Podcast appearances and mentions of David Sedlak

We've got 6 water crises to solve: Water for the wealthy, the many, the unconnected, for good health, for food, and for ecosystems. How do we do that? Let's ask David Sedlak, the author of "Water for All" More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/ #️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣ David Sedlak's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-sedlak-723b6937/ David Sedlak's "Water for All" https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300256932/water-for-all/ David Sedlak's "Water 4.0" https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vksm5 David Lloyd Owen's "Global Water Funding" https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-49454-4 Matt Damon & Gary White's "Worth of Water" https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/635415/the-worth-of-water-by-gary-white-and-matt-damon/ Peter Gleick's "Three Ages of Water" https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62873953 My full Blog Entry about today's topic https://dww.show/how-to-overcome-the-6-water-crises-ahead-the-rise-of-small-scale-solutions/ My conversation with David Lloyd Owen https://dww.show/3-paths-to-reach-sdg-6-by-2050-all-our-hopes-are-on-3/ My interview with Upmanu Lall https://dww.show/are-amazon-water-filters-the-best-way-to-quench-our-thirst/ My conversation with Piers Clark: https://dww.show/how-will-the-trial-reservoir-change-piloting-forever-and-for-good/ My full coverage of the UN Water Conference: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrmORG1scuqLQKWDuQWTKx9P8jPKvAZ9o&si=es59aiiyynlPJx72

This week, Brett sits down with professor, researcher, and award-winning author, David Sedlak to talk about his latest book, Water for All – Global Solutions for a Changing Climate. David started his career as a researcher looking to solve our world's water quality challenges but eventually shifted his focus to working on how to cope with, or even prevent, water scarcity in the United States and throughout the world. They discuss the “Six Water Crises”; the “Great Acceleration”; the difference in the scope of challenges between rich and poor countries, as well as rich and poor within a country; the role of dams in a post-Acceleration nation and world; salinization of farmland soils out West and what we need to do about it; and his artful distinction between optimism and hopefulness as it relates to the future of water. To buy Water for All, try here before you go to Amazon or the other big guys: https://www.midtownreader.com/book/9780300256932 You can get his first book, Water 4.0, there as well. Here's the link for it: https://www.midtownreader.com/book/9780300212679 Why not check out David's TED Talk. It's really good, and it'll give you a sense of what he's about while you're waiting for your copy of his books to arrive. Find it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_sedlak_4_ways_we_can_avoid_a_catastrophic_drought?language=en David talked about what got him interested in working on water issues, and one of the motivators was an environmental disaster that was discovered in the late 70s, known as Love Canal. If you're not familiar it, here's a decent place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal To keep up with the other good work David is doing, including as director of the Berkeley Water Center at the University of California, Berkeley, check out his page here: https://ce.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/sedlak This episode of Water for Fighting is brought to you by my friends at RES. RES is the nation's leader in ecological restoration, helping to restore Florida's natural resources with water quality and stormwater solutions that offer communities guaranteed performance and outcomes. Check them out at www.res.us This Episode is also thanks to my friends at Collins Land Services. When it comes to your disaster recovery and land management needs, you're looking for the perfect combination of competence, reliability, and affordability. And that means you're looking for Collins Land Services. Check them out at www.collinsland.com Please be sure to check out the Florida Specifier Podcast hosted by Ryan Matthews and myself as part of a new venture where we're striving to become Florida's first source for environmental news, educational tools, and unique perspectives on our state's natural environment and the events that shape it. To learn more about its flagship print publication and more, visit The Florida Specifier. You can follow the show on LinkedIn and Instagram @flwaterpod, and you can reach me directly at FLwaterpod@gmail.com with your comments and suggestions for who and/or what you'd like to know more about. Production of this podcast is by Lonely Fox Studios. Thanks to Karl Sorne for making the best of what he had to work with. And to David Barfield for the amazing graphics and technical assistance. And finally, a very special thank you goes out to Bo Spring from the Bo Spring Band for giving permission to use his music for this podcast. The song is called Doing Work for Free, (Apple Music | Spotify) and you should check out the band live, or wherever great music is sold. 4

As we see in news headlines and in our own neighborhoods, water crises are more frequent and increasingly severe, and the world's approach to providing the water that grows food, sustains cities, and supports healthy ecosystems fails to meet the demands of growing population and the water challenges of a changing climate. But the grim news reports of empty reservoirs, withering crops, failing ecosystems need not be cause for despair, argues award-winning author and environmentalist David Sedlak, who is with us on the Lean to the Left podcast.In Water for All: Global Solutions for a Changing Climate, just published by Yale University Press, Sedlak identifies the challenges society faces, including ineffective policies and outdated infrastructure, and the many tools at our disposal. He offers an informed and hopeful approach for changing the way water is managed so we can create a future with clean, abundant, and affordable water for all.Sedlak is the Plato Malozemoff Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Water Center. He is author of the award-winning Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource. "Climate change combined with global development is going to result in (water) crises happening more frequently and being more severe," Sedlak says, "but at the same time, the knowledge that we've accumulated and the technologies that we've developed and are developing give us new answers."(It) depends a lot upon whether we can let go of some of our preconceived notions about how we manage water and take a different path forward in," he adds. "And I think that if we're capable of doing that; if we're capable about seeing this as a time when the status quo no longer works and we have to try something different, there's a chance to come out in a much better place."Here are some key questions we discussed regarding water challenges of a changing climate:Q. Your book starts off discussing the six separate water crises that exist today. How about discussing them?Q. So what are the solutions to these crises?Q. What can be learned from communities that have experienced water crises and the actions they have taken?Q. You talk about the wealthy and their ability to cope with water shortages. But what about those less fortunate like the urban poor and those in rural communities?Q. How can emerging technologies unlock untapped water resources without damaging the environment?Q. You discuss some ideas to expand conventional and unconventional water sources. What are some of the most promising ideas there? Q. Are there places in the world that are practicing good water usage? What can we learn from them?Q. So where do we go next to ensure the best outcome? How do we tackle these areas in concrete, strategic ways? Q. Your last book, Water 4.0, looked at the history of water systems. What did you learn in the decade between Water 4.0 and now that made you want to write this book? Q. Where can people find your book?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-lean-to-the-left-podcast--4719048/support.

As we see in news headlines and in our own neighborhoods, water crises are more frequent and increasingly severe, and the world's approach to providing the water that grows food, sustains cities, and supports healthy ecosystems fails to meet the demands of growing population and the water challenges of a changing climate. But the grim news reports of empty reservoirs, withering crops, failing ecosystems need not be cause for despair, argues award-winning author and environmentalist David Sedlak, who is with us on the Lean to the Left podcast.In Water for All: Global Solutions for a Changing Climate, just published by Yale University Press, Sedlak identifies the challenges society faces, including ineffective policies and outdated infrastructure, and the many tools at our disposal. He offers an informed and hopeful approach for changing the way water is managed so we can create a future with clean, abundant, and affordable water for all.Sedlak is the Plato Malozemoff Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Water Center. He is author of the award-winning Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource. "Climate change combined with global development is going to result in (water) crises happening more frequently and being more severe," Sedlak says, "but at the same time, the knowledge that we've accumulated and the technologies that we've developed and are developing give us new answers."(It) depends a lot upon whether we can let go of some of our preconceived notions about how we manage water and take a different path forward in," he adds. "And I think that if we're capable of doing that; if we're capable about seeing this as a time when the status quo no longer works and we have to try something different, there's a chance to come out in a much better place."Here are some key questions we discussed regarding water challenges of a changing climate:Q. Your book starts off discussing the six separate water crises that exist today. How about discussing them?Q. So what are the solutions to these crises?Q. What can be learned from communities that have experienced water crises and the actions they have taken?Q. You talk about the wealthy and their ability to cope with water shortages. But what about those less fortunate like the urban poor and those in rural communities?Q. How can emerging technologies unlock untapped water resources without damaging the environment?Q. You discuss some ideas to expand conventional and unconventional water sources. What are some of the most promising ideas there? Q. Are there places in the world that are practicing good water usage? What can we learn from them?Q. So where do we go next to ensure the best outcome? How do we tackle these areas in concrete, strategic ways? Q. Your last book, Water 4.0, looked at the history of water systems. What did you learn in the decade between Water 4.0 and now that made you want to write this book? Q. Where can people find your book?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-lean-to-the-left-podcast--4719048/support.

The current approach to water management is failing to meet the demands of the growing human population and the severe challenges brought on by climate change.  Our guest, David Sedlak, director of the Berkeley Water Center and author of “Water for All: Global Solutions for a Changing Climate” argues that there are solutions to address … Read More Read More

On this edition of the Perpetual Notion Machine, we speak with University of California-Berkeley professor and author David Sedlak about his latest book Water for All: Global Solutions for a […] The post Water for All: Global Solutions for a Changing Climate appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

David Sedlak Author of Water for Water for All: Global Solutions for a Changing Climate  David Sedlak is the Plato Malozemoff Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Water Center. He is author of the award-winning Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's…More

Video Version: https://youtu.be/8hjsmIyC9ggWater reuse is crucial for addressing water scarcity and has many environmental, agricultural, and economic benefits. Yet, despite technological advancements and proven safety, public acceptance remains a challenge due to misconceptions and the importance of communication strategies. What we'll discuss today:

From desalination plants in Australia, wastewater recycling plants in Orange County, CA to net zero water buildings in NYC, in his latest book author and engineer David Sedlak looks not at the problems but the solutions. About: Hosted by Meghna Chakrabarti, On Point is WBUR's award-winning, daily public radio show and podcast. Its unique combination of original reporting, first-person stories, and in-depth analysis creates an experience that makes the world more intelligible and humane. Deep dives. Original stories. Fresh takes. We'd appreciate your help to better understand On Point's podcast listeners and get your feedback — it'll take you about 10 minutes or less! Take our survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/onpointpodcast  

David Sedlak, Professor at UC Berkeley, is well-known in the world of water. His most recent book, Water For All, explores the myriad of water issues facing the entire world, and how water crises are linked to one another. By applying a passion for water technology and innovation, David understands the demands of water and helps others to do the same. 

