cold-SNAP: Air conditioning that cools people and the planet
April 22, 2020
Part of the Wyss Institute’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day
By Lindsay Brownell
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Earth’s average temperature is rising – nine of the ten warmest years ever recorded in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s 140-year tracking history have occurred since 2005. Warmer temperatures bring with them greater demand for air conditioning, which requires immense amounts of energy. Every year, the United States consumes more electricity for cooling buildings than the entire continent of Africa consumes for
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Circe: Transforming Greenhouse Gases into Biodegradable Products Institute Project
Institute Projects are technologies that are considerably de-risked
and the teams have received feedback from potential investors that
has identified how the technology must be further de-risked technically
and commercially to warrant funding and ensure near-term commercial
success. Funds can be requested to recruit entrepreneurs-in-residence
with domain-specific expertise to help lead the team as well as to carry
out late stage validation efforts, including reducing costs of
manufacturing, demonstrating clinician buy-in, conducting regulatory
and market analyses, and carrying out Phase I clinical trials.
A platform that uses engineered microbes to produce synthetic polymers with minimal environmental impact
This laser-steering microrobot could refine minimally invasive surgeries
Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University.
Robotic engineers from Harvard’s Wyss Institute and John A. Paulson School for Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) have developed a laser-steering microrobot that can be integrated with existing endoscopic tools, which are used in minimally invasive surgeries.
The ends of endoscopic tools must be highly flexible to enable visualization and manipulation of the surgical site in the target tissue.
In the case of energy-delivering endoscopic tools, which allow surgeons to cut or dry tissues and stop internal bleeds, a heat-generating energy source is added to the end of the device.
Photograph by Stu Rosner; Painting:
Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1750) by François Boucher/Courtesy of the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Charles E. Dunlap
Visiting a Victorian house museum with her mother (an architect), young Cassandra Albinson glimpsed a member of the staff open a small door under the stairs and disappear below. Her interest piqued, then fanned by an art-history course at Washington University in her native St. Louis, she pursued her studies at Wellesley and Yale. Now the Harvard Art Museums’ Winthrop curator of European art and head of the division of European and American art, she aims in turn to ignite the interest of young visitors. Her specialty is portraits of aristocratic women in nineteenth-century Britain and France. “Walking by one of these portraits, you might say, ‘Oh, that’s just a portrait of a beautiful woman,’” she says. But these powerful women “worked closely with artists” to present “their