Biologists and bioengineers at UC San Diego have created a living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs; because bacteria are sensitive to many kinds of environmental pollutants and organisms, the scientists believe this approach could be used to design low cost bacterial biosensors capable of detecting an array of heavy metal pollutants and disease-causing organisms

Engineers at Brown University have developed a system that cleanly and efficiently removes trace heavy metals from water; in experiments, the researchers showed the system reduced cadmium, copper, and nickel concentrations, returning contaminated water to near or below federally acceptable standards; the technique is scalable and has viable commercial applications, especially in the environmental remediation and metal recovery fields

Researchers are working to develop a portable wastewater treatment system that could improve the military’s efficiency; the solar-bio-nano project also will generate energy and produce drinking water, thus providing a potential blueprint for the future of municipal/agricultural wastewater treatment systems

Scientists show that ionized plasmas like those in neon lights and plasma TVs not only can sterilize water, but make it antimicrobial; these plasma devices could be life-savers in developing countries, disaster areas, or on the battlefield where sterile water for medical use is in short supply and expensive to produce

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Well diggers in Bangladesh will soon be able to take advantage of a cell phone-based data system, developed at the Earth Institute, to target safe groundwater aquifers for installing new wells that are not tainted with arsenic

More than 800 million people around the world lack access to clean water; the water available for people to drink in many developing countries has not been treated to remove contaminants, including pathogenic microorganisms; half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by people who are sickened by the water they drink; Purdue University researchers have invented a water-disinfection system that uses the sun’s ultraviolet radiation to inactivate waterborne pathogens

Scientists at Kansas State University and seven other collaborating institutions were recently awarded $3.3 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to conduct a-large scale study of how stream organisms influence water quality across North America

South Florida’s water supply is becoming increasingly endangered by saltwater that is steadily seeping in from the ocean and contaminating supplies; despite the best efforts of local communities to stop the problem, saltwater intrusion is spreading