On today's show, I'll speak to author David Sedlak on his latest book Water for All:  Global Solutions for a Changing Climate.  We'll switch gears and hear an excerpt from a webinar put on by A Growing Culture featuring renowned seedologist and scientist Debal Deb. The post A Rude Awakening with David Sedlak and Debal Deb appeared first on KPFA.

This episode of Big Blend Radio's "Nature Connection" Show features professor and award-winning author David Sedlak, who discusses his new book, “Water for All: Global Solutions for a Changing Climate." Watch this podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UMN9alDYvLk The current approach to providing water is failing to meet the demands of the growing population and the challenges brought on by climate change. In "Water for All," David Sedlak argues there are solutions to address global water shortages. He identifies the challenges including ineffective policies and outdated infrastructure, and also outlines the myriad of tools at our disposal to address the problem. David Sedlak is the Plato Malozemoff Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Water Center. He is the author of the award-winning "Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource." More at https://ce.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/sedlak and https://sedlakgroup.berkeley.edu/professor-sedlak/ This episode is part of Big Blend Radio's "Nature Connection" Series that airs every 4th Friday in collaboration with Margot Carrera, a fine art nature photographer who is passionate about the environment. More: https://www.carrerafineartgallery.com/ Follow the Nature Connection Podcast: https://shows.acast.com/bigblendradio-nature Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Big Blend Radio's "Nature Connection" Show features professor and award-winning author David Sedlak, who discusses his new book, “Water for All: Global Solutions for a Changing Climate." Watch this podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UMN9alDYvLk  The current approach to providing water is failing to meet the demands of the growing population and the challenges brought on by climate change. In "Water for All," David Sedlak argues there are solutions to address global water shortages.  He identifies the challenges including ineffective policies and outdated infrastructure, and also outlines the myriad of tools at our disposal to address the problem.  David Sedlak is the Plato Malozemoff Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Water Center. He is the author of the award-winning "Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource." More at https://ce.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/sedlak and https://sedlakgroup.berkeley.edu/professor-sedlak/  This episode is part of Big Blend Radio's "Nature Connection" Series that airs every 4th Friday in collaboration with Margot Carrera, a fine art nature photographer who is passionate about the environment. More: https://www.carrerafineartgallery.com/  Follow the Nature Connection Podcast: https://shows.acast.com/bigblendradio-nature 

David Sedlak - On The Front Porch [00:00:00] David Sedlak - On The Front Porch [00:11:34] 2023-12-13 16:24:20 - mmsopm2 [00:23:25] David Sedlak Water for All 3 - On The Front Po [00:34:14] David Sedlak Water for All 4 - On The Front PoSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

David Sedlak's new book, Water for All, gives a fresh look at the world's water crises, and the existing and emerging solutions that can be used to solve them. Our twentieth-century systems for providing the water that grows food, sustains cities, and supports healthy ecosystems are failing to meet the demands of growing population and the challenges brought on by climate change. However, communities on the front lines of previous water crises have pioneered approaches that are ready to be applied elsewhere. Tune in as we talk with David about how we can meet the world's need for water in the 21st Century.

David Sedlak's new book, Water for All, gives a fresh look at the world's water crises, and the existing and emerging solutions that can be used to solve them. Our twentieth-century systems for providing the water that grows food, sustains cities, and supports healthy ecosystems are failing to meet the demands of growing population and the challenges brought on by climate change. However, communities on the front lines of previous water crises have pioneered approaches that are ready to be applied elsewhere. Tune in as we talk with David about how we can meet the world's need for water in the 21st Century.

The Biden administration wants all lead pipes ripped up. It'll take billions of dollars and rarely seen cooperation among government agencies. We ask UC Berkeley's David Sedlak and American University's Karen Baehler whether the plan is a pipe dream. This episode was produced by Isabel Angell, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Anouck Dussaud, engineered by David Herman, and hosted by Noel King Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Author Juli Berwald takes us on a journey through underwater ecosystems that reveal incredible complexities, as well as an uncertain future, in her book "Life on the Rocks." She contemplates the inevitable grief of climate change as well as the beauty of small victories.Then, author David Sedlak outlines informed and hopeful approaches for rethinking our assumptions about the way that water is managed in his book "Water For All: Global Solutions for a Changing Climate."

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The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) is hosting a Risk e-Learning webinar series focused on scientific research and tools that can be used to promote health and resilience to climate change. The series will feature SRP-funded researchers, collaborators, and other subject-matter experts who aim to better understand and address how climate change affects human exposures to hazardous substances and the public health consequences of a changing climate and identify ways to build health resilience. Building resilience to climate change includes removing hazardous substances from the environment that could be redistributed through climate events, such as flooding and hurricanes. The first session will feature SRP-funded researchers who are developing new strategies to clean-up contaminated water, using plants to mitigate drought, and designing more climate resilient communities. Presenters will discuss approaches to make ecosystems and communities more resilient to changing climatic conditions, such as drought, flooding, and pollution. SRP Director William Suk, Ph.D., M.P.H., will provide an overview of the series and briefly discuss the rationale and goals of SRP's climate change research activities. Raina Maier, Ph.D., of the University of Arizona SRP Center, will talk about soil health and the arid microbiome in dryland ecosystems as the climate continues to change. This talk will present results from studies in the Atacama and Sonoran Deserts showing the impact of aridity on the soil microbiome. These results will be put into the context of the role of the microbiome in reclamation of mine wastes generated by hardrock mining in arid regions. Research findings point to the need for nuanced approaches to management and regulation of mine waste reclamation efforts in a warming climate. Galen Newman, Ph.D., of Texas A&M University SRP Center, will discuss an engagement-based, adaptive and flexible green infrastructure toolkit developed by his team to address the needs of the City of Galena Park, Texas, which has experienced severe flood damage and hazardous substance transferal during flood events. The toolkit, which can be applied based on both on-ground spatial size and underground depth to existing infrastructure, can lessen both flooding and contamination issues to improve public health outcomes. David Sedlak, Ph.D., of the University of California, Berkeley SRP Center, will provide an overview of new water filtration techniques to ensure that the quality of urban runoff improves during the filtration process. His team developed robust systems that employ inexpensive geomedia that removes contaminants without impeding water flow. They also developed approaches for amending the geomedia with woodchips and other forms of organic carbon to enhance the removal of trace organics, nitrate, and metals through microbial processes. Sedlak will also discuss other approaches that can be used to enhance contaminant removal during the infiltration process. This webinar is the first in a three-part series, please visit the pages for Session II and Session III to register and learn more. To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/SRPCCH1_100722/

The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) is hosting a Risk e-Learning webinar series focused on scientific research and tools that can be used to promote health and resilience to climate change. The series will feature SRP-funded researchers, collaborators, and other subject-matter experts who aim to better understand and address how climate change affects human exposures to hazardous substances and the public health consequences of a changing climate and identify ways to build health resilience. Building resilience to climate change includes removing hazardous substances from the environment that could be redistributed through climate events, such as flooding and hurricanes. The first session will feature SRP-funded researchers who are developing new strategies to clean-up contaminated water, using plants to mitigate drought, and designing more climate resilient communities. Presenters will discuss approaches to make ecosystems and communities more resilient to changing climatic conditions, such as drought, flooding, and pollution. SRP Director William Suk, Ph.D., M.P.H., will provide an overview of the series and briefly discuss the rationale and goals of SRP's climate change research activities. Raina Maier, Ph.D., of the University of Arizona SRP Center, will talk about soil health and the arid microbiome in dryland ecosystems as the climate continues to change. This talk will present results from studies in the Atacama and Sonoran Deserts showing the impact of aridity on the soil microbiome. These results will be put into the context of the role of the microbiome in reclamation of mine wastes generated by hardrock mining in arid regions. Research findings point to the need for nuanced approaches to management and regulation of mine waste reclamation efforts in a warming climate. Galen Newman, Ph.D., of Texas A&M University SRP Center, will discuss an engagement-based, adaptive and flexible green infrastructure toolkit developed by his team to address the needs of the City of Galena Park, Texas, which has experienced severe flood damage and hazardous substance transferal during flood events. The toolkit, which can be applied based on both on-ground spatial size and underground depth to existing infrastructure, can lessen both flooding and contamination issues to improve public health outcomes. David Sedlak, Ph.D., of the University of California, Berkeley SRP Center, will provide an overview of new water filtration techniques to ensure that the quality of urban runoff improves during the filtration process. His team developed robust systems that employ inexpensive geomedia that removes contaminants without impeding water flow. They also developed approaches for amending the geomedia with woodchips and other forms of organic carbon to enhance the removal of trace organics, nitrate, and metals through microbial processes. Sedlak will also discuss other approaches that can be used to enhance contaminant removal during the infiltration process. This webinar is the first in a three-part series, please visit the pages for Session II and Session III to register and learn more. To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/SRPCCH1_100722/

