of ingenuity the fable demonstrates that cognitive ability can often be more effective than brute force.
The findings appear in PLOS ONE. e showed that crows can discriminate between different volumes of water
-and-effect relationships by choosing options that displace more water. ogan a junior research fellow at UCSB s SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind worked with New Caledonian crows in a set of small aviaries in New caledonia run by the University of Auckland
The testing room contained an apparatus consisting of two beakers of water the same height but one wide and the other narrow.
The diameters of the lids were adjusted to be the same on each beaker. he question is can they distinguish between water volumes?
Logan says. o they understand that dropping a stone into a narrow tube will raise the water level more?
because the water level would never get high enough in the wider tube; they were dropping all
With one set when subjects dropped a stone into a wide tube the water level raised in an adjacent narrow tube that contained food.
This was hidden due to a connection between the two tubes that allowed water to flow. The other set of tubes had no connection so dropping a stone in the wide tube did not cause the water level to rise in its adjacent narrow tube.
Each set of tubes was marked with a distinct color cue and test subjects had to notice that dropping a stone into a tube marked with one color resulted in the rise of the floating food in its adjacent small tube. hey have to put the stones into the blue tube
Research on causal cognition using the water displacement paradigm is only beginning to get at what these crows know about solving problems.
Through photosynthesis, plants and some bacteria turn sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into food for themselves and into oxygen for animals to breathe.
It also the only known natural enzyme that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
how much water you transport down the line of people depends on each person getting the right timing
#Power plant battery uses tanks of water Scientists have created new, water-based organic batteries that are built long-lasting
and from cheap, eco-friendly components. They built the new battery, which uses no metals or toxic materials, for use in power plants,
with two tanks of electroactive materials dissolved in water. The solutions are pumped into a cell containing a membrane between the two fluids with electrodes on either side releasing energy.
Narayan and Prakash wanted to find an organic compound that could be dissolved in water. Such a system would create a minimal impact on the environment
which were mixed then with water and concentrated by centrifugation into a thick slurry. The slurry was then spread by bar coatingomething like a squeegeecross a large plate.
The chemical stew that makes it possible is a mix of copper nitrate, phosphorous acid, hydrogen fluoride, and water.
and turn it into water that is clean enough for livestock to drink. It also extracts nutrients that can be reused as fertilizer.
Currently the system produces about 50 gallons of water from 100 gallons of manure. The goal is to increase that number to about 65 gallons.
who is involved with the project. bout 90 percent of the manure is water but it contains large amounts of nutrients, carbon,
and the water into the fuel-making process, says Gemma Reguera, Michigan State university microbiologist and one of the study coauthors. ith a saturated glycerol market,
she says. y cleaning the water with microbes on-site, wee come up with a way to allow producers to generate bioethanol,
Its atmosphere could consist entirely of water vapor or some other type of heavy molecule or it could contain high-altitude clouds that prevent the observation of what lies underneath.
The first spectra which Bean obtained in 2010 using a ground-based telescope suggested that the planet s atmosphere either was predominantly water vapor
This allowed the astronomers to rule out cloud-free atmospheres made of water vapor methane nitrogen carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide.
Cellulose could come from a variety of biological sources including trees plants algae ocean-dwelling organisms called tunicates
Beyond generating power the technology could also provide a new type of self-powered sensor allowing detection of vibrations motion water leaks explosions
and floats bobbing on ocean waves. They have learned to increase the power output by applying micron-scale patterns to the polymer sheets.
They can now produce current from contact between waterâ##sea water tap water and even distilled waterâ##and a patterned polymer surface.
Lipson says he hopes this simple demonstration is just the ip of the iceberg. 3d printing technology could be moving from printing passive parts toward printing active integrated systems he adds.
The cosmic microwave background is a sea of photons (light particles) left over from the big bang that pervades all of space at a temperature of minus 270 degrees Celsiusâ##a mere 3 degrees above absolute zero.
which light is polarized as it reflects off the surface of a lake or the hood of a car.
The dots are water-soluble and early tests have shown them to be nontoxic offering the promise that GQDS may serve as effective antioxidants Tour says.
Also as can be seen from oil spills in the Gulf of mexico oil can stick and easily spread out on any surface.
Imagine you and your mother are pictured together building a sandcastle at the beach. You re both tagged in the photo quite close together.
or in our case just stir in water all the particles will find one another and link togetherhe says. hey beautifully assemble into a three-dimensional crystal that we predicted computationally
Working with approximately 1 million nanoparticles in water they heated the solution to a temperature just above the DNA linkers melting point
#New giant clam species hid in plain sight One type of giant clam turns out to be two separate species report researchers who discovered the new species on reefs in the Solomon islands and at Ningaloo
and are some of the most recognizable animals on coral reefs coming in a spectrum of vibrant colors including blues greens browns
The largest single piece weighing about 650 kilograms was recovered from the bed of Lake Chebarkul in October by a team from Ural Federal University led by Professor Viktor Grokhovsky.
which can act as molecular ievesto separate liquids and gases one molecule at a timeâ##a property that shows promise for applications such as water purification water desalination and gas storage.
when facing a steady flow of water. hat is immediately obvious in the slow-motion videos is that the fish constantly move their fins to produce opposing forces.
