(Phys.org) — As a rising global population and increasing standard of living drive demand for freshwater, many researchers are developing new techniques to desalinate salt water. Among them is a team of scientists from The Netherlands, who have shown how to transform brackish (moderately salty) water into potable freshwater using just a pair of wires and a small voltage that can be generated by a small solar cell. The simple technique has the potential to be more energy-efficient than other techniques because of the minimal amount of mixing between the treated and untreated water.
The researchers, led by Maarten Biesheuvel from Wageningen University in Wageningen, The Netherlands, and Wetsus, Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, have published their study on water desalination with wires in a recent issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.
As the researchers explain in their study, there are two main ways to desalinate salt water. One way is to remove pure water molecules from the salt water, as done in distillation and reverse osmosis, particularly for water with a high salt concentration. The opposite approach is to remove the salt ions from the salt water to obtain freshwater, which is done in deionization and desalination techniques using, among other things, batteries and microbial cells.
Here, the scientists used the second approach, in which they removed positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chlorine ions from brackish water to produce freshwater. To do this, they designed a device consisting of two thin graphite rods or wires, which are inexpensive and highly conductive. Then they coated the outer surface of the wires with a porous carbon electrode layer so that one wire could act as a cathode and one as an anode. The wires were clamped a small distance apart in a plastic holder, with each wire squeezed against a copper strip.
To activate the electrodes, the researchers dipped seven sets of wire pairs into a container of brackish water and ran electrical wires from the copper strips to an external power source. Upon applying a small voltage difference (1-2 volts) between the two graphite wires of each wire pair, one wire became the cathode and adsorbed the positively charged sodium cations, while the other wire became the anode and adsorbed the negatively charged chlorine anions from the salty water.
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Merriam-Webster: Visual Dictionary Online “Welcome to the Visual Dictionary Online, the dictionary with a new point of view. A quick glance at the index is all it takes to connect words with images. Explore the 15 major themes to access more than 6,000 images and see words like never before.”
Confucius (551-479 BC) was a famous philosopher and teacher who lived in China nearly 2,500 years ago. His teachings were based on treating others in the same way as you treat yourself. He believed that peace and harmony are achieved by avoiding drastic action or wild thinking. He taught wisdom, love, courage, care, respect, and unselfishness.- Provided by The World Almanac 2012
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The most common tower crane used in construction today has a lifting capacity of some 12 to 20 tonnes. For quite a few construction projects in ancient history, this type of crane would be completely inadequate.
The majority of stones that make up the almost 140 discovered Egyptian pyramids have a weight of “only” 2 to 3 tonnes each, but all of these structures (built between 2750 and 1500 BC) also hold stone blocks weighing 50 tonnes, sometimes more. The temple of Amon-Ra at Karnak contains a labyrinth of 134 columns, standing 23 metres (75 feet) tall and supporting crossbeams weighing 60 to 70 tonnes each. The 18 capital blocks of Trajan’s column in Rome weigh more than 53 tonnes and they were lifted to a height of 34 metres (111 feet). The Roman Jupiter temple in Baalbek contains stone blocks weighing over 100 tonnes, raised to a height of 19 metres (62 feet). Today, to lift a weight of 50 to 100 tonnes to these heights, you need a crane like this.
Occasionally, our forefathers lifted even heavier stones. The gravestone of Theoderic the Great in Ravenna (around 520 AD) is a 275 tonne stone block that was lifted to a height of 10 metres. The temple dedicated to Pharaoh Khafre in Egypt is made up of monolithic blocks weighing up to 425 tonnes. The largest Egyptian obelisk weighed more than 500 tons and stands more than 30 metres tall, while the largest obelisk in the Kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia (4th century AD), raised up to a similar height, weighed 520 tonnes. The Colossi of Memnon, two statues of 700 tonnes each, were erected to a height of 18 metres and the walls in the Roman Baalbek temple complex (1st century BC) contain almost 30 monoliths weighing 300 to 750 tons each.
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The “Muslim Schindler”
Jewish, Muslim and Christian clergymen participate in the blessing of an ecumenical chapel at Poland’s new national stadium in Warsaw. Photo: Getty Images
Have you heard of the “Muslim Schindler” who risked his life to save Iranian Jews in Paris during the Second World War? No? Neither had I, until a few months ago.
