Ingber is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical school and Boston Children's Hospital as well as professor of bioengineering at Harvard School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS.
The idea for the coating evolved from SLIPS a pioneering surface technology developed by coauthor Joanna Aizenberg Ph d. who is a Wyss Institute Core Faculty member and the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials science at Harvard SEAS.
Reflecting the strong collaborative model of the Wyss Institute the cross-disciplinary team included researchers representing the Wyss Institute SEAS Harvard Medical school and Boston Children's Hospital
#Launch of new sensor device on Hudson river set to wire river for cleaner water In the race to find solutions to critical water issues the launch of a new cost-effective water quality sensor
device by Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries Clarkson University is the first step in overcoming hurdles of historically prohibitive costs for long-term water resource monitoring.
The installation of the Institute's newest generation of River and Estuary Observatory Network (REON II) sensor arrays signifies the passing of the baton from the science lab to the river as they run ahead complementing government capacity to invest in wiring the river for cleaner water.
The REON II device or Sonde deployed October 6 on the banks of the Hudson river in New Hamburg N y. is providing real-time data called for by scientists to better understand the complex relationship between humans the built environment and our fragile waterways.
It is one of 37 sensor stations currently in place in the Hudson and St lawrence river watersheds making REON one of the world's most robust resources of real-time data.
The goal of the REON research team to develop affordable scalable low-profile sensor networks
Applying world class research to water quality has to be viewed as a critical component for sustaining society as a whole says Clarkson University President Tony Collins. As healthy water becomes increasingly scarce establishing real-time data as the new standard for understanding water quality around the globe
"said Ranjan J. Perera, Ph d.,associate professor and scientific director of Analytical Genomics and Bioinformatics at Sanford-Burnham's Lake Nona campus in Orlando."
#Designing rivers: Environmental flows for ecosystem services in rivers natural and novel Last spring, the Colorado river reached its delta for the first time in 16 years,
flowing into Pacific ocean at the Gulf of california after wetting 70 miles of long-dry channels through the Sonoran Desert.
The planned 8-week burst of water from Mexico's Morelos Dam on the Arizona-Mexico border was the culmination of years of diplomatic negotiations between the United states and Mexico and campaigning from scientists and conservation organizations.
Now ecologists wait to see how the short drink of water will affect the parched landscape.
This year's spring pulse held less than 1 percent of the volume of the Colorado's annual spring floods before the construction of ten major dams and diversions to municipalities, industry, and agriculture.
and ease strains on fisheries in the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of california). Environmental flows for natural, hybrid,
and novel riverine ecosystems in a changing world There are two primary ways to achieve"environmental flows"of water necessary to sustain river ecosystems,
or reverse alterations to the natural flow of the river. For rivers like the Colorado, already much altered and bearing heavy demands from many different user groups, a"designer"approach is more practical than attempting to return the river closer to its natural,
pre-development state, say the authors. Designers work to create a functional ecosystem or support ecosystem services under current conditions,
birds and other life inhabiting the river, its banks and its marshes. Managers must plan to turn on the taps
lest water releases do more harm than good. Several decades of applied research guided the planning for the engineered"spring flood"on the lower Colorado this year,
Rebirth of the Elwha River For rivers with fewer economic and social demands, restoration guided by historical records of the natural dynamics of the river can be an effective restoration strategy
river systems need to fluctuate in natural rhythms of volume, velocity, and timing (to put it very simplistically).
At the end of the twentieth century, Washington state decided that the water of the Elwha River would be most valuable flowing freely through Olympic national park to the Pacific at the Strait of Juan de Fuca, supporting salmon trout, clams, and tourism.
Habitat and eroded coastline are recovering at an astonishing pace only one year after the demolition of two dams freed the river,
as Noreen Parks reports for her news story"Rebirth of the Elwha River"in ESA Frontier's October Dispatches.
Rivers of the Anthropocene? Outside protected wilderness, the Elwha's story may be more of an anomaly than a blueprint for future river restoration projects.
As nonnative species, land development, and climate change remodel river ecosystems, it is no longer easy to define what is"natural"for river systems.
But heavily used, regulated, and altered rivers have ecological value.""The future of freshwater biodiversity is linked inextricably to land
and water infrastructure management,"writes N Leroy Poff of Colorado State university in his guest editorial for ESA Frontiers, in
which he contemplates whether rivers have changed so much that we need to rethink some of our conceptions about restoration."
"We are rapidly entering an era where restoration interventions will be guided less by statistical deviations from historical reference conditions and more by"process-based"understanding of organism-environment relationships,
"it felt like water running across the back of my hand.""The system, which is limited to the lab at this point,
Findings from the new study will be published Oct 8 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Discovering the role that these invisible polymers play in disease transmission in the ocean is a tremendous step forward in helping us better understand
Contamination of coastal waters with disease-causing microorganisms is known to pose a threat to the health of both humans
and animals but the mechanisms by which diseases are transmitted in marine ecosystems has remained until now a mystery.
and other ocean food sources they investigated why the sea snails might be particularly effective carriers of the parasite.
which infectious agents like the T. gondii egg cells can embed and more quickly settle to the ocean floor.
and because its hydrophobicity (how much it repels water) can be controlled chemically allowing them to build membranes on top.
It is insoluble in water but chitosan is porous so it is capable of retaining water.
Finally they evaporated a phospholipid molecule known as dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) onto the chitosan-covered silicon substrate
and death--food and water tainted with pathogens from fecal matter results in the deaths of roughly 700000 children each year.
It has good water holding capacity and it can be used in agricultural areas to hold in nutrients
A soil mixture containing 10 percent biochar can hold up to 50 percent more water and increase the availability of plant nutrients he said.
In late December tests at CU-Boulder showed the solar energy directed into the reaction chamber could easily boil water
CU-Boulder team member Elizabeth Travis from Parker Colo. who is working toward a master's degree in the engineering college's Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities said her interest in water
Tiny Eurasian exotic is upending watery ecosystems across the northern Great lakes The zooplankton never saw it coming.
These tiny eyeless water creatures recognize predators by their scent and zooplankton in the Upper Midwest have added never the spiny water flea to their stink list.
The results have been catastrophic. The word I use is blindsiding says limnologist W. Charles Kerfoot a professor of biological sciences at Michigan Tech.
which is why the spiny water flea aka Bythotrephes (pronounced BITH-oh-TREH-feez) is devouring its way through the Great lakes and into the surrounding inland waters.
His group sampled the waters in dozens of sites from New york to northwestern Minnesota; they found 83 sites that were infested.
The scientists checked out Lakes Michigan Superior and many interior lakes and lingered two years in Voyageurs national park on Minnesota's border with Canada to examine Bythotrephes'long-term effect on the native zooplankton.
Three of the park's lakes--Rainy Kabetogama and Namakan--had significant densities of the spiny water flea.
Compared to nearby lakes with little or no Bythotrephes they had far fewer of the native zooplankton that support a food web topped by pike bass walleye--and of course fishermen.
They also compared their measurements with data from as far back as 2001 and found that some native zooplankton species had nosedived
whereas the entire foodweb experienced declines ranging from 39 percent to 80 percent. In addition they documented similar crashes in the populations of native predatory zooplankton species that feed on other zooplankton probably
because the Bythotrephes are eating up their food supply. Bythotrephes is having as much impact on the plankton communities as quagga mussels have had in Lake huron
and Lake michigan said Kerfoot. We expect it will have cascading effects up to the fish but right now we can see a major collapse of the plankton community.
So how did the spiny water flea get here and what makes it such a bad actor in the ecosystem?
Bythotrephes is no big deal in its native waters. The zooplankton communities in Scandanavia and Northern europe have adjusted to it Kerfoot said.
They have evolved together and the prey species the Bythotrephes eats have developed devices to protect themselves like helmets and spines.
North american zooplankton like many Daphnia and Bosmina species which are favorites on Bythotrephes'menu have similar hardware
but fail to sense the presence of the exotic and don't deploy the defenses. Since it can only live in fresh water the spiny water flea could never have crossed the Atlantic ocean on its own.
It came in ballast water no question Kerfoot said. Like many aquatic invasive species it was transplanted by ships loading ballast in one part of the world and dumping it in another in this case the Great lakes.
