Thursday, August 07. 2008Comme sous un nuageVersion imprimable/lisible ICI. - Un article écrit par la journaliste Sandrine Perroud paru dans Le Temps du samedi 26/7/08, à propos des "chauferettes en hiver" et des "brumisateurs en été". Avec cette phrase tirée de la fin de l'article:
Related Links:Personal comment: A mettre bien entendu en parallèle avec notre projet pour Nestlé, RealRoom(s), qui traitait principalement de cette question des espaces conditionnés, de cette sensation de confort globalisée: hygrométrie contrôlée, chaleur figée sur 21°, niveau d'éclairage constant, confort acoustique (Cf. Related links). RealRoom(s) tentait alors d'élargir le spectre spatial des espaces conditionnés, en connectant ceux-ci à des sources diverses, génératrices de climat variables et variés.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Design
at
12:16
Defined tags for this entry: climate, conditioning, design, design (products), equipment, globalization, interferences, territory
A Spherical Camera SensorA stretchable circuit allows researchers to make simple, high-quality camera sensors. By Kate Greene -
Today's digital cameras are remarkable devices, but even the most advanced cameras lack the simplicity and quality of the human eye. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have built a spherical camera that follows the form and function of a human eye by building a circuit onto a curved surface. The curved sensor has properties that are found in eyes, such as a wide field of view, that can't be produced in digital cameras without a lot of complexity, says John Rogers, lead researcher on the project. "One of the most prominent [features of the human eye] is that the detector surface of the retina is not planar like the digital chip in a camera," he says. "The consequence of that is [that] the optics are well suited to forming high-quality images even with simple imaging elements, such as the single lens of the cornea." Electronic devices have been, for the most part, built on rigid, flat chips. But over the past decade, engineers have moved beyond stiff chips and built circuits on bendable sheets. More recently, researchers have gone a step beyond simple bendable electronics and put high-quality silicon circuits on stretchable, rubberlike surfaces. The advantage of a stretchable circuit, says Rogers, is that it can conform over curvy surfaces, whereas bendable devices can't. The key to the spherical camera is a sensor array that can withstand a curve of about 50 percent of its original shape without breaking, allowing it to be removed from the stiff wafer on which it was originally fabricated and transferred to a rubberlike surface. "Doing that requires more than just making the detector flexible," says Rogers. "You can't just wrap a sphere with a sheet of paper. You need stretchability in order to do a geometry transformation." The array, which consists of a collection of tiny squares of silicon photodetectors connected by thin ribbons of polymer and metal, is initially fabricated on a silicon wafer. It is then removed from the wafer with a chemical process and transferred to a piece of rubberlike material that was previously formed into a hemisphere shape. At the time of transfer, the rubber hemisphere is stretched out flat. Once the array has been successfully adhered to the rubber, the hemisphere is relaxed into its natural curved shape. Because the ribbons that connect the tiny islands of silicon are so thin, they are able to bend easily without breaking, Rogers says. If two of the silicon squares are pressed closer together, the ribbons buckle, forming a bridge. "They can accommodate strain without inducing any stretching in the silicon," he says. To complete the camera, the sensor array is connected to a circuit board that connects to a computer that controls the camera. The array is capped with a globelike cover fitted with a lens. In this setup, the sensor array mimics the retina of a human eye while the lens mimics the cornea.
