geekosystem

When you walk or drive by a billboard, you're probably (a) delighted by what's being advertised, (b) annoyed at what's being advertised, or (c) annoyed by the eyesore the whole thing presents. What you're probably not thinking is, "I sure could use a glass of water. How about I head over there and fill up?" But in Lima, Peru, there's a billboard for that. An ad agency and the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) have installed a billboard that produces clean water.

Among other things our pedantic mothers warned us about when playing around in a swimming pool, getting pruney fingers from staying in the water too long was one of them, as though having one's fingertips resemble tiny geriatric faces was a terminal disease. It's a common experience nearly every human being on the planet has shared and yet science has never quite determined the purpose of this wrinkly phenomenon -- until now. Once thought to have been the swelling of the outer layers of skin caused from extended submersion, a research team from the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University has discovered that pruney digits are an evolutionary response of the nervous system which allows us to get a grip on wet surfaces.

Trees in cloud forests get plenty of fog to go around, but rainfall that actually saturates the ground can be rare. According to researchers from the University of California Berkeley, the trees that populate those forests have found an evolutionary workaround -- rather than depending solely on their roots to absorb water, they have developed the ability to drink in the water vapor in the clouds that surround them through their leaves.

It's no news that the surface of Mars was once home to water, but scientists may have just found more evidence that that same water could have once been teeming with living creatures -- or at least supported enough of them to prove we're not alone in the universe. Researchers from The Open University and the University of Leicester have found evidence in meteorites from Mars that the water on the Red Planet may once have been warm enough to support life.

The bad news: The water at a Pennsylvania beach on Lake Erie is full of artificial sweetener and no one really knows what that means. The good news? If you could figure out a way to combine it with the slightly caffeinated water of the Puget Sound, you would have Lake Diet Coke. If you did that, we have to assume that would win you all of the Nobel Prizes.

Researchers from the University of Tennessee have found proof for the theory that water present on the surface of the Moon is the product of solar winds. This work not only shows that other teams have been on the right track, but suggests that large, planet like bodies such as asteroids could also house water created by the same process, in which solar winds carry charged hydrogen particles millions of miles to bond with oxygen particles, producing water molecules in unexpected places.

Have you ever wondered how many molecules, exactly, it actually takes to make an ice crystal? You haven't? Yeah, us neither. That hasn't stopped researchers at Germany's Max Planck Institute from devoting significant portions of their rapidly passing mortal lives to answering that question. We can all now sleep better knowing that to make an ice crystal, you need about 275 water molecules.

I don't know how many times you've let water boil over the sides of a pot while cooking pasta, but if you're anything like me the number is somewhere in the ballpark of "a bajillion times." That travesty may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to nanoparticles which can disperse heat in boiling water, making sure your water comes to an extremely hot boil while remaining as placid as a remote mountain lake. A mountain lake filled with delicious spaghetti. Also, yes, I've totally had that dream before. It's a happy place for me.

Researchers at Aalto University have devised a way to convert tiny drops of water into encoded digital information, building a simple computer out of just water droplets and a water-repellant surface. A new study in the journal Advanced Materials demonstrates that, using a hydrophobic surface that causes water to bead up and roll off, researchers can follow the trails of individual water droplets along paths in the surface. That predictability allowed researchers to build simple computers like a memory device that tracks the droplets and encodes them as bits of information, with drops on one track representing ones and drops on the other representing zeroes. They even demonstrated machines that can use the technology to complete basic Boolean operations.

Sasha Kennedy of Essex is addicted to water, drinking 25 liters of the stuff a day, far exceeding the USDA Recommended Daily Water Intake of  2.7 liters. Her condition provokes many pressing questions, namely "Won't that dilute her blood?" and "Has she ever tried soda?"

What surprised me most was that the condition had a name: Psychogenic polydipsia. It is "an uncommon clinical disorder characterized by excessive water-drinking in the absence of a physiologic stimulus to drink" and is typically found among mental patients on phenothiazine medications. Kennedy appears to be completely sane, although she does experience the dry mouth sensation characteristic of the condition.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded a project by Manchester University researcher Sarah Haigh with the end goal of making toilet water safe to drink, as well as being able to have energy extracted from it. Don't tell your dog just yet, but Patches may have some high quality water to sneak from the bathroom when you aren't looking sometime in the future.

This fountain at the new City Creek Center mall in Salt Lake City, spouts not only water, but employs fire and music in its mesmerizing dance. The fountain was designed by the same people who designed the iconic fountain at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, but, you know, this one is a fountain and shoots fire.

Though Mercury is generally thought of as an inhospitable, flaming ball of rock due to its close distance to the Sun, its poles are permanently cast in shadow. In the past, work has shown that areas near Mercury's poles reflect radar, which is something ice does. Now, it turns out, the Messenger probe has found that the radar patches near the shadowy poles actually line up with craters that are covered in shadow, which would make a perfect home for water-ice.

The dreams of a life-sustaining Mars have mostly died away, with recent study focusing on whether or not Mars could have supported life at one point. However, a new study shows that while the surface of the red planet might be barren, the conditions under the Martian surface could support life in some form. If the work is correct, it suggests that huge areas of the planet might be more life-sustaining than originally thought.

Researchers at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University have developed a fuel cell which turns wastewater into power, generating clean water as a byproduct. As someone who regularly contributes to the wastewater problem via his toilet, I can personally attest to the importance of this technology. Led by Yanbiao Liu, the researchers sought a way to harvest the potential energy of sewage while also reducing the amount of potential pollutants. Their method uses visible light as a catalyst and a titanium dioxide nanotube-array as an electrode to harvest the energy. When running, the light breaks down the organic compounds in the water, releasing electrons which are collected by the nanotubes. In addition to organic compounds (like, you know, poop), the team looked to see if their system could separate inorganic compounds such as perfumes and medication that often end up sewage water.