Since Bythotrephes needs cool conditions it has gained not a footing in more southerly waters. But it is having a field day in a band of inland lakes stretching from eastern Ontario to northern Minnesota and in the cooler Great lakes.
Oceangoing vessels can't be blamed directly for Bythotrephes in Voyageurs national park however. It is transported to inland lakes by recreational fishing said Kerfoot.
The spiny water flea has an enormous spine with barbs that attach to all types of surfaces (fishing lines nets anchor ropes)
and unless boats and fishing gear are cleaned thoroughly they can carry spiny water fleas and their resting eggs between lakes infecting one after another.
Bythotrephes resting eggs are exceptionally hardy. We discovered that the eggs are special: big round and thick shelled said Kerfoot.
They go through fish guts intact. That means that minnows taken from Bythotrephes-infested waters and used for bait elsewhere can poop viable eggs into the new lake.
Spot-tailed shiners are especially good at spreading spiny water flea eggs but there's a solution:
if minnows are held for 24 hours they will pass all the eggs and be safe to use as bait.
Right now there's no way to get Bythotrephes out of infested lakes. But boaters and anglers can stop it from spreading.
Drain all water from bilge live wells ballast tanks etc. before leaving. Dry everything thoroughly before you put your gear in another lake.
This usually takes about five days. If you want to use your boat sooner clean all surfaces with hot (over 104 degrees F.)water a high-pressure hose or a disinfectant like a household bleach solution.
Don't transfer fish directly from one lake or stream to another either whole or cut up for bait.
To assure that minnows are not carrying Bythotrephes eggs keep them for 24 hours and then transfer them to a container with clean water.
Or avoid lake spot-tailed shiners and use river emerald shiners which don't eat Bythotrephes or its eggs.
Some states such as Minnesota have launched Stop Hitchhikers campaigns to raise awareness and have installed spray units at public boat launches where boaters can clean their vessels and bait buckets.
Isle royale national park is one of the few regions in the Upper Midwest where his team found no Bythotrephes in inland lakes.
There boaters must disinfect all vessels before putting them in water and anglers are limited to artificial bait.
Unfortunately that doesn't stop the odd Typhoid Mary. In some places along Highway 41 in Upper Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula every lake we tested with a boat ramp had Bythotrephes.
The primary highway for invasive aquatic species the ballast tanks of oceangoing vessels entering the Great lakes is still open.
since the St lawrence Seaway opened in 1959 many freighters still release contaminated ballast water into the system.
They can pick up something in the southern Great lakes and pollute Thunder Bay or Duluth said Kerfoot.
We absolutely have to cut that conduit off. The study of Lakes Superior and Michigan was funded from National Science Foundation OCE-9726680 OCE-9712872 and OCE-9712889.
Geographic survey sampling and studies in the national parks during 2008-10 were funded by a grant from the National park service Natural resource Preservation Program GLNF CESU Task Agreement No.
Advances in sensor technology and increased understanding of plant physiology have made it possible for greenhouse growers to use water content sensors to accurately determine irrigation timing and application rates in soilless substrates.
Sensor-based irrigation systems substitute capital for water and associated inputs such as energy labor and fertilizer the authors explained.
and their bases are immersed in a solution of deionized water, ethanol, and a dissolved polymer.
the water-ethanol mixture streams upward, dragging chains of polymer with it. The water and ethanol quickly dissolve, leaving a tangle of polymer filaments opposite each emitter, on the electrode.
The researchers were able to pack 225 emitters, several millimeters long, on a square chip about 35 millimeters on a side.
#Engineers Develop a Computer That Operates on Water Researchers at Stanford university have developed a synchronous computer that operates using the unique physics of moving water droplets.
Computers and water typically don mix, but in Manu Prakash lab, the two are one and the same.
and his students have built a synchronous computer that operates using the unique physics of moving water droplets.
Then they carefully injected into the mix individual water droplets that had been infused with tiny magnetic nanoparticles.
thanks to a moisture mill a turbine engine driven by water evaporating from wet paper strips lining its walls.
