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Researchers at the University of Waterloo have invented a fast, affordable way for developing communities to test their drinking water for potentially deadly E. coli.

Unlike current tests that cost about $70 and can take up to three days to get back from the lab, the Waterloo invention uses paper strips similar to those in litmus tests to produce results in less than three hours at a cost of 50 cents.

New measurements of molecular iodine in the Arctic show that even a tiny amount of the element can deplete ozone in the lower atmosphere.

Human production of fixed nitrogen, used mostly to fertilize crops, now accounts for about half of the total fixed nitrogen added to the Earth both on land and in the oceans.

An examination of long-term data for lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management finds that land treatments in the southwestern United States are increasingly large, expensive and related to fire and invasive species control.

The study, recently published in Restoration Ecology, reveals an extensive legacy of land management decisions and provides new insight on strategies to increase future treatment efficacy in an extremely water-limited region.

Centuries-old nautical charts, mapped by long-deceased sailors to avoid shipwrecks, have been used by modern scientists to study loss of coral reefs.