
A seed that could bring clean water to millions - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2018-06-seed-millions.html
======
Hasz
We do not lack the technology to produce clean water. What is lacking,
however, is the infrastructure to deliver that water safely and effectively to
those who need it.

Unfortunately, "lay more pipe" is not nearly as sexy a headline as "seemingly
insignificant thing that could do x for y millions of people in z place", so
we get these resume boosters and they never turn out all that well.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Pipe not going to do it, even wells are tricky in some areas (you can pollute
the entire region's water source from one well.) Delivering by jugs doesn't
scale and pipes cost a fortune...maybe a central water source every xxx people
in urban areas and one in a village in other places, to start?

------
janwillemb
Maybe I'm a bit too cynical here, but there have been so many of these
discoveries that "could" solve the water and food problems of third world
countries, that I'm inclined to read these kind of titles as "a seed that _won
't_ bring clean water to millions".

~~~
duncan_bayne
That's because historically, there's been one escape from third-world extreme
poverty: capitalism.

[https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=770](https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=770)

 _Since its economic liberalization reforms in 1991, India’s average income
has increased by 7.5 percent per year. That means that average income has more
than tripled over the last quarter century. As wealth increased, the poverty
rate in India declined by almost 24 percent. But most significantly, for the
Dalits – the poorest and lowest caste in Indian society – the poverty rate
during this period declined even faster, by 31 percent. That means that in the
nation that has by far the largest number of people in extreme poverty, it is
the people at the very bottom of the social strata who are getting richer
faster._

You can't, and won't, 'fix' broken States with technology, or charity, or
education. First, they must fix their political systems to enable the
creation, saving and investment of wealth.

It's a source of some surprise to me that the above is ever controversial
among folks who admire Paul Graham, and have read his essays on wealth
creation.

~~~
glenstein
I think this is right in the sense that, people struggling to survive are
offered no choice but to play by the rules of a system that otherwise leaves
them to die. It's frying pan or fire, so of course they have to be
capitalists.

Over the first two centuries of industrial revolution, lifting the bottom
~billion out of drought, malnutrition and early death has never been pursued
for its own sake or incentivized in its own right. But it has sometimes been a
fortunate, peripheral outcome of working within systems structured first and
foremost by the flow of capital, as you correctly note with the example of
India's relatively recent economic liberalization.

~~~
nine_k
There's a simple problem: if you're the top dog and _desperately_ need to keep
your population fed, you have to have the food to do that. But if your society
is structured so that it cannot efficiently produce enough food, or other
goods, you're unable to do that, no matter how good your intentions are.

It was exactly the problem that killed Soviet Union: by winter of 1985, there
was not enough food to even distribute via the then-imposed food stamp system.
This led to a change of course that ultimately ended up with the dissolution
of USSR and a new rise of the capitalist Russia.

------
amelius
> The seed of M. oleifera contains at least eight different proteins.

Seems like an understatement. Doesn't any cell contain thousands of different
proteins?

~~~
stochastic_monk
You are correct. According to [0], M. oleifera has 19465 known protein-coding
genes, so you're probably looking at something on the order of thousands of
proteins.

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26032590](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26032590)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Sounds similar to this article about 8 years ago.

[https://m.phys.org/news/2010-09-miracle-tree-basis-low-
cost-...](https://m.phys.org/news/2010-09-miracle-tree-basis-low-cost-
purification.html)

------
pkphilip
This is hardly news. The use of Moringa extracts for water purification and
sewage treatment has been going on for sometime now and there are companies
with commercial products using this technology:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inV8Uzhphxs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inV8Uzhphxs)

