deep under the sea. That finding is more likely than the one that suggests the rocky pillars dotting Icelandâ#Skaelingar valley were tossed projectiles into the fields by warring trollsâ##a theory University at Buffalo geologist Tracy Gregg heard from a tour guide and local hiker.
and made from basalt likely formed in a surprising reaction where lava met water without any explosion occurring. sually
when lava and water meet in aerial environments the water instantly flashes to steamsays Gregg associate professor of geology. hatâ#a volume increase of eight timesâ##boom.?
Formations like the ones we see in Iceland are common in the ocean under two miles of water where thereâ#so much pressure that thereâ#no explosionshe says. heyâ##ve never been described on land before
and itâ#important because it tells us that water and lava can come together on land and not explode.
This has implications for the way we view volcanic risk. eep-sea basalt pillars form
when columns of super-heated water rise between pillows of lava on the ocean floor cooling the molten rock into hollow pipe-like minarets.
so slowlyâ##centimeters per secondâ##that it was able to react with the water in a inder gentlermanner. f youâ##re driving your car at 5 miles per hour
Each of these distinctive characteristics is also prevalent in deep ocean pillars says Gregg. knew as soon as I saw them what they were.
and seen these things deep under the sea so I was just hysterical saying â##Look at these!'
'n the future Gregg says scientists could hunt for land-based lava pillars near oceans to learn about the height of ancient seas
or search for such formations on Mars and other planets to determine where water once existed.
Interest spiked with the May 24 2013 eruption in the waters near Russia of the world s strongest deep earthquakeâ##roughly five times the power of the great San francisco quake of 1906.
or to break down organic pollutants in the ead zonesof lakes and coastal waters where fertilizer runoff and other organic waste can deplete oxygen levels
and suffocate marine life. At the moment however the laboratory prototype is about the size of A d-cell battery
#Earth s wobble fixes food for ocean creatures Princeton university rightoriginal Studyposted by Catherine Zandonella-Princeton on September 16 2013the cyclic wobble of the Earth on its axis controls the production of ixednitrogen
which is essential to the health of the ocean according to a new study. The findings published in Nature give researchers insight into how the ocean regulates its own life-support system
which in turn affects the Earth s climate and the size of marine fisheries. Researchers report that during the past 160000 years nitrogen fixation rose
Studies from the 1980s revealed that precession leads to a regular upwelling of deep water in the equatorial Atlantic ocean roughly every 23000 years.
The upwelling in turn brings nitrogen-poor water to the surface where blue-green algae convert nitrogen drawn from the air into a form that is biologically usable.
The finding that nitrogen fixation is determined by precession-driven upwelling appears to indicate that the ocean s fixed nitrogen reservoir is resilient
and that the ocean biosphere can recover from even the most dramatic ecological changes says second author Daniel Sigman professor of geological
and geophysical sciences at Princeton university. y studying the response of nitrogen fixation to different environmental changes in the Earth s past we have found connections that may ensure that the ocean s fixed nitrogen level will always reboundsigman says. his suggests that an ocean over time has a relatively stable nutrient reservoir
and thus stable productivity. he rise of deep water spurs nitrogen fixation because that water is low in nitrogen
The phosphorus fuels the fixing of nitrogen carried out by blue-green algae also known as cyanobacteria. he phosphorus-rich nitrogen-poor water is a boon to cyanobacteria that can fix their own nitrogensigman says. y growing more rapidly the nitrogen-fixers
top up the fixed nitrogen to the levels needed by other phytoplankton. he researchers tracked changes in nitrogen fixation in the North atlantic ocean by measuring the fixed nitrogen contained in the shells of marine animals recovered from sediment in the Caribbean sea.
and 15n contained in the shells of tiny marine animal plankton called foraminifera. The ratio of 15n to 14n was used then to reconstruct the rate of nitrogen fixation.
and the resulting ocean upwelling. The investigators also compared the fluctuations in nitrogen fixation to historical records of water temperature and levels of ironâ##another crucial nutrientâ##both
of which influence cyanobacteria survival and thus nitrogen fixation. No correlation was found. ur findings suggest that this upwelling was the dominant influence on nitrogen fixationsigman says.
along with throwing light on the major controls on this key process over long time scales. dditional researchers from Princeton The swiss Institute of technology in Zurich (ETH) and Columbia University Lamont-doherty earth observatory.
