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Ukraine accused Moscow on Thursday of forcibly relocating hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians from their besieged homes to Russia, where officials believe many will be held as “hostages” to negotiate a surrender from Kyiv. Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudsperson, said 402,000 people – including 84,000 children – have been deported against their will. Russia gave nearly identical figures of those that have been relocated, though claimed that the people wanted to leave. Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev on Thursday said that the roughly 400,000 people evacuated to Russia since the invasion began were from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern...

Vladimir Putin has been accused of deporting Ukrainians to 'filtration' centres before forcibly taking them to remote Siberian towns after confiscating their phones and documents. 'Several thousand' people have so-far been taken, Mariupol city council claimed, before being processed through 'filtration camps' and sent to 'remote cities' in Russia where they will be obliged to stay for years and work for free. -snip- Russian news agencies have reported that buses carrying hundreds of refugees from the besieged southeastern port city Mariupol had arrived in Russia in recent days. Moscow officials also said a trainload of over 280 Ukrainians were being...

Published today in Science Advances, the findings explain that manta rays filter zooplankton, mesoplankton and microcrustaceans with an apparatus different from anything previously seen in any biological or industrial system. "The most common type of filter is a sieve filter, where a particle-containing fluid is passed through a membrane with pores smaller than the particles," said study co-author Jim Strother, assistant professor of integrative biology in the OSU College of Science. Sieve filters include everything from a kitchen colander that strains pasta to membrane filters that produce ultrapure water. Other filter mechanisms are hydrosol filtration, such as the fiber filters...

New York's water is delicious—and filled with tiny crustaceans called "copepods". (Making it possibly not kosher.) H&E stain the water and put it under a microscope and you'll find these little guys. Crunchy closeup after the jump.Delicious!(And completely harmless. Copepods are even known to eat mosquito larvae, so don't think of them as invisible shrimp that are caught in your teeth—think of them as invisible shrimp who make NYC tap water taste fantastic. Like fantastic, quenching shrimp juice.)[Reddit]  

COL NASIR WA SALAM – Civil affairs Soldiers and leaders of the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, joined Iraqi Ministry of Water officials to celebrate the opening of a refurbished water filtration plant near the village of Aqur Quf, Feb. 28. Prominent shaykhs, Iraqi Security Forces and U.S. Soldiers gather at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of a water filtration plant, Feb. 28, in the Zydon region of Iraq. The plant will provide more than 4,000 Iraqi people with clean drinking water. Photo by Spc. Daniel Schneider, 366th Mobile PA Det. The Soldiers, from Company B, 422nd Civil Affairs...

Staff Sgt. Jeff Blanchard, 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion, photographs the work done on one of the canals that feed into a solar powered water filtration system providing clean water to 240 Iraqi families in Zadan, Dec. 5. Photo courtesy of Multi-National Division – Baghdad. BAGHDAD — U.S. Civil Affairs Soldiers assessed solar powered water filtration systems installed by Iraqi contractors here in the Zadan village area of Abu Ghraib, Dec. 5. Soldiers and engineers of the 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion (CAB) rolled out to various villages within the Zadan area, in western Baghdad, to inspect the filtration systems constructed to...

52 REASONS NOT TO MOW 37 WAYS TO HELP TREES Please download with 100% cotton, rice, recycled, or scrap paper Ron Howard, director of A Beautiful Mind and many other films,made his first film at age 8.. an anti mowing film which showed the nature of mowers' attacks on lawns. Art Buchwald: People shouldn't be judged by the length of their grass. In 2003 through now, the world has seen floods, famine, fire, mudslides, hurricanes, tornados and other disasters created by the unprecedented destruction of trees around the world. Trees are nature's weather stabilizers. We need trillions of trees.. new...

Keeping an army provisioned in the desert is a ballet of logistics, particularly when it comes to supplying two vital liquids: diesel fuel and water. Now, using technologies developed for the space program, the U.S. Army is conducting an experiment that could convert the exhaust pipes of military vehicles into water fountains. Later this month, United Technologies Corp.'s Hamilton Sundstrand unit will deliver two military Humvees to the Army for three months of testing at the Aberdeen Proving Ground outside Baltimore. Built into each vehicle's truck bed is a complex system that can recover water from engine exhaust, purifying as...