Water

Throughout the densely-populated country of Bangladesh, a lack of access to clean drinking water is responsible for a variety of debilitating and often-lethal infections. Soon, however, residents could filter virtually all harmful microbes out of their water, using paper derived from algae.

A new international study indicates that a simple, automatic chlorine dispenser can have a major impact on childhood diarrhea in the developing world. By applying water disinfectant that doesn't adversely affect taste, rates or diarrhea were reduced by 23 percent in a test project in Bangladesh.

One opportunity for improvement when it comes to water desalination tech lies in the materials used for filtration systems, with scientists now putting forward a wood-based alternative to the plastic-based membranes currently in use.

Earth’s poles are famously icy places, but they’re far from alone in that regard. The poles of other planets and moons are often the best places to look for ice, and now a new analysis of NASA data has found evidence of much more water ice on the Moon and Mercury than previously thought.

Hurricanes and water go hand in hand. But researchers from Purdue University and MIT have now made a surprising discovery by tweaking a hurricane simulation – the storms can occur under much colder and drier conditions than previously thought, which may be common on other planets.

The search is very much on for new water desalination technologies that can get the job done more efficiently. Scientists in Melbourne have put forward one rather promising solution, developing a new kind of system that heats up and purifies water using only the power of the Sun.​

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa 2 has successfully pulled off a second touchdown on the surface of the distant asteroid Ryugu. The risky dive saw the probe collect material that had been exposed during the creation of an artificial crater on April 5.

In many arid coastal regions, a great quantity of fresh water is lost into the atmosphere every day, as it evaporates from the ocean. This situation prompted scientists to create a new hydrogel that's highly effective at capturing moisture from the sea air, and then releasing it as fresh water.

​Looking for impurities in drinking water or other liquids typically involves chemical analysis, which may be time-consuming. Now, however, scientists have created an inexpensive system in which light – that's converted to sound – is used to instantly determine if water is safe to drink.

​Potentially fatal to both animals and humans, blue-green algae blooms occur when overly-abundant cyanobacteria in the water produce harmful substances known as cyanotoxins. The sooner those toxins are detected, the better – which is where a new smartphone-connected device comes into the picture.

​"Solar steaming" is a form of water purification in which sunlight is used to heat tainted water, turning it to steam which condenses back into liquid. That clean liquid is then collected as drinking water. A new system offers improved performance, and it copies the structure of the rose flower.

Curiosity has begun investigating one of the most interesting regions so far – the clay-bearing unit. After drilling two new samples last month, the rover has confirmed high amounts of clay minerals, providing further proof that ancient Mars was once much wetter.