##and very strongâ##skeletons of organisms such as sea sponges. The nanoscale building blocks display remarkable strength and resistance to failure despite being more than 85 percent air.
Scientists have suspected long that the difference between natural materialsâ##like sea sponge skeletonsâ ##and manmade products constructed from similar materials has to do with the hierarchical architecture of the biological materialsâ##the way the silica-based skeletons are built up from different structural elements some
#Catalyst makes tiny rods swim to target University of Warwick rightoriginal Studyposted by Anna Blackaby-Warwick on September 10 2013putting a bit of catalyst on the ends of microscopic atchstickscan propel them through water to a specific chemical report researchers.
and direction of motion of microscopic structures in water relies on what the researchers have dubbed chemically otorized microscopic matchsticks. efore now most research seeking to influence the direction of motion of microscopic components have had to use outside influences such as a magnetic field
When that happens that symbiotic relationship helps to expand uptake by the plant's root system by as much as 90 percent helping the plant soak up water and nutrients from much deeper in the soil.
researchers used a low-intensity laser to heat water on a gold surface. The tiny bubble optical behavior remains consistent
To determine whether alcohol would affect fear responses the researchers exposed separate groups of fish to different doses of ethanol in water.
In a separate tank they simulated a heron attack from the water s surface#herons also prey on zebrafish
before the water boils. Solar steam efficiency comes from light-harvesting nanoparticles that were created at LANP by Rice graduate student Oara Neumann,
When submerged in water and exposed to sunlight, the particles heat up so quickly they instantly vaporize water
and create steam. The technology has an overall energy efficiency of 24 percent. Photovoltaic solar panels, by comparison, typically have an overall energy efficiency of around 15 percent.
#New evidence suggests giant ocean on Mars CALTECH (US) esearchers have found signs of an ancient delta on Mars where a river might have emptied once into a vast ocean.
This ocean, if it existed, could have covered much of Mars northern hemispheretretching over as much as a third of the planet. cientists have hypothesized long that the northern lowlands of Mars are a dried-up ocean bottom,
Although the new findings are far from proof of the existence of an ancient ocean,
and thus appears similar to the ocean basins found On earth. The border between the lowlands and the highlands would have been the coastline for the hypothetical ocean.
Researchers used new high-resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to study a 100-square-kilometer area that sits right on this possible former coastline.
These inverted channels form when coarse materials like large gravel and cobbles are carried along rivers
After the river dries up, the finer materialuch as smaller grains of clay, silt, and sandround the river erodes away, leaving behind the coarser stuff.
This remaining sediment appears as today ridge-like features, tracing the former river system. When looked at from above, the inverted channels appear to fan out
a configuration that suggests one of three possible origins: the channels could have once been a drainage system in
and converged to form a larger river; the water could have flowed in the other direction,
creating an alluvial fan, in which a single river channel branches into multiple smaller streams and creeks;
or the channels are actually part of a delta, which is similar to an alluvial fan except that the smaller streams
and creeks empty into a larger body of water such as an ocean. Sediment history To figure out which of these scenarios was most likely,
piecing together the history of how sediments were deposited along these ancient rivers and streams. The team was able to determine the slopes of the channels back
when water was still coursing through them. Such slope measurements can reveal the direction of water flown this case,
showing that the water was spreading out instead of converging, meaning the channels were part of an alluvial fan or a delta.
But they also found evidence for an abrupt increase in slope of the sedimentary beds near the downstream end of the channels.
Water therefore would have flowed most likely into a lake enclosed by such a boundary and so did not provide evidence for an ocean.
