Available online 1 April 2009

Treatment of domestic wastewater, at both the village and urban level, remains a problem in most developing countries. This is a review paper illustrating the use of duckweed-based wastewater treatment systems that provide genuine solutions to these problems. They are inexpensive to install as well as to operate and maintain. They do not require expensive technologies. Therefore, this review pa...

A number of years ago the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at York discovered new high surface area forms of polysaccharides. Further study of these materials has found that after controlled thermal treatment they exhibit remarkable thermal properties, which have enabled us to make an entirely new class of materials with properties ranging from starch-like to carbon-like (see figure 1). Tra...

There is a worldwide and increasing shortage of potable fresh water. Modern water reclamation technologies can alleviate much of the problem by converting wastewater directly into drinking water, but there is public resistance to these approaches that has its basis largely in psychology. A psychological problem is encapsulated in the saying of those opposing recycled water: “toilet to tap.” We ...

Complex technological systems have emerged during the last decade as an important strand in technology teaching in several national curricula for compulsory school. However, even though understanding the systemic aspects and connected nature of contemporary society, it remains unclear what such understanding entails in detail, and even more unclear what may constitute good teaching. We present ...

Улучшение экологической ситуации промышленных регионов возможно за счет использования крупнотоннажных промышленных отходов (ПО). Внедрение малоотходных технологий стимулирует реализацию мероприятий по охране окружающей среды: ликвидацию отвалов ПО, выявление ресурсной ценности и полезных свойств ПО, обоснование целесообразности их утилизации в качестве технических материалов и сорбентов при очи...

The bacterial population dynamics in an industrial scale reverse-osmosis (RO) water purification system were analyzed by fluorescent staining methods and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). Bacterial numbers increased with storage in a tank, and bacterial diversity changed during the water purification process. A DNA sequence-based analysis of the major bands on the DGGE gel reveale...

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) policies compensate individuals or communities for undertaking actions that increase the provision of ecosystem services such as water purification, flood mitigation, or carbon sequestration. PES schemes rely on incentives to induce behavioral change and can thus be considered part of the broader class of incentive- or market-based mechanisms for environmen...