A new research paper was published in Aging (“Aging (Albany NY)” by Medline/PubMed, “Aging-US” by Web of Science) on the cover of Volume 14, Issue 16, entitled, “Synergism of BCL-2 family inhibitors facilitates selective elimination of senescent cells.” Cellular senescence, a complex cellular response to stress characterized by a halt of cell cycle progression, is one factor contributing to aging. Accumulation of senescent cells in tissues with advancing age participates in the pathogenesis of several human age-associated diseases. Specific senescent secretome, the resistance of senescent cells to apoptotic stimuli, and lack of immune system response contribute to the accumulation of senescent cells and their adverse effects in tissues. Inhibition of antiapoptotic machinery, augmented in senescent cells, by BCL-2 protein family inhibitors represents a promising approach to eliminate senescent cells from tissues. “In this study, with the goal of decreasing the toxicity and potential onset of resistance to senolytic BCL-2 inhibitor monotherapy, we explored the effects of combined treatment covering both BCL-2 and MCL-1 anti-apoptotic factors in human cells.” Researchers David Rysanek, Pavla Vasicova, Jayaprakash Narayana Kolla, David Sedlak, Ladislav Andera, Jiri Bartek, and Zdenek Hodny from the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Danish Cancer Society Research Center aimed to explore synergistic and selective senolytic effects of anti-apoptotic BCL-2 family targeting compounds, particularly BH3 mimetics. “Using human non-transformed cells RPE-1, BJ, and MRC-5 brought to ionizing radiation-, oncogene-, drug-induced and replicative senescence, we found synergy in combining MCL-1 selective inhibitors with other BH3 mimetics.” In an attempt to uncover the mechanism of such synergy, the team revealed that the surviving subpopulation of cells resistant to individually applied ABT-737/ABT-263, MIK665, ABT-199, and S63845 BCL-2 family inhibitors showed elevated MCL-1 compared to untreated control cells indicating the presence of a subset of cells expressing high MCL-1 levels and, therefore, resistant to BCL-2 inhibitors within the original population of senescent cells. Overall, the researchers found that combining BCL-2 inhibitors can be beneficial for eliminating senescent cells, thereby enabling use of lower, potentially less toxic, doses of drugs compared to monotherapy, thereby overcoming the resistance of the subpopulation of senescent cells to monotherapy. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204207 Corresponding Author: Jiri Bartek, Zdenek Hodny – Email: jb@cancer.dk, hodny@img.cas.cz Keywords: homoharringtonine, cellular senescence, BCL-2, MCL-1, senolytics Sign up for free Altmetric alerts about this article: https://aging.altmetric.com/details/email_updates?id=10.18632%2Faging.204207 About Aging-US Launched in 2009, Aging-US publishes papers of general interest and biological significance in all fields of aging research and age-related diseases, including cancer—and now, with a special focus on COVID-19 vulnerability as an age-dependent syndrome. Topics in Aging-US go beyond traditional gerontology, including, but not limited to, cellular and molecular biology, human age-related diseases, pathology in model organisms, signal transduction pathways (e.g., p53, sirtuins, and PI-3K/AKT/mTOR, among others), and approaches to modulating these signaling pathways. Please visit our website at https://www.Aging-US.com​​ and connect with us: SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/Aging-Us Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AgingUS/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/AgingJrnl Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/agingjrnl/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/agingus​ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/aging/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/AgingUS/

This week we're traveling back to. . . well, it's not totally clear, but we're talking about Cold War history with Top Secret! Join us as we learn about that weird heel click salute, Ripple, surf rock, the fascinating history of the phrase "that sucks", and more! Sources: "Churchill Broadcast on the Soviet-German War (June 1941)" https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/churchill-broadcast-on-the-soviet-german-war-june-1941  Daniel Thomas Curtin, The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-war, (1917) https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Land_of_Deepening_Shadow/jxEyAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0  Sarah Wagner and Thomas Matyók, "Monumental Change: The Shifting Politics of Obligation at the Tomb of the Unknowns," History and Memory 30, no.1 (2018): 40-75.  "Desalination history" https://www.water.vic.gov.au/water-grid-and-markets/desalination/desalination-background/desalination-history  David Sedlak, "Turning to the Sea for Drinking Water," Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource, 217-37 (Yale University Press, 2014). https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vksm5.15   E. Delyannis, "Historic background of desalination and renewable energies," Solar Energy, 75, no.5 (2003): 357-66.  Andreas N. Angelakis, Mohammad Valipour, Kwang-Ho Choo, Abdelkader T. Ahmed, Alper Baba, Rohitashw Kumar, Gurpal S. Toor, and Zhiwei Want, "Desalination: From Ancient to Present and Future," Water 13 (2021).  "Why suck is a dirty word | | The Guardian" https://amp.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/sep/13/guardianletters4  Gillian Frank, "Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco," Journal of the History of Sexuality, 16, no.2 (2007): 276-306.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/30114235  Dear and Peter Kemp, (eds.) "sucking the monkey," The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (Oxford University Press, 2007).  John Ayto and John Simpson, "suck," The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang (Oxford University Press, 2013).  BBC Learning English, "Suck it and see," https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/features/the-english-we-speak/ep-170404  Billboard Magazine, June 29 1963: https://books.google.com/books?id=XgsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false Beach Boys "Surfin'" 1961: https://youtu.be/3jIdYAAO7cM Ben Finney, "Surfing in Ancient Hawaii," The Journal of Polynesian Society 68, 4 (1959) RL Rutsky, "Surfing the Other: Ideology on the Beach," Film Quarterly 52, 4 (1999) Chris Gibson and Andrew Warren, "Making Surfboards: Emergence of a Trans-Pacific Cultural Industry," Journal of Pacific History 49, 1 (2014) https://drunkard.com/55-dead-end-drinks/

As drought and the effects of climate change continue to threaten the water supply that Californians rely on, experts at UC Berkeley are looking for new ways to generate an ongoing, stable water supply in its cities that is not as reliant on the weather. "Californians are leaders worldwide in the recycling of water," says David Sedlak, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the Berkeley Water Center. There's just one problem that needs to be solved — and if it is, it could open up water recycling opportunities in many parts of the world.Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.If you haven't already, follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts!(UC Berkeley illustration by Neil Freese; Music by Blue Dot Sessions) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital ResourceDavid Sedlak, University of California at Berkeley.   Keynote from BlueTech Forum 2019. 

David Sedlak, from UC Berkeley, set the scene at the opening of IWA's virtual #WorldWaterCongress. In this podcast, he talks about the challenges and opportunities for the water sector, and the sense of urgency of solving the water crisis.

Dr. David Sedlak is the Plato Malozemoff Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Co-Director of the Berkeley Water Center, Deputy Director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Reinventing the Nation's Urban Water Infrastructure, and Director of the Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, he is author of the book Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource. David is working to create technologies that will allow future generations to have access to adequate amounts of clean, safe water. When David isn’t working, he enjoys long-distance running. He often runs along the many trails that go through and around the city of Berkeley, and he participates in an annual local trails marathon. David earned his Bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Cornell University. After college, he worked as a Staff Scientist at Environ Corporation in Princeton, New Jersey. David then attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he was awarded his Ph.D. in water chemistry. Prior to joining the faculty at UC, Berkeley, David conducted postdoctoral research at the Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology in Dübendorf, Switzerland. Throughout his career, David has received numerous awards and honors, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Development Award, the Paul L. Busch Award for Innovation in Applied Water Quality Research, a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, a Fulbright Alumni Initiative Award, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering Gilbreth Lecture Award, and the Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize for Excellence in Water Research. He has also been named an Elected Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, as well as a Rydell Distinguished Visiting Professor at Gustavus Adolphus College and the Francqui Foundation Chair, Ghent University. In our interview, David shares more about his life and research.

A brief overview of how we got to where we are today and a glimpse into the future of water. From the Romans to the Victorians, each previous water revolution was triggered by a crisis or emergency.Today we are at a precipice where a global water crisis is precipitating the next water revolution.This podcast paints the picture of the Brave Blue World we are about to enter into.Support the show (https://www.braveblue.world/)

At a time of uncertain water supplies, how can we get the most use of our water? By passing water through a material called a reverse osmosis membrane, adding a small amount of hydrogen peroxide and exposing it to ultraviolet light, engineers in Orange County, California have been turning what used to be considered useless wastewater into drinking water for more than 25 years. David Sedlak’s research team at Berkeley has developed technologies to improve the treatment processes. Series: "Cal Future Forum: Our Changing World" [Science] [Show ID: 33071]

At a time of uncertain water supplies, how can we get the most use of our water? By passing water through a material called a reverse osmosis membrane, adding a small amount of hydrogen peroxide and exposing it to ultraviolet light, engineers in Orange County, California have been turning what used to be considered useless wastewater into drinking water for more than 25 years. David Sedlak’s research team at Berkeley has developed technologies to improve the treatment processes. Series: "Cal Future Forum: Our Changing World" [Science] [Show ID: 33071]

At a time of uncertain water supplies, how can we get the most use of our water? By passing water through a material called a reverse osmosis membrane, adding a small amount of hydrogen peroxide and exposing it to ultraviolet light, engineers in Orange County, California have been turning what used to be considered useless wastewater into drinking water for more than 25 years. David Sedlak’s research team at Berkeley has developed technologies to improve the treatment processes. Series: "Cal Future Forum: Our Changing World" [Science] [Show ID: 33071]

At a time of uncertain water supplies, how can we get the most use of our water? By passing water through a material called a reverse osmosis membrane, adding a small amount of hydrogen peroxide and exposing it to ultraviolet light, engineers in Orange County, California have been turning what used to be considered useless wastewater into drinking water for more than 25 years. David Sedlak’s research team at Berkeley has developed technologies to improve the treatment processes. Series: "Cal Future Forum: Our Changing World" [Science] [Show ID: 33071]