But the newly discovered delta is not inside a crater or other confining boundary, suggesting that the water likely emptied into a large body of water like an ocean. his is probably one of the most convincing pieces of evidence of a delta in an unconfined regionnd a delta points to the existence of a large body of water in the northern hemisphere
of Mars, says Dibiase, lead author of the paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
This large body of water could be the ocean that has been hypothesized to have covered a third of the planet.
the water would have covered the entire Aerolis Dorsa region, which spans about 100,000 square kilometers.
and northern lowlandshe hypothetical ocean coastlinend analyze other sedimentary deposits to see if they yield more evidence for an ocean. n our work
and that of othersncluding the Curiosity rovercientists are finding a rich sedimentary record on Mars that is revealing its past environments,
which include rain, flowing water, rivers, deltas, and potentially oceans, Lamb says. oth the ancient environments on Mars
and the planet sedimentary archive of these environments are turning out to be surprisingly Earthlike. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation
That area of the ocean is also the site of military training and testing exercises that involve loud mid-frequency sonar signals.
These are the first direct measurements of individual responses for any baleen whale species to these kinds of mid-frequency sonar signals says Brandon Southall SOCAL-BRS chief scientist from SEA Inc
In the new experiments, the Rice lab mixed graphene nanoribbons and tin oxide particles about 10 nanometers wide in a slurry with a cellulose gum binder and a bit of water, spread it on a current collector
#Plankton fossils found in 3 billion-year-old rocks Researchers say they ve discovered microfossils of plankton in 3 billion-year-old rocks.
The embedded fossils are likely planktonic autotrophs free-floating tiny ocean organisms that produce energy from their environment.
The spindle-shaped microfossils are from 20 to 60 microns in length about the size of fine sand and within the size range of today s microplankton.
The existence of these microfossils in diverse locations as far back as 3. 4 billion years ago suggests that the oceans probably had life in them for a very extended period of time adds Oehler.
Three groups of fish were treated with varying doses of ethanol in water#zero percent (control group) 0. 25 percent and 1 percent by volume.
which within 50 years often shows signs of degradation particularly in ocean environments. The manufacturing of Roman concrete also leaves a smaller carbon footprint than does its modern counterpart.
and colleagues characterized samples of Roman concrete taken from a breakwater in Pozzuoli Bay near Naples Italy.#
and rock chunks into wooden molds immersed in seawater. Rather than battle the marine elements Romans harnessed saltwater
and shipping declined the need for the seawater concrete declined#Jackson says.##You could also argue that the original structures were built so well that once they were in place they didn need#t to be replaced.#
and ocean that can give the vehicles a free ride toward their destination. Once in the vicinity they can be powered off to wait for a particular current of wind or water.
When they detect the current they need for navigation they power back on slip into the current then power off again to conserve fuel as the current carries them to a target location.
In essence they can go for a fact-gathering ride on hurricane winds and waters. The devices are a departure from current technology
although just as important considering that the warm moist air on the ocean surface provides fuel for hurricanes.
and can boil one liter of water in four minutes, as rapidly as a jet boil or reactor flame.
#FLOW-AID helps farmers save water without sacrificing yields Wee already seen gadgets such as Koubachi and Flower power,
when and how much water to apply to their crops, so they don run their irrigation systems unnecessarily.
soil characteristics and water rationing limits into account. So far FLOW-AID has been tested in six countries,
where researchers have reported a 10 to 50 percent reduction in water use. Because the device also keeps track of nutrient levels in the soil,
but by expelling a jet of water. This allows them to move very quickly and quietly.
Initially water is sucked in through an opening in each ball -just as a squid or octopus draws water into its mantle.
Cables integrated into the balls then cause them to contract rapidly expelling the water. In the same way that the animals steer themselves by moving the funnel that the water comes out of the Fraunhofer system can also be steered using a motor to selectively point the balls in the desired direction (s). The whole apparatus can be fabricated in one step using a 3d printer.
Production could reportedly be scaled up to the point of producing balls measuring two meters (6. 6 ft) across.
According to Fraunhofer not only would a commercial version of the technology allow for fast and near-silent travel
but there would also be no danger of sea creatures being cut by propellers. Interestingly enough the German researchers aren't the only people currently developing such systems.
For more on Oculus you can read our Gear VR review and our hands-on with the'Crescent Bay'Oculus Rift from CES 2015 E
#Panasonic#s new technology purifies water with sunlight and photocatalysts Drinking clean water is something that many people in the world can't take for granted as they rely on polluted sources
and photocatalysts to purify polluted water at a high reaction rate to improve access to clean water where it's needed.