Abdol-Hossein Sardari unexpectedly found himself in charge of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Paris during the German occupation of France. A lawyer by training, he used his negotiating skills to try to persuade the Nazis’ experts on racial purity that the 150 or so Iranian Jews living in the city in 1940 were assimilated to non-Jewish – and “Aryan” – Persians through history, culture and intermarriage. At the same time, the dapper diplomat quietly began to issue new-style Iranian passports to Jews, making it easier for them to flee France.
Even though he was stripped of his diplomatic immunity and ordered to return to Tehran after Iran signed a treaty with the Allies in 1941, he stayed on in France to help Jews, and not just Iranian Jews, escape the Holocaust. In his 2011 book In the Lion’s Shadow, Fariborz Mokhtari estimates that there were between 500 and 1,000 blank passports in Sardari’s safe. If each of them was issued to a family of two or even three, “this could have saved over 2,000”.
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the problem…the cure
Kim Jong-un Delivers Speech to Schoolchildren
In his second public speech, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un addressed his nation’s schoolchildren, approximately 20,000 of whom were transported to the capital, Pyongyang, to hear him speak Wednesday. The new leader made his first speech in April during the 100th anniversary of the birth of his grandfather, North Korean founder Kim Il-sung. It has been suggested that Kim Jong-un is crafting a persona similar to that of his grandfather. In contrast, his father, Kim Jong-il, is thought to have made only one speech during his reign, which ended with his death last December. Kim Jong-un urged the students to study hard so they can make contributions to their country.
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The most Unique House in the World
Vietnamese architect Dan Viet Nga has created a unique home like no one else in the world.
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Scandals of Classic Hollywood: That Divine Gary Cooper
Let’s talk straight: there was no cowboy handsomer than Gary Cooper. John Wayne had the sneer, and Gene Autry had the voice, but no one smoldered quite like Cooper. In his early films, he was glamour on a horse: his eyes lined, his face powdered, yet somehow right at home in the saddle — in part because unlike so many city-boys-turned-screen-cowboys, he grew up in Montana, one of the last veritable frontiers of the early 20th century. Over his 30 years in Hollywood, he would play variations on the cowboy — the cowboy goes to war, the cowboy goes to the city — but in each turn, he not only won the girl but did so righteously. Unlike other major stars, who allowed for and even reveled in the opportunity to play against type, Cooper kept things simple. He played slight variations on the same character, but their moral center remained constant: as he once told a screenwriter attempting to fine-tune his character, “just make me the hero.”
Cooper became a hero to many, even as he developed a reputation as one of the most notorious philanderers in Hollywood. He had stiff competition — Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, the list goes on — but Cooper may or may not have slept with EVERY. SINGLE. CO-STAR. No matter his age, no matter their age, he was insatiable, before and during his marriage. How to reconcile his moral righteousness onscreen with his philandering offscreen? That was the work of Fixers, gossip magazines, and the studio system at large, which ensured that Cooper was never caught, never denounced, and held up as a paragon of American values. Of course, the way he looked in pants didn’t hurt.
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Robot Right and Wrong
Driverless cars may be just around the corner, but who do we blame if they cause an accident? An article in the Economist argues that the proliferation of robots, now in heavy use by the military and increasingly by civilians, demands that we reconsider long-held concepts of agency and autonomy in order to develop a “machine ethics.” Sorting out this new landscape may well involve asking the kind of questions experimental philosophy is currently asking about everyday moral intuitions. And at the very least, ethicists and engineers will have to get used to the idea of working closely together. The article also suggests it will be necessary “to determine whether the designer, the programmer, the manufacturer or the operator is at fault” if something goes wrong. But if responsibility can ultimately be assigned to a human being, its unclear why we would need to scrap the good old fashioned moral system we already have in place. If we can’t blame the robots, why bother developing a system in which they’re accountable?
Was It Something I Said? Some might argue that making provocative claims is more or less the point of doing philosophy. So Clive Hamilton wonders, in a post at Oxford University’s Practical Ethics blog, why philosophers who advance arguments in favor of, say, infanticide, seem so surprised when the public takes offense to them. Hamilton suggests that because professional philosophers tend to encourage and operate within a climate of “hyperrationality,” they often have “tin ears” for the moral intuitions of laypeople. There are some fundamental aspects of being human, he argues, that are difficult to cast in purely logical terms, but which our moral arguments must nevertheless take account of. Otherwise, we’re at the mercy of “a kind of learned autism.”
