A Green Peel on STEAM Education: An Innovative and Sustainable Education Scheme Integrating STEAM and Environmental Education

The STEAM education in China started late so it is still in its infancy. Its curriculum is partial to IT and Internet, which is against the original purpose of interdisciplinary education in STEAM. Meanwhile, the resources put on environmental education are minute so the environmental awareness of citizens is very weak. Therefore, we have proposed an innovative education scheme—integrating STEAM, environmental and family education together so that they can complement each other. Such a scheme not only makes STEAM education more comprehensive, it can also make environmental education more effective. To implement our scheme, we have made use of peel wastes to produce a new natural peel crayon. The whole production process is further developed to a curriculum which serves as an education model that combines all five elements in STEAM education. Together we have created a ‘learning package’ that takes care of students’ individuality in education. After putting it into practice, we have received positive feedbacks from both parents and children. Furthermore, we have done several standard tests to ensure the safety of our peel crayons. Results have proved the feasibility of our new education scheme. Such a scheme has provided a role model for integration of environmental and STEAM education. In the future, we hope to develop more education models to make our learning package more diverse and applied in different aspects

Development of a Modeling Software Tool to Optimize Energy Performance of Medium-Size Office Buildings at the Early Design Stage

Building energy modeling is an important tool for low-energy building design. An energy modeling tool is used to estimate energy consumption, peak heating and cooling load for sizing mechanical equipment, and to demonstrate compliance with building codes and standards. Modeling tools are designed to evaluate building performance associated with a set of building specifications but it is difficult to predict building loads at the early design stage because most design features have not yet been specified. In addition, the designer must have experience and insight regarding the design features that most strongly influence building performance. In this thesis, a new modeling tool, entitled Excel-Based Load Model (EBLM), was developed to aid designers in the early design stage to estimate building loads, and to size/specify the building components that most strongly affect the overall building performance. EBLM is an open source tool that uses Excel as the calculation engine, creating the advantage that users may modify the program according to their individual interests or project needs. EBLM is a single zone modeling tool that consists of three parts: inputs, load calculations, and outputs. The load calculations use the conduction time series (CTS) and radiant time series (RTS) methods to account for the thermal storage effect that delays cooling load. One of the unique features of EBLM is the ability to model slat-type operable shading systems. Users can specify one of three shading control strategies. Results can be presented in hourly, monthly, or annual format. The program also outputs the percentage of building loads for each building component in figures and tables. The EBLM has been validated with the commonly used eQUEST model; the difference is about 8% for the sum of all building loads. EBLM was also used to perform a series of simulations to examine the influence of building components that are considered to be important. The major conclusions were: • High performance building specifications significantly reduce building loads, and energy-efficient mechanical equipment could further reduce energy consumption. • An outdoor operable shading system can be used to effectively block excess solar gain and to help reduce cooling load in summer months, but can also be operated to allow solar gain and to reduce heating load in winter months. • Using an outdoor temperature shading control strategy, low solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) windows with an outdoor operable shading system have better energy performance than high SHGC windows with outdoor operable shading system in Toronto. • As found in many studies, the window-to-wall ratio (WWR) has a significant influence on building performance. Lower WWR can minimize both the conductive heat transfer and alleviate excess solar gain. • Lowering the WWR from 40% to 30% has a similar effect on energy use as deploying outdoor operable shading system

Evaluation of Energy and Airflow Performance of Data Centers with Centralized Thermosiphon

The need of fast and uninterrupted online services and applications in our daily life leads to rapid expansion in both quantity and capacity of data centers to handle these huge amounts of digital information. However, the energy use associated with hundreds of information technology (IT) equipment running 24/7 in data centers creates a huge burden to the global economy and environment. Globally, electricity consumption of data centers accounts for about 238 billion kWh per year which is corresponding to about 1.3% of total global electricity consumption. In a typical data center, about 30-50% of its total energy is dedicated to remove the heat from running the IT equipment all year round. Conventional cooling energy saving strategy is to utilize outdoor air directly to cool the IT equipment when outdoor temperature is lower, which known as direct airside free cooling. However, the main concerns about this approach is the breakdown of IT equipment due to poor outdoor air quality. This could be a limiting factor in certain locations for using the direct free cooling system. Therefore, an indirect free cooling approach is more interested to be used under poor outdoor air environments. In this thesis, an indirect airside free cooling based on thermosiphon loop is proposed and investigated to reduce energy consumption and improve the IT equipment reliability in a novel vertical data center (VDC) which is designed by Vert.com Inc. An energy model was established to evaluate the energy performance of this new proposed design in different selected cities across North America. The energy results show that approximately 41% to 59% of an annual overall HVAC energy are saved with the thermosiphon free cooling system depending on the local climate conditions in comparison to the data center without any free cooling implementations. Analysis of indoor airflow distribution was also conducted in this VDC project because it can help to optimize different design options and enhance cooling efficiency. Unlike other typical data centers that are designed horizontally and occupied a large footprint like warehouses, the proposed data center in this study is designed vertically like a tower with a compact rectangular form. In this thesis, two proposed locations of the indoor thermosiphon heat exchangers were compared and analyzed through CFD simulation. The simulation results indicate that there are many turbulent flows developed inside the building, especially at 90° bends, which can affect the air distribution uniformity and cooling performance through the heat exchanger

The inaugural australian centre for hepatitis virology public panel discussion on viral hepatitis research—lessons in scientific community outreach

Viral hepatitis remains one of the most significant health issues globally, directly responsible for over 1 million deaths each year and affecting almost 300 million people around the world. Scientific research in recent decades has brought about improvements in the lives of people living with chronic viral hepatitis. On the 29 July 2021, the Australian Centre for Hepatitis Virology (ACHV) for the first time held a public educational forum for the general public. The main aim of this event was to inform the affected community about the importance of scientific research and give an overview of upcoming developments in the field. Here, we provide a detailed report of the panel discussion (including its organisation, execution, and lessons learned to incorporate into future events) and provide strategies that can be used by other scientific societies to hold similar events in their own communities