Healthy buildings can help stop Covid-19 spread and boost worker productivity

PUBLISHED SAT, NOV 6 2021
Susan Caminiti@SUSANCAMINITI

KEY POINTS

Healthy buildings have become the latest enticement to bring employees back into the office, and the first step is to make sure ventilation systems are working the way they are supposed to.

Improving indoor air quality in offices could add as much as $20 billion annually to the U.S. economy, according to estimates from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“I don’t think business people realize the power of buildings to not only keep people safe from disease but to lead to better performance,” said Joseph G. Allen, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health associate professor.

VIDEO 4:33

Harvard’s Joseph Allen on indoor air quality, employee health and productivity

Any C-suite executive looking to lure workers back into the office has likely spent more time thinking about indoor air quality and ventilation over the past year-and-a-half than at any other point in their pre-pandemic life.

That’s because healthy buildings have become the latest enticement to bring employees back into the office. As people slowly return to in-person work, they’re naturally concerned with how safe they’ll be. Companies continue to reassure workers that desks, computer keyboards, elevator buttons, and every other public surface are being sufficiently sanitized.

But now they’re also paying closer attention to how healthy the air is inside those buildings — and the impact this can have not only on preventing the spread of Covid-19 and other respiratory ailments but how air quality can affect cognitive function.

“I don’t think business people realize the power of buildings to not only keep people safe from disease but to lead to better performance,” said Joseph G. Allen, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health associate professor and director of the Harvard Healthy Buildings program at the CNBC Workforce Executive Council summit on Wednesday. “Greater ventilation leads to significantly better cognitive function performance of employees. It’s good for worker health and productivity.”

“Droplet dogma is over”

Allen said the increased interest in the air quality inside buildings stems from a better understanding of how Covid-19 spreads. Cleaning surfaces and obeying the six-foot distancing rule made sense when the belief was that the virus spread through droplets emitted when we coughed or sneezed and these droplets couldn’t travel further than six feet.

The reality is that Covid-19 is spread through respiratory aerosols that travel well beyond six feet, Allen said. “When we’re talking, coughing, sneezing, or just breathing, we’re constantly emitting respiratory aerosols of different sizes,” he added. “If we’re infected, those particles carry the virus and can travel across any room and stay aloft for hours. The droplet dogma is over.”

An under-ventilated room or building means these respiratory aerosols will build up and can infect someone well beyond that six-foot distance. “All of the big outbreaks we’ve seen have the same characteristics,” Allen said. “Time indoors in an under-ventilated space. It doesn’t matter if it’s spin class, choir practice, or a restaurant. It’s the same fundamental underlying factors that are driving transmission.”

Businesses can take action to counter this, Allen said. “Just like we’ve made great gains in public health around sanitation, water quality, and food safety, indoor air quality is going to be part of that conversation moving forward,” he said.

Employees wear protective masks at a JLL office in Menlo Park, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Giving buildings a tune-up

The first step is for building managers to determine what systems are in place and if they are operating as they were designed to do. “It seems obvious, but oftentimes we put equipment in and then leave it for 10 or 15 years and never give it a tune-up like we do our cars,” Allen explained.

Maximizing the amount of outdoor air coming into the building is another step to take. And finally, Allen said air filters should be upgraded to what’s called MERV 13. (MERV stands for minimum efficiency reporting value.) He explained that a typical building has a MERV 8 filter that captures about 20% of airborne particles. A MERV 13 filter will capture closer to 90% or more of those particles.

Not only will these higher-grade filters improve air quality to help reduce the spread of viruses, but they can also help workers improve their performance.

Allen’s team at Harvard recently released a study looking at workers from around the world for a year. Each had air quality sensors placed at their desks. A custom-designed smartphone app enabled these workers to take brief cognitive function tests. Allen found that the people with better air ventilation and lower particle levels performed significantly better on these tests than people working in areas where the air quality is worse.

“The beautiful thing about all this is that healthy building strategies help protect against infectious disease, but they’re also good for worker health, productivity, and performance,” Allen said.

