On:

In a world where water is running short, we need to find an affordable way to remove the salt from seawater. The UN reports that about 780 million people around the world do not have access to clean drinking water.

A defense contractor may have found a way to solve this problem without building expensive desalinization plants.

Officials and engineers at Lockheed Martin have invented a filter made of an incredibly thin sheet of graphene, a substance similar to the lead in pencils, with holes about a nanometer in size (a nanometer is a billionth of a meter) that allow water to pass through but block molecules of salt.
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Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly 120 million dollars to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change. The funds, given out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.

The money was routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, both operating out of the same town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC.
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We know people can do it, but can PLANTS do it? This is necessary to know if we want to eventually create living space environments, in which people can spend the many years it might take to travel to distant stars and planets.

Researchers have found that changes in gravity affect the reproductive process in plants. Gravity modulates traffic on the intracellular "highways" that ensure the growth and functionality of the male reproductive organ in plants, the pollen tube.
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We have a lot to thank bees for, so maybe we should let them share our lattes.

It turns out that bees like caffeine, and that ingesting it actually boosts their memories. But where can they get it? They’re attracted to citrus flowers because they have caffeine-laced nectar, which hooks them the same way coffee hooks human imbibers.

The New York Times quotes brain specialist Geraldine Wright as saying, "The plant is using this as a drug to change a pollinator’s behavior for its own benefit." In other words, if the bees remember where those flowers are, they’ll return again and again to pollinate them.
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