This Water Filter Could Make Seawater Drinkable.
Technology may now be on the side of the questionably intelligent kid who always asked "why don’t we just drink seawater?"
in science class.
According to a report published by the journal Nature Nanotechnology, UK-based researchers have created a sieve that is capable of removing sea salt from seawater.
The "membrane," in this instance, was able to inhibit common salt.
"Realization of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology," Rahul Nair, professor of material physics at the University of Manchester, revealed in a statement.
"In terms of scalability and the cost of the material, graphene oxide has a potential advantage over single-layered graphene," said Dr. Nair.
This could seriously impact survival as we know it, which means research like this is imperative for additional drinking alternatives.
Video: Extraction Lab Serves America’s Most Expensive Cup of Coffee "This is the first clear-cut experiment in this regime.
That’s news we can certainly raise our water glasses to.

Water saving Garden in a Box keeps vegetable gardens going.
Food Lover’s Market has partnered with Reel Gardening on a product range that still allows for gardening while saving 80% of water during the germinations phase – this in a time when South Africa is facing increasing water scarcity.
The Reel Gardening “Garden in a Box” is an organically fertilised, biodegradable and colour-coded paper strip that makes gardening easy for everyone.
The paper strip contains organic fertiliser and seeds ranging from seasonal vegetables to herbs.
The strip indicates the correct depth and distance to plant the seeds, keeps the seeds hydrated and prevents birds from eating it.
The Garden in a Box was designed to make gardening fun and easy and offers a free downloadable planting app that gives guidance on what to do each day, depending on what was planted.
The box contains a sim card, that if used in conjunction with the app, will automatically load free data to the value of R80 over each 90-day growing period.
Each box will contain five different vegetables or herbs that include companion flowers to plant.
The content of the boxes will plant out two square meters and produce roughly 40 servings of vegetables or herbs.
Reel Gardening’s Garden in a Box is exclusively available at Food Lover’s Market stores nationwide at R 79.99.

Water shortage in Pakistan.
According to the World Resources Institute, Pakistan is among the five leading countries that face extremely high water stress and low access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
Similarly, the United Nations categorizes Pakistan amongst those few (unfortunate) countries where water shortage could destabilise and jeopardize its existence in next 10 years.
The flood water ravages everything that comes in its way and goes straight into the river unutilized.
There needs to be a two-pronged approach addressing supply side as well as demand side issues.
Over 95pc of Pakistan’s water is used for agriculture.
Due to poor farming practices and almost free availability, most of the water is wasted.
The Governments’ policy of subsidizing water-intensive crops is another major factor, exacerbating the situation.
Of all the challenges Pakistan is facing, water is the most critical, it should be realized by the government.
It is high time that the government focuses on construction of other major dams.

Graphene could work wonders in water purification.
However, an innovative solution to this problem was proposed in this month’s issue of journal Nature Nanotechnology.
The authors, who belong to a group in the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester, developed graphene-oxide membranes capable of controlling pore size.
In order to avoid swelling, the sheets were stored under high humidity conditions and embedded in epoxy resin.
“This is the first clear-cut experiment in this regime.
We also demonstrate that there are realistic possibilities to scale up the described approach and mass produce graphene-based membranes with required sieve sizes.” The innovation is a low-cost, sustainable and reliable alternative to current bulky desalination systems.
When brought to fruition, it could be a game-changer in countries with poor access to drinking water.
This development could have far-reaching consequences including improving child health and empowering women who currently spend a significant part of their days gathering water.
Additionally, the United Nations forewarns that by 2025, 14% of the world will suffer from water scarcity.
Tunable graphene-oxide filters could potentially save the world from the impending water crisis.

Aramm teaser: AR Rahman releases Nayanthara starrer teaser.
Watch video.
Nayanthara has signed quite a few movies this year as the lead actor.
Her recent release Dora also has her playing the main role, and for the first time in Tamil film history, this lead female actor got a cutout of herself raised at the Albert theatre.
The film is directed by debutant Gopi Nainar and also stars Kaaka Muttai fame Vignesh and Ramesh.
In this film, Nayanthara plays the role of a district collector who makes certain reformations in the village to bring about a positive change and if possible solve the problems that revolve around water scarcity.
The teaser highlights the pain of the farmers and the many deaths caused by this problem, and also shows Nayanthara playing the role of a serious government official.
Here’s the teaser of #Aramm dedicated to our farmers.
http://t.co/W87k0eR4Qu — A.R.Rahman (@arrahman) April 5, 2017 AR Rahman released the teaser on Twitter and said, “Here’s the teaser of #Aramm dedicated to our farmers.
In fact, the farmers had lost an entire crop season to the Cauvery row.

