All posts tagged: water

Kristen Stewart’s ‘The Chronology of Water’ Stays Too Close to the Surface

Kristen Stewart’s ‘The Chronology of Water’ Stays Too Close to the Surface

Published by Sam

For her feature directorial debut, the actor Kristen Stewart has chosen to adapt a tough, lyrical memoir about a woman trying to out-swim a traumatic childhood and addiction. In The Chronology of Water, the writer Lidia Yuknavitch details the sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of her father and its long aftermath, from a scuttled competitive swimming career to new purpose found, years later, in writing. It’s a difficult piece, but Stewart has shown in her acting work that she’s a fan of daunting tasks. The film, which premiered here at the Cannes Film Festival on May 16, is no timid first foray into filmmaking. Stewart dives in full-body, keeping things ever in rapid motion—flickering forward and backward in time, ratcheting up high emotion and then suddenly breaking into a moment of dreamy peace. The effort is appreciated, even if all that style—however true it is to Yuknavitch’s prose—can sometimes overwhelm the meaning behind it. Imogen Poots plays a version of Yuknavitch, from adolescence on. A promising freestyle swimmer with prospects of college recruitment, …

Does Your City Use Chlorine or Chloramine to Treat Its Water?

Does Your City Use Chlorine or Chloramine to Treat Its Water?

Published by skeptic

There’s chlorine in your drinking water, America. Or maybe there’s a different chlorine compound called chloramine. This isn’t meant to alarm you, though of course it’s alarming to many. An entire industry of faucet and countertop and shower filters has sprung up specifically to remove chlorine compounds from the water you drink and bathe in, whether for reasons of health or flavor or beauty. After all, chlorine tastes and smells bad; some people are sensitive to its aroma even in tiny amounts. It also potentially messes with your hair dye and dries out your skin. Plus, few people realllllly want to drink chlorine, if you ask them. Hence, water filters like WIRED’s best-tested shower filter, the Canopy Filtered Showerhead, designed to remove chlorine before you wash with it. Canopy Filtered Showerhead But note that the chlorine is entirely supposed to be there. The US Centers for Disease Control has hailed water chlorination as one of the greatest public health advances of the 20th century, alongside such obscure triumphs as “penicillin” and “the polio vaccine.” Extremely …

Micro-sparks between water droplets may have started life on Earth

Micro-sparks between water droplets may have started life on Earth

Published by skeptic

amino acids: Simple molecules that occur naturally in plant and animal tissues and that are the basic building blocks of proteins. ammonia: A colorless gas with a nasty smell. Ammonia is a compound made from the elements nitrogen and hydrogen. It is used to make food and applied to farm fields as a fertilizer. Secreted by the kidneys, ammonia gives urine its characteristic odor. The chemical also occurs in the atmosphere and throughout the universe. atmosphere: The envelope of gases surrounding Earth, another planet or a moon. bond: (in chemistry) A semi-permanent attachment between atoms — or groups of atoms — in a molecule. It’s formed by an attractive force between the participating atoms. Once bonded, the atoms will work as a unit. To separate the component atoms, energy must be supplied to the molecule as heat or some other type of radiation. carbon dioxide: (or CO2) A colorless, odorless gas produced by all animals when the oxygen they inhale reacts with the carbon-rich foods that they’ve eaten. Carbon dioxide also is released when organic …

This spa’s water is heated by bitcoin mining

This spa’s water is heated by bitcoin mining

Published by skeptic

 “I thought, ‘That’s interesting—we need heat,’” Goodman says of Bathhouse. Mining facilities typically use fans or water to cool their computers. And pools of water, of course, are a prominent feature of the spa.  It takes six miners, each roughly the size of an Xbox One console, to maintain a hot tub at 104 °F. At Bathhouse’s  Williamsburg location, miners hum away quietly inside two large tanks, tucked in a storage closet among liquor bottles and teas. To keep them cool and quiet, the units are immersed directly in non-conductive oil, which absorbs the heat they give off and is pumped through tubes beneath Bathhouse’s hot tubs and hammams.  Mining boilers, which cool the computers by pumping in cold water that comes back out at 170 °F, are now also being used at the site. A thermal battery stores excess heat for future use.  Goodman says his spas aren’t saving energy by using bitcoin miners for heat, but they’re also not using any more than they would with conventional water heating. “I’m just inserting miners into …

