PLEA is an organisation engaged in a worldwide discourse on sustainable architecture and urban design through annual international conferences, workshops and publications.
It has a membership of several thousand professionals, academics and students from over 40 countries.
Participation in PLEA activities is open to all whose work deals with architecture and the built environment, who share our objectives and who attend PLEA events.
PLEA stands for “Passive and Low Energy Architecture”, a commitment to the development, documentation and diffusion of the principles of bioclimatic design and the application of natural and innovative techniques for sustainable architecture and urban design.
PLEA serves as an open, international, interdisciplinary forum to promote high quality research, practice and education in environmentally sustainable design.
Los científicos dicen que podría ser desarrollado en laboratorios de cualquier parte del mundo.
ABC.es / Madrid
IPC PAS, Grzegorz Krzyzewski Una investigadora presenta una estructura de grafeno – ABC.es
El grafeno es considerado por muchos como el material del futuro. Compuesto por nanoestructuras de carbono, podría sustituir al silicio en la fabricación de semiconductores y revolucionar la informática y la electrónica dando un paso de gigante en esos campos. El problema es que sigue siendo una sustancia costosa y difícil de fabricar. Los científicos buscan de forma infatigable la manera de obtener grafeno en grandes cantidades de forma barata y eficaz, y un grupo de investigadores europeos ha dado un nuevo paso al respecto. Han desarrollado un método de bajo coste para la fabricación de láminas de grafeno de varias capas. Lo ventajoso del nuevo método es que es simple, no requiere ningún equipo especial y puede ser implementado en cualquier laboratorio de cualquier parte del mundo.
El método, desarrollado por científicos del Instituto de Química Física de la Academia Polaca de Ciencias (IPC PAS) en Varsovia y del Instituto de Investigación Interdisciplinaria (IRI), en Lille (Francia) puede ser otro paso prometedor para la fabricación de grafeno a gran escala.
Considered by many as the most promising material of the future, graphene still remains an expensive and hard-to-fabricate substance. Researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, and the Interdisciplinary Research Institute in Lille developed a low cost method for manufacturing multilayered graphene sheets. The new method does not require any specialized equipment and can be implemented in any laboratory.
A low cost method for producing graphene sheets has been developed in cooperation within research project by teams from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw and the Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IRI) in Lille, France. The method is simple enough to be provided in almost any laboratory throughout the world.
Graphene was discovered in 2004, by peeling off carbon layers from graphite using an ordinary scotch tape. «In what had been peeled off the researchers were able to find one-atom-thick sheets. And that was graphene. If we are thinking about industrial applications of graphene, we have to find better controlled methods for producing this material in a large scale, without using an expensive, specialized equipment», says Izabela Kamińska, a PhD student from the IPC PAS, a scholarship holder of the Foundation for Polish Science within the International PhD Projects Programme. Kamińska has carried out her experiments at the International Research Institute.
Considering the structure, graphene is a two dimensional system composed of six-membered carbon rings. The hexagonal graphene lattice resembles a honeycomb, with the difference that the graphene sheet has the lowest possible thickness: of one atom only.
Investigadores del MIT dicen que esta nueva técnica puede purificar el agua tres veces más rápido que los métodos actuales.
ABC.es / Madrid
Asociación Americana de Química Grafeno para filtrar el agua salada – ABC.es
A pesar de que los océanos y mares contienen alrededor del 97% del agua existente sobre la Tierra, en la actualidad apenas un 1% del suministro mundial de agua potable proviene del agua desalada. Realmente muy poco. Los científicos creen que este recurso podría ser más y mejor explotado, con técnicas de desalinización más eficientes y menos costosas. Dos investigadores del Instituto de Tecnología de Massachusetts (MIT) han dado un interesante paso en ese camino. En simulaciones, dicen haber demostrado que los nanoporos de grafeno pueden filtrar la sal del agua a una velocidad de 2 a 3 veces mayor que la mejor tecnología de desalinización comercial que existe en la actualidad (la ósmosis inversa).
Los investigadores creen que la superior permeabilidad al agua del grafeno podría conducir a técnicas de desalinización que requieren menos energía y equipos, según explican en Physorg. «Este trabajo muestra que algunos de los inconvenientes de las técnicas de desalinización actuales se podrían evitar con la invención de materiales membrana más eficientes y precisos», dice Jeffrey C. Grossman, del MIT. Los investigadores creen que este material permite el flujo real de agua, evita por completo que se filtre la sal y tiene una permeabilidad mucho mayor en comparación a la ósmosis inversa. Y todo ello mucho más rápido que con las técnicas actuales.
neoteo Compresibilidad negativa: se comprime al estirarlo, se expande al presionarlo – ABC.es
Sí, parece que hay un error en el título de este artículo, pero realmente es así: un equipo de científicos de la Northwestern University en Evanston (Illinois) ha desarrollado un metamaterialque se expande cuando uno intenta comprimirlo. Si construyésemos un almohadón con este material, cuando te sentases sobre él se elevaría en lugar de hundirse. Los físicos se refieren a este tipo de propiedad como “compresibilidad negativa» y el producto podría ser aprovechado para crear recubrimientos protectores para vehículos militares.
Los metamateriales pueden cambiar el mundo que conocemos. Así como el grafeno parece estar revolucionando la tecnología electrónica, permitiendo semiconductores mucho más eficientes que los que se consiguen utilizando el “viejo” silicio, los denominados metamateriales -compuestos con propiedades que desafían el sentido común- seguramente cambiarán aspectos de la realidad que hoy damos por sentados.