In his 2020 book, “Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity” which he co-wrote with Harvard Business School lecturer John D. Macomber, Allen said they show how better air quality and ventilation can lead to bottom-line gains for businesses. His Harvard research and financial simulations found that the benefits of higher ventilation alone are estimated to be between $6,500 and $7,500 per person, per year. In an April 2020 Harvard Business Review article that he co-authored with Macomber, Allen cites researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimating that improving indoor air quality in offices could add as much as $20 billion annually to the U.S. economy.

“Since the late 1970s, in response to the global energy crisis, we started to tighten up our buildings and in the process choked off the air supply in an effort to conserve energy,” Allen said. In doing so, we ushered in the sick building era.

“It’s no surprise that we have high levels of indoor air pollution and sick buildings where people can’t concentrate in conference rooms and constantly feel sleepy at work,” he said.

And contrary to what many think, it’s not just new, modern buildings that can be health-focused. “Any building can be a healthy building and it’s not hard to do and it’s not that expensive,” he added. “In fact, I would argue that healthy buildings aren’t expensive. Sick buildings are what’s expensive.”

 

Portable MicroFactory From Shipping Containers Runs on Solar Power, Reduces Plastic Waste

\5 Nov 2021, 15:21 UTC · 

by Cristina Mircea 

The issue of plastic waste is a global one that can no longer be ignored, especially considering that plastic products are still being sold in massive quantities all over the world. This portable, off-grid MicroFactory made from shipping containers aims to make a difference.

 10 photos

Developed by New York-based company Circular Economy Manufacturing (CEM), the MicroFactory is solar-powered and uses post-consumer plastics to give them a new purpose. The company turns single-use plastic into new, well design products, harnessing just the power of the sun to do so. It is a harmless process that doesn’t produce any waste or polluting substances.

With a roof full of solar panels, the MicroFactory collects the solar energy and stores it in its batteries, which power the machinery used to process the plastic. CEM’s MicroFactory is equipped with a rotational molding machine and a plastic shredder, both powered by the aforementioned batteries. The factory comes with transparent walls that allow anyone to see what goes on inside.

Transforming the plastic into a new, eco-friendly product is a multi-step process. First, the plastic has to go through the shredder where it is turned into plastic flakes. Those flakes are then rinsed in a washer and placed into the rotational molding machine, which spins them and coats the interior of the mold with liquid plastic. The last step is for the mold to be left to cool and the plastic within to solidify.

Circular Economy Manufacturing buys the plastic locally, from a recycling plant in Brooklyn, but the great thing about its MicroFactory is that it is portable. The company plans to place such facilities all over the country, making CEM part of a circular economy instead of a linear one.

A linear economy is based on collecting the raw material, processing it, and turning it into a product that will eventually become waste, once it's no longer useful. On the other hand, a circular economy recycles the product and reuses it, minimizing waste and focusing on sustainability.

 

Honor’s new Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park is quite the modern marvel – Phandroid

It’s been quite an interesting couple of years for Honor, as the former Huawei sub-brand went through a period of turmoil following Huawei’s highly-publicized trade ban. Then, the company was spun off and separated from Huawei and has since released several new smartphones over the course of this year. The Honor 50 was the company’s first foray back into the smartphone market, which was then followed by the Honor Magic 3 flagship lineup.

This week, Honor announced its first “self-funded factory” which will help the company produce new phones at a much faster rate than previously. According to Honor, with the new Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park, it will be able to have a smartphone leave the production line every 28.5 seconds. 

We are proud to announce the opening of our new manufacturing facility which will be integral to assuring our wider range of premium products are of the highest quality. As a premium technology product provider, being able to ensure our standards of reliability and quality will be paramount as we continue our journey to become a leading global technology brand – George Zhao, Honor CEO

While that’s an impressive number, what may be even more impressive is how precise the facility will be able to manufacture new smartphones. Honor claims it will be able to achieve assembly precision of up to 75 microns, which is essentially the size of a single human hair.

Additionally, the company confirmed it will be using more than 600 different quality standards, across the entire array of the process, including development, manufacturing, and finally, the user experience. This includes performing almost 200 “stringent tests on all incoming materials” to ensure that everything meets the quality that Honor wants to achieve with its smartphone lineup.

