The Bush administration has approved new energy efficiency standards, which stipulated that new washing machines must use 35 percent less energy by 2007 and water heaters by 5 percent to 9 percent less energy beginning in 2004.

Scientists from the University of Missouri in the United States have developed a fingerprinting technique that could be used to differentiate human waste from non-human variety.

The fingerprinting technique involved the culturing of the bacteria, Escherichia (E) Coli, and the extraction of its DNA. E. Coli are tiny organisms that live in the guts of humans and other warm-blooded animals and are found in the animal and human waste. The DNA of the bacteria is then cut up with a restriction enzyme, a set of molecular scissors that chops the DNA into small fragments when it encounters a particular genetic sequence. Since different strains of E. Coli have different genetic sequences, the resulting mass of chopped up DNA fragments can be turned into a DNA fingerprint that uniquely identifies each E. Coli strain.

The scientists created a DNA library of the strains of E. Coli that live in people, cattle, pigs, horses, dogs, chickens, turkeys and geese. They were able to link the E. Coli strains to the eight animal species, with 85 to 99% accuracy, depending on the species in question.

Researchers from the Pennsylvania State University have discovered that synthetic clay known as swelling mica could be used to separate radioactive radium ions, a natural product of uranium, from water. They experimented with a number of synthetic micas and found that sodium-4 mica was the best synthetic clay for the removal of radium.

The swelling mica will absorb radium ions into its layered structure. When the mica is filled with radium, a shift in the layers occurs and the radium atoms are trapped between the layered structure.

The State Public Service Commission in Maryland has approved a poultry company's plan to build a four-megawatt power plant that would be fueled by chicken litter, a combination of chicken manure and wood chips. The plant would convert approximately 40,000 tons of chicken litter into electricity and steam each year.

A major Japanese company Sanix Inc has announced recently that it will be able to sell electricity generated from a 74,000 kilowatt thermal power plant using fuel produced from recycled waste plastic. The power plant will consume about 705 tonnes of the recycled fuel a day, which provides a means of recycling plastic waste.

Sanix said that construction of the 10 billion yen power plant on Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido will begin in May 2001 and the plant will be ready by August 2002. According to the company, the in-house equipment in the power plant will consume 15% of the electricity generated by the new power plant and the remaining 85% electricity will be sold to both commercial and industrial users in Hokkaido.