which collects and safely holds the water even if it is held upside down. The tank, which has a capacity of 4cl,
in order to dispense the water. Kjaro can be worn after being used and is adaptable to different situations.
since the early 1800's. Light a candle, fill the device with water, and you have a charger."
has created an insect-like robot that can jump on water surfaces. As Dr Cho and co-authors watched the water strider jump on water surfaces using high-speed cameras,
they noticed that the long legs accelerate gradually, so that the water surface doesn retreat too quickly
and lose contact with the legs. Using a theoretical model of a flexible cylinder floating on liquid,
the scientists found that the maximum force of the water striderslegs is always just below the maximum force that water surface tension can withstand.
and gradually increases but that never exceeds the surface tension force of water. As well, the high-speed cameras reveal that the water strider sweeps its legs inward
in order to maximize the time the legs can push against the surface of the water, thus maximizing the overall force;
this additional concept was applied also to the robots to help them achieve lift off. umping on water is a unique locomotion mode found in semiaquatic arthropods, such as water striders.
and applied them to develop a bio-inspired impulsive mechanism that maximizes momentum transfer to water,
the scientists wrote in a paper published in the journal Science. e found that water striders rotate the curved tips of their legs inward at a relatively low descending velocity with a force just below that required to break the water surface (144 millinewtons/meter).
and verified that it jumps on water with maximum momentum transfer, the scientists said t
and spin microscopic particles suspended in water. The research by academics from the University of Bristol's Department of Mechanical engineering and Northwestern Polytechnical University in China, is published in Physical Review Letters.
when a mixture of small microparticles (less than 1 micron) and water were introduced they rotated slowly about the vortex core.
made from water, carbon dioxide and renewable energy sources, and they say their pilot plant in Dresden will pump out 160 litres of the of the stuff every day in the coming months to power their Audi a8 cars.
so that no biomass is required-just water, hydrogen, CO2 and sunlight, like how they're producing their new'e-diesel'fuel."
boil the fish in water or soup for 10 minutes, remove from the heat, and add a generous dash of lemon juice to foster iron absorption.
#Engineers have created a computer that operates on water droplets Researchers in the US have built a fully functioning computer that runs like clockwork-but instead of electrons,
it operates using the movement of tiny magnetised water droplets. The ultimate goal is to use the machine to precisely control
Although this new water-based computer could theoretically do everything a normal computer can thanks to its universal logic gates,
but although it was easy enough to work out how to control water droplets-by infusing them with magnetic nanoparticles
but Prakash team struggled to find something that would do the same thing with water.
And it carries information using the absence of presence of water droplets as the 1s and 0s of its binary code."
of which loves water-hydrophilic -and the other is repelled by it-hydrophobic. When great numbers of these molecules are mixed together,
not only does it transform the sewerage that goes through it into sterilised flushing water, it also seeks to solve one of the biggest issues that arise
the team has integrated also a function that can turn the byproducts of the water sterilising process into useable hydrogen and fertiliser.
"The same technique was used to display projects in the air, across fluorescent plates, in water and in a fluorescent solution.
and looped irrigation system they use requires 70 percent less water than open-field farming and can produce crops all year round,
AND electricity A new type of solar cell can convert liquid water into clean hydrogen fuel 10 times more effectively than any other technology,
which can split water into its hydrogen and oxygen components far more cheaply and efficiently than the batteries and semiconductor materials that have been used in the past.
Previous studies have shown that connecting an existing silicon solar cell to a water-splitting battery can produce hydrogen fuel,
The most promising option is using some kind of semiconductor material that can convert sunlight into an electrical charge while splitting water into useable components,
"In addition, Gap is also able to extract oxygen from the water -so you then actually have a fuel cell in
From the products of a biomass gasification plant i e. hydrogen carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide the Demosng pilot plant directly produces methane and water by means of a nickel catalyst (SNG operation.
Frank Graf Section Head of the test laboratory of the German Technical and Scientific Association of Gas and Water (DVGW) at KIT adds:
#Technology to recycle all type of plastics without using water The technology developed by Marco Adame founder of Ak Inovex can process more than 90 percent of any type of plastic avoids water waste
(when it comes in contact with water it retains moisture at a molecular level) so it has to be dehydrated so it can be crystallized;
and then cooling the material with water. However the development of AK Inovex performs all this process without water
so it goes directly to the formation of recycled beads. As a result the energy consumption is reduced by half
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
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)
Array"After the newly discovered bacteria interact with uranium compounds in water the uranium becomes immobile,
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."
and are increasing in coastal waters worldwide, "says study co-author, Dr Amelia Wenger.""Fish gills are in direct contact with their environment
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.
#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.
mineral-rich water released at mid-ocean vents that then precipitated to the ocean floor. Now Johnson and Li
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.
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.
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.
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.
#California's Drought Is Part of a Much Bigger Water Crisis Why do I keep hearing about the California drought,
"Pretty much every state west of the Rockies has been facing a water shortage of one kind or another in recent years.
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.
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."
When officials divvied up rights to Colorado river water nearly a century ago, it happened to be a wetter period than usual.
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.
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 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.
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,
which entitle it to keep drawing water even as Lake Mead runs dry and the rest of the Colorado river states suffer through shortages.
But should Colorado river shortages worsen to the point that the states ever re-negotiate that division of water
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,
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.
or injecting water or other liquids into the plasma sheath to make it more permeable to radio signals,
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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