At a time of uncertain water supplies, how can we get the most use of our water? By passing water through a material called a reverse osmosis membrane, adding a small amount of hydrogen peroxide and exposing it to ultraviolet light, engineers in Orange County, California have been turning what used to be considered useless wastewater into drinking water for more than 25 years. David Sedlak’s research team at Berkeley has developed technologies to improve the treatment processes. Series: "Cal Future Forum: Our Changing World" [Science] [Show ID: 33071]

At a time of uncertain water supplies, how can we get the most use of our water? By passing water through a material called a reverse osmosis membrane, adding a small amount of hydrogen peroxide and exposing it to ultraviolet light, engineers in Orange County, California have been turning what used to be considered useless wastewater into drinking water for more than 25 years. David Sedlak’s research team at Berkeley has developed technologies to improve the treatment processes. Series: "Cal Future Forum: Our Changing World" [Science] [Show ID: 33071]

Scientists agree that California’s droughts are cyclical and appear to be growing worse. While some technologies have been developed to address shortages, water policy remains a divisive issue in the Golden State, and not necessarily along traditional Republican-Democratic party lines. Instead, the splits are evident between agricultural and urban industries, the Central Valley and coastal communities, and environmentalists and fracking proponents, among others. Join moderator Dick Beahrs, State Water Resources Control Board Chair Felicia Marcus, former US Representative Mel Levine and David Sedlak, director of the Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley for a timely discussion on finding bipartisan solutions to ensure a sustainable water supply in California. Presented by the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 30123]

Scientists agree that California’s droughts are cyclical and appear to be growing worse. While some technologies have been developed to address shortages, water policy remains a divisive issue in the Golden State, and not necessarily along traditional Republican-Democratic party lines. Instead, the splits are evident between agricultural and urban industries, the Central Valley and coastal communities, and environmentalists and fracking proponents, among others. Join moderator Dick Beahrs, State Water Resources Control Board Chair Felicia Marcus, former US Representative Mel Levine and David Sedlak, director of the Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley for a timely discussion on finding bipartisan solutions to ensure a sustainable water supply in California. Presented by the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 30123]

Scientists agree that California’s droughts are cyclical and appear to be growing worse. While some technologies have been developed to address shortages, water policy remains a divisive issue in the Golden State, and not necessarily along traditional Republican-Democratic party lines. Instead, the splits are evident between agricultural and urban industries, the Central Valley and coastal communities, and environmentalists and fracking proponents, among others. Join moderator Dick Beahrs, State Water Resources Control Board Chair Felicia Marcus, former US Representative Mel Levine and David Sedlak, director of the Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley for a timely discussion on finding bipartisan solutions to ensure a sustainable water supply in California. Presented by the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 30123]

Scientists agree that California’s droughts are cyclical and appear to be growing worse. While some technologies have been developed to address shortages, water policy remains a divisive issue in the Golden State, and not necessarily along traditional Republican-Democratic party lines. Instead, the splits are evident between agricultural and urban industries, the Central Valley and coastal communities, and environmentalists and fracking proponents, among others. Join moderator Dick Beahrs, State Water Resources Control Board Chair Felicia Marcus, former US Representative Mel Levine and David Sedlak, director of the Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley for a timely discussion on finding bipartisan solutions to ensure a sustainable water supply in California. Presented by the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 30123]

Scientists agree that California’s droughts are cyclical and appear to be growing worse. While some technologies have been developed to address shortages, water policy remains a divisive issue in the Golden State, and not necessarily along traditional Republican-Democratic party lines. Instead, the splits are evident between agricultural and urban industries, the Central Valley and coastal communities, and environmentalists and fracking proponents, among others. Join moderator Dick Beahrs, State Water Resources Control Board Chair Felicia Marcus, former US Representative Mel Levine and David Sedlak, director of the Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley for a timely discussion on finding bipartisan solutions to ensure a sustainable water supply in California. Presented by the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 30123]

Scientists agree that California’s droughts are cyclical and appear to be growing worse. While some technologies have been developed to address shortages, water policy remains a divisive issue in the Golden State, and not necessarily along traditional Republican-Democratic party lines. Instead, the splits are evident between agricultural and urban industries, the Central Valley and coastal communities, and environmentalists and fracking proponents, among others. Join moderator Dick Beahrs, State Water Resources Control Board Chair Felicia Marcus, former US Representative Mel Levine and David Sedlak, director of the Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley for a timely discussion on finding bipartisan solutions to ensure a sustainable water supply in California. Presented by the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 30123]

UC Berkeley professor, David Sedlak, discusses the revolutions in urban water systems and to forecast what the next generation of our urban water systems will look like, which he calls Water 4.0. Dr. Sedlak takes us through the circumstances that surrounded the development of major technological revolutions in how water was supplied, treated and disposed of, and he's got intriguing and provocative ideas on the need for and shape of a new revolution in our urban water systems.

UC Berkeley professor, David Sedlak, discusses the revolutions in urban water systems and to forecast what the next generation of our urban water systems will look like, which he calls Water 4.0. Dr. Sedlak takes us through the circumstances that surrounded the development of major technological revolutions in how water was supplied, treated and disposed of, and he’s got intriguing and provocative ideas on the need for and shape of a new revolution in our urban water systems.

Water is one of the most important natural resources. This panel explores the innovations in technology and affordability of water, waste water and the economics and regulation of water. Moderator: Richard Luthy, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford. Panel: Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security; David Sedlak, Co-Director, Berkeley Water Center. and Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering. UC Berkeley; David Sunding, Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics. UC Berkeley. Series: "Water, Climate and Society" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Show ID: 26063]

Water is one of the most important natural resources. This panel explores the innovations in technology and affordability of water, waste water and the economics and regulation of water. Moderator: Richard Luthy, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford. Panel: Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security; David Sedlak, Co-Director, Berkeley Water Center. and Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering. UC Berkeley; David Sunding, Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics. UC Berkeley. Series: "Water, Climate and Society" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Show ID: 26063]

