Careless disposal of antibiotics can create aquatic superbugs

A wastewater treatment plant can provide the perfect mating ground for carelessly disposed of antibiotics to form superbugs that are eventually discharged into streams and lakes, says a University of Michigan researcher.

It’s not the fault of the wastewater treatment plants, says Chuanwu Xi, assistant professor at the UM School of Public Health.

His research team sampled water at five sites in and near Ann Arbor’s Waste Water Treatment Plant and found that the water contained the superbug Acinetobacter, a multidrug-resistant bacterium.

The results were first reported by Xi’s group in 2009, and the research is ongoing.

Treatment plants across the country face the same problem due to the overuse of antibiotics and because people improperly flush them down the toilet, whereby the drugs enter the wastewater treatment systems where they can breed, Xi says.

“When we monitored the survival of these bugs in the Huron River, the downstream level dropped quickly to the level of upstream,” Xi said.

“More robust risk-assessment research is needed to assess the exact risk. This study, along with many other studies, alerts us to proper use and handling of antibiotics.”

The Ann Arbor wastewater plant recently installed technology that enhances the removal of bio-solids from the water, which in turn, will help prevent superbugs from forming.

People with unused antibiotics should not flush them down the toilet but should dispose of them properly, Xi says.

Britain (UK) Throws Away $20 Billions of Food

A new report from Britain has found that more than $20 billion of consumable food and drink is throw away in the country each year.

The study by the Waste and Resources Action Program, or WRAP — a group created by the British government to investigate waste and packaging — found Britain’s food waste amounts to an estimated 6.6 million tons per year.

“We throw away a staggering $20 billion of food and drink that could have been consumed, either because we cook or prepare too much, or because we let it go off,” said Dr. Richard Swannell, the director of retail and organics for WRAP, in an e-mail message.

“Research in both Australia and the U.S.A. shows that significant amounts of food are also wasted by households,” Dr. Swannell added.

The WRAP report is the first of its kind in Britain to include liquid waste. The report found that British consumers throw away abouit $460 million of milk, $417 million of soft drinks and $180 million of tea every year.

“If we stopped wasting food that could have been eaten, we could prevent at least 15 million tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions each year,” the report concluded. “The majority of these emissions are associated with embedded energy, but a significant proportion arises as a result of food waste going to landfill sites.”

Once placed in a landfill, the organic breakdown of food, along with other wastes, produces methane, a substantially more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Britain’s Food Climate Research Network estimates that 20 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions are associated with food production, distribution and storage.

Britain’s 2009 budget indicates that landfill taxes are set to increase. The budget estimates landfill tax revenues in excess of $1.6 billion over the next several years.

WRAP said it aims to reduce consumer food waste by 250,000 tons by March 2011, which the group says would save 1.1 million tons of carbon-dioxide emissions.

Venus Express Maps: Finds Oceans and Granite

The first temperature map (centered at the south pole) of the planet's southern hemisphere at infrared wavelengths, charted with Venus Express's Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer, VIRTIS. Higher temperatures (red) correspond to lower altitudes, while lower temperatures (blue) correspond to higher altitudes. Credit: ESA/VIRTIS/INAF-IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA

Venus is a Home from Home

Venus may once have been more Earth-like, with volcanic activity and an ocean of water, a new map of the toasty planet's southern hemisphere suggests.

The map comprises over a thousand individual images, recorded between May 2006 and December 2007 by the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft. It gives astronomers another tool in their quest to understand why Venus is so similar in size to Earth and yet has evolved so differently.

Thick Clouds obscure Venus

Normal visible light cameras cannot see the surface of Venus because it is covered in clouds. So, Venus Express uses a particular frequency of infrared wavelength to 'see' through them.

Although radar systems have been used in the past to provide high-resolution maps of Venus's surface, Venus Express is the first orbiting spacecraft to produce a map that hints at the chemical composition of the rocks.

Rocky clues

The new data is consistent with suspicions that the highland plateaus of Venus are ancient continents, once surrounded by ocean that might have evaporated away into space and produced by past volcanic activity.

"This is not proof, but it is consistent. All we can really say at the moment is that the plateau rocks look different from elsewhere," said Nils Müller of the the University Münster and DLR Berlin, who headed the mapping efforts.

Water

Water is a key to life as we know it. And though there are no signs of past or present biology on the suffocating surface Venus, some astronomers have speculated that the its clouds could harbor life.

The rocks look different because of the amount of infrared light they radiate into space. Different surfaces radiate different amounts of heat at infrared wavelengths due to a material characteristic known as emissivity, which varies in different materials.

Space station (ISS) Astronauts Drink Urine

Astronauts drink water recycled from their urine to toast the official start of their new water recycling system - fit to pass any taste test.