Water splitting uses more energy than expected, researchers say

Water splitting uses more energy than expected, researchers say

Published by skeptic

Scientists are excited about using water splitting to create clean hydrogen fuel, but the process takes more energy than it theoretically should. A team at Northwestern University has discovered why water splitting is so energy-intensive: right before releasing oxygen, water molecules “flip” surprisingly, which uses a lot of extra energy. After observing the water molecules flip, the team quantified the precise energy cost associated with that critical step. They discovered the acrobatic act is a major contributor to water splitting’s efficiency bottleneck. However, in yet another discovery, they found that increasing the pH of water lowers the energy cost and thereby contributes to making the process more efficient. “When you split water, two half-reactions occur. One half-reaction produces hydrogen, and the other produces oxygen,” explained Northwestern’s Franz Geiger, who led the study. “The half-reaction that produces oxygen is really difficult to perform because everything has to be aligned just right and ends up taking more energy than calculated.” Benefits and challenges of water splitting As the climate continues to warm, scientists have become increasingly interested …

How innovation is transforming the UK’s water system

How innovation is transforming the UK’s water system

Published by skeptic

Jo Jolly, Ofwat’s Director of Environment and Innovation, discusses how innovation and collaboration are transforming the UK’s water system to tackle critical challenges like leakage, emissions, and pollution while building a sustainable future. The water system is a complex and nationally critical network, with hundreds of thousands of kilometres of mains water and wastewater pipes across the length and breadth of the country. Every day, each person in England and Wales uses an average of 152 litres of water; 15.3 billion litres of water is treated to some of the strictest quality levels in the world, and 11 billion litres of wastewater is collected and processed in 9,000 sewage treatment works. In a water system of such scale, serving 26 million homes and businesses, it’s no surprise that there are challenges. Some are well-publicised, such as sewage overflowing into our waterways and seas. Other challenges in our water system achieve less attention, but equally require action, such as reducing the sector’s significant greenhouse gas emissions, cutting leaks, building circularity into wastewater treatment, managing runoff and …

New water treatment process removes pollutants most now don’t

New water treatment process removes pollutants most now don’t

Published by skeptic

activated charcoal: (also known as activated carbon) A form of carbon that comes as a powder or small granules. It is used to filter out things that may be harmful, smelly or impart a bad taste. The impurities sorb (attach) to the carbon. The small size of the particles increases the carbon’s surface area. So does the particles’ rough surface, which — like a sponge — has lots of pores that offer even more sites at which impurities can attach. algae: Single-celled organisms, once considered plants (they aren’t). As aquatic organisms, they grow in water. Like green plants, they depend on sunlight to make their food. algal bloom: The rapid and largely uncontrolled growth of any of various aquatic species in waterways that received a sudden influx of nutrients. They’re generally referred to as algal blooms. Despite the name, however, not all algal blooms actually involve algae. Some are caused by bacteria, others by protists known as dinoflagellates. atom: The basic unit of a chemical element. Atoms are made up of a dense nucleus that …

Water can turn into a superacid that makes diamonds

Water can turn into a superacid that makes diamonds

Published by skeptic

Superacids can turn carbon molecules into diamonds Sefa Kart/Alamy Water may transform into a superacidic fluid under extreme heat and pressure. These conditions are found only in Earth’s interior, within icy planets like Uranus and Neptune – and possibly in controlled laboratory experiments. “Under immense pressures and temperatures, water exhibits a remarkable property – it becomes an exceptionally potent acid, also known as a ‘superacid’, which can be billions or even trillions of times stronger than sulphuric acid,” says Flavio Siro Brigiano at Sorbonne University in France. This… Source link

How bottled water companies are draining our drinking water – video | Water

How bottled water companies are draining our drinking water – video | Water

Published by Sam

As droughts become more prevalent, corporate control over our drinking water is threatening the health of water sources and the access people have to them. Josh Toussaint-Strauss explores how foreign multinational companies are extracting billions of litres of water from natural aquifers to sell back to the same communities from which it came – for huge profits Source link

The truth about fluoride in water: Essential protection or hidden danger?

The truth about fluoride in water: Essential protection or hidden danger?

Published by skeptic

Water is vital for life, but in many communities, it also carries something else: fluoride. Touted as one of the most significant public health achievements of the 20th century, fluoride has been added to drinking water for decades. While many experts support its benefits, the practice continues to stir debate. Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral found in soil, rocks, and water. Scientists in the 1930s noticed that people in areas with naturally high fluoride levels had fewer cavities. This discovery led to the first intentional fluoridation of public water in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1945. Since then, cities worldwide have followed suit. The reason is simple—fluoride helps protect teeth. “Fluoride strengthens tooth enamel by helping to remineralize weakened areas, making teeth more resistant to acid attacks from bacteria in the mouth,” says Dr. Steven Levy, a researcher at the University of Iowa. This process reduces the risk of cavities, especially in children. Supporters argue that fluoridation is an effective, low-cost way to improve dental health for entire communities. The Centers for Disease Control and …