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Cookie Monster Stainless Steel Water Bottle - $11.95
The New Year is here! The resolutions are made! Will 2012 be the year you get your inner cookie loving monster under control? Get inspired to stay hydrated and get active with the Cookie Monster Stainless Steel Water Bottle from the NeatoShop.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fun Water Bottles! Oh, and once you are over all the exercising be sure to come back and check out all the exciting Food & Drinks!
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No, it’s not really a rose being liquified. It’s a composite photograph of 17 different images of a crystal rose with colored water being poured down the surface. My hat goes off to Anthony Chang for having the patience to put together this gorgeous art project.
Link Via Laughing Squid
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From spiders who can live underwater for a whole day at a time to underwater rivers with their own wave systems, it’s simply amazing what can happen below the surface.
Tuvalu, in the South Pacific, is made up of nine small islands with a population of 11,000. It is estimated that the entire atoll will be uninhabitable in about 50 years due to climate change. Already the citizens are feeling the effects, as high tide floods the neighborhoods like never before. Sixty-four-year-old Ioane Malologa said,
“I have already advised my children. I got four daughters and one only son. … They’ve been well educated, and now they all got jobs in the government. Well that’d be okay for their life at the moment but … I have advised them — it is better to migrate.”
This sentiment is not held by all. Though encouraging his children to migrate, Malologa himself wants to stay in Tuvalu. While most Tuvaluans have family living abroad, largely in New Zealand and Fiji, many people I met there wanted to stay in Tuvalu as long as possible. But in a country where land is precious and scarce, coastal erosion, flooding, and increasingly severe weather patterns, eking out a living here is now difficult.
Read more and see a gallery of photos at The Atlantic. Link -via Look At This
(Image credit: Amelia Holowaty Krales)
The title of this picture from redditor theroboticdan is “My cousin’s entire Bridal Party sank into a lake this weekend. Awesome picture…. ” but the top-voted comment gave it the above title. There are plenty more puns in the comments. Link
(Image credit: Jeff Hayford)
With waterborne illnesses affecting 40 million Indians each year, Sarvarjal has targeted a way to meet the need for clean water. The water “ATMs” are solar powered and franchised throughout villages. A liter of water on the average Indian’s income of $.60 a day is $.006 or less.
Comments Off The train station in Osaka, Japan has a computerized fountain that spells out the time, announcements, and pictures in falling water. If you spend too much time waiting for the clock to display, you’ll realize what time it really is …time to find a restroom! See more pictures and video at the uploader’s site. Link -via Everlasting Blort
The Tropism Well bows as you approach it, filling a pitcher with water and pouring it into your cup. UK-based Poietic Studio is looking into creating permanent installations of the fountain for public places.
Link -via Laughing Squid
Arsenic in water can be caused by human pollution or by natural leakage, and is normally expensive to clean for developing countries where poisoning is common and deadly. Scientists have potentially found a convenient solution by turning plastic bottles into arsenic magnets.
“Dealing with arsenic contamination of drinking water in the developing world requires simple technology based on locally available materials,” said study leader Tsanangurayi Tongesayi, Ph.D., professor of analytical and environmental chemistry at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J. “Our process uses pieces of plastic water, soda pop and other beverage bottles. Coat the pieces with cysteine — that’s an amino acid found in dietary supplements and foods — and stir the plastic in arsenic-contaminated water. This works like a magnet. The cysteine binds up the arsenic. Remove the plastic and you have drinkable water.”
Tongesayi described laboratory tests of the plastic bottle arsenic removal method on water containing 20 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic, which is two times the safe standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water. It produced drinkable water with 0.2 ppb of arsenic that more than meets the federal standard.
Link -via Fast Company | Photo Credit: Warrenski
Hyeona Yang and Joshua Noble, two students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, built the “Raincatch.” It’s a suit that collects rainwater and filters it into drinking water.
If Joshua Noble’s name seems familiar to you, it may be because he’s one of the people responsible for the playable receipt printer.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is sending back data that may indicate that the red planet has some flowing water during part of the Martian year. The streams are small, short-lived, and must be salty -if it is what they think it is.
Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring. Repeated observations have tracked the seasonal changes in these recurring features on several steep slopes in the middle latitudes of Mars’ southern hemisphere.
“The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water,” said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson. McEwen is the principal investigator for the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and lead author of a report about the recurring flows published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Science.
Some aspects of the observations still puzzle researchers, but flows of liquid brine fit the features’ characteristics better than alternate hypotheses. Saltiness lowers the freezing temperature of water. Sites with active flows get warm enough, even in the shallow subsurface, to sustain liquid water that is about as salty as Earth’s oceans, while pure water would freeze at the observed temperatures.
“These dark lineations are different from other types of features on Martian slopes,” said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Scientist Richard Zurek of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Repeated observations show they extend ever farther downhill with time during the warm season.”
NASA has a multimedia presentation in which you can see how the images change over time. Link
Star Trek Enterprise Stainless Steel Water Bottle – $11.95
Attention Star Trek fans! Behold the Star Trek Enterprise Stainless Steel Water Bottle from the NeatoShop. Now it is time to boldly go to the gym.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Star Trek items!
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From pumpkin carving to fine dining to a music festival, you’d be amazed just how much stuff can happen underwater when you get a few expert scuba divers together for a good time. Oddee has a collection of some of the wackiest underwater events to have ever been posted on the web.
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Greg In the Desert shot this photo of pier in Ohio where the water stains formed a sunset-styled western scene complete with a cowboy on his horse. Sometimes it’s amazing what coincidence can do.
Link Via BoingBoing
Elmo Stainless Steel Water Bottle – $11.95
Boy is it hot out there! Are you looking for a new beverage container to help you beat the heat? You need the Elmo Stainless Steel Water Bottle from the NeatoShop. This handy dandy portable container comes with a special reminder printed on the back, “Elmo loves you!”
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for lots more fantastic Glassware & Drinkware.
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Our ideas about the Moon — what it’s made of and how it got there, and even how we can use its energy — have changed rapidly over the last half-century. You know, since we started sending people there. The newest confirmed findings from lunar rocks reveals that our nearest neighbor is wetter then we thought.
Mind you, we’re not talking about potential geysers or subsurface lakes here; the amount of water we’re seeing here means you’d need to grind up a couple of cubic meters of this glass just to get enough water to drink with lunch. So what’s the big deal?
The big deal is that now we’re even less certain how the Moon formed. The presence of water in subsurface lunar rocks messes with the Giant Impact Hypothesis, the leading theory on the topic to date. Read more at Bad Astronomy.
Link | Image: Sunday Mercury
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John Wayne Stainless Steel Water Bottle – $11.95
Is your Dad a John Wayne fan in need of a means to keep cool and hydrated? This Father’s Day get him the John Wayne Stainless Steel Water Bottle from the NeatoShop.
A Man’s Got To Have A Code.
A Creed To Live By.
- John Wayne
A man also needs to drink plenty of fluids. Being as cool as John Wayne can make a man very, very thirsty.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more macho Water Bottles!
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A few years ago, I wrote a post on Neatorama that became one of my favorites: 5 Really Weird Things About Water.
Actually, there are a lot more than 5 weird things about good ol’ H2O. Like this newly discovered quantum properties of water in carbon nanotubes, for instance:
It turns out that the protons in this nano-confined water at room temperature behave in an entirely different way to those in bulk water. Protons are known to be sensitive to the electronic fields around them. So when these fields form into unusual electronic networks, it’s no surprise the protons behave differently.
"The departures of the momentum distribution of the protons from that of bulk water are so large, that we believe that the nano-confifined water can be properly described as being in a qualitatively different quantum ground state from that of bulk water," they say.
They even suggest that there could be some kind of quantum coherence that spreads out through the electronic network.
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Instructables member Shawn Melito designed and built a special “water scooter” for his then-5-year-old daughter, who has Cerebral Palsy. This gave her buoyancy, mobility, and independence on the water -under supervision, of course. He explains how he he built at at the link. Then comes the kicker:
BTW – After two seasons of use my daughter has grown out of this, but it still works great. It is free to the first person who has a disabled child the right size that can use it safely. We live near Toronto, Ontario.
