Nature of Water News

January 25, 2025

Top Headlines

Salt Deposit Ring Inside Your Pasta Pan?

Jan. 21, 2025 — If you've ever tossed a generous pinch of salt into your pasta pan's water for flavor or as an attempt to make it boil faster, you've likely ended up with a whitish ring of deposits inside the pan. A group of scientists, inspired by this observation ...

We Can Make Fertilizer More Efficiently Under the Surface of the Earth

Jan. 21, 2025 — Instead of relying on energy-hungry reactors to generate high temperatures and pressure, researchers are looking underground at Earth's natural heat and forces to cook up ammonia for fertilizer. In a proof-of-concept study, researchers generated ...

New Research Helps Eliminate Dead Zones in Desalination Technology and Beyond

Jan. 15, 2025 — Engineers have found a way to eliminate the fluid flow 'dead zones' that plague the types of electrodes used for battery-based seawater desalination. The new technique uses a physics-based tapered ...

Engineers Develop Breakthrough Method for Aluminum Surfaces, Enabling Advancements in Cooling, Self-Cleaning and Anti-Icing Technologies

Jan. 15, 2025 — An international team of engineers has developed an innovative, scalable method for creating topography-patterned aluminum surfaces, enhancing liquid transport properties critical for applications in ...

Latest Headlines

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Sensor Tech and Water Filtration: Graphene Made Permeable for Ions

Jan. 15, 2025 — A milestone in graphene research: Chemists have succeeded in controlling the passage of halide ions by deliberately introducing defects into a two-layer nanographene system. Their paper shows new ...

Self-Stimulated Ejection of Freezing Droplets, Unlocking Cost-Effective Applications in De-Icing

Jan. 14, 2025 — Water droplets under freezing conditions do not spontaneously detach from surfaces as they do at room temperature due to stronger droplet-surface ...

New Insights Into Acoustic Bubbles Give Boost to Future Applications

Jan. 10, 2025 — A research team found a key indicator for the chemical activity of acoustic microbubbles and a correlation between the temperature of a liquid and that of the microbubbles ...

Researchers Use Lab Data to Rewrite Equation for Deformation, Flow of Watery Glacier Ice

Jan. 9, 2025 — Laboratory experiments designed to deform ice at its pressure-melting temperature were like grabbing a bagel at the top and the bottom, then twisting ...

Moving in Sync, Slowly, in Glassy Liquids

Jan. 8, 2025 — Researchers used computer simulations to determine the mechanisms that control the temperature dependence of molecular dynamics in a glassy supercooled liquid. This work may lead to higher-quality ...

Water Treatment: Catching Steroid Hormones With Nanotubes

Jan. 2, 2025 — Steroid hormones are among the most widespread aquatic micropollutants. They are harmful to human health, and they cause ecological imbalances in aquatic environments. Researchers investigated how ...

Unlocking the Journey of Gold Through Magmatic Fluids

Dec. 16, 2024 — When one tectonic plate sinks beneath another, it generates magmas rich in volatiles such as water, sulphur and chlorine. As these magmas ascend, they release magmatic fluids, in which sulphur and ...

Minuscule Robots for Targeted Drug Delivery

Dec. 11, 2024 — An interdisciplinary team has created tiny bubble-like microrobots that can deliver therapeutics right where they are needed and then be absorbed by the ...

Largest Study of CTE in Male Ice Hockey Players Finds Odds Increased 34% With Each Year Played

Dec. 4, 2024 — A large study, of 77 deceased male ice hockey players, has found that the odds of having chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) increased by 34% each ...

Manta Rays Inspire Fast Swimming Soft Robot Yet

Dec. 4, 2024 — A team of researchers has beaten its own record for the fastest swimming soft robot, drawing inspiration from manta rays to improve their ability to control the robot's movement in the ...

Chemical Structure's Carbon Capture Ability Doubled

Dec. 3, 2024 — Scientists have found a way to more than double the uptake ability of a chemical structure that can be used for scrubbing carbon dioxide from factory ...

Dynamics of Structural Transformation for Liquid Crystalline Blue Phases

Dec. 3, 2024 — Researchers explore the transformation dynamics of cubic liquid crystals using direct simulation and machine learning, offering new possibilities for advanced materials ...

