The water flea has genetically adapted to climate change. Biologists from KU Leuven, Belgium, compared ‘resurrected’ water fleas — hatched from 40-year-old eggs — with more recent specimens. The project was coordinated by Professor Luc De Meester from the Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, Evolution and Conservation.

The water flea Daphnia genetically adapts to climate change.

The water flea has genetically adapted to climate change. Biologists from KU Leuven, Belgium, compared ‘resurrected’ water fleas — hatched from forty-year-old eggs — with more recent specimens. The project was coordinated by Professor Luc De Meester from the Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, Evolution and Conservation. Read more

884 million people around the world are without access to safe drinking water. And 2.6 billion are without adequate sanitation.

That’s why CDM Smith and our employees support Water For People, an international humanitarian organization of dedicated people who recognize water as a primary building block of life. Since 1991, Water For People has helped educate, guide, and connect people with the necessary human and financial resources to establish sustainable water systems. Read more

Population growth could cause global demand for water to outpace supply by mid-century if current levels of consumption continue. But it wouldn’t be the first time this has happened, a Duke University study finds.

Crop irrigation

Using a delayed-feedback mathematical model that analyzes historic data to help project future trends, the researchers identified a regularly recurring pattern of global water use in recent centuries. Periods of increased demand for water — often coinciding with population growth or other major demographic and social changes — were followed by periods of rapid innovation of new water technologies that helped end or ease any shortages. Read more

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shown that deep sea fault zones could transport much larger amounts of water from Earth’s oceans to the upper mantle than previously thought.

Parinacota, a volcano on the border of Chile and Bolivia.

Water is carried mantle by deep sea fault zones which penetrate the oceanic plate as it bends into the subduction zone. Subduction, where an oceanic tectonic plate is forced beneath another plate, causes large earthquakes such as the recent Tohoku earthquake, as well as many earthquakes that occur hundreds of kilometers below Earth’s surface. Read more

Water is the key component in a Rice University process to reliably create patterns of metallic and semiconducting wires less than 10 nanometers wide.

These nanowires were created at Rice University through a process called meniscus-mask lithography. From left, they’re made of silicon, silicon dioxide, gold, chromium, tungsten, titanium, titanium dioxide and aluminum. The scale bar is 1 micron for all images.

The technique by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour builds upon its discovery that the meniscus — the curvy surface of water at its edge — can be an effective mask to make nanowires.

The Rice team of Tour and graduate students Vera Abramova and Alexander Slesarev have now made nanowires between 6 and 16 nanometers wide from silicon, silicon dioxide, gold, chromium, tungsten, titanium, titanium dioxide and aluminum. They have also made crossbar structures of conducting nanowires from one or more of the materials. Read more