water

For the last several days, I’ve done nothing but play a steady rotation of Persona 3 Reload, Final Fantasy XIV, and Enshrouded. They’re all hefty undertakings, and to say I’ve got a bit of the brain drain is an understatement. I need something easy, something satisfying and new that doesn’t require every cylinder to fire. That’s why I tried Infinite Craft, but that’s definitely not evidenced by the time I spent in Infinite Craft. For the unfamiliar, it’s a charming word game that gives you four elemental words: Wind,…

Graphical abstract. Credit: Science of The Total Environment (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.168711 The same phosphorous that fertilizes the thriving agriculture of the Midwest is also responsible for a vast "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico near the Mississippi Delta. Efforts to reduce the amount of phosphorus that enters the Mississippi River system are underway, but research led by the University of Illinois…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Forests, which cover a third of Earth's land surface, are pivotal in carbon storage and the water cycle, though the full scope of their impact remains to be fully understood. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers from Stockholm University and international colleagues provide new insights into the complex role forests play in the climate system and water cycle.…

Amphibian vehicles that can run on land and water are rare in India. Occasionally, some inventor creates one and gains some publicity, but soon fades from public view. Here, we have a man from Kerala who created an amphibian vehicle out of a discarded Maruti Omni van. How did he do it? Let’s check the video to find out. The video has been uploaded by Fasttrack by Manorama Online on their YouTube channel. The man behind this creation is Jain Raj, a resident of Ernakulam district’s Perumbavoor region. Jain has always…

Pa’ashi in April 2023. Credit: Vivian Underhill The San Joaquin Valley of California, despite supplying a significant percentage of the country's food, is nevertheless a dry, arid place. Fresno, at the heart of the valley, receives just over 10 inches of rain a year on average, according to the National Weather Service, and sometimes as little as 3. …

Pure water is an almost perfect insulator.Yes, water found in nature conducts electricity – but that's because of the impurities therein, which dissolve into free ions that allow an electric current to flow. Pure water only becomes "metallic" – electronically conductive – at extremely high pressures, beyond our current abilities to produce in a lab.But, as researchers demonstrated for the first time back in 2021, it's not only high pressures that can induce this metallicity in pure water.By bringing pure water into…

A study on temperature variations in 12 caves worldwide indicates that climate change could endanger key freshwater reserves and the ecosystems within. The research, highlighting the correlation between surface and cave temperatures, raises concerns about the stability of these vital subterranean environments.A global study examining temperature changes in 12 caves across the world indicates that a significant portion of the Earth’s readily available freshwater supplies may be endangered by climate change.Caves allow…

Quebec has lifted the veil of secrecy around the province's biggest water users, revealing that billions of litres of water are withdrawn yearly by the mining and metal industry, along with pulp and paper manufacturing.The data dump, which includes records going back a decade, also lists golf clubs, ski hills, water bottling plants and food processors among the companies that are withdrawing tens of millions — sometimes hundreds of millions — of litres in a year.The records don't specify the quality or amount of water…

An intense white-light laser casts a brilliant rainbow, as demonstrated by a photo from the experiments conducted by L. Hong’s team at South China University of Technology. Credit: L. Hong et al., South China University of Technology.Water facilitates a broad-spectrum supercontinuum white laser spanning an impressive range of wavelengths.Researchers are achieving notable progress in creating ultra-broadband white laser sources, which span a broad range of wavelengths from ultraviolet to far infrared. These advanced lasers…

Satellite image of the Kufrah district captured on May 26, 2022, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite.The remote and arid Kufrah district in Libya lies on top of one of the largest irrigation projects in the world.The remote Kufrah district in southern Libya sits at the heart of the Sahara Desert. Filled with sand dunes and rugged plateaus, much of the district is extremely arid. But it wasn’t always so dry. Buried beneath the shifting sand dunes is a vast fossil aquifer and…