http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A new mobile phone app developed by a University of Nottingham researcher is changing the lives of millions of people in Africa by giving them the power to instantly report problems with poor sanitation. http://phys.org/news284802654.html Technology Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:00:04 EST news284802654 To celebrate World Toilet Day on November 19, researchers at Columbia University's Engineering School, working in Ghana with Waste Enterprisers Ltd., the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly, are launching a pilot facility to convert fecal sludge into biodiesel fuel, thereby addressing a ubiquitous societal problem and concurrently producing renewable, cost-effective sustainable energy. The team is scaling up its research efforts initiated in a Columbia Engineering lab, and expects this working facility to become a revolutionary new model in sanitation. http://phys.org/news272550770.html Technology Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:33:02 EST news272550770 Cranfield University is to develop a waterless, hygienic toilet with the potential to transform the lives of the 2.5 billion people worldwide without access to basic sanitation, thanks to $800,000 funding from the ‘Reinvent the Toilet Challenge’ of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Water, Sanitation and Hygiene initiative. http://phys.org/news264325822.html Technology Thu, 16 Aug 2012 08:51:14 EST news264325822 Following is a snapshot of the world ahead of the UN's June 20-22 Rio Summit on sustainable development. http://phys.org/news258607949.html Space & Earth Mon, 11 Jun 2012 04:32:40 EST news258607949 Clean drinking water and basic sanitation are human rights. Yet almost 780 million of the world's population still have no access to drinking water and some 2.6 billion people live without sanitary facilities. Water, though, is also an important economic factor: Today, agricultural and manufacturing businesses already use up more than four fifths of this precious commodity. And the demand for water continues to rise. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is expecting that by 2050, global water consumption will have risen by more than half. Some 40 percent of the world‘s population will then be living in regions with extreme water shortages - 2.3 billion people more than today. http://phys.org/news253964510.html Technology Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:41:58 EST news253964510 Can Peepoo stop the flying toilet? A small Swedish company believes so. At the World Water Forum in Marseille, it is promoting a cheap, smart fix for the world's billion slumdwellers. http://phys.org/news250866874.html Technology Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:30:02 EST news250866874 (PhysOrg.com) -- An Oxford University study of 1.65 billion of the world's poor shows that over twice as many live in 'middle-income' countries as in 'low-income' countries. http://phys.org/news242550319.html Other Sciences Thu, 08 Dec 2011 07:05:30 EST news242550319 Developing countries often lack the official government structure needed to collect taxes efficiently. This lack of systematic tax collection limits the ability of those countries to provide public services that aid growth, such as roads, sanitation and access to water. http://phys.org/news225541456.html Other Sciences Wed, 25 May 2011 11:25:55 EST news225541456 Fast-growing Asian economies may be flush with money but filthy toilets remain a blight across the region despite rising standards of living, with dire effects on poverty reduction and public health. http://phys.org/news223530223.html Medicine & Health Mon, 02 May 2011 05:20:01 EST news223530223 A complex sugar may someday become one of the most effective weapons to stop the spread of cholera, a disease that has claimed thousands of lives in Haiti since the devastating earthquake last year. http://phys.org/news214585648.html Chemistry Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:07:41 EST news214585648 About 2.6 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation, including more than 10 million in Kenya’s densely populated urban slums. Given the lack of critical infrastructure, slum dwellers go to the bathroom in holes in the ground surrounded by primitive sheds that are shared by up to 150 people. These "pit latrines" are typically constructed with foreign aid, but funding to maintain them is lacking, and so they often fall into disrepair. As a result, many people resort to open defecation, which contaminates drinking water. http://phys.org/news209386823.html Technology Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:00:35 EST news209386823 (AP) -- Protesters who hold Nepalese U.N. peacekeepers responsible for a deadly outbreak of cholera that has killed 1,000 in three weeks threw stones and threatened to set fire to a base in the country's second-largest city Monday, Haitian radio and eyewitnesses reported. http://phys.org/news209048722.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Nov 2010 14:20:01 EST news209048722 Nearly 1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water. The problem is particularly dire in Ghana, where diarrhea causes 25 percent of all deaths of children below the age of five each year, according to UNICEF. The figure is even higher in northern Ghana, where about half the population get its water from wells, ponds and streams that often contain disease-causing microorganisms. http://phys.org/news191829831.html Technology Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:10:02 EST news191829831 Far more people in India have access to a cell phone than to a toilet and improved sanitation, according to UN experts who published today a 9-point prescription for achieving the world's Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sanitation by 2015. http://phys.org/news190470178.html Other Sciences Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:30:03 EST news190470178 In this months PLoS Medicine Editorial, the editors argue that -- despite recent international objections -- access to clean water should be recognised as a human right. http://phys.org/news165565328.html Space & Earth Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:23:51 EST news165565328 (AP) -- The huge salmonella outbreak from peanut butter represented a failure of the Food and Drug Administration, that agency's new chiefs declared Tuesday - one they hope to fix. http://phys.org/news162577286.html Medicine & Health Tue, 26 May 2009 17:23:27 EST news162577286 A decade after the conclusion of a schistosomiasis control program in Mali, prevalence of the disease had regressed to pre-intervention levels, according to a study published May 5 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. http://phys.org/news160724301.html Medicine & Health Tue, 05 May 2009 06:38:51 EST news160724301 (AP) -- Chinese health officials said Friday that hand, foot and mouth disease has sickened 41,000 people across the country and killed 18 children so far this year. http://phys.org/news157356227.html Medicine & Health Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:04:42 EST news157356227