Solar disinfection method not effective technique to clean water

October 6th, 2009 Airlines ordered to test, disinfect onboard waterWASHINGTON — Federal regulators are issuing final rules requiring airlines to test and disinfect the water served to passengers and used in plane lavatories. The Environmental Protection Agency rules set out how frequently airlines must flush and disinfect the water systems on planes and test for coliform bacteria, which are associated with disease-causing germs.

September 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Observations by the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Venus Express mission have provided strong new evidence that the solar wind has stripped away significant quantities of water from Venus, which means the planet was more humid and Earth-like in the distant past. The SPICAV and VIRTIS instruments carried by the spacecraft have been used to measure concentrations of water vapor in the Venusian atmosphere at altitudes ranging from the lowest 10 km up to 110 km, high above the cloud tops.

August 31st, 2009 LONDON - A five-strong group of scientists have developed a new technique that can monitor movements beneath the earth's surface to help understand how earthquakes behave. The scientists, led by Andrew Curtis, Professor of Mathematical Geoscience at Edinburgh University, used computers to simulate the motion of one earthquake at the location of another to discover more in-depth information about underground movements.

August 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Reports indicate that the slums of Cairo, Egypt's largest city, have got an energy makeover, with solar panels sprouting on apartment rooftops, providing residents with clean power and water and a chance to directly improve their lives. According to a report in National Geographic News, since 2003, the nonprofit Solar CITIES project has installed 34 solar-powered hot water systems and 5 biogas reactors in Cairo's poor Coptic Christian and Islamic neighborhoods.

August 12th, 2009 LONDON - Researchers at Imperial College London are trying to imitate the process of photosynthesis by making an 'artificial leaf' to produce clean power. Photosynthesis, the process where plants use sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugar, is the most effective solar energy conversion process on Earth.

August 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have developed a laser technique that, in combination with standard techniques, would help to find supernovas. To find a supernova, the new technique would have to search for one single atom of a certain isotope of hafnium on Earth, which would prove that a supernova once exploded near our solar system.

July 13th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has developed 'Bullet fingerprinting' technology, which is a simple but effective method to visualize fingerprints even after the print itself has been removed. The technology has been developed by Dr John Bond, from Northamptonshire Police Scientific Support Unit and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leicester's Forensic Research Centre, in collaboration with University scientists.

June 15th, 2009 LONDON - A new technique for detecting signs of life on distant planets by analyzing reflected light could soon lead astronomers to extra-terrestrial life. According to a report in the Telegraph, when scientists tested the method on Earth, they found unmistakably strong signs of life in the form of chemical "fingerprints".

June 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has determined that the secret of a successful sandcastle could aid the revival of an ancient eco-friendly building technique. The researchers, led by experts at Durham University's School of Engineering, have carried out a study into the strength of rammed earth, which is growing in popularity as a sustainable building method.

May 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A long-proposed tool for hunting planets has finally discovered a Jupiter-like planet orbiting one of the smallest stars known. The technique, called astrometry, was first attempted 50 years ago to search for planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets.

May 26th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists are relying on fire and water to date archaeological objects by unlocking their "internal clocks", with this simple yet novel method promising to be as significant for dating ceramic materials as radiocarbon has become for organic materials such as bone or wood. Researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Edinburgh, behind the new technique, called it "rehydroxylation dating" to be used on fired clay ceramics like bricks, tile and pottery.

May 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has developed a new way of dating archaeological objects, by using fire and water to unlock their 'internal clocks'. The scientists, from the University of Manchester and the University of Edinburgh, call this technique as 'rehydroxylation dating', which can be used to date fired clay ceramics like bricks, tile and pottery.

April 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - Chemical disinfectants used to make water safe to drink react with organic material in it, and yield toxic consequences, say researchers. Michael Plewa, a geneticist at the University of Illinois, points out that disinfection by-products (DBPs) in water are the unintended consequence of water purification.

March 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Indian scientists have developed a solar water heating system that will effectively pay for itself five times over, with an estimated working life of about twenty years. The solar hot water system used in the study is installed at the Jijau hostel, part of the Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University campus, in Akola, Maharashtra state, India.

March 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers at the University of Basel have designed a new technique that could assist individual decision-making. Numerous studies have shown that a crowd of people usually gives more accurate responses to questions compared to a mere individual.