The park itself is located in Shenzhen, China, and handles everything from the testing of materials to the actual creation of the devices and packaging. All of this is rather impressive, especially when you consider that the facility was self-funded. Things are definitely looking up for Honor, and it’s come a long way from where it was just a couple of years ago.

Are clothes made from recycled materials really more sustainable?

The majority of clothes are made from synthetic fabrics derived from fossil fuels. Photograph: Sergey Ryzhov/Alamy Stock Photo

A growing number of brands are switching to recycled fibers but experts worry people may believe their purchases are impact-free – when that’s far from true

Supported by


Emma Bryce
Sat 6 Nov 2021 

Woven into your clothes is a material that takes on many disguises. It may have the texture of wool, the lightness of linen or the sleekness of silk. It’s in two-thirds of our clothing – and yet most of us don’t even know that it’s there. It’s plastic, and it’s a big problem.

Today, about 69% of clothes are made up of synthetic fibres, including elastane, nylon and acrylic. Polyester is the most common, making up 52% of all fiber production. Plastic’s unique durability and versatility have made it indispensable to the fashion industry.

“It’s in the waistband of your jeans, your shoes, in practically everything you wear, because plastic is this miracle material,” said George Harding-Rolls, campaigns adviser at the Changing Markets Foundation, an organization that investigates corporate practices.

But there’s a climate cost: the raw material for these fibers is fossil fuels. Textile production consumes 1.35% of global oil production, more oil than Spain uses in a year, and significantly contributes to the fashion industry’s huge climate footprint. Synthetics also continue to have an impact long after production, shedding plastic microfibers into the environment when clothes are washed.

In response, a growing number of brands are switching to recycled versions of synthetic fibers like polyester, often advertising these clothes as the “more sustainable” or “conscious” choice.

This seems like an environmental win. But as brands weave more of these recycled yarns into their garments, some experts question whether they are just patching over fashion’s environmental harms. “We’ve been led to believe that recycled and sustainable are synonymous, when they are anything but,” said Maxine Bédat, executive director of the New Standard Institute, a non-profit pushing for a sustainable fashion industry.

The common recycled substitute for virgin synthetics are polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, the most common type of plastic bottles, which are produced in the billions each year. A survey of nearly 50 fashion brands by the Changing Markets Foundation revealed that 85% of them aimed to source recycled polyester from plastic bottles. Estimates show that recycled polyester could reduce emissions by up to 32% compared to virgin polyester.

A coastal fishing community Accra, Ghana, is overwhelmed by fast fashion waste. Photograph: Muntaka Chasant/Rex/Shutterstock


The demand for recycled synthetics from industries including fashion is expected to accelerate. Nike uses “some recycled material” in 60% of its products, said Seana Hannah, Nike’s vice-president of sustainable innovation. Recycled polyester is a primary focus: “Nike is the highest industry user of recycled poly and we divert more than 1bn plastic bottles on average a year from landfills,” Hannah said.

Many big brands are setting targets. H&M, Madewell, J Crew and Gap Inc are among more than 70 brands that have committed to increase the share of recycled polyester to 45% by 2025 as part of a recycled polyester challenge set by the Textile Exchange, a non-profit working to increase uptake of lower-impact fibers across the textile industry.

Synthetics make up the second-largest share of fibers after cotton for Gap Inc, said Alice Hartley, director of product sustainability and circularity at the company. All four of its brands – Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta and Gap – have committed to the 2025 challenge, with Old Navy opting to increase its recycled polyester to 60%.

The company says that recycled synthetics are not a magic bullet. “We really try to stay away from the term ‘sustainable garment’, because that implies that we’ve reached the destination. We really haven’t, it’s a continuous journey,” Hartley said.

Yet this nuanced message may not be filtering through to consumers, especially as many other brands do describe recycled fabrics as sustainable. Experts worry that people may believe their purchases are impact-free – when that’s far from true.