"This technology heralds the advent of a new class of imaging devices with wide-angle fields of view, low distortion, and compact size," says Takao Someya, a professor of engineering at the University of Tokyo, who was not involved in the research. "I believe this work is a real breakthrough in the field of stretchable electronics." Rogers isn't the first to use the concept of a stretchable electronic mesh, but this work distinguishes itself in that it is not constrained to stretching in limited directions, like other stretchable electronic meshes. And importantly, his is the first stretchable mesh to be implemented in an artificial eye camera. The camera's resolution is 256 pixels. At the moment, it's difficult to improve resolution due to the limitations of the fabrication facilities at the University of Illinois, says Rogers. "At some level, it's a little frustrating because you have this neat electronic eye and everything's pixelated," he says. But his team has sidestepped the problem by taking another cue from biology. The human eye dithers from side to side, constantly capturing snippets of images; the brain pieces the snippets together to form a complete picture. In the same way, Rogers's team runs a computer program that makes the images crisper by interpolating multiple images taken from different angles. The most immediate application for these eyeball cameras, says Rogers, is most likely with the military. The simple, compact design could be used in imaging technology in the field, he suggests. And while the concept of an electronic eye conjures up images of eye implants, Rogers says that at this time he is not collaborating with other researchers to make these devices biocompatible. However, he's not ruling out the possibility in the future. Related Links:Buildings--the Biggest Bang for the Buck in Global CO2 AbatementThe Vattenfall/McKinsey Report "A Cost Curve for Greenhouse Gas Reduction" contains a graph (below) that everybody needs to see. The graph shows how much greenhouse gas abatement potential lies in some popular strategies/technologies, and simultaneously shows the monetary cost of each strategy. The first thing you notice when you see the graph is that the cost for many abatement strategies is negative. That means these strategies make money, they don't cost money. The second thing that you notice is most of the money-making strategies are in the building industry: better insulation, better HVAC, better lighting, better water heating. Also in the money-making realm are better vehicle fuel efficiency and sugarcane ethanol. Forestry has perhaps the largest single abatement potential but is one of the more expensive methods; the power industry has the largest total abatement potential, but different technologies have different costs. There are some aspects of the graph I am skeptical about. For instance, the extremely high price of biodiesel--in San Francisco right now, biodiesel is cheaper than petro-diesel. (But Jørgen Vos of Sustainability Planning Partners and Natural Logic has done a paper indicating biodiesel makes less sense ecologically than we might think.) Also, nuclear power shows up as cheaper than wind, which is not true according to Rocky Mountain Institute's Winning the Oil Endgame. And finally, sequestration by plankton in oceans and biochar in soils do not even appear on the graph. But still, the graph is a fantastic visualization of most strategies and their costs. It should inform strategic planning in companies and governments.
One governmental strategy for CO2 abatement is cap-and-trade systems. Emissions trading schemes in the EU and US currently only count CO2 abatement at the source--energy generation. But anyone who knows about efficiency (such as Amory Lovins, LBL, LLNL, NREL, and many other research labs) will be quick to point out that avoiding one unit of end-user electricity use avoids three units of primary energy use, due to the inefficiencies of generating electricity. Therefore, end-user efficiency should be valued right alongside clean power generation. A movement has started to get efficiency equal footing in emissions trading schemes. Lend Lease Corporation, Lincolne Scott, and Advanced Environmental (a subdivision of Lincolne Scott) have proposed an Integrated Emissions & Efficiency Trading Scheme (EETS). The 70-page document details both the rationale of the system and how it would work. For instance, they quote the Stern Report and Bill Clinton, saying: "If upstream emissions from heat and electricity are included, emissions from buildings total 40% of global emissions and up to 80% of total greenhouse gas emissions in our cities and towns. The building sector provides more potential for quick, deep and cost effective greenhouse gas mitigation than any other industry..." They also quote the McKinsey study, saying "High value carbon credits of AUD $34 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2-e) could realistically achieve a carbon zero position in commercial office buildings at nil cost and, based on the McKinsey cost curves, energy efficiency in buildings represents an estimated cost negative abatement of US$45 billion to the United States economy, and $5.2 billion to the Australian economy." How would cap-and-trade work for efficiency? It would be similar to emissions trading, but instead of caps on emission from power generation, building owners would calculate the amount of CO2-equivalent emissions their buildings use (adding up all their electricity, oil, gas, and other energy use), and there would be a cap for an allowable amount of CO2 emission per square meter of building. This would not replace normal emission trading. The integrated EETS system would have an efficiency cap-and-trade market in addition to the power generation emission cap-and-trade market, working in parallel. Detractors have argued against efficiency counting for emissions offsets because of concerns about double-counting. (If a building uses less energy, couldn't the building owner trade abatement credits while the power company also trades abatement credits for not generating the additional power that would have been used?) The EETS avoids this by having the two separate buckets, one for power generation and one for building energy use. Each is its own separate market, and efficiency credits would not count toward a nation's Kyoto Protocol goals. Another argument against such a scheme is that cap-and-trade schemes are a form of tax and subsidy, and there is no need to subsidize CO2 abatement methods that are already money-makers (and they clearly are, by the McKinsey graph above). Architect and consultant Huston Eubank, formerly of the World Green Building Council and Rocky Mountain Institute, explained that in existing emissions trading schemes, "A project only qualifies... if it can prove that the emissions reduction would not have occurred without the project. In its strictest sense, this means that the project must not have been financially feasible without carbon credits." This causes the unintended consequence of not encouraging financially sustainable strategies for environmental sustainability. True sustainability needs to be commercially viable as well as ecologically helpful: isn't it a much better use of taxpayer money to launch an industry that will become self-sustaining rather than spend money on things which would never be economically feasible by themselves? Obviously the scale of our environmental challenge is large enough that we can't limit ourselves to money-making schemes--we need to pump money into every technology that works--but it would be foolish for us to skip over the low-hanging fruit in favor of more expensive, slower, and less proven strategies. That is effectively what we are doing with the emissions trading schemes that exist now. The exclusion of money-making strategies for CO2 abatement in the building industry also ignores the perverse incentives of the building industry's economy. This is an industry where the people paying for a building's energy use are not the same people who built the building, where first cost is nearly always at odds with life-cycle cost. A cap-and-trade scheme is perfect for an industry like this, because it introduces a new feedback loop that counteracts (and in the long run overwhelms) the existing perverse incentives. It effectively rationalizes the economy of the industry, internalizing some of the externalities of inefficiency.
