Lack of water causes great distress among the population in large parts of Africa and Asia. Small, decentralized water treatment plants with an autonomous power supply can help solve the problem: They transform salty seawater or brackish water into pure drinking water.
After some false starts, the first commercial attempt to create a geothermal power plant using hot dry rock technology reached a crucial milestone in late January, when a production well successfully reached its target depth of 13,850 feet. Hot dry rock technology, which draws energy from deep underground areas where geothermal heat is abundant, but no water exists to carry the heat to the surface, was employed to create the well.
A New Antarctic ice core should provide clearest climate record yet. The research team has recovered a 1,900-foot ice core – the first section of what is hoped to be a 11,360-foot column of ice detailing 100,000 years of Earth’s climate history, including a precise year-by-year record of the last 40,000 years.
Vermeer Mfg. Co., manufacturer of horizontal directional drilling equipment and tooling, has purchased substantially all of the operating assets of Horizontal Rig & Equipment Inc.
The fight against water-borne disease – one of the most serious threats to child health in developing countries – will receive a major boost thanks to groundbreaking work by an international consortium led by the University of Bristol, and supported by a $13 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Researchers recently completed a study demonstrating that taking local geography into account would result in water-quality testing that not only is at least as effective as current federal testing, but also less expensive, so that resources could be used to test for a wider range of contaminants in more communities. Their conclusion: Water-quality monitoring needs to be tailor-made for each community.
In Asia, rice is a dietary staple, but one that is threatened by arsenic contamination. The arsenic-rich sediments of the Ganges and Brahmaputra river filter into ground water – water that is pumped to the surface through millions of tube wells, then used to irrigate crops. But a new study shows that improving irrigation practices can reduce the threat.
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