• Engineering students win wastewater treatment competition

    In a surprise win, Humboldt State University (HSU) students recently bested engineering students at top ranked California universities to gain first place at the annual American Society of Civil Engineers Mid-Pacific Water Treatment Competition; this year teams were asked to build a system that would treat contaminated water that was heading toward a sensitive wetland ecosystem after an earthen levy around a biosolids compost facility had been breached; the teams were challenged to either design a containment system for the water or a treatment system; the HSU team won the competition beating U.C. Berkeley by more than thirty points

  • Turkey plans two earthquake resistant cities to move residents from vulnerable Istanbul

    To encourage residents to move away from seismically unsafe neighborhoods, Turkey’s government recently announced that it will begin building two earthquake-resistant developments near Istanbul; the city of more than twelve million people currently sits near a major fault-line that could potentially kill thousands in the event of a major earthquake; engineers and seismic experts warn that Istanbul’s poor construction, shoddy city planning, and overcrowding would result in many fatalities in the event of an earthquake; officials plan for the new urban centers to be home to roughly 1 million residents each; any move to the new settlements would be entirely voluntary

  • Direct removal of carbon dioxide from air infeasible

    A group of experts looked at technologies known as Direct Air Capture, or DAC, which would involve using chemicals to absorb carbon dioxide from the open air, concentrating the carbon dioxide, and then storing it safely underground; they conclude that these technologies are unlikely to offer an economically feasible way to slow human-driven climate change for several decades

  • New technology quickly detects bioattacks on water supply systems

    If pathogens enter into a city water supply network, many people may fall ill quickly; to protect against this biological threat, researchers have developed a detection system, partly based on nanotechnology, that can warn authorities in time

  • Difficult decisions for Japanese living near Fukushima

    Japanese residents living just outside the twelve mile evacuation zone of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant have struggled with their daily lives as the plant has continued to spew radiation; while Japanese officials have said that the radiation levels outside the evacuation zone are not high enough to cause observable health risks, many residents and scientists are still worried as radiation is still several times above the normal level; experts acknowledge their limited understanding of the health risks for long term exposure to low doses of radiation has made it difficult for scientists and policy makers to come to an agreement on what levels of radiation are safe and what areas need to be evacuated

  • Japan attempts "cold shutdown" at reactor no. 1

    Officials at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) hope to bring reactor no. 1 at the beleaguered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to a “cold shutdown” by the end of the week; plant operators will attempt to bring the temperature inside the reactor below the boiling point of water so that it will no longer produce radioactive steam; the building housing reactor no. 1 must be vented so that all the radioactive air that has accumulated is released allowing workers to approach the reactor; once inside workers will inject cold water into the reactor’s primary containment structure; injecting tons of water into a damaged containment unit that houses uranium makes some scientists uneasy

  • Men arrested outside U.K. largest nuclear plant, then released

    Five young men of Bangladeshi origin were arrested outside Sellafield, the U.K.’s largest nuclear facility hours after President Obama announced the killing of OBL; the men were arrested for taking pictures and behaving suspiciously (the Civil Nuclear Constabulary said that the men were “unable to give a satisfactory account of their actions”); after being questioned the men were released as it appears that they had taken a wrong turn; the men told police they were traveling along the road only because their in-car satellite navigation system had taken them the wrong way on the remote road just off the coast of Cumbria, close to the Lake District; Sellafield is one of only four nuclear fuel reprocessing plants in the world

  • Recipe for radioactive materials helps in studies of nuclear waste and fuel storage pools

    Easy-to-follow recipes for radioactive compounds like those found in nuclear fuel storage pools, liquid waste containment areas, and other contaminated aqueous environments have been developed by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories; the trick to the recipes is choosing the right templates; these are atoms or molecules that direct the growth of compounds in much the way islands act as templates for coral reefs

  • Portable technology provides drinking water, power to villages, military

    Researchers have developed an aluminum alloy that could be used in a new type of mobile technology to convert non-potable water into drinking water while also extracting hydrogen to generate electricity; such a technology might be used to provide power and drinking water to villages and also for military operations

  • Missouri levee blast floods 130,000 acres, but saves Illinois city

    On Tuesday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blasted a section of a levee along the Mississippi River to create a controlled breach that would relieve pressure and prevent the town of Cairo, Illinois from becoming engulfed in record flood levels; the blast created a gap more than 10,000 feet wide at Birds Point, Missouri levees and inundated more than 130,000 acres of farmland; heavy rains have left the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers swollen, putting Cairo and its 3,000 residents at great risk as it sits on a narrow stretch of land between the two surging rivers; on Monday, the Corps received permission from the federal government to go ahead with its plan, despite Missouri’s protests

  • What past rises of sea levels tell us about future rises

    During a period of high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels three million years ago — the mid-Pliocene climate optimum — sea levels were anywhere between 15 and 100 feet higher than at present because water that is now locked up in glaciers as ice circulated freely through the oceans; by understanding the extent of sea level rise three million years ago, scientists hope more accurately to predict just how high the seas will rise in the coming decades and centuries due to global warming

  • U.S. infrastructure lagging far behind Europe

    America’s transportation infrastructure is quickly falling behind the rest of the world as roads continue to fall into disrepair, railroad lines age, and airports become more congested resulting in longer commute times, more delays, and increasing transportation-related fatalities; the United States now ranks twenty-third overall for infrastructure quality between Spain and Chile; government expenditures on infrastructure have fallen to just 2.4 percent of GDP; in contrast Europe invests 5 percent of its GDP on infrastructure and China 9 percent; U.S. infrastructure investment has fallen behind largely as a result of the highway trust fund’s declining revenues, which are generated from gas and vehicle taxes

  • California roads to generate renewable energy

    California lawmakers recently passed a bill for a pilot program that would turn road vibrations into energy; the bill proposes using a process called piezoelectric generation that captures energy from cars, trains, or people as they move across surfaces and create vibrations; these vibrations are then harnessed and converted into energy by piezoelectric materials that would be buried beneath the road’s surface; a .6 single lane road can prove as much as forty-four megawatts of energy each year, which is enough to light up more than 30,000 homes

  • Solving nuclear fuel storage problem more crucial than ever: MIT report

    The Japan nuclear crisis adds to the urgency of dealing with radioactive used fuel, and may raise cost of new plants, MIT Energy Initiative study says; the report recommends that an interim solution be developed to remove spent fuel storage facilities at reactor sites, and move to regional, medium-term repositories where the fuel can be monitored and protected as it decays over time