One region of their fin pushes water forward while the other region pushes the water backwardsays Eric Fortune a professor of biological sciences at the New jersey Institute of technology who was a co-author of the paper. his arrangement is rather counter-intuitive like two propellers fighting against each other. f the fish wants to move forward
or backward instead of hovering it can adjust the proportion of fin pushing in either direction.
and clutter in bubbly water. Some dolphins blow ubble netsaround schools of fish which force the fish to cluster together.
#Drop an internet in the ocean to detect tsunamis University at Buffalo rightoriginal Studyposted by Cory Nealon-Buffalo on October 14 2013a deep-sea internet network is expected to improve the way scientists detect tsunamis monitor pollution
and analyze data from our oceans in real timesays Tommaso Melodia associate professor of electrical engineering at the University at Buffalo
and National oceanic and atmospheric administration use sound wave-based techniques to communicate underwater. For example NOAA relies on acoustic waves to send data from tsunami sensors on the sea floor to surface buoys.
The buoys convert the acoustic waves into radio waves to send the data to a satellite which then redirects the radio waves back to land-based computers.
Melodia tested the system recently in Lake erie a few miles south of downtown Buffalo. Hovannes Kulhandjian and Zahed Hossain both doctoral candidates in his lab dropped two 40-pound sensors into the water.
Kulhandjian typed a command into a laptop. Seconds later a series of high-pitched chirps ricocheted off a nearby concrete wall an indication that the test worked.
#Tiny water sensor embedded in plant stems Cornell University Posted by Krishna Ramanujan-Cornell on October 14 2013researchers are completing soil tests on a water sensor within a fingertip-sized silicon chip
Crop growers wine grape and other fruit growers food processors and even concrete makers all benefit from water sensors for accurate steady and numerous moisture readings.
For example sophisticated vintners use precise irrigation to put regulated water stress on grapevines to create just the right grape composition for a premium cabernet or a chardonnay wine.
While growers can use the sensors to monitor water in soils for their crops civil engineers can embed the chips in concrete to determine optimal moisture levels as the concrete cures. ne of our goals is to try
The cavity is filled with water and then the chip may be inserted in a plant stem or in the soil where it through a nanoporous membrane exchanges moisture with its environment and maintains an equilibrium pressure that the chip measures.
#Signs of water detected in exoplanet s debris University of Warwick rightoriginal Studyposted by Anna Blackaby-Warwick on October 11 2013the remains of a water-rich rocky exoplanet have been discovered outside
and the large telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory researchers found an excess of oxygenâ##a chemical signature that indicates that the debris had once been part of a bigger body originally composed of 26 percent water by mass.
By contrast only approximately 0. 023 percent of the Earth s mass is water. Evidence for water outside our solar system has previously been found in the atmosphere of gas giants
but this is the first time it has been pinpointed in a rocky body making it of significant interest in understanding of the formation and evolution of habitable planets and life.
Itâ#believed that bodies like Ceres were the source of the bulk of our own water On earth.
In the study published in Science researchers suggest it is most likely that the water detected around the white dwarf GD 61 came from a minor planet at least 90 kilometers (56 miles) in diameterâ
Like Ceres the water was most likely in the form of ice below the planet s surface.
From the amount of rocks and water detected in the outer envelope of the white dwarf the researchers estimate that the disrupted planetary body had a diameter of at least 90 kilometers.
The water-rich minor planet was knocked out of its regular orbit and plunged into a very close orbit where it was shredded by the starâ#gravitational force.
 In these remnants lie chemical clues which point towards a previous existence as a water-rich terrestrial body. hose two ingredientsâ##a rocky surface
The finding of water in a large asteroid means the building blocks of habitable planets existedâ ##and maybe still existâ##in the GD 61 system and likely also around substantial number of similar parent starssays lead author Jay Farihi from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. hese water-rich building blocks
and the terrestrial planets they build may in fact be commonâ##a system cannot create things as big as asteroids
and GD 61 had the ingredients to deliver lots of water to their surfaces. ur results demonstrate that there was definitely potential for habitable planets in this exoplanetary system
but this is the first time the signature of water has been found. Source: University of Warwickyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license h
That ranges from less than 1000 nanoseconds for water and ammonia to quite long4000-plus nanoseconds for pyridine.
They found categories of solvents nonpolar alcohols protics (which include water) and aprotics tended to gather in their own areas. hat s another interesting thingmart says. ifferent solvent groups occupy different areas in the map.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011