Clay Minerals: Researchers Observe for the First Time How Sediment Particles Align During Deposition

Dec. 2, 2024 — Clay minerals are a major constituent of the earth's surface and are mainly found in the sediments of lakes, rivers and oceans. The properties of clay and claystone crucially depend on how the ...

Making a Difference: Efficient Water Harvesting from Air Possible

Nov. 27, 2024 — A research team has found a way to make more efficient the desorption of water-adsorption polymers used in atmospheric water harvesting and desiccant air ...

To Design Better Water Filters, Engineers Look to Manta Rays

Nov. 25, 2024 — Studying the filter-feeding mechanism of mobula rays, engineers developed a new design for industrial cross-flow water filters. Research shows the filter-feeders strike a natural balance between ...

Engineered Additive Makes Low-Cost Renewable Energy Storage a Possibility

Nov. 22, 2024 — As part of an effort to overcome the long-term energy-storage challenge, engineers have invented a water-soluble chemical additive that improves the performance of a type of electrochemical storage ...

Thermochemical Tech Shows Promising Path for Building Heat

Nov. 19, 2024 — Energy stored in thermochemical materials can effectively heat indoor spaces, particularly in humid regions, according to ...

Researchers Develop Crystals to Harvest Water from Air, Inspired by Desert Life

Nov. 19, 2024 — Researchers have developed a new crystalline material that can harvest water from fog without any energy input. The design of the novel type of smart crystals, which the researchers named Janus ...

Study Tracks PFAS, Microplastics Through Landfills and Wastewater Treatment Plants

Nov. 19, 2024 — Scientists find that most of the microplastics and the 'forever chemicals' known as PFAS cycle through landfills and wastewater treatment plants and end up back in the ...

Modeling and Analysis Reveals Technological, Environmental Challenges to Increasing Water Recovery from Desalination

Nov. 18, 2024 — Using zero liquid discharge to increase water recovery from desalination is an emerging method to combat water scarcity, but is expensive, energy-intensive and comes with environmental risks. ...

Deciphering the Anomalous Properties of Water

Nov. 14, 2024 — Water, a molecule essential for life, has unusual properties -- known as anomalies -- that define its behavior. However, there are still many enigmas about the molecular mechanisms that would explain ...

Plugged Wells and Reduced Injection Lower Induced Earthquake Rates in Oklahoma, Study Finds

Nov. 13, 2024 — Wastewater injection resulting from oil and gas production in Oklahoma caused a dramatic rise in seismic activity in the state between 2009 and 2015. But regulatory efforts to backfill some injection ...

Anti-Fatberg Invention Could Help Unclog City Sewers

Nov. 13, 2024 — Engineers have invented a protective coating for concrete pipes that could help drastically reduce the formation of fatbergs in ...

Microplastics Impact Cloud Formation, Likely Affecting Weather and Climate

Nov. 7, 2024 — Scientists have spotted microplastics, tiny pieces of plastic smaller than 5 millimeters, in some of the most pristine environments on Earth, from the depths of the Mariana Trench to the snow on Mt. ...

New PFAS Testing Method Created

Nov. 6, 2024 — Researchers have discovered a new way to detect per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water. This marks an important step forward in creating testing devices that are simpler, more ...

Development of a Simple, Revolutionary Printing Technique for Periodic Nano/microstructures

Oct. 31, 2024 — A team of researchers has developed a printing technique capable of forming a periodic nano/microstructure on the surface of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) slab and easily transferring it onto the ...

Farewell Frost! New Surface Prevents Frost Without Heat

Oct. 30, 2024 — In a new study, researchers discovered that tweaking the texture of any surface and adding a thin layer of graphene oxide prevents 100% of frost from forming on surfaces for one week or potentially ...

Researchers Unlock a 'New Synthetic Frontier' for Quantum Dots

Oct. 25, 2024 — A new technique for growing quantum dots has not only found a new, more efficient way to build a useful type of quantum dot, but also opened up a whole group of novel chemical materials for future ...

A New Spectroscopy Reveals Water's Quantum Secrets

Oct. 25, 2024 — Researchers have exclusively observed molecules participating in hydrogen bonds in liquid water, measuring electronic and nuclear quantum effects that were previously accessible only via theoretical ...

Watershed Moment: Engineers Invent High-Yield Atmospheric Water Capture Device for Arid Regions

Oct. 25, 2024 — As a megadrought stresses the water supply throughout the Southwest, revolutionary research is answering this problem with a groundbreaking technology that pulls large amounts of water from the air ...