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American Pain: The Largest U.S. Pill Mill’s Rise and Fall
Christopher George and his twin brother Jeffrey opened their first pain clinic in a strip mall on the outskirts of Fort Lauderdale in 2008. There were a couple of rooms and a handful of doctors. No appointment was necessary.
It was a good year to be in the business of servicing people in pain. The economy was tanking. The real estate market was in free fall. People were losing their homes, businesses, savings, and jobs, and looking for an escape from their discomfort. The George brothers ran an ecumenical clinic. Their doctors didn’t discriminate among the causes of human suffering—be it back pain, fibromyalgia, toothaches, cancer, depression, divorce, boredom, mental illness, unemployment, hip replacement, or withdrawal symptoms.
Just about everyone who came through their doors walked away with the same remedy: a prescription for a month-long supply of powerful opioids. More often than not, the pills were small and blue—generic, immediate-release oxycodone-hydrochloride, which everyone called “roxies.” The customers often left satisfied and frequently returned.Jeffrey helped run the nation’s largest pill mill operationPalm Beach sheriff officeJeffrey helped run the nation’s largest pill mill operation
The George twins, now 31, grew up in Florida in an entrepreneurial family. Their father, John George, owned Majestic Custom Homes, a luxury development business that fell into bankruptcy during the recession. While their father’s company crumbled, the twins’ business flourished. Each of their four clinics—American Pain, Executive Pain, Hallandale Pain, and East Coast Pain—was bigger than the last. Christopher invested in two pharmacies. They charged patients $50 a referral to visit a mobile MRI business in a parking lot behind a strip club. Jeffrey bought a monster truck, a Lamborghini, and a bunch of boats. They advertised on billboards. They gave their mom a job.
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Downed US Air Force Pilot Rescued in Bosnia (This day in 1995)
On June 2, 1995, US Air Force pilot Scott O’Grady was enforcing a NATO no-fly zone over Bosnia when his F-16 was hit by a surface-to-air missile. He ejected and, for the next six days, survived in the wilderness by eating leaves and ants. During that time, he avoided capture by Serb patrols and made contact with US forces. The Marines then mounted a daring rescue and brought him home. The 2001 film Behind Enemy Lines is loosely based on O’Grady’s ordeal. Why did he sue the filmmakers?
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Cleaning the antenna of the Empire State Building – Vincent Laforet
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Empire State Building after a B-25 crashed into it – July, 1945
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The Challenge of Studying the Big Bang So Long After it Happened
The universe is a marvelously complex place, filled with galaxies and larger-scale structures that have evolved over its 13.7-billion-year history. Those began as small perturbations of matter that grew over time, like ripples in a pond, as the universe expanded. By observing the large-scale cosmic wrinkles now, we can learn about the initial conditions of the universe. But is now really the best time to look, or would we get better information billions of years into the future – or the past?
New calculations by Harvard theorist Avi Loeb show that the ideal time to study the cosmos was more than 13 billion years ago, just about 500 million years after the Big Bang. The farther into the future you go from that time, the more information you lose about the early universe. “I’m glad to be a cosmologist at a cosmic time when we can still recover some of the clues about how the universe started,” Loeb said.
Two competing processes define the best time to observe the cosmos. In the young universe the cosmic horizon is closer to you, so you see less. As the universe ages, you can see more of it because there’s been time for light from more distant regions to travel to you. However, in the older and more evolved universe, matter has collapsed to make gravitationally bound objects. This “muddies the waters” of the cosmic pond, because you lose memory of initial conditions on small scales. The two effects counter each other – the first grows better as the second grows worse.
Loeb asked the question: When were viewing conditions optimal? He found that the best time to study cosmic perturbations was only 500 million years after the Big Bang.
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Top 10 Things That Determine Happiness
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BEIJING, June 7 (UPI) — China’s existing Great Wall, one of the country’s treasures, is 13,170 miles long, much longer than a previous survey showed, officials said.
Survey results released Tuesday by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage show the wall to be considerably longer than the 5,500-mile figure a preliminary survey in 2008 showed, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Great Wall structures span the country’s 15 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, the survey found. The survey identified stretches of the wall, defense works and passes, as well as other related Great Wall facilities and ruins, Tong Mingkang, SACH deputy chief, said. Construction of the Great Wall began in the Warring States Period, 475-221 B.C., and more of the wall was added by later dynasties in scattered but strategic areas to fend off northern nomadic tribes.
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Originally posted 2012-06-08 11:39:14. Republished by Blog Post Promoter