“If you are recycling synthetics, that doesn’t get rid of the microplastics problem,” said Harding-Rolls. Fibers continue shedding from recycled plastic yarns just as much as from virgin yarns, he said.

PET bottles are also part of a well-established, closed-loop recycling system, where they can be efficiently recycled at least 10 times. The apparel industry is “taking from this closed-loop, and moving it into this linear system” because most of those clothes won’t be recycled, said Bédat. Converting plastic from bottles into clothes may actually accelerate its path to the landfill, especially for low-quality, fast-fashion garments which are often discarded after only a few uses.

“One of the hallmarks of greenwashing is taking one piece of the puzzle and extrapolating broad benefits from that,” said Ashley Gill, senior director of standards and stakeholder engagement Textile Exchange. “Sustainability in the apparel industry is a really complex issue.”

There are moves to use recycled textiles as feedstock for new clothes – less than 1% of clothes are currently recycled into new fibers – especially as projections from some markets suggest that cross-industry demand for recycled bottles will soon outstrip supply. But most clothes are made from a medley of fibers, and commercial-scale technology doesn’t yet exist to disentangle these. “A whole supply chain needs to be built up to really get to the commercial volumes that we need, to see more recycled fiber-to-fiber textiles,” Hartley said.

Hyping the lower emissions impact of recycled yarns, said Bédat, distracts from fashion’s larger emissions source: textile mills, which process fibers into yarn to make fabric as well as dyeing and finishing, an energy-guzzling process that accounts for about 76% of a garment’s lifecycle emissions. “Brands are focusing on what magical material they can create, rather than doing the less sexy work of improving energy efficiency in textile mills,” said Bédat. “I don’t want to pooh-pooh progress, but we really do have to start prioritizing where we’re going to be able to move the needle the most.”

Some innovators think the solution lies in finding viable alternatives to fossil fuel-derived synthetics that have the same performance traits. Materials science company Kintra Fibers has developed bio-based fibers made from corn and wheat designed to compost fully in nature. “That addresses the microfiber issue, and provides another pathway for textile circularity as well,” said Alissa Baier-Lentz, the company’s co-founder.

Spinning bio-based yarns at the Kintra Fibers lab in Brooklyn, New York. 

Photograph: Kintra Fibers

The fiber can also be returned to its base components through chemical recycling and used as a feedstock for circular yarn production, Baier-Lentz said. “It’s just on us to get the [recycling] system in place, and work with industry partners to make it happen,” she said. In 2020 Kintra partnered with clothing brand Pangaia to scale up production of the compostable yarn; the company will launch the first clothes made with Kintra fibers in 2022.

But no one innovation is going to solve the fashion industry’s complex plastics problem. Some think the real answer is moving the industry away from a model of excessive production and consumption. Brands churn out dozens of clothing collections a year and, in 2014, people bought 60% more clothing than in 2000 but kept it for half as long. Textile Exchange will focus some of its future industry challenges on “slowing down the growth rate” of clothing production, said Gill.

Legislation will be needed to drive real, systemic change, said Harding-Rolls: “[The apparel industry] is one of the most lightly regulated industries in the world. What we need now are mandatory measures. We see it working in the plastics space, and it’s time for the fashion sector to follow.”

There’s a role for us, too, said Bédat, and that involves people seeing themselves as citizens who can make ethical and political choices. “We’ve been trained to see ourselves primarily as consumers … that the way we solve these problems is by buying, which is the antithesis to the real solution.”

SCIENCE AS TAX WRITE OFF

Mimer Superyacht Explorer Is Perfect for the Adventurous, 

Eco-Friendly Millionaire

 Explorer yachts are no longer the brutish, unpolished and unwelcoming vessels of yesteryear. As demand for luxurious vessels with longer ranges and ice-class hulls soars, a new hybrid vessel has emerged: the superyacht explorer.

6 Nov 2021,

by Elena Gorgan 

Superyacht explorers were initially introduced as concepts, before the multi-millionaires of the world started to have them built. The trend is clearly here to stay, as this new type of vessel is able to blend the best of both worlds, offering multiple functionality, ruggedness and efficiency in a package just as luxurious as that of “regular” superyachts. Pricing is comparable, as well.

