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.
and water, explains Bo tjan Pregelj of the Jo ef Stefan Institute, and who is the Principal investigator of the FCGEN project.
and obtaining data on the presence of water or water-rich minerals. The A6 is scheduled to launch sometime later this year Planetary Resources says it wants to pursue a est oftenphilosophy in building the A3r
#Nanowires Boost Hydrogen Production from Sunlight Tenfold Using the energy of the sun to split water into hydrogen
even when using systems called solar fuel cells solar cells immersed in the water it splitting. Now researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology in The netherlands and the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) report in the 17 july issue of Nature Communications that they have improved tenfold the hydrogen producing capacity of a solar fuel cell.
and Chrome River Technologies that are gaining traction. ee at the front lip of something big that happening,
what they call data lake or data hub. They were hearing not every company wanted to take that long
Last year was a breakthrough year for bitcoin as a sea of established retailers, including Dell,
I wrote last week about a new Volvo that uses sensors to detect black ice
which describes dditional steps to address the Russian occupation of the Crimea. he region a peninsula that juts into the Black sea has less than 2 million inhabitants
including a major San francisco bay Area hospital system. The key to understanding Analyticsmd proposition is the large-scale,
and save a drowning victim who is 75 meters from the beach. It takes a drone 22 seconds.
Next, salt water is advised not and the phone should only occasionally be chlorinated in water, and it needs to be rinsed off afterward.
And of course, before the phone is recharged, the USB port needs to be dry. The M4 Aqua will have a starting price of 299 EUR
Yet that point is distinctly farther under the water than any other major cell phone maker.
Cofounder Thomas Brady tells me that the founders of the company were previously part of both volunteer and doctoral research in ground sea and air robotics.
and Red sea Ventures. Smart Vision device, the SVONE, is based on initial research that Zhou and Albanese conducted while at BU.
Waterfall discounts where merchants give 15%off, then 30%off, then 50%off can also overstep the necessary price cut
Aclima-equipped Street view cars will crisscross the Bay Area and other cities this year as part of the next big data collection.
Aquion batteries use sodium ions from saltwater as their electrolyte. Electrical current moves through this brackish liquid from positive electrodes based on manganese oxide to negative ones based on carbon.
and building his own prosthetic limbs for rock and ice climbing. Climbing is a sport in
#Sharing Flood Mitigation Strategies with At-Risk Countries After a 1953 North sea storm surge killed nearly 2000 people in The netherlands the country s government built massive new protective seawalls along the coast.
Today faced with sinking land rising sea levels and the prospect of far worse floods the nation is sophisticated developing computer models of climate precipitation hydrology sea level
and economics to figure out how best to defend itself. An initiative dubbed Sustainable Deltas 2015 was launched last month at a conference in Rotterdam the Dutch port city that includes neighborhoods 20 feet below sea level.
It aims to share the tools developed in The netherlands and elsewhere with the rest of the world.
The land area of The netherlands includes a vast river delta formed by the Rhine and two other rivers.
Its strategies guided by sophisticated computer models include building some inland water barriers as a second line of defense;
(which drains rivers that flow through China India Bangladesh Bhutan and Nepal) the Mekong river delta in Vietnam and the Amazon river delta.
But seas are also rising and rivers are disgorging more water during intense rainstorms s
#Can Apple Pay Do to Your Wallet What itunes Did for Music? The point-of-sale terminal at the CVS drugstore in Palo alto, California, can accept payments through a quick tap from a smartphone.
So far Tibbits has demonstrated materials that respond to light water and heat. But he says it should be possible to make ones that respond to air pressure and other stimuli.#
because it can easily be generated from water using electrolysis. It also burns cleanly to produce water vapor.
The hope is that it could also be distributed using the same global network of liquid fuel transport that moves petrol around the planet.
and catalyst materials to make hydrogen and oxygen from water. This new ater splitter, as such devices are known,
Researchers have been pursuing solar-powered water splitting for decades, and while theye shown great performance in one or two parts of such a device,
The solar water splitter stores 12.3 percent of the energy in sunlight in the form of hydrogen.
nanometre scale particles mixed in water. These particles can be engineered chemically to bind together to form specific structures.
The particles they want to assemble are tiny droplets of fluorinated oil placed in water. These droplets are 50 micrometres in diameter
The team injects a number of these droplets in a row into a flow of water that passes through a microfluidic chamber.
and water needed to grow food. Researchers at Cornell University and Rothamsted Research in the United kingdom successfully transplanted genes from a type of bacteria-called cyanobacteria-into tobacco plants
OLED pixels can be destroyed by even trace amounts of water vapor and oxygen, so you have to seal the display within robust, high-quality, flexible materials.
although drone services can yet be offered commercially in the United states. Mike Schmitt, a professor in the Department of Soil, Water,
#Germany and Canada Are Building Water Splitters to Store Energy Germany which has come to rely heavily on wind
and solar power in recent years is launching more than 20 demonstration projects that involve storing energy by splitting water into hydrogen gas and oxygen.
The electrolyzer projects under construction in Germany typically consist of a few buildings each the size of a shipping container that consume excess renewable energy on sunny and windy days by turning it into an electric current that powers the water-splitting reaction.
pumping water up a hill and then letting it back down to drive a turbine. That approach is limited severely by geography
Adapting quickly to that sea change will also help businesses foster innovation and ultimately gain competitive advantage. 3. ENHANCING RESOURCE OPTIMIZATION.
While zinc is more stable, the water-based electrolytes in conventional zinc batteries cause zinc to form dendrites,
furnishing water that sufficiently clean to use in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for oil and natural gas production (see atural Gas Changes the Energy Map.
