ON DECEMBER 22nd an odd couple—Nicaragua’s left-wing government and a Chinese-born telecoms magnate—say they will begin the realisation of a dream that has captivated Nicaraguans for generations: the construction of an inter-oceanic canal to rival Panama’s. According to Manuel Coronel, an octogenarian who runs the canal authority, their intentions are now beyond dispute. “When the bride and groom set a date, you know it’s serious,” he says.
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Chinese construction is due to start—but of what?
This Tower Pulls Drinking Water Out of Thin Air
In some parts of Ethiopia, finding potable water is a six-hour journey.
People in the region spend 40 billion hours a year trying to find and collect water, says a group called the Water Project. And even when they find it, the water is often not safe, collected from ponds or lakes teeming with infectious bacteria, contaminated with animal waste or other harmful substances.
The water scarcity issue—which affects nearly 1 billion people in Africa alone—has drawn the attention of big-name philanthropists like actor and Water.org co-founder Matt Damon and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who, through their respective nonprofits, have poured millions of dollars into research and solutions, coming up with things like a system that converts toilet water to drinking water and a “Re-invent the Toilet Challenge,” among others. Read more
Scientist discusses three-year mission to study how soil, water, and carbon interact
Dara Entekhabi, an MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering and of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, is the science team leader of NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite, scheduled to be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Jan. 29.
The satellite will provide measurements of the moisture in the top 2 inches of the soil, everywhere on Earth, over the course of its planned three-year mission, as well as specifying whether that water is liquid or frozen. Entekhabi discussed what he hopes this mission will be able to accomplish.
Q. How much of an improvement will SMAP represent over current ways of assessing soil moisture around the world? Why is it important to be able to do so?
A. Why we need soil moisture information, and what capability SMAP adds, can be explained by following a timeline of what we know about how the Earth system works, starting in the 1980s and 1990s. Read more
Global Water Shortages Grow Worse but Nations Have Few Answers
As we have been hearing, global water shortages are poised to exacerbate regional conflict and hobble economic growth. Yet the problem is growing worse, and is threatening to deal devastating blows to health, according to top water officials from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) who spoke before a House panel hearing today.
Hydrogen bonds: why life needs water
Water is everywhere on our planet. In the air, in our bodies, in our food and in our breath. Without it life as we know it would not be possible. Water is vital for the survival of all living things, yet as a molecule it has some pretty odd behaviour. Water molecules stick to each other, forming the ‘skin’ on ponds and droplets. The solid form floats on the liquid form. At room temperature water is a liquid, when most of the molecules closely related to it are gasses.
Why does water have so many strange and wonderful properties? What is it about this rather tiny and innocuous molecule that makes it so important for life?
To answer that you have to look at the actual structure of the molecule, exploring a world far, far smaller than microbiology usually goes. The properties of water are determined by the forces that hold it together.
The above diagram shows a water molecule, H2O. Two atoms of hydrogen attached to one molecule of oxgyen sharing electrons between them to form bonds. But the red lines that I’ve used to show the bonds hide a far more complicated story. This may be a bond, but it is not a very equal one because while oxgyen is a nice reasonably sized molecule, with eight electrons surrounding each atom, hydrogen is tiny. It only has one electron! Read more