Sahin Laboratory, Columbia University An immensely powerful yet invisible force pulls water from the earth to the top of the tallest redwood
Yet despite the power of evaporating water, its potential to propel self-sufficient devices or produce electricity has remained largely untapped until now.
it could one day produce electricity from giant floating power generators that sit on bays or reservoirs,
or from huge rotating machines akin to wind turbines that sit above water, said Ozgur Sahin, Ph d,
Inside the case, evaporating water made the air humid. The humidity caused the muscle to elongate,
A self-sustaining cycle of motion was born. hen we placed water beneath the device, it suddenly came to life,
Coupling that piston to a generator produced enough electricity to cause a small light to flash. e turned evaporation from a pool of water into light,
With its current power output, the floating evaporation engine could supply small floating lights or sensors at the ocean floor that monitor the environment,
#Safe drinking water Via Solar power Desalination Natasha Wright, an MIT Phd student in mechanical engineering, has designed a solar powered system that makes water safe to drink for rural, off-grid Indian villages.
she had no idea how to remove salt from groundwater to make it more palatable, nor had she ever been to India,
with a possible focus on filtering biological contaminants from groundwater to make it safe to drink. There are already a number of filters on the market that can do this,
Although the available filters made water safe to drink, they did nothing to mitigate its saltiness so the villagersdrinking water tasted bad and eroded pots and pans,
providing little motivation to use these filters. In reviewing the list of questions she had prepared for her interviews with locals,
Wright noticed that there were no questions about the water salty taste. o one had asked ever them about that.
Almost 60 percent of India has groundwater that noticeably salty, so later, after returning to MIT,
which uses a difference in electric potential to pull salt out of water. This type of desalination system has been around since the 1950s,
but Wright calculated that the amount of water used by a single farm is similar to the amount of water that a small village needs for its daily drinking water 6 to 12 cubic meters.
poor access to water pipelines often leads to a heavy reliance on well water. But some ranchers find that even their livestock won tolerate the saltiness of this water. t useful to install a small-scale desalination system where people are
so spread out that it more costly to pump in water from a municipal plant, she says. hat true in India and that also true in the U s. ource:
Julia Sklar, MIT Newsimage: Bryce Vickmar S
#Half Price Lithium-ion Batteries With Improved Performance and Recyclability MIT spinoff company 24m has reinvented the manufacturing process for lithium-ion batteries to reduce cost,
SEAS researchers have built one of the first 3-D printed, soft robots that moves autonomously.
senior author Robert J. Wood, Charles river Professor of Engineering and Applied sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS) and core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired
San diego. Co-authors include Johannes T b. Overvelde and Katia Bertoldi of SEAS; James Weaver of the Wyss Institute;
because the materials can assemble in water instead of more toxic organic solutions that are used widely today. nce you make the materials,
you can dump them into water and they assemble into the appropriate structure because of the way the materials are designed,
and UV light can rapchemicals for easy removal from soil and water. Many human-made pollutants in the environment resist degradation through natural processes,
and extract a variety of contaminants from soil and water. Ferdinand Brandl and Nicolas Bertrand, the two lead authors, are former postdocs in the laboratory of Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT Koch Institute
When they learned that UV light was used to disinfect water in certain treatment plants, they began to ask a different question. e thought
or hormones from water, because we saw that the particles aggregate once you irradiate them with UV light. trap for ater-fearingpollutionthe researchers synthesized polymers from polyethylene glycol,
and dispersed evenly in water. But when exposed to UV light, the stabilizing outer shell of the particles is shed,
anoparticles with photoinduced precipitation for the extraction of pollutants from water and soil, Nature Communications 6, Article number:
#4 steps to jumpstarting a smart water initiative in your city Just as the smart grid is the new reality for the energy industry,
smart water networks are the new face of the water utility industry. In a piece published in Australian business publication ferret,
and other technologies in transforming a dumb water network into an efficient, automated system and spells out four steps water utilities can take to ensure a successful transition.
What do smart water networks offer? The benefits of incorporating data analysis into a water network are better performance with the possibility of improved customer service,
and a uniquely detailed way to visualize the network's operations. On the technology side, smart water networks include the integration of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA),
meter data management solutions, advanced metering and automated meter reading and more. Those all enhance the ability to prevent the water loss prevalent in dumb systems through leak detection and control, pressure management, equipment repairs and asset management,
the company says. Schneider Electric describes four basic steps intended to occur over time. The following is a brief summary (learn more in the ferret article:
Related articleshe customer benefits of smart water networkssan Francisco turns to smart water meters during droughtlooking for a quick-payoff project?
