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1. Produced water, money water, living water: Anthropological perspectives on water and fracking

   https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1272  

   de_Rijke, Kim (March 2018, WIREs Water)

   Advances in hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”) technologies and horizontal drilling have enabled the extraction of previously unviable unconventional oil and gas resources. However, as global environmental concerns have become more prominent and unconventional oil and gas developments have moved ever closer to residential centers, public scrutiny of the industry and its methods and impacts of extraction have increased. Water impacts feature prominently among the contemporary societal concerns about fracking. These concerns include the large water requirements of the process itself, as well as concerns about the potential pollution of groundwater and the (underground) environment more broadly. Anthropologists have undertaken qualitative field research on unconventional gas developments in a variety of settings, largely among local communities in regions of extraction. The perspectives employed by anthropologists are commonly drawn from the broader social science literature, including the anthropology of water and natural resources, science and technology studies, studies of social movements, and studies which examine the energy‐society nexus. Based on the shortcomings of the published anthropological accounts, interdisciplinary research collaboration with hydrologists, engineers and economists, as well as a more fulsome engagement with the variety of hopes, fears and dreams of fracking and unconventional gas, is recommended.WIREs Water2018, 5:e1272. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1272 This article is categorized under:Engineering Water > Sustainable Engineering of WaterScience of Water > Water QualityHuman Water > Methods 

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2. The role of water mobility on water-responsive actuation of silk

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52715-6  

   Podbevšek, Darjan; Jung, Yeojin; Khan, Maheen_K; Yu, Honghui; Tu, Raymond_S; Chen, Xi (September 2024, Nature Communications)

   Abstract Biological water-responsive materials that deform with changes in relative humidity have recently demonstrated record-high actuation energy densities, showing promise as high-performance actuators for various engineering applications. However, there is a lack of theories capable of explaining or predicting the stress generated during water-responsiveness. Here, we show that the nanoscale confinement of water dominates the macroscopic dehydration-induced stress of the regenerated silk fibroin. We modified silk fibroin’s secondary structure, which leads to various distributions of bulk-like mobile and tightly bound water populations. Interestingly, despite these structure variations, all silk samples start to exert force when the bound-to-mobile (B/M) ratio of confined water reaches the same level. This critical B/M water ratio suggests a common threshold above which the chemical potential of water instigates the actuation. Our findings serve as guidelines for predicting and engineering silk’s WR behavior and suggest the potential of describing the WR behavior of biopolymers through confined water. 

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3. Indicators of climate change impacts on the water cycle and water management

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03057-5  

   Peters-Lidard, Christa D.; Rose, Kevin C.; Kiang, Julie E.; Strobel, Michael L.; Anderson, Michael L.; Byrd, Aaron R.; Kolian, Michael J.; Brekke, Levi D.; Arndt, Derek S. (March 2021, Climatic Change)
4. Truck Impact on Buried Water Pipes in Interdependent Water and Road Infrastructures

   https://doi.org/10.3390/su132011288  

   Uddin, Shihab; Lu, Qing; Nguyen, Hung (October 2021, Sustainability)

   In the development of sustainable and resilient infrastructures to adapt to the rapidly changing natural and social environment, the complexity of the dependencies and interdependencies within critical infrastructure systems need to be fully understood, as they affect various components of risk and lead to cascading failures. Water and road infrastructures are highly co-located but often managed and maintained separately. One important aspect of their interdependence is the impact of vehicle loading on a road on underlying water pipes. The existing studies lack a comprehensive evaluation of this subject and do not consider possible critical failure scenarios. This study constructed finite element models to analyze the responses of buried water pipes to vehicle loads under an array of scenarios, including various loads, pipe materials, pipe dimensions, and possible extreme conditions, such as corrosion in pipes and a sinkhole under the pipe. The results showed negligible impact of heavy trucks on buried water pipes. The pipe deflection under a maximum allowable truck load in the worst condition was still within the allowable range specified in standards such as those from the American Water Works Association. This implies that the impact of heavy vehicles on water pipes may not need to be considered in the context of the interdependency between water and road infrastructures, which leads to a more unidirectional dependency between these two infrastructures. 

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5. The water-energy nexus at water supply and its implications on the integrated water and energy management

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.04.408  

   Khalkhali, Masoumeh; Westphal, Kirk; Mo, Weiwei (September 2018, Science of The Total Environment)