HORIZON INTERNATIONAL SOLUTIONS SITE

In London on October 5, 2011, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter addressed an audience of international journalists and partners to announce that the Carter Center-led global campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease has entered its final stage to end this gruesome waterborne parasitic infection. “The poorest, most isolated, most neglected, quite often, the most hopeless people, on earth…now have new hope that their future will be free of this dreaded disease,” said President Carter.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on 7 December 2011 announced it will provide up to $1.8 million for projects across the country to protect Americans’ health and help restore urban waters by improving water quality and supporting community revitalization. The funding is part of EPA’s Urban Waters program, which supports communities in their efforts to access, improve and benefit from their urban waters and the surrounding land. Urban waters are canals, rivers, lakes, wetlands, aquifers, estuaries, bays and oceans.

Water is a precious resource many take for granted until there is too little or too much. Scientists and engineers have positioned instruments at the Susquehanna Shale Hills Observatory at Pennsylvania State University to learn much more about the water cycle there. It is one of six Critical Zone Observatories in the United States.

In the results of a new study, scientists explain how they used DNA to identify microbes present in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the particular microbes responsible for consuming natural gas immediately after the spill.