AI's excessive water consumption threatens to drown out its environmental contributions
Water is needed for development, production and consumption, yet we are overusing and polluting an unsubstitutable resource and system.
Mar 22, 2024
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Water is needed for development, production and consumption, yet we are overusing and polluting an unsubstitutable resource and system.
Mar 22, 2024
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Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCVs) are typically powered by polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), which convert the chemical energy of hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and produce water in the cathode.
Mar 19, 2024
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In a corner of Kelsey Hatzell's lab sits a small jar filled with a material that has an ability far beyond what its nondescript appearance would suggest: a way to capture and release carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by ...
Mar 15, 2024
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Inspired by the classic drinking bird toy, scientists in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China have developed an engine that efficiently converts energy from water evaporation into electricity to power small electronics. The device ...
Mar 14, 2024
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University of Waterloo researchers have created a new technology that can remove harmful nanoplastics from contaminated water with 94% efficiency. The study, "Utilization of epoxy thermoset waste to produce activated carbon ...
Mar 14, 2024
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A small team of environmental scientists has found via simulations that rerouting commercial airplanes to reduce contrails would be less expensive than previously thought. In their study, published in the journal Environmental ...
Odd things can happen when a wave meets a boundary. In the ocean, tsunami waves that are hardly noticeable in deep water can become quite large at the continental shelf and shore, as the waves slow and their mass moves upward.
As any percussionist or fidgety pen-tapper can tell you, different materials make different noises when you hit them. Researchers at Drexel University hope this foundational acoustic phenomenon could be the key to the speedy ...
Mar 7, 2024
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Researchers in Sweden unveiled a new concept for producing hydrogen energy more efficiently, splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen without the dangerous risk of mixing the two gases.
Mar 6, 2024
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It has been 10 years since Malaysia Airlines passenger flight MH370 disappeared on March 8 2014. To this day it remains one of the biggest aviation mysteries globally.
Mar 5, 2024
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Water is a ubiquitous chemical substance, composed of hydrogen and oxygen, that is essential for the survival of many known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface. On Earth, it is found mostly in oceans and other large water bodies, with 1.6% of water below ground in aquifers and 0.001% in the air as vapor, clouds (formed of solid and liquid water particles suspended in air), and precipitation. Saltwater oceans hold 97% of surface water, glaciers and polar ice caps 2.4%, and other land surface water such as rivers, lakes and ponds 0.6%. A very small amount of the Earth's water is contained within biological bodies and manufactured products. Other water is trapped in ice caps, glaciers, aquifers, or in lakes, sometimes providing fresh water for life on land.
Water moves continually through a cycle of evaporation or transpiration (evapotranspiration), precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea. Winds carry water vapor over land at the same rate as runoff into the sea. Over land, evaporation and transpiration contribute to the precipitation over land.
Clean, fresh drinking water is essential to human and other lifeforms. Access to safe drinking water has improved steadily and substantially over the last decades in almost every part of the world. There is a clear correlation between access to safe water and GDP per capita. However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability. Water plays an important role in the world economy, as it functions as a solvent for a wide variety of chemical substances and facilitates industrial cooling and transportation. Approximately 70 percent of freshwater is consumed by agriculture.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA