The behaviour of a building's users may be at least as important as its design when it comes to energy use, according to new research from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). The UK promises to reduce its carbon emissions (排放）by 80 percent by 2050, part of which will be achieved by all new homes being zero-carbon by 2016. But this report shows that sustainable building design on its own — though extremely important- is not enough to achieve such reductions: the behaviour of the people using the building has to change too.

    The study suggests that the ways that people use and live in their homes have been largely ignored by existing efforts to improve energy efficiency (效率)，whichinstead focus on architectural and technological developments.

     ‘Technology is going to assist but it is not going to do everything,'explains Katy Janda, a UKERC senior researcher，‘consumption patterns of building users can defeat the most careful design. 'In other words，old habits die hard, even in the best-designed eco-home.

    Another part of the problem is information. Households and bill-payers don't have the knowledge they need to change their energy-use habits. Without specific information，it's hard to estimate the costs and benefits of making different choices. Feedback (反馈） facilities, like smart meters and energy monitors，could help bridge this information gap by helping people see how changing their behaviour directly affects their energy use; some studies have shown that households can achieve up to 15 percent energy savings using smart meters.

    Social science research has added a further dimension (方面），suggesting that individuals'behaviour in the home can be personal and cannot be predicted 一 whether people throw open their windows rather than turn down the thermostat (恒温器) , for example. Janda argues that education is the key. She calls for a focused programme to teach people about buildings and their own behaviour in them.

    Young people and older people do not always agree. They sometimes have different ideas about living, working and playing. But in one special program in New York State, adults and teenagers live together in a friendly way.

    Each summer 200 teenagers and 50 adults live together for eight weeks as members of a special work group. Everyone works several hours each day. They do so not just to keep busy but to find meaning and fun in work. Some teenagers work in the forests or on the farms near the village. Some learn to make things like tables and chairs and to build houses. The adults teach them these skills.

    There are several free hours each day. Weekends are free, too. During the free hours some of the teenagers learn photo-taking or drawing. Others sit around and talk or sing. Each teenager chooses his own way to pass his free time.

    When people live together, they should have rules. In this program the teenagers and the adults make the rules together. If someone breaks a rule, the problem goes before the whole group. They talk about it and ask, “Why did it happen? What should we do about it?”

    One of the teenagers has said something about it, “You have to stop thinking only about yourself. You learn how to think about the group.”

    Some people dream about becoming engineers. Luckily, the new IMAX film Dream Big shows how engineering can improve people's lives. It teaches viewers how engineers use high-tech to help the world. The film hits IMAX theaters nationwide on February 17 to celebrate Engineers Week.

    The film, taking place in locations like China, Dubai and Africa, tells the stories of engineers who try to come up with creative ideas to save energy and help people.

    Dream Big was directed by Greg MacGillivray who has 38 films under his belt, including some of the most successful films ever shown in IMAX theaters.

    How did MacGillivray get into the moviemaking business? “I grew up at the beach. My first movies were about surfing and the ocean. As time went on, I saw the changes in the ocean including polluting and overfishing. So I started making films about conservation of nature.” He told TFK. Now, his films cover a variety of topics, from the natural world to human creation.

    One of the engineers in Dream Big is Angelica Hernandez. In high school, she was on a team that best MIT, a university, in an underwater robotics competition. Today, the engineering work she does focuses on helping people use less energy and save money and resources. “I work with companies to promote energy efficiency with their commercial customers, so it's really trying to push forward all the measures that customers and high-energy users can apply, she explains.

    Engineering is such a good job-you make good money, travel around the world, solve amazing problems and help people.” She says.

    The mission of Dream Big is to show people the good that engineers can do to the world. “That was the impulse of making this movie”, MacGillivray explains, “We want to explain engineering in a way that will get the kids very excited about it.” “Whoever and wherever you are, you can become an engineer,” he adds, “All you need is the creative spirit.”

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art

    1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028

    211-535-7710 www.metmuseum.org

    Entrances

    Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street

    Hours

    Open 7 days a week.

