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Qatar and other countries of Gulf Cooperation Council are among the most water scarce countries in the world and are being characterized as "high‐water risk" countries by Water Resource Institute. Therefore, it is important to implement sustainable water resource management that encompass economic, societal, and environmental aspects. In this review article, the Driver‐Pressure‐State‐Impact‐Response framework was used to analyze the water resource system in Qatar in terms of drivers, pressures, change in state, impacts, and responses. It was noted that both economic and population growth together with unsustainable water consumption are major driving forces that are pressurizing the Qatar's water resources (desalinated seawater and renewable groundwater). Currently, desalination plants using Multi‐Stage Flash (MSF) techniques are predominantly being used to meet the rising water demands. However, widespread use of MSF techniques poses several environmental and economic impacts. Therefore, in addition to other management and corrective measures, reverse osmosis (RO) technique has also been suggested to be utilized in desalination industry as a "response" to mitigate those impacts. Since, the performance of RO is mainly affected by biofouling and mineral scaling, the paper also highlights the recent materials (polymers and nano‐materials) used to tackle these problems. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 38:e13081, 2019 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planar alignment of disc‐like nanomaterials is required to transfer their superior anisotropic properties from microscopic individual structures to macroscopic collective assemblies. However, such alignment by electrical or magnetic field is challenging due to their additional degrees of orientational freedom compared to that of rod‐like nanostructures. Here, the realization of planar alignment of suspended graphene sheets using a rotating magnetic field produced by a pair of small NdFeB magnets and subsequent demonstration of high optical anisotropy and potential novel device applications is reported. Compared to partially aligned sheets with a static magnetic field, planar aligned graphene suspensions exhibit a near‐perfect order parameter, much higher birefringence and anisotropic absorption/transmission. A unique feature of discotic nanomaterial assemblies is that the observed order parameter and optical property can vary from isotropic to partial and complete alignment depending on the experimental configuration. By immobilizing and patterning aligned graphene in a UV‐curable polymer resin, we further demonstrated an all‐graphene permanent display, which exhibits wide‐angle, high dark‐bright contrast in either transmission or reflection mode without any polarizing optics. The ability to control and pattern graphene orientation in all three dimensions opens up new exploration and broad device applications of graphene. Planar alignment of suspended graphene sheets is realized with a near‐perfect order parameter and high optical anisotropy by using a rotating magnetic field produced by a pair of small NdFeB magnets, and can be further patterned and immobilized by photolithography. The arbitrary orientational and spatial control has enabled a wide range of device applications of graphene and related materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An aligned graphene assembly amplifies the anisotropic properties of individual sheets, creating in a strong dark/bright contrast in the all‐graphene Panda display. Zhiming M. Wang, Jiming Bao, and co‐workers report in article number 1805255, that such alignment can be achieved with a pair of rotating magnets in an arbitrary direction and space, which opens the opportunity of transfering graphene's superior properties to a macroscopic graphene assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]