On that note, the latest design from Laurent Giles, in collaboration with Tillberg Design of Sweden (TDoS) is here to prove that a superyacht explorer can still be very stylish. It’s superficial to think of a boat’s functionality in terms of aesthetics, but when you pay $75 million for one, it’d better look good throughout. Mimer does all that, while sacrificing none of the ruggedness or high performance of a true explorer. And it’s got green credentials, to boot.

Mimer was introduced last September and is now being listed for sale through IYC, with an asking price of €65 million – just a hair over $75 million at the current exchange rate. It’s a superyacht and an explorer all rolled into one beautiful, Scandinavian-styled package, with a customizable layout and plenty of gear to suit the needs of the most adventurous explorer out there.

Measuring 60 meters (197 feet) in length and spanning several decks, Mimer offers accommodation for 12 guests in six suites, and 15 crew. Its highest selling point is that it can be anything the owner needs it to be, focusing either on luxurious amenities and gorgeous living spaces, or functioning merely as a (still very lavish) transport ship for all the exploring gear.

To that end, Mimer comes with three possible configurations. You have the World Traveler package, which includes a generously-sized beach club and more space for the guests, including the possibility of a full-size gym and spa area aft, without encroaching on the space dedicated to the two cavernous tender garages. Then, there’s the Adventure Explorer package, which replaces the beach club with a large, open, multi-purpose storage area under the helipad deck. The third configuration is basically a Plus version of the Adventure Explorer, adding a fully enclosed helicopter garage.

In the gear-focused configurations, Mimer becomes a virtual toy carrier, as renders in the gallery above will show. In addition to the two tender garages, it will be able to haul a variety of cars and off-road vehicles, jet skits, submarines, and other types of water toys.

The generous, 1600GT interior is just as impressive as the exterior. Mimer oozes Scandinavian minimalism and pure Zen, with soft, neutral furnishes and floor-to-ceiling glazing that allows in natural light and opens up otherwise cramped spaces. The owner’s suite, located on the main desk, is exactly like what you’d find on a superyacht: it has its own private terrace, a jacuzzi, an office and wardrobe, and ensuite bathroom with full-size bathtub.

Mimer would be eco-friendly in whichever was possible, too. TDoS says that locally-sourced or recycled materials will be used for the interiors, to minimize waste and the carbon footprint during production. Because this would be an ice-class vessel meant to go to remote locations, its own carbon footprint would be reduced by means of a hybrid propulsion system, “potentially combing battery fuel cells.” Onboard support system, such as water treatment and waste handling, are “selected to meet the latest and highest requirements regarding low energy consumption and the best possible sustainability solutions available today,” the design studio notes.

“We challenged ourselves to design an explorer yacht that would meet the most demanding requirements in Antarctica as well as looking beautiful in the port of Miami or Monaco. Function combined with beauty,” TDoS Partner & Yacht Director Daniel Nerhagen says in a statement.

Specifics on propulsion have not been published, but TDoS imagines Mimer would have a range of 6,000 nautical miles.

Editor's note:

This article was not sponsored or supported by a third-party.

 

Sex and the Symbiont: Can Algae Hookups Help Corals Survive Climate Change?

By RICE UNIVERSITY NOVEMBER 6, 2021

Rice University’s Lauren Howe-Kerr, left, and Adrienne Correa discovered that symbiont algae found on corals in French Polynesia are able to reproduce via mitosis and sex. That could make it easier to develop algae that better protect coral reefs from the effects of climate change. Credit: Brandon Martin/Rice University

Rice biologists’ discovery can be used to help climate-challenged reefs survive for now.

A little more sexy time for symbionts could help coral reefs survive the trials of climate change. And that, in turn, could help us all. 

Researchers at Rice University and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography already knew the importance of algae known as dinoflagellates to the health of coral as the oceans warm, and have now confirmed the tiny creatures not only multiply by splitting in half, but can also reproduce through sex. 

That, according to Rice marine biologist Adrienne Correa and graduate student Lauren Howe-Kerr, opens a path toward breeding strains of dinoflagellate symbionts that better serve their coral partners. 