‘Water managers lack vision to overcome water scarcity’.
ISLAMABAD: The water scarcity in Pakistan is solvable; however, institutions as well as water managers lack vision and understanding of the workable solutions.
Dr Mustafa said that commuting climate change and its impacts in future terms was not a right strategy and instead, immediate issues of the people should be addressed, including the contemporary problems people in Pakistan were facing, including the water scarcity issue.
He said that in present context, groundwater in the lower reaches of the Indus Basin was salty and hence, unusable for most of the purposes whereas water table was rising in some areas to such an extent that plants can no longer grow in the soil.
But the people in the saline groundwater zone were facing urgent problem.
He added that the small farmers were bearing most of the brunt of water scarcity.
Most of these farmers, he said, have to buy their inputs on credit, and as a result of poor harvests, were often unable to repay their debts.
This phenomenon was contributing to an urbanisation rate that is higher than anywhere else in South Asia.
He said the debate on water issues in Pakistan has become a source of mistrust between the people from different provinces and keeping in view their extreme positions, it was really hard to coverage their opinions while finding the contemporary water problems.
While the real water and security challenges were substantial, the cultural and social capital realized through water must not be underestimated, he concluded.

– Several Bhubaneswar homes lack water supply Bhubaneswar, April 4: Residents here continue to suffer from water scarcity because of the dillydallying approach of the state government.
At a question-answer session during the ongoing Assembly session, housing and urban development minister Pushpendra Singh Deo admitted that the city did not get adequate water for its daily requirements.
In his reply to a question by legislator Chiranjib Biswal, the minister admitted that only 33 of the city’s 67 wards were fully covered with piped water supply till March 2016.
"At present, 24 wards of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) have complete piped water supply, whereas the other 43 wards are partially covered," Singh Deo had said in the Assembly.
The minister, however, assured the Assembly that several projects had been taken up under Atal Mission for Urban Rejuvenation and Transformation (Amrut) and the entire city would be covered with piped water by 2021-22.
61, where only 10 per cent of the households get piped water supplied by the Public Health Engineering Organisation (Pheo).
There are very few households with piped water supply in our area.
The Pheo calculated that half of the available water went down the drain due to leakages while the rest half supplied to the households which have piped water connection and stand posts.
It has been planned that 13 of these 38 projects will be completed by the end of this year.
"We have already initiated the water supply projects under Amrut.

Graphene-based sieve turns salt water into drinking water.
To make it, researchers turned to a chemical derivative known as graphene oxide.
Graphene is an allotrope consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice.
This gives it a wide range of unique properties, such as extraordinary tensile strength and electrical conductivity.
However, manufacturing graphene-based membranes have proven difficult in the past.
In contrast, graphene oxide is much easier to produce.
“Graphene oxide can be produced by simple oxidation in the lab,” said co-author Dr. Rahul Nair, a professor at the University of Manchester, according to BBC News.
This then restricted the substance and allowed researchers to control how much salt passed through by changing the speed of water as it went through the membrane.
They hope that one day the sieve — or ones like it — could be used to help reduce that number.
While more work needs to be done before graphene-based membranes can be inexpensively produced at an industrial scale, this new device is the first time scientists have been able to control the spacing of pores in a membrane for desalination purposes.

Vijayapura administration steps up measures to tackle water scarcity.
The district administration has made several arrangements for supplying water to the residents and fodder to the cattle.
These borewells have come in handy in solving the problem of water scarcity,” an official told The Hindu .
The official said that the owners are paid Rs.
500 per day for collecting water from their borewells as per a government order.
Already, 54 villages are getting water through 174 tankers making 512 trips each day, the official said, adding that 85 more villages will join this list in April and 65 in May.
He said that the officials of the Revenue Department have identified these villages based on the availability of water and possible scarcity they could face when the summer intensifies.
“We are prepared to supply water to 396 villages till the end of summer,” he said.
With regard to fodder, he said that five fodder banks have been set up in the district where 1.59 tonnes of fodder has been stored.
Besides this, fodder kits have been distributed to farmers to cultivate fodder, he said, adding that fresh fodder would be available in May as the farmers have already sown the seeds.

KHS students haul water, get taste of third world.
Looking beyond the comforts of the developed world to the poverty of the third world, Killeen High School students lugged gallon-jugs around the Buckley Stadium track.
Admittedly a far cry from the daily travails of hauling water from remote wells and streams, the lesson still seemed to hit home.
Geography teacher Jennifer Larkin and two of her peers came up with the idea for the engaging simulation four years ago and have made the Water Walk an annual tradition in their classes.
“We’re raising awareness, trying to understand what it is like for children and families who don’t live close to sources of water,” said sophomore Littzy Paredes Brignoni.
In addition to hauling water jugs around the track, the students spent time reading facts about the global water crisis, a reality that leads to a wide range of preventable disease and hardship.
Larkin said she used 76 gallons of water a day on her own.
“We’re learning about water scarcity,” said freshman Madeleine Jones.
“Carrying water imitates children carrying water for their families.
“We’re seeing what’s happening in the world, not just in our own worlds, not just with ourselves.”