And the volume of this so-called roducedwater is rising as the industry pumps water into nearly depleted wells to enhance oil recovery.
Right now, gas producers tend to store water that comes back up during the process in man-made ponds
Ultimately they inject the dirty water deep underground for final disposal. his is far and away the largest such plant anyone has built ever.
The water is pretreated to remove oil and grease residue and solid particles. The company heats the saline water
and sprays it into a porous material with a large surface area, saturating air with water vapor. This water-saturated air is then pumped up through tiny holes in a series of shallow
water-filled trays. As bubbles pass through the water in the trays, the water vapor in the bubbles condenses
and joins the water it is passing through, creating more fresh water. This so-called ubble columnallows the company to condense water vapor without needing expensive metal heat exchangers.
The processhich the company calls carrier gas extractionecycles up to 85 percent of the heat needed to keep the system running.
The remaining waste is disposed then as sludge in landfills. The project is being done with Pioneer Natural resources, an oil company in Texas. Anurag Bajpayee,
president and CEO of Gradiant who co-developed the technology with the company CTO, Prakash Govindan, says the initial focus is on the booming petroleum
and natural gas industry in the United states and elsewhere. ater issues have been a point of a lot of controversy for the industry,
he says
#How An Intelligent Thimble Could Replace the Mouse In 3d Virtual reality Worlds The way in
which humans interact with computers has been dominated by the mouse since it was invented in the 1960s by Doug Engelbert.
#Super-Slick Material Stops Ice from Forming A super-slick new material, inspired by the treacherous mouth of the carnivorous pitcher plant, has been developed by researchers at Harvard university.
For years researchers had been trying to use superhydrophobic materialsaterials with microscopic structures that repel watero prevent icing (see urfaces that Keep the Ice Away.
causing more ice to form and adhere more strongly than it would on an untreated surface.
While the pitcher plant uses water to form a slick surface, the Harvard researchers use a variety of lubricants.
Likewise on wind turbines, where ice can cause them to stall and stop generating electricity. Ice can take whole wind farms offline
and wreak havoc on the grid in places such as Colorado, where wind power now accounts for a large fraction of the total electricity supply r
though, the tide may be turning: on Tuesday Google released draft source code of a tool, called End-to-end, that would secure a message from the moment it leaves one browser to the moment it arrives at anothereaning even e-mail providers couldn read them as they travel between two people,
when carbon dioxide is pumped along with water into certain types of underground formations, it reacts with the surrounding rock
In the new work, researchers from University college London and the University of Iceland added carbon dioxide to a stream of water being pumped underground at a large geothermal power plant in Iceland,
The carbon dioxide quickly dissolves in the water, and in that state it no longer has a tendency to rise to the surface.
the carbon dioxide-laden water reacts with basalt, a type of volcanic rock. The researchers showed that, within a year,
While basalt is common, especially on the ocean floor, basalt that is porous enough to accommodate the large volumes of water
and carbon dioxide might be hard to come by. If the approach were to be used at a large scale,
Another robot dips its arms into a water trough to put droplets on the ends of its arms,
I no longer slip on ice and I can tell whether I walk on gravel, concrete, grass or sand.
I no longer slip on ice and I can tell whether I walk on gravel, concrete, grass or sand.
when copper ions generate free radicals from water and oxygen, and sometimes from certain sulfur-containing amino acids.
Many ancient societies used utensils made of copper or its alloys for food and water.
"It was like looking for a needle at the bottom of a lake, "she said.
Graphene's Potential Drinking water Graphene could be used to desalinate seawater to make it drinkable-tiny pores in its crystal lattice could let water molecules through while blocking salt.
Rust-free cars Graphene repels water and is highly conductive. This combination delays the oxidising reaction that causes rust.
Graphene's Potential Drinking water Graphene could be used to desalinate seawater to make it drinkable-tiny pores in its crystal lattice could let water molecules through while blocking salt.
Rust-free cars Graphene repels water and is highly conductive. This combination delays the oxidising reaction that causes rust t
The electrolyser uses nine litres of water plus the solar energy collected, coupled with the batteries inside the housing, to produce the gas needed to inflate Zephyr in half a day.
The electrolyser uses nine litres of water plus the solar energy collected, coupled with the batteries inside the housing, to produce the gas needed to inflate Zephyr in half a day.
in the soil and water, becoming stronger and smarter, while posing a greater threat to public health.
when it interacts with other organisms in water. Its relationship with azospirillum brasilense, a bacteria routinely found in plants
and Tide to Bounty and Crest-is launching a grant competition in Singapore that asks those in academia to submit research proposals on 3d bio printing applications that would be of relevance to the consumer goods brand. e want to look at the possibilities of bioprinting.
#Bucktown Polymers water soluble Rinse Out 3d prinintg Resin (ROR) could replace lost wax casting Jun 1,
when exposed to light yet remains water soluble after curing: Rinse Out Resin (ROR. The company-which is based in Chicago,
the support material is able to be dissolved quickly using only a warm water rinse. Among other benefits of the ROR (Rinse Out Resin) include its ability to drastically reduce the amount time required to produce as an investment casting material.
whereas the ROR is capable of being rinsed with water in a matter of minutes. Additionally, the material allows for higher pattern resolution, intricacy and better finishes than other similar materials.
Since the water rinse is ultimately replacing the burnout process, it is also eliminating the problem of unintended patterns that can be created from other materials due to polymer expansions or leftover ash and residue.
With this in mind, the water soluble materials can be formulated for compatibility with many existing desktop 3d printers
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