    Sunday-Thursday 10:00-17:30

    Friday and Saturday 10:00-21:00

    Closed Thanksgiving Day, December 25, January 1，and the first Monday in May. Admission

    $ 25. 00 recommended for adults, $ 12. 00 recommended for students, includes the Main Building and the Cloisters（回廊）on the same day; free for children under 12 with an adult.

    Free with Admission

    All special exhibitions, as well as films, lectures, guided tours, concerts, gallery talks, and family/children's programs are free with admission.

    Ask about today's activities at the Great Hall Information Desk.

    The Cloisters Museum and Gardens

    The Cloisters Museum and Gardens is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of Europe in the Middle Ages. The extensive collection consists of masterworks in sculpture, colored glass, and precious objects from Europe dating from about the 9th to the 15th century.

    Hours

    Open 7 days a week.

    March-October 10:00-17:15

    November-February 10:00-16:45

    Closed Thanksgiving Day, December 25, and January 1.

    For as long as we've known about it, humans have searched for a cure for cancer. Across the world, countless amounts of time and money have been spent on researching a way to stop this terrible disease. But now, it seems like the answer could have been inside our own bodies the whole time.

    Recently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US, a government agency that's responsible for healthcare, approved a new form of gene therapy (疗法) that could mean the end of a certain type of cancer.

    The therapy allows scientists to "train" the immune (有免疫力的) cells of sick patients to fight leukemia (白血病)—a form of blood cancer that mostly affects young people.

    The exciting new treatment works by removing healthy immune cells from the patient, known as T-cells, which are then changed to be able to "hunt down" cancer cells.

    The cells are then put back into the patient before they begin to get rid of the patient's leukemia over time, similar to how the body fights off other illnesses.

    "This is truly an exciting new day for cancer patients," Louis J. DeGennaro, president of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, said in a news release.

    Up until now, a long and painful marrow transplant (骨髓移植) was the only option for many leukemia patients.

    In this procedure, healthy blood cells are taken from a donator and placed into the sick patient, who also has to go through chemotherapy (化疗) to allow their body to adjust to the new cells.

    But with a recovery rate of around 83%—according to a news release published by the FDA—it's hoped that the days of painful trips to the hospital, or even death, are over for leukemia sufferers.

    "We're entering a new frontier in medical innovation (创新) with the ability to reprogram a patient's own cells to attack a deadly cancer," FDA representative Scott Gottlieb said in the release. "New technologies such as gene and cell therapies hold the potential to transform medicine and our ability to treat and even cure many incurable illnesses."

Video calls are a common occurrence, but have you imagined being able to touch the person on the other end of the line? Scientists are making this a reality.

Researchers at the University of new South Wales, Australia have invented a soft skin stretch device (SSD). A haptic device that can recreate the sense of touch. Haptic technology mimics the experience of touch by stimulating localized areas of the skin in ways that are similar to what is felt in the real world, through force, vibration or motion.

Vibration is the most common haptic technology today and has been built into many electronic devices such as one attached to the back of the trackpad (触摸板) in laptops, which simulates a button clicking. However, haptic feedback with vibration becomes less sensitive when used continuously. The existing technology also has great difficulty recreating the sense of touch with objects in virtual environments or located remotely. According to Mai Thanh Thai, lead author of the study.

The new technology overcomes issues with existing haptic devices. The research team introduced a novel method to recreate the sense of touch through a soft artificial "muscles".

"Our three-way directional skin stretch device, built into the fingertips of the wearable glove we also created is like wearing a second skin-- its soft stretchable and mimics the sense of touch-- and will enable new forms of haptic communication to enhance everyday activities" said Thanh Nho Do, senior author of the study.

Imagine you are at home and you call your friend who is in Australia. You wear a haptic glove with the SSDs, and your friends also wears a glove with integrated 3D force sensors. If your friend picks up an object, it will physically press against your friend's fingers. And their glove with 3D force sensors will measure with interactions. The force signals can be sent to your glove so your device will generate the same 3D forces. Making you experience the same sense of touch as your friend.

The haptic devices could be applied in various situations, allowing users to feel objects inside a virtual world or at a distance. It could also be used in medical practices. Doctors can feel a patient's organ tissues. With surgical tools without touching them.