Dinoflagellates not only contribute to the stunning color schemes of corals, but critically, they also help feed their hosts by converting sunlight into food. 

“Most stony corals cannot survive without their symbionts,” Howe-Kerr said, “and these symbionts have the potential to help corals respond to climate change. These dinoflagellates have generation times of a couple months, while corals might only reproduce once a year. 

“So if we can get the symbionts to adapt to new environmental conditions more quickly, they might be able to help the corals survive high temperatures as well, while we all tackle climate change.”

In an open-access study in Nature’s Scientific Reports, they wrote the discovery “sets the stage for investigating environmental triggers” of symbiont sexuality “and can accelerate the assisted evolution of a key coral symbiont in order to combat reef degradation.”

A coral of the type studied by scientists at Rice University is protected by dinoflagellates (inset), algae that turn sunlight into food to feed and protect reefs. The study showed the algae are able to reproduce via sex, opening a path toward accelerated evolution of strains that can better protect coral from the effects of climate change. Credit: Inset by Carsten Grupstra/Rice University; coral image by Andrew Thurber/Oregon State University

To better understand the algae, the Rice researchers reached out to Rosa Figueroa, a researcher at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography who studies the life cycles of dinoflagellates and is lead author on the study.

“We taught her about the coral-algae system and she taught us about sex in other dinoflagellates, and we formed a collaboration to see if we could detect symbiont sex on reefs,” Howe-Kerr said.

“In genomic datasets of coral dinoflagellates, researchers would see all the genes coral symbionts should need to reproduce sexually, but no one had been able to see the actual cells in the process,” said Correa, an assistant professor of biosciences. “That’s what we got this time.” 

The discovery follows sampling at coral reefs in Mo’orea, French Polynesia, in July 2019 and then observation of the algae through advanced confocal microscopes that allow for better viewing of three-dimensional structures. 

A dinoflagellate tetrad cell that will soon split into four separate cells, captured by Rice University scientists through a confocal microscope. The cell’s four nuclei are depicted in red. Researchers at Rice and in Spain determined from experiments that these symbionts, taken from a coral colony in Mo’orea, French Polynesia, are able to reproduce both through mitosis and via sex. Credit: Correa Lab/Rice University

“This is the first proof that these symbionts, when they’re sequestered in coral cells, reproduce sexually, and we’re excited because this opens the door to finding out what conditions might promote sex and how we can induce it,” Howe-Kerr said. “We want to know how we can leverage that knowledge to create more genetic variation.”

“Because the offspring of dividing algae only inherit DNA from their one parent cell, they are, essentially, clones that don’t generally add to the diversity of a colony. But offspring from sex get DNA from two parents, which allows for more rapid genetic adaptation,” Correa said. 

Symbiont populations that become more tolerant of environmental stress through evolution would be of direct benefit to coral, which protect coastlines from both storms and their associated runoff. 

“These efforts are ongoing to try to breed corals, symbionts and any other partners to make the most stress-resistant colonies possible,” Correa said. “For coral symbionts, that means growing them under stressful conditions like high temperatures and then propagating the ones that manage to survive. 

“After successive generations we’ll select out anything that can’t tolerate these temperatures,” she said. “And now that we can see there’s sex, we can do lots of other experiments to learn what combination of conditions will make sex happen more often in cells. That will produce symbionts with new combinations of genes, and some of those combinations will hopefully correspond to thermotolerance or other traits we want. Then we can seed babies of the coral species that host that symbiont diversity and use those colonies to restore reefs.”

Reference: “Direct evidence of sex and a hypothesis about meiosis in Symbiodiniaceae” by R. I. Figueroa, L. I. Howe-Kerr and A. M. S. Correa, 22 September 2021, Scientific Reports.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-98148-9

The research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Community Project (DIANAS-CTM2017-86066-R), a Lewis and Clark Grant from the American Philosophical Society, a Wagoner Foreign Study Scholarship, the National Science Foundation (1635798) and an early-career research fellowship from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences (2000009651).