How likely is an EETS to be implemented? Eubank provided me with documents from the UNEP's Sustainable Buildings & Construction Initiative, which said, "At the moment, a number of projects regarding energy efficiency in buildings - such as those that introduce solar power, more efficient lighting devices, HVAC systems, and cooking devices, such as stoves in rural areas that require less biomass in their operation - are eligible for the flexible instruments of the Kyoto Protocol, particularly under the CDM. These projects are, however, still rather few in number and limited to active solutions, such as PV cells, or other technological options. Passive solutions, such as the design of better oriented and ventilated buildings, are not yet applicable under the instruments of the Kyoto Protocol." What's required for passive systems to count are universally agreed-upon benchmarks and measurement standards, so that legitimate quantitative values can be established for energy savings. Luckily, data and calculation methods for this have been built and refined for over a decade in the US, as part of the LEED rating system, and have been worked on by some of the best labs and consultancies in the industry. The World Green Building Council and other groups can work together to establish similar benchmarks and measurement systems for national and international EETS systems. However, as Eubank pointed out, "Getting UNFCCC approval for a new methodology is a long and arduous process. Thus the importance of supporting this initiative." Encouragingly, one of the UNEP's documents said that "At a June side event in Bonn, Germany, the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] secretariats requested UNEP-SBCI's to assist in reviewing how to put the building sector on the agenda at the upcoming Conference of the Parties 14 in Poznan, Poland in December 2008." Public awareness of Lend Lease, Lincolne Scott, and Advanced Environmental's integrated efficiency and emissions trading scheme is still slim, however, and it needs to come to the attention of more policymakers. It would be foolish of us to bypass the low-hanging fruit of 40% of the world's CO2 emissions, which can be abated not only without economic hardship but with economic gain. "An integrated EETS will... improve the energy efficiency of the vast majority (98%) of building stock: existing buildings which hold the lowest cost abatement opportunities in the world." Related Links:Facebook, Coca-Cola and Medical Aid in Africa
A recent development on Facebook has shown that social networking may be more powerful than simply a vehicle for gossip between friends, co-workers and ex-significant others. When Coca-Cola executives responded to a Facebook-based call for humanitarian action, it showed a new opportunity for dialogue between consumers and corporations: smart organizers can harness this kind of rapid message-spreading medium to foster a conversation between the decision-makers at the top and the masses at the point-of-use. Incensed by the irony that remote African communities had limitless access to bottles of Coca-Cola, but no infrastructure to get medicines to sick children, innovator Simon Berry decided to speak up and ask Coca-Cola to dedicate a fraction of its distribution network to carry medicines for simple, widespread and life-threatening ailments like diarrhea. At first, Berry's ideas fell on deaf ears; after all he was the only recruit in a one-man army. Now, a modest Facebook publicity campaign has catapulted Berry's message into the Coca-Cola boardroom. Salvatore Gabola, global head of stakeholder relations for the beverage giant, took notice of the social networking momentum and has invited Berry to Coca-Cola's European headquarters to discuss his idea (read their recent correspondence here). The size of the campaign's Facebook following – 3,811 at our last visit – is still tiny relative to Coca-Cola's consumer base. But the viral, self-publicizing nature of Berry's campaign is nothing to sneeze at when you're an executive of a company like Coca-Cola, facing significant skepticism from the kinds of creative-minded, marketer-wary users who populate Facebook and other sites like it. If Coca-Cola can indeed facilitate a medical supply network, the company stands to gain enormous approval from some tougher consumers. I, for one, hope Coke decides (for any reason) to act on Berry's suggestion. Allying the social conscience of global multinationals with a worthy cause may prove to be an important first step towards a better world. If you are interested in reading more about this campaign, check out Simon's blog for the latest on his work and his growing band of eager volunteers. Also, if you have some ideas that might be useful to the project, or would like to get involved directly, feel free to do so here. Hesseltje S. van Goor is a soon-to-be-Media-Management-graduate with a day-time job as marketing executive for Systemlink Ireland. She spends her spare time working on her dissertation and researching green technology.. Photo credits: Flickr/Nick Gripton and Flickr/Tielmann; bike image appeared on Simon Berry's blog Related Links:
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fabric | rblgThis blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research. We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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