Muchas veces hemos oído hablar de estos materiales en el contexto de la búsqueda de mantos capaces de convertir en invisible a quien los utiliza, pero esta no es la única aplicación que puede tener esta tecnología. Los científicos de la Northwestern han desarrollado un metamaterial que se expande cuando uno intenta comprimirlo. Liderados por Nicolaou Zacarías y Adilson Motter, los físicos han puesto a punto un material que posee lo que denominan “compresibilidad negativa”, es decir, se comprime cuando se le estira y se expande cuando se presiona.
EVANSTON, Ill. — It’s not magic, but new materials designed by two Northwestern University researchers seem to exhibit magical properties. Some contract when they should expand, and others expand when they should contract.
When tensioned, ordinary materials expand along the direction of the applied force. The new metamaterials (artificial materials engineered to have properties that may not be found in nature) do the opposite when tensioned — they contract. Other materials designed by the researchers expand when compressed.
“Materials are networks of connected constituents, and when you apply tension or pressure, they can respond in surprising ways,” said Adilson E. Motter, the Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
“Think of a piece of rod that you tension by pulling its ends with your fingers,” he said. “It would normally get longer, but for these materials it will get shorter.”
Motter and Zachary G. Nicolaou applied network concepts to design the new materials, all of which exhibit negative compressibility transitions. Their results are published this week in Nature Materials. Nicolaou, an undergraduate physics student at Northwestern when the work was done, now is a first-year graduate student at Caltech.
One of the 3-D printers at work in the Mediated Matter group at the MIT Media Lab. Photo: Melanie Gonick
Imagine being able to “print” an entire house. Or a four-course dinner. Or a complete mechanical device such as a cuckoo clock, fully assembled and ready to run. Or a printer capable of printing … yet another printer?
These are no longer sci-fi flights of fancy. Rather, they are all real (though very early-stage) research projects underway at MIT, and just a few ways the Institute is pushing forward the boundaries of a technology it helped pioneer nearly two decades ago. A flurry of media stories this year have touted three-dimensional printing — or “3DP” — as the vanguard of a revolution in the way goods are produced, one that could potentially usher in a new era of “mass customization.”
One of the first practical 3-D printers, and the first to be called by that name, was patented in 1993 by MIT professors Michael Cima, now the Sumitomo Electric Industries Professor of Engineering, and Emanuel Sachs, now the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Unlike earlier attempts, this machine has evolved to create objects made of plastic, ceramic and metal. The MIT-inspired 3DPs are now in use “all over the world,” Cima says.
The initial motivation was to produce models for visualization — for architects and others — and help streamline the development of new products, such as medical devices. Cima explains, “The slow step in product development was prototyping. We wanted to be able to rapidly prototype surgical tools, and get them into surgeons’ hands to get feedback.”
Environmental Management research and practice is increasingly aided by and dependent on information technology. Enviromatics 2010 addresses recent developments in Geomatics and their applications in the field of environmental management. It addresses all aspects of the geo-information cycle, from data acquisition, processing, management, visualization and delivery. Enviromatics 2010 brings together researchers, developers, data providers and users from all over the world to discuss the potentials and challenges of using information technology in environmental management and planning.
The symposium provides a forum to examine and discuss current practices and future directions related to the application of information technology to environmental management and planning. The symposium aims to provide the participants an occasion to share and exchange experiences and research findings, to stimulate more ideas and useful insights regarding the uses of Geomatics and their applications in the field of environmental management, and to debate their views on future research and developments.
Topics of Interest
We invite scholars and practitioners in Geomatics, computer engineering, environmental management to submit papers on any topic related to conference theme. Papers may reflect on a wide spectrum of issues related to information technology and its applications in environmental issues. Topics of interests include -but are not limited to:
Ecological and Environmental Geomatics
Artificial Intelligence for Ecological and Environmental Studies
Analytical and Monitoring Technologies for Environmental Informatics Studies
Modeling for Ecological and Environmental Systems
Geographical Analysis for Urban and Regional Planning & Development
Virtual Realty Applications in Environmental Management
Informatics of Biodiversity
Technologies for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Mitigation
Internet-Based Applications
Geo-Information for Environmental Emergencies
E-Libraries and E-Learning in Environmental Management
Knowledge Systems for Environmental Management
Decision Support Systems
GIS And Spatial Information Management
Intelligent Mapping
Photogrammetry, Laser Scanning And Modeling
Data Acquisition Technologies
3D Data Capture and Processing In Cultural Heritage
Digital Reconstructions and 3D Modeling
Multimedia, Data Management and Archiving
The Economics of Environmental Informatics
Usability and Interface Design for Environmental Applications
Methods of and Issues Related To Accessibility and Interoperability
Other Areas of Environmental Systems Science and Information Technology
Important Dates
Full Paper Submission for Review: May 15, 2010
Notification of acceptance: June 305, 2010
Deadline for final papers: July 30, 2010
According to the «2009 DesignIntelligence Sustainable Design Survey» (Report #223, Vol. 15, No. 4), recently published by the journal DesignIntelligence, practitioners believe the architecture and design profession still has a lot of work to do to more closely align practice with principles of sustainability.
The survey, which records data submitted by the leaders of the most successful architecture and design firms around the United States, asked participants how well they believe their own firms are progressing in achieving higher levels of sustainable design, if they think their firms lead or trail their peers in that regard, and how design leaders are altering their habits to reduce their personal carbon footprint. Only 13 percent of architecture and design firms from among those surveyed reported they are «very satisfied» with their firms’ progress in achieving sustainability in their projects, while 45 percent said they are «satisfied,» 18 percent said they are «dissatisfied,» and 1 percent said they are «very dissatisfied.» (The remaining 23 percent reported they were «neutral» on their firms’ progress.)
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