Link -via NeatoBambino
Comments Off Defense contractor SPAWAR System Center Pacific has developed a system that turns a stream of seawater shot into the air into a functional antenna:
As the pillar of water is squirted through the current probe, a magnetic field is created and signal comes through to a hooked-up communication device.
Plus, depending on the height of the stream of water, you can get UHF, VHF and HF broadcasts, all from the same jet of H2O. You can even set up multiple jets of water, at different heights, to broadcast on different bands simultaneously. Handy.
The idea could prove particularly useful for ships, which struggle to find room for all the antennas on board. US Navy ships already have upwards of 80 antennas on deck, meaning real estate for extra towers is hugely limited. Instead, the sea water device can be placed anywhere on the deck.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ
This is a wonderful way to look at the world. I just wish I knew who the original artist is. -via The Daily What
Update: The artist is Selin Jessa. Link -Thanks, Andy!
Practical it is not, but this gadget sure is nifty! The Hydro Power Calculator ($9.95) is powered by water – all you have to do is fill the "batteries" with tap water and you’re ready to calculate.
Water-powered battery consists of two electrodes made of special alloys, which, when immersed in water, produce electricity through a chemical reaction.
Simply refill the battery as the water evaporates – typically every 2 to 3 months. The battery has a minimum continuous life of 2 years.
Fun and educational – From the NeatoShop: Link | More fun Back To School Items
Located in a Japanese mall called Canal City, this fountain is programmed immaculately to “paint” the air with falling water.
Canal City (Wiki) via Bits and Pieces
Taking the concept of watercoloring literally, this unnamed artist creates wonderful images by painting directly on water. (Bonus: Trippy flute music)
Link [Embedded YouTube Clip]
Note: Some of you may know this as the traditional Turkish painting technique of Ebru (also known as paper marbling in other cultures)
Heavy rains in St. Petersburg flooded the streets. What’s a woman to do? This act of chivalry not only kept them dry, but also made the women recording the video squeal with delight. There’s also a bonus surprise that passes by. -via Arbroath
Would you recognize that someone is drowning if you saw them? Real-life drowning looks nothing like the way Hollywood depicts drowning: the yelling, the arm-waving, the violent panic.
The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening (source: CDC).
gCaptain has a list of signs that indicate the instinctive drowning response. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
The National Maritime Research Institute of Japan has developed a machine that can create shapes in a pool of water, including a heart and a star. But that’s just to entertain reporters. The primary purpose of the machine is apparently to conduct tests for water safety. At the link, you can view a Japanese-language video about the device.
Link via DVICE | Image: Japan Probe
In the asteroid belt lies a 125 mile wide hunk of rock called 24-Themis that is covered in ice and organic material. Scientists discovered this by analyzing the reflected sunlight and finding that it is consistent with the properties of water and various other organic materials.
Finding ice on the surface of the asteroid was a surprise because it would have been expected to evaporate quickly.
‘This implies that ice is quite abundant in the interior of 24 Themis and perhaps many other asteroids,’ Dr Emery added.
‘This ice on asteroids may be the answer to the puzzle of where Earth’s water came from.’
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by sshuggi.
You may think the baboon is not too smart because it fell for that old trick, but at least it knows where the water is! From the 1974 documentary Animals Are Beautiful People. -via Cynical-C
Just this week, the school my children attend got a $500 grant from an environmental agency. The school decided to buy all the students metal water bottles so they could bring water from home and consume fewer bottles of water at school, thereby saving plastic. My immediate reaction was “What’s wrong with the drinking fountain?” National Geographic asks that question as well: Which is better for children, bottled water or tap water? The production of bottled water uses lots of resources and the bottles just go to landfills.
But switching to tap water could be a bad idea in some schools where the risk of lead contamination from old pipes—known to affect physical and mental development—is high, particularly in large urban areas such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
For instance in September 2009, the Associated Press published a nationwide investigation showing that the drinking water in schools in 27 states is contaminated with lead and other toxic substances from lead-soldered pipes generally installed before 1985.
Some school don’t test the water because of the high cost of replacing pipes. They find it more cost-effective to serve bottled water, or even soft drinks to children. Link
(image credit: Flickr user Isobel T)