David Sedlak is a professor in the school of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. He is also the Deputy Director of the NSF Engineering Center named Renuwit, which stands for Reinventing the nation's urban water infrastructure, and a member of the Berkeley Water Center. http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~sedlak/ http://urbanwatererc.org/TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly [00:00:30] 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with UC Berkeley Civil and environmental engineering professor David Sedlak. He is the deputy director of a new NSF engineering center named renew it, which stands for re-inventing the nation's urban water infrastructure. The center partner [00:01:00] institutions are Stanford, the Colorado School of Mines, New Mexico State University and UC Berkeley. Professor said Lac is a member of the Berkeley Water Center and has been teaching at Berkeley for 17 years. This interview is prerecorded and edited. Professor Sedlak, thanks very much for coming to spectrum and talking with us. Oh, you're welcome. I'm really happy to be here. I wanted to start by laying a foundation a little bit for people who may not be familiar with the [00:01:30] kinds of work that you're doing and the issues related to water that you deal with. Speaker 3: I think my main area of interest is really the way in which we manage water in cities. So that includes everything from the drinking water supply, the waste that we generate, the storm runoff that comes through the streets and the entire urban water cycle. Speaker 2: Can you describe the water cycle in a city? Speaker 3: Sure it is. Yeah. There's no one urban water cycle [00:02:00] in the city. The water cycle that we all learn in junior high school is that the water evaporates from the ocean. It falls in the mountains, the mountain runoff create the streams, the streams throat floated the ocean and then there's a city on the stream. The city picks up water from the river, it goes through a water treatment plant. People use it in their houses, it goes down the drain, it goes to a sewage treatment plant. It goes back in the river and it goes to the ocean. And that might've been the situation 70 or 80 [00:02:30] years ago, but now our cities are much more crowded and the situation's much more diverse. So, for example, many cities that river where they collect their drinking water from is downstream of another city. So the water in that river is already been in and out of the previous city. And so the water supply consists of river water mixed with sewage effluent. Speaker 2: And do you think it's helpful to assess water [00:03:00] globally to give a context in the sense of how much fresh water is there, how much wastewater is there? Speaker 3: There's been a lot of good work done on water, especially at the national or regional level. And one of the things that people often miss is that water in cities is quite different from water at a national scale. So for example, at a national scale, cities only use about 20% of the water. The other 80% goes to agriculture and power plant cooling. But [00:03:30] if you're a city and you run out of water, there's not much solace in the fact that there's a farm hundreds of miles away that has water, or there's a power plant in another state that has that water. So water is a local issue. And cities are places where there's a very large demand for water in a very small space and that stresses their ability to deliver water and leads to water shortages. So you can have a situation where you have a country or a state which has [00:04:00] plenty of water, but you have a city that's running out of water and doesn't have a good option for providing more. Speaker 3: Just to give you an example of a city that almost ran out of water a few years ago, so many of us have seen the photos and news stories about Brisbane, Australia last year when they had tremendous flooding that almost washed away the city will about four or five years ago, that same city almost ran out of water. So Brisbane is a city of around a million people along the gold coast [00:04:30] of Australia. It's Australia is equivalent of Florida that it's a place that developed mainly during the 70s up until the present and they don't have an imported water supply from a long distance. And so they were beholden mainly to one main reservoir. And when Australia went into a drought about 10 years ago, the level of water in that reservoir kept sinking and sinking and sinking. And about four years ago they had about 15% [00:05:00] capacity in the reservoir and they were using about one or 2% a month. And so if the rain didn't return, they were going to actually run out of water and there wasn't going to be any water for the city. So they'd already done the water conservation, they'd already stopped all the wasteful uses of water and they were reaching a point where they would have to shut down the city or take emergency measures to bring water in at very high prices. Speaker 2: Cities [00:05:30] really can't know that this is going to befall them, but they all need to take a much more active role in figuring out what the wiggle room is and their water supply. Speaker 3: With wise planning. Cities can anticipate these pinch points or these crunches in their water supply, but that assumes that you have some foresight. I'll give you an example of a place that has a lot of foresight about their water supply. And that would be Singapore, where water is actually considered national security. So [00:06:00] Singapore, if you're not familiar with the geography, is surrounded by Malaysia. And when the British left and they created two countries in that region, Singapore was still receiving its water from Malaysia. So there's a foreign country that controls your water supply and the founder of Singapore, Lee Kuan, you realize that the country will be very susceptible to Malaysia holding them hostage over their water. And so they established an aggressive plan [00:06:30] to develop alternative water supplies so they can wean themselves from their imported water. And today Singapore's at a place where the imported water supplies only fraction of the total water used in the city. Speaker 2: That kind of planning is that growing worldwide and in the United States, Speaker 3: in the United States especially, it seems like we wait for an emergency to happen. And so when a drought happens, someone says, Gee, we [00:07:00] should be doing something about this. And so in places where droughts have occurred and people have seen the start of this progression of shortages, city managers and water utilities have taken some steps to build up the water supply and make themselves more secure. Good example of that would be orange county in southern California, Orange County which grew after the rest of the Los Angeles area has relatively junior water rights relative to the city of Los Angeles [00:07:30] and many of the other communities that get imported water. And so in order to grow they've had to keep improving their local water supply and take on some innovative programs to augment the public water supply that break them away from imported water sources. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Professor David [00:08:00] said lack about current and future urban water systems. Is there something that individuals can do in terms of recycling water that has an impact?Speaker 3: The best thing people can do to improve the urban waters situation is just to use less water. So the average American uses a hundred gallons or so of water a day, 10 gallons every time we take a shower, a 40 gallons when we washed a load of clothing [00:08:30] in a few gallons. When you flush the toilet, everything else. So if you just think in terms of water use, it's possible to save a lot of water around the house and all of the water you save means that there's that much more water to go around and there's that much more water, water around for the environment. So that's the first thing everyone can do. And I think most of us are guilty in some way or another of wasting water, either leaving the water running while we brush teeth or taking super long showers or just being prolific that with, with our [00:09:00] water use. Speaker 3: I think the other thing that many people don't realize is that there's a connection between water and energy. So there's a lot of energy use in heating water for the house. So if you look at the urban water cycle, we could probably go a long way towards running our urban water system if we didn't heat the water. After all the Romans had flowing water and they didn't have electricity. A lot of our water system functions on gravity, but the minute we start heating many gallons [00:09:30] of water in the home, we're burning a lot of electricity. The other thing that you could do with respect to water is think about runoff and what goes down down into the street. All the junk that we throw out eventually finds its way into the bay and I think most people would be hesitant to just throw a plastic bag or a bucket full of soapy water into the bay if they were standing right next to it. Speaker 3: Well, when you pour it in the street or wash your car or throw some trash in the street, that's [00:10:00] essentially what you do in the home. Is there a way for people to reuse water? There are a lot of people who really want to make a difference with respect to their water. And there's a lot of enthusiasm in the public for something called gray water and gray water is this idea that you have all this water in your house, it's relatively clean. It's the stuff that you, you know the water that was in the sink when you washed your vegetables or it's even the water that was in your washing machine that rinse your clothes after you wash them. [00:10:30] And that we should be able to use this water somehow. And I think it's great that there's this intention to save water and to reuse water and you certainly can collect this water and put it on the plants and the garden. Speaker 3: But it's really not a solution to our larger urban water problems. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One is to do this in an organized way, takes a collection and distribution system. So if you have water from your sink or water from your shower, then [00:11:00] you have to have a way to collect it and you have to have a way to use it and maybe you're going to use it in the garden, but there's no guarantee that that water is going to be safe and free of microbes that can make people sick and there's no guarantee that that's going to be economically attractive once you price out the cost of building all these other pieces. And so new construction, there are many ways to make a building more water efficient, [00:11:30] low flow fixtures and water conserving practices. But the way in which it seems that we're going to make the biggest difference is to think about the whole urban water system and how it can be reinvented to do things differently. Speaker 3: For example, there may be a future when toilets and washing machines don't use water anymore. I have a friend who works for the EPA and he has a vacuum toilet in his house that functions just like [00:12:00] those vacuum toilets on airplanes. So there's nothing that says that 50 years from now we're going to be washing our waists down the toilet with water where there are companies that had been exploring washing machines that use very small quantities of water. So many people were already switched from top loading washing machines to front loading, washing machines that use a fraction of the water. There may be a future where we even cut that two to a fraction once again. So I'm much more confident that technological [00:12:30] innovations will lead the way as opposed to these small scale piece by piece solutions that people feel good about because they're taking an active role but ultimately either turn out to be more expensive than the system we have or have their own sets of limitations. Speaker 3: What sort of advances have there been in sewage treatment over your time of interest? Sure, so sewage treatment plants were [00:13:00] originally designed to to protect surface waters. So really the main reason people built sewage treatment plants was there was too much gunk going into rivers and the fish were dying from lack of oxygen. When you talk about building a sewage treatment plant because you want to recycle the water, perhaps even to put it in the potable water supply, it's a whole different level of technology. So over the last 20 years, technologies have been developed to purify water to a point that you can [00:13:30] have sewage coming in one end of a treatment plant and the water that comes out looks like bottled water coming out of the the store. And there's a whole host of different technologies that are getting less and less expensive every year and are making it more attractive to build these kinds of advanced sewage treatment plants. Speaker 3: Is there a lot of construction of sewage stream and plastic gotta be very expensive? I would imagine that. So the place where you see construction of sewage treatment plants [00:14:00] is in the cities where there's a need to recycle water or to reclaim this sewage as part of the water supply. So, for example, um, Orange County, which I talked about earlier in southern California, built an advanced treatment plant because they wanted to take their sewage and instead of putting it out in the ocean like they used to, they wanted to put it back into the drinking water supply. So they built a very large advanced sewage treatment plant that takes the water and puts it through reverse osmosis membranes. [00:14:30] Those are the same kinds of membranes that are used to desalinate seawater and then subjected to ultraviolet radiation to kill the pathogens along with hydrogen peroxide to break down the chemicals and then putting it into the drinking water supply. Speaker 3: So it's not your grandparents sewage treatment plan. It's really something that's a lot more advanced. And how is that being accepted by the the users? There's a mixed record of public acceptance of advanced sewage treatment [00:15:00] plants for augmenting the water supply. So in Orange County they've had pretty good public acceptance, but they also had a very long program of public education about their water situation. In other places. I'm in San Diego as an example or in Brisbane, Australia. These advanced treatment plants came at the public out of the blue and they really weren't aware that there was a problem and they weren't aware that there were technologies that [00:15:30] had been used as solutions in other places, so when the public heard that there was sewage water going into the water supply, they couldn't accept it and the projects died. A quick death in public hearings. