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UBC engineers have developed a more resilient type of concrete using recycled tires that could be used for concrete structures like buildings, roads, dams and bridges while reducing landfill waste.

The researchers experimented with different proportions of recycled tire fibres and other materials used in concrete—cement, sand and water—before finding the ideal mix, which includes 0.35 per cent tire fibres, according to researcher Obinna Onuaguluchi, a postdoctoral fellow in civil engineering at UBC.

State-of-the-art solar cells are efficient – but are even more so when they are kept clean. A cleaning robot developed by Norwegian researchers enables solar panels to deliver at full capacity.

At a solar energy farm just outside Budapest in Hungary, a cleaning robot is industriously getting on with today’s task. Hundreds of square metres of solar panels are waiting to be cleaned – as quickly and effectively as possible. And without the use of chemicals or any unwanted discharges to the natural environment. The robot is the result of a joint project between Norwegian researchers and the Hungarian company ProDSP Technology.

El crear una cultura organizacional de mejora continua encaminada a integrar sistemas es la meta de casi todas las organizaciones, desde hace más de 12 años que hemos realizado diversos ejercicios de mejora de cultura organizacional y hemos tenido que hablar de cultura a diferentes audiencias que van desde directivos de alto nivel hasta trabajadores de planta es curioso ver que los esfuerzos la mayoría de las veces no son de largo plazo y terminan al concluir la semana de seguridad, higiene y ambiente.

Existen muchos saboteadores de cultura organizacional que pueden aparecer a la vez, y que tienen la capacidad de socavar y anular completamente todos los esfuerzos realizados para desarrollar una cultura organizacional fuerte que permee una integración adecuada de sistemas.

Algo que siempre nos ha sorprendido es el deseo de las organizaciones de trazar límites alrededor de conceptos, poner las ideas en documentos muy bien elaborados y hechos de forma muy minuciosa, y esto es algo que resulta prácticamente imposible de cumplir en un cierto tiempo (semana de sistemas integrados, mes de la seguridad, día del medio ambiente). Este es un desafío particular cuando se trata de definir una cultura corporativa. El mismo acto de tratar de definir nuestra cultura tiende a crear un espacio que nos aísla, y estos espacios o estas ideas limitadas a políticas de escritorio, a su vez, pueden convertirse en lo que se llama “saboteadores de cultura”. Los siguientes son quizás los tres principales saboteadores que hemos visto durante nuestra experiencia a lo largo de más de una década.

Hundreds of built and proposed hydroelectric dams may significantly harm life in and around the Amazon by trapping the flow of rich nutrients and modifying the climate from Central America to the Gulf of Mexico. These findings, published in Nature, emerge from a multidisciplinary, international collaboration of researchers from 10 universities, led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin.

To meet energy needs, economic developers in South America have proposed 428 hydroelectric dams, with 140 currently built or under construction, in the Amazon basin — the largest and most complex network of river channels in the world, which sustains the highest biodiversity on Earth. The rivers and surrounding forests are the source of 20 percent of the planet’s fresh water and valuable ingredients used in modern medicine. 

In the UK alone, some 1.5 million homes are equipped with solar panels, and it has been estimated that by 2020 the figure could soar to 10 million, with the prospect of lower energy bills for consumers and massive reductions in CO2emissions. Now, a University of Huddersfield researcher is developing new technologies that could enable clusters of houses to share their solar energy, rather than simply exporting surplus electricity to the national grid. Also, new systems for fault detection will enable householders to monitor and maintain the efficiency of their panels.