One of the difficulties associated with Tio2 is that it is difficult to collect once dispersed in water
When the novel photocatalytic particles are stirred Tio2 is released from the zeolite and dispersed throughout the water.
and a larger volume of water can be processed in a short amount of time. If the water is left still it will cause Tio2 to bind to zeolite again making it easy to separate
and recover the photocatalysts from the water so they can be used again later. The technology was unveiled recently at Tokyo's Eco Products Fair.
Panasonic is working with a number of institutions in India to test the product and its capabilities.
Alternative solutions are being sought in other parts of the world as well where similar water-related problems occur c
Over a period of 25 years, between 1955 and 1980, more than 50 corporations left New york city, including IBM, Gulf Oil, Texaco, Union carbide, General Telephone, Xerox, Pepsico and U s. Tobacco.
The Homestead steel mill, across the river from Pittsburgh, is now a mall e
#How Scientists Can Turn off Pain Receptors In research published in the medical journal Brain, Saint louis University researcher Daniela Salvemini, Ph d. and colleagues within SLU,
such as the harvest date. here been a very rapid sea change in consumer behavior, said Elliott Grant, the chief marketing officer for Harvestmark. ith very high-profile food recalls, cellphones and iphones,
This particular sea creature can create up to 10 microamperes of electricity for anywhere from five to 24 hours.
###Call centers are like water, ##Bills said.####They flow to the place of the lowest labor cost.
or HECO, in September told solar contractors on Oahu that the island s solar boom is creating problems.
#Munjal Shah, entrepreneur in residence at Charles river Ventures,#surveyed a thousand peopleabout what super powers they would acquire
water and even basic sanitation#leaving an estimated 550 million people with phones who can t even charge them on a regular basis.
the machine is equipped with an off-gas filter that disintegrates these gases into water and carbon.
Plastic trash is also polluting our oceans and washing up on beaches around the world. Tons of plastic from the US and Japan are#floating in the Pacific ocean
killing mammals and birds. Perhaps this tragedy is captured best in the#TED presentation by Capt.
He s taken it on planes on many occasions as part of a project that began some years ago in the Marshall islands.
#Tapping into the Waterways in the Sky With all of the water we have in the world,
only 2%of it is fresh water. To make matters worse, only one-forth of all fresh water is accessible to humans.
Until now, the entire human race has survived on 0. 5%of the available water on earth. But that about to change.
We are seeing a fast growing trend towards harvesting water from the atmosphere, something our ancestors first began working on centuries ago.
People in the middle East and Europe devised the original air-well systems over 2 000 years ago.
The earth atmosphere is a far more elegant water distribution system than rivers, reservoirs, and underground waterways.
Since we all depend on the rains to provide the water we need, what if we could extract this rain at the very time
On-demand water extractors. A new breed of inventors has emerged to tackle this exact problem.
and other forms of passive energy, our future water networks will be operate with far more efficiency and convenience than anything imaginable today.
NBD Nano had developed a unique surface coating comprised of patterned superhydrophilic (water loving) and superhydrophobic (water hating) surfaces, on the nanoscale.
Together these surfaces dramatically increased the efficiency of moisture condensation and by extension, harvesting water from air.
Submissions ranged from self-filling water bottles, to extreme dehumidification, to a large-scale water sources for greenhouse drip irrigation, to emergency water for lifeboats, to self-filling canteens for the military,
and much more. The winning entry, titled he Aquamist, presented a simple elegant design for the emerging aquaponics and hydroponics industries.
and The Aquamist produced a water-replenishing environment to satisfy those needs. A new breed of companies has begun to spring up around the world,
looking to the skies to solve the world looming water issues. These companies are using a variety of technologies to drive costs down for extracting water from air.
Here are some of the true innovators in this space: Fogquest is a Canadian nonprofit that uses modern fog collectors to bring drinking water and water for irrigation and reforestation to rural communities in developing countries around the world.
Their fog collectors can be used in dry regions and even deserts that receive less than one millimeter of rain each year.
Living in the Caribbean in 1997, inventor Marc Parent came up with the idea of using a windmill to extract water from the air.
After many years of development and testing, the WMS1000 (shown above) became the world first wind turbine able to produce 1, 000 liters of water a day from air condensation.
and produces water. The water is stored then in an underground tank and pumped to the roots of crops via sub surface drip irrigation hosing.
