used for scouring arsenic, bacteria and cloudiness out of rural drinking water
There, the residual water from boiling the flat, oval-shaped lobes of prickly pear for salads and other dishes was used to clear up cloudy water drawn from the river before use for cooking or drinking.
Mucilage is the clear, gooey, viscous liquid from within the cactus which helps to seal water inside the plant so it can survive desert-dry conditions.
She found that the mucilage binds to the dirt and causes the particles to coagulate, forming large enough clumps that they can settle out of the water.
The group's more recent research has shown that the mucilage can also form a complex with arsenic, a carcinogenic water contaminant that can occur naturally or from industrial or agricultural pollution.
"Sometimes we get 80 percent removal, and sometimes we get lower than 50 percent removal," Alcantar said. "We don't yet know exactly what it is; we haven't found what are the exact best conditions for the mucilage [to get the most arsenic removal]."
Album sales dropped for a seventh consecutive year, but a dramatic increase in the sale of digital tracks helped keep the music industry afloat in 2006.
"High School Musical" is the first soundtrack to become the No. 1 album since "Titanic" sold 9.3 million copies in 2002, a feat that should have Disney -- an indie in the recorded music field -- smiling.
album sales drop again; high school musical was the 1st soundtrack to become the #1 album since Titanic; "no major label act could beat a TV soundtrack aimed at tweens".