Look into smart wate
#Utah nearly eliminates homelessness with solution that sounds too simple to work It sounds like a solution a child might offer:
In the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco city in Tianjin, China, Itron deployed one network that runs three meters--water, electricity and gas.
Council Lead Partner Itron, meanwhile, completed installation of smart water, heat and gas meters and communication modules as well as its fixed network for Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco city in Tianjin, China.
On the natural gas front an area that many environmentalists would argue is not a green energy source GE will work on developing alternative technologies to replace water in the hydraulic fracturing process.#
and groundwater contamination have escalated with the advent of the natural gas boom in the U s. The huge amount of water used in fracking has become a particularly touchy subject in drought-ridden areas where some 55 percent of the wells fracked
according to study released in February by Ceres. The study found 97 billion gallons of water were used to frack more than 39,
whether CO2 can be used economically as an alternative to water. It's possible to use CO2 to fracture shale rock formations,
It s not that they believe everyone wants to immerse themselves in an endless sea of headlines.
The majority of Saudi arabia's fresh water comes from desalination, the process that turns saltwater into a drinkable supply.
the price of desalinated water rises with the price of crude. The King Adbullah City for Atomic and Renewable energy, the government organization also known as Ka-care that was set up in 2010 to oversee the country's renewable energy strategy,
With demand for electricity and fresh water increasing, Saudi arabia is seeking out other sources of power including solar, geothermal, wind and nuclear.
#Climateminder helps farms be smarter about water usage California start-up Climateminder, which is selling technology that its founder first put to the test in Turkish greenhouses,
is piloting an environmental monitoring system that helps agribusiness concerns be smarter about how much water they use.
a former electronics engineer with IBM and Sun who got the idea for a water-monitoring system
Val Babajov, president of Climateminder, says his company's goal is to help agricultural concerns produce the same yield with less water.
I called Bayer Monday at his office in Green Island, NY. Excerpts of our conversation are below.
Where is Green Island? It sounds very peaceful and, well, green. It s an island in the Hudson river near Albany.
It has a hydroplant about a mile from us, and it s a nice spot for our company.
What the NRC really knew about Fukushima Fukushima ocean radiation could pose sleeper threat Nuclear meltdowns nearly made northern Japan uninhabitable do need we to worry about radiation in our milk?
Elevated radiation levels widespread in eastern Japan Test show Japanese child exposed to radiation Rice crops threatened by radiation Radioactive tuna found in Pacific ocean Hydrofracking drives new water treatment solutions
. But Spacex will also try to bring the Falcon 9's first stage back to Earth for a pinpoint landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic ocean.
and then return to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific ocean. Spacex holds a $1. 6 billion contract with NASA to complete 12 cargo runs to the space station.
and rinsed with water, which helped remove the ionic liquid and re-solidify the cellulose.
They can be recycled during the water reconstitution process.""Durkin believes that if the NFW process were scaled up,
for example, heating up water to heat up a radiator which heats up air and then finally heats up objects in a room, according to Harper.
Harper and his collaborators turned to graphene inks. his is especially important for water heating, where we wrap the flexible graphene element around a hot water tank,
heat transfer in water condensation. In a steam-powered power plant, water is heated up to create steam that turns a turbine.
The turning of the turbine produces electricity. In this process, the steam is condensed back into water
and the whole process begins again. The MIT team looked at these condensers and found that by layering their surfaces with graphene they can improve the rate of heat transfer by a factor of four.
In some of these systems, the condensation takes the shape of a thin sheet of water coating the surface of the metal tubing;
in others, water droplets are formed. When a thin film is formed the heat transfer of the condensation is compromised.
The MIT researchers exploited the graphene coating hydrophobic qualities to ensure that the water formed into droplets.
After testing the material in an environment of pure water vapor at 100 degrees Celsius the researcher found that the graphene coating offered a fourfold improvement in heat transfer compared to bare metal.
Bright Energy is developing a system that would use offshore renewable energy to store compressed air in vessels in the ocean.
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