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking with Professor David Sedlak about [00:16:00] current and future urban water systems. Speaker 3: I was wondering if you want to talk about, sure. The kinds of research, my own research mainly focuses on chemicals and water and I'm very interested in the chemicals mainly that are present in sewage that might find their way back into the environment because our treatment plants aren't perfect. I first got into this topic about 15 years ago when I saw a talk from a scientist [00:16:30] from Britain who had found that fish living near sewage treatment plants were feminized. That is they would go out and collect fish below the sewage treatment plant and they couldn't find any male fish. They all were female. And this phenomena of feminisation was really fascinating to me because I thought to myself, well, if this is happening to the fish when they're at the sewage treatment plant, it's quite possible that there's some chemical in there that's responsible. And so that got me very intrigued by [00:17:00] saying, well, I don't really know of any very potent biologically active chemicals that might be able to pass through a sewage treatment plant. Speaker 3: And that started a, a line of inquiry that has stayed with me to this day. The substance that you're talking about, pharmaceuticals, metals, things like that, are there other things that are in the water that you're looking at? Well, so in the case of the feminized fish, it turned out it was steroid hormones. So it was residual amounts [00:17:30] of estrogens, some of them from birth control pills, some that are just produced within the body and they were president minute quantities, part per trillion levels. And that was enough to feminize the fish. But since then we've expanded and looked at a whole range of different chemicals. And what is very interesting about it to is that these are not the kinds of chemicals that people had been looking for before. So up until interest turn to sewage, affluent people were interested in [00:18:00] chemicals that might come from a factory or an industrial process. Speaker 3: But when we look inside of our homes and when we look inside of our commercial activities inside of our kitchens, we see that there are all of these things that are in sewage that we either wouldn't want to put into a river or we wouldn't want to put back into the water supply. So a lot of this then comes down to educating the population so that they stop putting these things in the water. If only it were that easy. You know, many of these chemicals [00:18:30] that we've been studying are not the result of someone doing something wrong. So you know that the interests that people have had in pharmaceuticals over the past 10 years, pharmaceuticals that show up in water, people say, well, we just have to start pouring our pills down the drain when we're done with them. Well guess what? The pills getting poured down the drain is a very minor fraction of the whole. Speaker 3: The majority of the pharmaceuticals that end up in the sewage come from normal use because those drugs go [00:19:00] inside of our body. They do the great things that we've come to rely on and then they come back out and the molecule hasn't been changed at all. So in many cases, if a pharmaceutical is used correctly, it's final repository is the sewage treatment plant. And I don't know of too many people who are willing to give up their aspirin or their heart medication or whatever it is because they want to protect a fish or a downstream drinking water user. [00:19:30] Technology has evolved to the point where these elements can be removed from the water. As a matter of course, we can remove anything we want from water. It's just a question of cost. And I think that that always, that's always the rub in this whole situation. Speaker 3: So if we wanted to, we could take the nastiest water in the world and make it into water that's so clean, we could use it for semiconductor manufacturing. And that's a lot cleaner than drinking water has to be. The problem is that people have come [00:20:00] to expect their water and their wastewater treatment bills to be low. And so if you want to remove these things, it's going to cost money and oftentimes it's going to cost more money than people are willing to pay. You've done a certain amount of work with wetlands and what's your experience with trying to recreate wetlands? So we talked a little bit already about how the systems for removing contaminants from water have to be inexpensive. [00:20:30] And so starting about 25 years ago, people started to toy around with the idea that you could build wetlands and have the wetlands removed some of these residual pollutants for you. Speaker 3: The idea is you have a sewage treatment plant and instead of that water directly into the river, you put it into an area that has wetland plants in it, cat tails, bull rush, the usual kinds of plants, and in that system the pollutants will disappear because [00:21:00] the plants and the bacteria that break down the decaying plants will also degrade the pollutants. And that certainly works quite well for one of the main pollutants in wastewater, which is nitrate. So nitrate, which is a water pollutant, and it's also a nutrient that causes algae to bloom in rivers. Nitrate can be removed quite well in treatment wetlands. What we've been doing for the past few years has been experimenting with wetlands that [00:21:30] are optimized to remove things like pharmaceuticals and personal care products and the chemicals that we find in wastewater. And one of the ways in which we do that is by exploiting sunlight. Speaker 3: Many of these chemicals are unstable in the presence of sunlight. And so if we can build a wetland where we have lots of sunlight penetration, we can actually take advantage of this natural process. And the good news is that it's pretty much free. You're just relying upon [00:22:00] the gravity to flow the water through the wetland system and the sunlight and the bacteria and the plants to break down the pollutants for you. Now there is another aspect of the work we've been doing with wetlands that I think is also important and that is the idea that we can build wetlands within our cities to help treat the storm water runoff and the polluted water that flows through the cities and improve the habitats that way while providing some aesthetic benefit. So perhaps in the [00:22:30] future or urban creeks instead of being concrete channels to quickly move water out, we're even underground drainage pipes might actually have an element of a natural treatment system built into them. Speaker 3: The new center that you've just become part of here at cal, do you want to describe what that is? You know, over the past decade or so in my research, I've been looking at different pieces of this water puzzle. But I recognized a few years ago along with several of my colleagues [00:23:00] that this is too big a problem to solve with individual technologies. It really takes a holistic look at the entire urban water cycle to solve the problem. And so an opportunity came a couple of years ago to apply for an NSF engineering research center. And, and in this case we decided to go after this question of urban water systems and how they're gonna make the transition from their current state, which is a reliance on imported water consumption of energy [00:23:30] pollution to a future state in which they're more self sufficient and immune from droughts. They use less water and they leave the environment in better condition than what they found in. Speaker 3: We put in a, and we were successful, the center launched at the beginning of August. So the acronym is renew it, reinventing the nations, urban water infrastructure. And that's really what we're all about. We would like to see a system that developed during the 19th [00:24:00] century and the 20th century evolve into something that's going to be suitable for the 21st century and you're going to be involved in project work and field work. I think the thing that's the big challenge with our center is to take the technologies that we develop in the laboratory and study at our test sites and actually get them into the urban water system, but really the success of this project is measured by whether [00:24:30] we have a reinvented urban water system in 10 or 20 years. Professor said, luck. Thank you very much for coming on spectrum. Thanks very much for having me. Speaker 1: Oh, Speaker 5: well Speaker 1: the [inaudible] center website is urban water, e r c.org a regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally [00:25:00] over the next few weeks. We can cargo ski joins me for the calendar Speaker 5: in our last episode, Kashara Hari, you mentioned that the bay area science festival is having a pub crawl tonight from six to nine 30 with various venues in San Francisco's mission district participating. This will be a very busy night with lots of places you can stop. Some highlights include nerd night speed dating at the makeout room, which will include lightning talks on dating and romance, a guided tour of natural oddities. I Paxton Gate, a physics circus at Atlas Cafe and a talk [00:25:30] at black and blue tattoo who's hosting Carl Zimmer's presentation on science theme. Tattoos. For more information on these and other activities tonight, visit www.bayareascience.org on Monday, November 7th from seven to 9:00 PM the Berkeley Rep theater at two zero one five Addison is hosting the Berkeley labs science at the theater this month. UC Berkeley's College of natural resources. Professor John Hart will moderate a panel on the secrets of soil. Panelists will discuss how soil microbes change with climate, [00:26:00] how these microbes can lead to better biofuels and how they adapt to extreme environments and mission is free. Speaker 5: Visit www.lbl.gov for more info. MIT President, Dr Susan Hockfield is speaking at the Silicon Valley Bank. Three zero zero five Tasmin drive in Santa Clara on Wednesday, November 9th she'll talk about investing in innovation and scientific research to retain the economic power of the United States. The program starts at 7:00 PM with a check in at six 30 [00:26:30] the event is $7 for students, $12 for Commonwealth club members and $20 for standard admission. Visit www.commonwealthclub.org for more info now several stories. Science insider reports that Lawrence Livermore national laboratory has chosen, noted physicist and National Security Policy Expert Penrose Parnia Albright as their new director. Albright is the 11th director of the lab since it was established in 1952 you places [00:27:00] George Miller who is stepping down after six years. Albright previously served as assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and we'll assume directorship in December, www.llnl.gov has more information. Science news reports at the Advisory Committee on immunization practice announced the recommendation that the vaccine against the human papilloma virus or HPV be used for boys starting at age 11 or 12 HPV can cause genital warts and is the [00:27:30] most common cause of cervical cancer.Speaker 5: So the vaccine is already recommended for girls. While the disease is rarely symptomatic, it is the most commonly sexually transmitted infection in the United States. More than 6 million new infections each year. The vaccine doesn't seem to work against HPV that has already infected an individual, but it is preventative for the uninfected prompting for its early use in both boys and girls. The castle solar car team competed in the world solar challenge in Australia during [00:28:00] October and finished 20th out of 37 teams. The Red Berry commonly called Miracle Fruit has spawned flavor tripping parties as it makes sour foods such as around lemons or bitter foods such as beer, taste sweet like lemonade or ice cream without adding any sugar. While it has been known for more than 40 years that the protein miraculous is the active ingredient in the miracle fruit. It hasn't been clear to how that protein works. Speaker 5: In a paper published in the September 26 edition of the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [00:28:30] University of Tokyo, biochemists, Keiko Ayub and her team state that the miraculous is interaction with the tongue sensors depends on acidity. The team used molecular modeling and experiments where they used human kidney cells, engineered to produce sweet receptor proteins with fluorescent markers and miraculous and substances with different Ph levels. They found that miraculous had no effect ph 6.7 or higher but had an effect that increased as the Ph decreased from 6.5 to 4.8 they suggest that miraculous [00:29:00] binds to sweet receptors at neutral ph and then functionally changes in acidic environments. Studying miraculous may eventually lead to better ways of sweetening foods without increasing caloric content. Speaker 1: [inaudible] music card during the show is from a less Donna David album titled Folk and Acoustic [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. You're happy to hear from listeners. If you have [00:29:30] comments about the show, please send them to us. Our email address is full spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com join us into [inaudible] time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David