Developed by Joe Ellsworth in Seattle, the A2wh system uses a desiccant to absorb moisture from the air.
The higher the humidity the more water the desiccant can absorb. The unit uses solar heat to drive both the airflow for the absorption process
and allows it to capture the water in liquid form. A small Photo Voltaic solar panel provides power for the micro controller, sensors, various valves, etc.
Ecoloblue has created an off-grid water harvester/dispenser specifically for the home or office. The unit shown above, the Ecoloblue 30,
to continually generate water even in emergency situations. It will generate between 1-3 Gallons Water/day depending on the humidity conditions and sun conditions.
Technion, an Israel Institute of technology, has come up with an unusual water extraction concept. Two architects invented this low-tech way of collecting dew and turning it into fresh water.
It works well for collecting water in virtually any environment even in polluted areas. About 12 gallons of fresh water can be extracted from air in a single day from one 300 sq ft unit.
This technology recently won an international competition. Imke Hoehler, an inductrial design student at Germany Muthesius Academy of Fine arts has turned a lot of heads with her thesis project, the Dropnet fog collector.
The collectors extracts tiny water droplets from fog clouds and turns them into drinking water at a rate of roughly 4-5 gallons a day.
Developed over the past 5 years on the Canary islands by Hernando Theo Olmo and Ricardo Gil
the ater Gardensare groupings of water-extracting towers for high volume and high quality water. Some of the planned uses are for forests, camping, fire suppression, agriculture, livestock,
and human consumption. The Atmospheric Water Collector shown above is still not a functional product,
but Canadian design student Thomas Row gives us an idea of what it may look like.
With a portable water extractor that fits on most any bottle, the goal is to provide for all the basic water needs of a person on a daily basis. Final Thoughts Prospects for the Future There are roughly 37,
500 trillion gallons of reshwater in the air at any given time. The age-old problem has been getting it to people who need it at exactly the right time.
In liquid form, water is heavy and difficult to transport. Plastic bottle made water far more transportable,
but it created a whole new set of problems. Every day, millions of plastic water bottles, cups and containers are transported around the world by exhaust-spewing steamships, trains,
and trucks, only to be discarded, thrown into landfills, and onto our streets. And most of our current bottles don degrade.
A high percentage of the products we buy in grocery stores contain water. Everything from pop to juice, to vegetables, to beer, to soup,
Transporting water is expensive, so what if the containers automatically added the water directly from the atmosphere once we took it home?
Is it possible to add a water extracting ground spike next to every plant or tree in our garden?
Is this a technology light enough for every athlete to carry with them, every adventurer to wear on their belt,
Will atmospheric water extractors replace city reservoirs, dams, water towers, and our elaborate network of fire hydrants throughout every community?
when chlorine-tasting water was an everyday occurrence n
#Precision agriculture moves farmers into the high tech age The U s. has seen record-setting drought in recent years.
The drought has pushed everyone to look for new ways to save water. So, the The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has joined forces with America beer brewers to change how farmer irrigate their crops.
For the nonprofit, conserving America rivers meant growing America barley, one of the primary ingredients in one of our favorite cold beverages, with less water.
the convergence of digital technology that allows farmers to apply just the right amount of fertilizer and water on their fields.
we douse fields to give them as much water and fertilizer as we think they need.
Experimental projects are even testing how to dispatch farm drones (crop-spying quadcopters for example) that measure everything from reflectivity to water loss to optimize the efficiency of a farm operations. rom our perspective:
while trying to protect freshwater mussels in the Flint River. It found that if it could divert water from fields,
more remained for threatened wildlife. hat wee doing in Georgia and Idaho is catching on around the world,
nozzles, and computer-controlled irrigation covering thousands of acres that conserve millions of gallons of water each day. s a brewer, we know that the area we can have the biggest impact in reducing water usage is within the agricultural supply chain,
Millercoors director of sustainability. he learnings and savings in the first two years of the pilot project farms were significant cumulative 270 million gallons of water reduced.
Over all, there are now more people undercorrectional supervision in Americamore than six millionthan were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.
Four more states Connecticut, New jersey, New york and Rhode island approved legislation mandating the increases. The AP notes:
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