April 1999Issue 311



Oysters help clean ocean

JAQUELINE DELIA/RUSH / CAMERA PRESS

Oyster shells are to clean up waste water in Oshima, Japan. ‘Oyster shells harbour large numbers of anaerobic and aerobic microbes on their surfaces. Dirty water is food for these microbes,’ explains Toyokuni Asahina, one of the designers of the wastewater plant. Around 250 tonnes of shells will be used annually to form layers in filtration tanks where the oyster-shell microbes can feast on kitchen, bath and laundry water from 265 households.

New Scientist Vol 161 No 2169




Language Tools
Powered by Ultralingua

Join over 10,000 people just like you. Get e-mail updates about new content, issue alerts, contests, and more!

other articles
FROM THIS ISSUE

Chopstick controversy
China is the biggest consumer, producer and exporter of chopsticks. It fells 25 million trees a year to make 45 billion pairs. Two-thirds are used in China and few are recycled.

Language lessons
English-only policies are under fire in the US.

The facts on War and Peace

Curiosity kills
The killing of journalists worldwide has doubled in 1998.

Empty houses, full shelters
Spain's homeless left out of the country's second-home boom.

more articles
ON RELATED TOPICS

The Bay of Napoli
Horatio Morpurgo visits the scene of the Napoli, a container ship grounded off the coast of Britain, to see what lies beneath it.

Death and the whale
Greenpeace Ocean Defenders blog direct from the brutal kill in the Southern Ocean. PLUS: Sea quotes and an illustrated guide to Ocean Resources.

Lost at sea
Life on board for seafarers sometimes resembles slavery. Martin Whitfield tells their stories. PLUS: An illustrated guide to Ocean Life.

Conakry

The rise of slime
Red tides, jelly-fish plagues, explosions of primitive organisms. Kenneth R Weiss reports on evolution in reverse. PLUS: An illustrated guide to Ocean Currents.

recently
IN THIS COLUMN

Court in the act
Apartheid accomplices Coca-Cola, Barclays, BP et al are heading for court

A kick in the balls
New Zealand intelligence gathering or US & NATO spy satellite?

Inside China’s prisons
It’s difficult to know for sure how many political prisoners there currently are in China, but it’s safe to say that there are thousands of them.

Starved by the system
The companies making a killing from the food crisis

Planktos wiped out
Planktos – RIP

Cyclone survival
Women in Orissa, India, have ways of dealing with calamity






Voices from the margins:

Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.