Sedlak is a professor in the school of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. He is also the Deputy Director of the NSF Engineering Center named Renuwit, which stands for Reinventing the nation's urban water infrastructure, and a member of the Berkeley Water Center. http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~sedlak/ http://urbanwatererc.org/TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly [00:00:30] 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with UC Berkeley Civil and environmental engineering professor David Sedlak. He is the deputy director of a new NSF engineering center named renew it, which stands for re-inventing the nation's urban water infrastructure. The center partner [00:01:00] institutions are Stanford, the Colorado School of Mines, New Mexico State University and UC Berkeley. Professor said Lac is a member of the Berkeley Water Center and has been teaching at Berkeley for 17 years. This interview is prerecorded and edited. Professor Sedlak, thanks very much for coming to spectrum and talking with us. Oh, you're welcome. I'm really happy to be here. I wanted to start by laying a foundation a little bit for people who may not be familiar with the [00:01:30] kinds of work that you're doing and the issues related to water that you deal with. Speaker 3: I think my main area of interest is really the way in which we manage water in cities. So that includes everything from the drinking water supply, the waste that we generate, the storm runoff that comes through the streets and the entire urban water cycle. Speaker 2: Can you describe the water cycle in a city? Speaker 3: Sure it is. Yeah. There's no one urban water cycle [00:02:00] in the city. The water cycle that we all learn in junior high school is that the water evaporates from the ocean. It falls in the mountains, the mountain runoff create the streams, the streams throat floated the ocean and then there's a city on the stream. The city picks up water from the river, it goes through a water treatment plant. People use it in their houses, it goes down the drain, it goes to a sewage treatment plant. It goes back in the river and it goes to the ocean. And that might've been the situation 70 or 80 [00:02:30] years ago, but now our cities are much more crowded and the situation's much more diverse. So, for example, many cities that river where they collect their drinking water from is downstream of another city. So the water in that river is already been in and out of the previous city. And so the water supply consists of river water mixed with sewage effluent. Speaker 2: And do you think it's helpful to assess water [00:03:00] globally to give a context in the sense of how much fresh water is there, how much wastewater is there? Speaker 3: There's been a lot of good work done on water, especially at the national or regional level. And one of the things that people often miss is that water in cities is quite different from water at a national scale. So for example, at a national scale, cities only use about 20% of the water. The other 80% goes to agriculture and power plant cooling. But [00:03:30] if you're a city and you run out of water, there's not much solace in the fact that there's a farm hundreds of miles away that has water, or there's a power plant in another state that has that water. So water is a local issue. And cities are places where there's a very large demand for water in a very small space and that stresses their ability to deliver water and leads to water shortages. So you can have a situation where you have a country or a state which has [00:04:00] plenty of water, but you have a city that's running out of water and doesn't have a good option for providing more. Speaker 3: Just to give you an example of a city that almost ran out of water a few years ago, so many of us have seen the photos and news stories about Brisbane, Australia last year when they had tremendous flooding that almost washed away the city will about four or five years ago, that same city almost ran out of water. So Brisbane is a city of around a million people along the gold coast [00:04:30] of Australia. It's Australia is equivalent of Florida that it's a place that developed mainly during the 70s up until the present and they don't have an imported water supply from a long distance. And so they were beholden mainly to one main reservoir. And when Australia went into a drought about 10 years ago, the level of water in that reservoir kept sinking and sinking and sinking. And about four years ago they had about 15% [00:05:00] capacity in the reservoir and they were using about one or 2% a month. And so if the rain didn't return, they were going to actually run out of water and there wasn't going to be any water for the city. So they'd already done the water conservation, they'd already stopped all the wasteful uses of water and they were reaching a point where they would have to shut down the city or take emergency measures to bring water in at very high prices. Speaker 2: Cities [00:05:30] really can't know that this is going to befall them, but they all need to take a much more active role in figuring out what the wiggle room is and their water supply. Speaker 3: With wise planning. Cities can anticipate these pinch points or these crunches in their water supply, but that assumes that you have some foresight. I'll give you an example of a place that has a lot of foresight about their water supply. And that would be Singapore, where water is actually considered national security. So [00:06:00] Singapore, if you're not familiar with the geography, is surrounded by Malaysia. And when the British left and they created two countries in that region, Singapore was still receiving its water from Malaysia. So there's a foreign country that controls your water supply and the founder of Singapore, Lee Kuan, you realize that the country will be very susceptible to Malaysia holding them hostage over their water. And so they established an aggressive plan [00:06:30] to develop alternative water supplies so they can wean themselves from their imported water. And today Singapore's at a place where the imported water supplies only fraction of the total water used in the city. Speaker 2: That kind of planning is that growing worldwide and in the United States, Speaker 3: in the United States especially, it seems like we wait for an emergency to happen. And so when a drought happens, someone says, Gee, we [00:07:00] should be doing something about this. And so in places where droughts have occurred and people have seen the start of this progression of shortages, city managers and water utilities have taken some steps to build up the water supply and make themselves more secure. Good example of that would be orange county in southern California, Orange County which grew after the rest of the Los Angeles area has relatively junior water rights relative to the city of Los Angeles [00:07:30] and many of the other communities that get imported water. And so in order to grow they've had to keep improving their local water supply and take on some innovative programs to augment the public water supply that break them away from imported water sources. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Professor David [00:08:00] said lack about current and future urban water systems. Is there something that individuals can do in terms of recycling water that has an impact?Speaker 3: The best thing people can do to improve the urban waters situation is just to use less water. So the average American uses a hundred gallons or so of water a day, 10 gallons every time we take a shower, a 40 gallons when we washed a load of clothing [00:08:30] in a few gallons. When you flush the toilet, everything else. So if you just think in terms of water use, it's possible to save a lot of water around the house and all of the water you save means that there's that much more water to go around and there's that much more water, water around for the environment. So that's the first thing everyone can do. And I think most of us are guilty in some way or another of wasting water, either leaving the water running while we brush teeth or taking super long showers or just being prolific that with, with our [00:09:00] water use. Speaker 3: I think the other thing that many people don't realize is that there's a connection between water and energy. So there's a lot of energy use in heating water for the house. So if you look at the urban water cycle, we could probably go a long way towards running our urban water system if we didn't heat the water. After all the Romans had flowing water and they didn't have electricity. A lot of our water system functions on gravity, but the minute we start heating many gallons [00:09:30] of water in the home, we're burning a lot of electricity. The other thing that you could do with respect to water is think about runoff and what goes down down into the street. All the junk that we throw out eventually finds its way into the bay and I think most people would be hesitant to just throw a plastic bag or a bucket full of soapy water into the bay if they were standing right next to it. Speaker 3: Well, when you pour it in the street or wash your car or throw some trash in the street, that's [00:10:00] essentially what you do in the home. Is there a way for people to reuse water? There are a lot of people who really want to make a difference with respect to their water. And there's a lot of enthusiasm in the public for something called gray water and gray water is this idea that you have all this water in your house, it's relatively clean. It's the stuff that you, you know the water that was in the sink when you washed your vegetables or it's even the water that was in your washing machine that rinse your clothes after you wash them. [00:10:30] And that we should be able to use this water somehow. And I think it's great that there's this intention to save water and to reuse water and you certainly can collect this water and put it on the plants and the garden. Speaker 3: But it's really not a solution to our larger urban water problems. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One is to do this in an organized way, takes a collection and distribution system. So if you have water from your sink or water from your shower, then [00:11:00] you have to have a way to collect it and you have to have a way to use it and maybe you're going to use it in the garden, but there's no guarantee that that water is going to be safe and free of microbes that can make people sick and there's no guarantee that that's going to be economically attractive once you price out the cost of building all these other pieces. And so new construction, there are many ways to make a building more water efficient, [00:11:30] low flow fixtures and water conserving practices. But the way in which it seems that we're going to make the biggest difference is to think about the whole urban water system and how it can be reinvented to do things differently. Speaker 3: For example, there may be a future when toilets and washing machines don't use water anymore. I have a friend who works for the EPA and he has a vacuum toilet in his house that functions just like [00:12:00] those vacuum toilets on airplanes. So there's nothing that says that 50 years from now we're going to be washing our waists down the toilet with water where there are companies that had been exploring washing machines that use very small quantities of water. So many people were already switched from top loading washing machines to front loading, washing machines that use a fraction of the water. There may be a future where we even cut that two to a fraction once again. So I'm much more confident that technological [00:12:30] innovations will lead the way as opposed to these small scale piece by piece solutions that people feel good about because they're taking an active role but ultimately either turn out to be more expensive than the system we have or have their own sets of limitations. Speaker 3: What sort of advances have there been in sewage treatment over your time of interest? Sure, so sewage treatment plants were [00:13:00] originally designed to to protect surface waters. So really the main reason people built sewage treatment plants was there was too much gunk going into rivers and the fish were dying from lack of oxygen. When you talk about building a sewage treatment plant because you want to recycle the water, perhaps even to put it in the potable water supply, it's a whole different level of technology. So over the last 20 years, technologies have been developed to purify water to a point that you can [00:13:30] have sewage coming in one end of a treatment plant and the water that comes out looks like bottled water coming out of the the store. And there's a whole host of different technologies that are getting less and less expensive every year and are making it more attractive to build these kinds of advanced sewage treatment plants. Speaker 3: Is there a lot of construction of sewage stream and plastic gotta be very expensive? I would imagine that. So the place where you see construction of sewage treatment plants [00:14:00] is in the cities where there's a need to recycle water or to reclaim this sewage as part of the water supply. So, for example, um, Orange County, which I talked about earlier in southern California, built an advanced treatment plant because they wanted to take their sewage and instead of putting it out in the ocean like they used to, they wanted to put it back into the drinking water supply. So they built a very large advanced sewage treatment plant that takes the water and puts it through reverse osmosis membranes. [00:14:30] Those are the same kinds of membranes that are used to desalinate seawater and then subjected to ultraviolet radiation to kill the pathogens along with hydrogen peroxide to break down the chemicals and then putting it into the drinking water supply. Speaker 3: So it's not your grandparents sewage treatment plan. It's really something that's a lot more advanced. And how is that being accepted by the the users? There's a mixed record of public acceptance of advanced sewage treatment [00:15:00] plants for augmenting the water supply. So in Orange County they've had pretty good public acceptance, but they also had a very long program of public education about their water situation. In other places. I'm in San Diego as an example or in Brisbane, Australia. These advanced treatment plants came at the public out of the blue and they really weren't aware that there was a problem and they weren't aware that there were technologies that [00:15:30] had been used as solutions in other places, so when the public heard that there was sewage water going into the water supply, they couldn't accept it and the projects died. A quick death in public hearings. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We're talking with Professor David Sedlak about [00:16:00] current and future urban water systems. Speaker 3: I was wondering if you want to talk about, sure. The kinds of research, my own research mainly focuses on chemicals and water and I'm very interested in the chemicals mainly that are present in sewage that might find their way back into the environment because our treatment plants aren't perfect. I first got into this topic about 15 years ago when I saw a talk from a scientist [00:16:30] from Britain who had found that fish living near sewage treatment plants were feminized. That is they would go out and collect fish below the sewage treatment plant and they couldn't find any male fish. They all were female. And this phenomena of feminisation was really fascinating to me because I thought to myself, well, if this is happening to the fish when they're at the sewage treatment plant, it's quite possible that there's some chemical in there that's responsible. And so that got me very intrigued by [00:17:00] saying, well, I don't really know of any very potent biologically active chemicals that might be able to pass through a sewage treatment plant. Speaker 3: And that started a, a line of inquiry that has stayed with me to this day. The substance that you're talking about, pharmaceuticals, metals, things like that, are there other things that are in the water that you're looking at? Well, so in the case of the feminized fish, it turned out it was steroid hormones. So it was residual amounts [00:17:30] of estrogens, some of them from birth control pills, some that are just produced within the body and they were president minute quantities, part per trillion levels. And that was enough to feminize the fish. But since then we've expanded and looked at a whole range of different chemicals. And what is very interesting about it to is that these are not the kinds of chemicals that people had been looking for before. So up until interest turn to sewage, affluent people were interested in [00:18:00] chemicals that might come from a factory or an industrial process. Speaker 3: But when we look inside of our homes and when we look inside of our commercial activities inside of our kitchens, we see that there are all of these things that are in sewage that we either wouldn't want to put into a river or we wouldn't want to put back into the water supply. So a lot of this then comes down to educating the population so that they stop putting these things in the water. If only it were that easy. You know, many of these chemicals [00:18:30] that we've been studying are not the result of someone doing something wrong. So you know that the interests that people have had in pharmaceuticals over the past 10 years, pharmaceuticals that show up in water, people say, well, we just have to start pouring our pills down the drain when we're done with them. Well guess what? The pills getting poured down the drain is a very minor fraction of the whole. Speaker 3: The majority of the pharmaceuticals that end up in the sewage come from normal use because those drugs go [00:19:00] inside of our body. They do the great things that we've come to rely on and then they come back out and the molecule hasn't been changed at all. So in many cases, if a pharmaceutical is used correctly, it's final repository is the sewage treatment plant. And I don't know of too many people who are willing to give up their aspirin or their heart medication or whatever it is because they want to protect a fish or a downstream drinking water user. [00:19:30] Technology has evolved to the point where these elements can be removed from the water. As a matter of course, we can remove anything we want from water. It's just a question of cost. And I think that that always, that's always the rub in this whole situation. Speaker 3: So if we wanted to, we could take the nastiest water in the world and make it into water that's so clean, we could use it for semiconductor manufacturing. And that's a lot cleaner than drinking water has to be. The problem is that people have come [00:20:00] to expect their water and their wastewater treatment bills to be low. And so if you want to remove these things, it's going to cost money and oftentimes it's going to cost more money than people are willing to pay. You've done a certain amount of work with wetlands and what's your experience with trying to recreate wetlands? So we talked a little bit already about how the systems for removing contaminants from water have to be inexpensive. [00:20:30] And so starting about 25 years ago, people started to toy around with the idea that you could build wetlands and have the wetlands removed some of these residual pollutants for you. Speaker 3: The idea is you have a sewage treatment plant and instead of that water directly into the river, you put it into an area that has wetland plants in it, cat tails, bull rush, the usual kinds of plants, and in that system the pollutants will disappear because [00:21:00] the plants and the bacteria that break down the decaying plants will also degrade the pollutants. And that certainly works quite well for one of the main pollutants in wastewater, which is nitrate. So nitrate, which is a water pollutant, and it's also a nutrient that causes algae to bloom in rivers. Nitrate can be removed quite well in treatment wetlands. What we've been doing for the past few years has been experimenting with wetlands that [00:21:30] are optimized to remove things like pharmaceuticals and personal care products and the chemicals that we find in wastewater. And one of the ways in which we do that is by exploiting sunlight. Speaker 3: Many of these chemicals are unstable in the presence of sunlight. And so if we can build a wetland where we have lots of sunlight penetration, we can actually take advantage of this natural process. And the good news is that it's pretty much free. You're just relying upon [00:22:00] the gravity to flow the water through the wetland system and the sunlight and the bacteria and the plants to break down the pollutants for you. Now there is another aspect of the work we've been doing with wetlands that I think is also important and that is the idea that we can build wetlands within our cities to help treat the storm water runoff and the polluted water that flows through the cities and improve the habitats that way while providing some aesthetic benefit. So perhaps in the [00:22:30] future or urban creeks instead of being concrete channels to quickly move water out, we're even underground drainage pipes might actually have an element of a natural treatment system built into them. Speaker 3: The new center that you've just become part of here at cal, do you want to describe what that is? You know, over the past decade or so in my research, I've been looking at different pieces of this water puzzle. But I recognized a few years ago along with several of my colleagues [00:23:00] that this is too big a problem to solve with individual technologies. It really takes a holistic look at the entire urban water cycle to solve the problem. And so an opportunity came a couple of years ago to apply for an NSF engineering research center. And, and in this case we decided to go after this question of urban water systems and how they're gonna make the transition from their current state, which is a reliance on imported water consumption of energy [00:23:30] pollution to a future state in which they're more self sufficient and immune from droughts. They use less water and they leave the environment in better condition than what they found in. Speaker 3: We put in a, and we were successful, the center launched at the beginning of August. So the acronym is renew it, reinventing the nations, urban water infrastructure. And that's really what we're all about. We would like to see a system that developed during the 19th [00:24:00] century and the 20th century evolve into something that's going to be suitable for the 21st century and you're going to be involved in project work and field work. I think the thing that's the big challenge with our center is to take the technologies that we develop in the laboratory and study at our test sites and actually get them into the urban water system, but really the success of this project is measured by whether [00:24:30] we have a reinvented urban water system in 10 or 20 years. Professor said, luck. Thank you very much for coming on spectrum. Thanks very much for having me. Speaker 1: Oh, Speaker 5: well Speaker 1: the [inaudible] center website is urban water, e r c.org a regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally [00:25:00] over the next few weeks. We can cargo ski joins me for the calendar Speaker 5: in our last episode, Kashara Hari, you mentioned that the bay area science festival is having a pub crawl tonight from six to nine 30 with various venues in San Francisco's mission district participating. This will be a very busy night with lots of places you can stop. Some highlights include nerd night speed dating at the makeout room, which will include lightning talks on dating and romance, a guided tour of natural oddities. I Paxton Gate, a physics circus at Atlas Cafe and a talk [00:25:30] at black and blue tattoo who's hosting Carl Zimmer's presentation on science theme. Tattoos. For more information on these and other activities tonight, visit www.bayareascience.org on Monday, November 7th from seven to 9:00 PM the Berkeley Rep theater at two zero one five Addison is hosting the Berkeley labs science at the theater this month. UC Berkeley's College of natural resources. Professor John Hart will moderate a panel on the secrets of soil. Panelists will discuss how soil microbes change with climate, [00:26:00] how these microbes can lead to better biofuels and how they adapt to extreme environments and mission is free. Speaker 5: Visit www.lbl.gov for more info. MIT President, Dr Susan Hockfield is speaking at the Silicon Valley Bank. Three zero zero five Tasmin drive in Santa Clara on Wednesday, November 9th she'll talk about investing in innovation and scientific research to retain the economic power of the United States. The program starts at 7:00 PM with a check in at six 30 [00:26:30] the event is $7 for students, $12 for Commonwealth club members and $20 for standard admission. Visit www.commonwealthclub.org for more info now several stories. Science insider reports that Lawrence Livermore national laboratory has chosen, noted physicist and National Security Policy Expert Penrose Parnia Albright as their new director. Albright is the 11th director of the lab since it was established in 1952 you places [00:27:00] George Miller who is stepping down after six years. Albright previously served as assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and we'll assume directorship in December, www.llnl.gov has more information. Science news reports at the Advisory Committee on immunization practice announced the recommendation that the vaccine against the human papilloma virus or HPV be used for boys starting at age 11 or 12 HPV can cause genital warts and is the [00:27:30] most common cause of cervical cancer.Speaker 5: So the vaccine is already recommended for girls. While the disease is rarely symptomatic, it is the most commonly sexually transmitted infection in the United States. More than 6 million new infections each year. The vaccine doesn't seem to work against HPV that has already infected an individual, but it is preventative for the uninfected prompting for its early use in both boys and girls. The castle solar car team competed in the world solar challenge in Australia during [00:28:00] October and finished 20th out of 37 teams. The Red Berry commonly called Miracle Fruit has spawned flavor tripping parties as it makes sour foods such as around lemons or bitter foods such as beer, taste sweet like lemonade or ice cream without adding any sugar. While it has been known for more than 40 years that the protein miraculous is the active ingredient in the miracle fruit. It hasn't been clear to how that protein works. Speaker 5: In a paper published in the September 26 edition of the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [00:28:30] University of Tokyo, biochemists, Keiko Ayub and her team state that the miraculous is interaction with the tongue sensors depends on acidity. The team used molecular modeling and experiments where they used human kidney cells, engineered to produce sweet receptor proteins with fluorescent markers and miraculous and substances with different Ph levels. They found that miraculous had no effect ph 6.7 or higher but had an effect that increased as the Ph decreased from 6.5 to 4.8 they suggest that miraculous [00:29:00] binds to sweet receptors at neutral ph and then functionally changes in acidic environments. Studying miraculous may eventually lead to better ways of sweetening foods without increasing caloric content. Speaker 1: [inaudible] music card during the show is from a less Donna David album titled Folk and Acoustic [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. You're happy to hear from listeners. If you have [00:29:30] comments about the show, please send them to us. Our email address is full spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com join us into [inaudible] time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.