A Saltless Solution to Water Purification
Scientists from UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have discovered a new reverse osmosis membrane that has the potential to reduce the cost of water purification and the ability to turn seawater into drinking water by desalination.
Reverse osmosis desalination requires extremely high pressure to push salty or contaminated water through membrane pores devised to allow water passage but block salt ions and other impurities, leaving behind highly purified water.
Environmental engineering assistant professor Eric Hoek and his research team are responsible for this new membrane design, which uses material that requires less pumping energy than similar membranes.
Because of its power to repel particles that might usually stick to the surface, the new membrane also clogs more slowly than others, resulting in a purification process that is equally as effective but more energy-efficient and potentially much cheaper than current methods. Initial predictions suggest twice the productivity with a 25-percent reduction in cost.
Hoek hopes to confront the key challenges that limit the use of reverse osmosis membrane technology today by increasing its robustness and efficiency. He anticipates commercial availability of the new membrane within a year or two.
Brain Region Dictates Memories’ Total Domain
The amount of detail included in a memory depends on whether a certain brain region is activated to package it together, UC Irvine researchers found.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the scientists were able to examine subjects’ brains experiencing a highly detailed event. Participants who later remembered all detailed elements of the experience used a specific brain area that attached the various components together as a package. When this domain wasn’t activated, only sparse aspects of the event were later recalled.
The experiment had several trials testing a person’s ability to remember the color, location and name of objects.
They concluded that the brains of subjects who could remember all components of an object were aroused in a critical region in the parietal cortex. They believe this region to be responsible for binding memory features together so that individuals remember contextual attributes as well as more basic aspects of the event.
