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Category: habitats – Page 33

Climate change policy has entered a new era. The growing row between the United States and the European Union over the impacts of the new American green subsidy regime makes that all too clear. Yet, in many ways, this story is ultimately about China.

For the last 20 years, developed countries have used three main types of policies to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Renewable energy mandates have required electricity generators to invest in solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal power. Emissions trading schemes for energy and industrial businesses put a price on carbon. And energy efficiency standards have been progressively improved on a whole range of products, from vehicles and white goods to homes.

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US-based entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Boring Company is developing a tract of land in Texas near as housing for its employees.

Called Project Amazing, the development will be located in Bastrop County near Austin and contain 110 homes built for workers at the nearby facilities of the Boring Company.

Developed by homebuilder Lennar, the community will be situated in a largely rural area on a tract of land owned by Gappes Bass, an affiliate of the Boring Company, according to Business Insider.

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Japanese “calm technology” company Mui Lab has unveiled the consumer-ready version of its Mui Board – a minimalist control hub for the smart home that looks like an unassuming block of wood.

Designed for wall mounting, the Mui Board is a plank of timber that lights up from within using a subtle white LED dot matrix display.

This can be used like a touch screen to control lighting, curtains, thermostats, speakers and other elements of the home.

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A ground fault normally occurs in one of two ways: by accidental contact of an energized conductor with normally grounded metal, or as a result of an insulation failure of an energized conductor. When an insulation failure occurs, the energized conductor contacts normally non-current-carrying metal, which is bonded to a part of the equipment-grounding conductor.

In a solidly grounded system, the fault current returns to the source primarily along the equipment-grounding conductors, with a small part using parallel paths such as building steel or piping.

If the ground return impedance were as low as that of the circuit conductors, ground fault currents would be high, and the normal phase-overcurrent protection would clear them with little damage.

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ICON has also completed a series of 3D-printed homes in Tabasco, Mexico. The company partnered with charity New Story in order to build 500 square-foot (47 square-metre) houses for families in need of shelter.

This community of homes withstood a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in June 2020 with no visible damage.

The Texan construction technology company is collaborating with BIG on a robotic construction project for the Moon.

Construction technology company ICON is making four 3D-printed houses in Austin, Texas, from concrete that’s designed to cope with extreme weather.

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Researchers from UNSW Sydney have analyzed millions of satellite photos to observe changes in beaches across the Pacific Ocean. The findings, published in Nature Geoscience today (Feb. 10), reveal for the first time how coastlines respond to different phases of the El-Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle.

ENSO is a natural climate phenomenon that causes variations in over the Pacific Ocean. The warming phase, known as El Niño, and the cooling phase, known as La Niña, affect across different coastlines depending on the cycle.

During these periods, can also intensify, shifting sand away from beaches and threatening beachfront homes and habitats. But scientists haven’t been able to study this broadly using conventional coastal monitoring techniques, which have been limited to on-ground observations on just a few beaches.

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Veronica Roth (Tor)

THERE isn’t much world-building in Veronica Roth’s sci-fi retelling of Sophocles’s classic Greek tragedy Antigone. Then again, in Arch-Conspirator, there isn’t much world. A dusty dystopian city (Thebes in the original, but it isn’t clear where we are in the reboot) is all that remains after a thinly sketched environmental polycrisis has turned humanity into an endangered species.

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