Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene 2014 Sept - Oct Vol. 9 No.5 | Page 42

Roundup in such a way that the unpolarized light becomes polarized, meaning the light waves travel in one direction. Free online course on urban sanitation starts 13 October By Cor Dietvorst A team of instructors led by Christoph Lüthi from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) are eager to teach you how to plan urban sanitation systems. Together with Sandec/Eawag, EPFL has designed a 5 week online course introducing sector planning tools and frameworks such as Sanitation 21, Community-Led Urban Environmental Sanitation (CLUES) and the Sanitation Systems Approach. The course consists of lecture videos (English, with French subtitles), practical exercises, a homework quiz and a final exam. The questions and explanations for the practical exercises, the homework quiz and the final exam are offered in English and French. Outlining their Greater mouse-eared bat, Myotis myotis, findings in a study from Bulgaria published by in Nature Communications, the researchers admit that they have no idea how the bats are able to detect polarized light. Mysterious crop circle on Bavarian wheat field attracts many visitors Cap Galaxy NGC This is a newly released composite image of the spiral galaxy NGC 4258, which is also known as M106. The image was composed from X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, radio data from the National Science Foundation’s Karl Jansky Very Large Array, optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope as wells as infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. (NASA) Bats Rely on Polarized Light to Reset Their Internal Compasses A species of bats, called Greater mouse-eared bats, use the polarized light of the setting sun to calibrate their internal magnetic compass, which helps the flying animals travel in the right direction, according to a new report. The sun usually gives off unpolarized light, which means that the light waves bounce all over the place. However, at sunset the light waves interact with the atmosphere 42 Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • September - October 2014 On July 28, 2014 photo visitors walked through a crop circle in a wheat field near Raisting, southern Germany. A balloonist had discovered the crop circle earlier on. Since then thousands of esoteric fans came to visit the circle whose appearance is unknown. Farmer Christoph Huttner, the owner of the field, said that he was not responsible for the crop circle. Arsenic in Water Supplies Did you know that arsenic-contaminated water affects the health of over 140 million people worldwide? According to a quote by Allan Smith from the University of California at Berkeley in an article on BBC news, “one in every ten people with high concentrations of arsenic in their water will die from it.” Arsenic consumption leads to higher rates of some cancers, including tumors of the lung, bladder, skin and other lung conditions. Some of these effects show up decades after the first exposure. This issue stems beyond drinking water. Especially in developing countries, food grown in contaminated soil can quickly spread disease throughout the population. For example, rice is typically grown in paddy fields; flooded with potentially contaminated water.