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Shaping Tomorrow's Built Environment Today
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A roof tile that switches between a heating and a cooling state could lower heating and cooling bills. In a paper in the journal Device, UC Santa Barbara researchers Charlie Xiao, Elliot Hawkes and Bolin Liao presented an adaptive tile, which when deployed in arrays on roofs, can lower heating costs in winter and cooling costs in summer without electronics. At about four inches square, this passive thermoregulating device blends Liao’s expertise in thermal science and Hawkes’ work in mechanism design — employing a movable surface that can change its thermal properties in response to a range of temperatures. It wasn’t until Xiao’s idea of using a wax motor that the idea of creating adaptive roof tiles took its final shape. Read more
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The idea for this project came to the Liao and Hawkes years ago during long drives between Santa Barbara and northern California. Credit: Verstappen Photography/ Unsplash
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Intel is joining data center work at RISE, the Swedish Research Institute for Sustainable Transition Technologies. The chip giant will take part in RISE's data center testbed, known as the Infrastructure and Cloud research and test Environment (ICE), aiming to find ways to remove heat sustainably from chips, using air and liquid cooling. RISE's large-scale test environment includes data center modules, climate and heat boxes, wind tunnels, edge and liquid cooling testbeds and the ability to take simulations and concepts to the point of implemented demonstrations and tests for data collection and analysis. Read more
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Air quality in the office may affect our creativity at work, scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have discovered. Working with the global air filter manufacturer Camfil on a shared research project, the NTU Singapore scientists found in a study that high levels of VOCs—gases released from products such as detergents, pesticides, perfumes, aerosol sprays and paint—affected the study participants' creativity when they were asked to build 3D models with Lego bricks. The findings detailed in the study, published in Scientific Reports, shed light on the importance of indoor air quality on our creative cognition, said the research team led by Assistant Professor Ng Bing Feng and Associate Professor Wan Man Pun, Cluster Directors for Smart & Sustainable Building Technologies at the Energy Research Institute. Read more
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Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged Monday that Japan will "take the lead" in efforts to achieve a carbon-free Asia as he spoke at a multinational forum focused on discussing decarbonization measures in Tokyo. Kishida said Japan will try to create a huge "decarbonization market" capable of attracting global investments to Asia. In a joint statement issued after the first-ever summit of the Asia Zero Emission Community, or AZEC, the participants also confirmed their cooperation on maintaining economic growth and ensuring energy security as well as cutting CO2 emissions. Read more
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In Other News
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By Andy Pearson, Ph.D., C.Eng, Fellow ASHRAE
Last month, I promised to explore teaching math in school. This has been an interest of mine for a long time (since I was a school pupil) but was rekindled by an excellent discussion I heard recently on BBC Radio 4’s program, “The Infinite Monkey Cage.” The panelists on the program were a mathematician, a statistician and a comedian. Download here
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