【推荐2】The World Cup will take place between November and December when Qatar can reach average temperatures of 40 to 50°C. With the tournament getting closer and closer, Dr. Saud Ghani, professor of Mechanical Engineering at Qatar University, has been in the spotlight by introducing the technology that will, in fact, cool the stadiums of the 2022 World Cup.

Nicknamed Dr. Cool, Ghani believes that stadiums’ architecture should be a positive link between design and climate. In his view, the buildings shouldn’t work against climate, but rather be smart and work with it. He developed a system based on sustainability(可持续), modularity, and functionality to cool stadiums.            

The first step to ensure hot air will not enter the stadiums would be to analyze their shapes to understand how the design could minimize this situation. During the process, numerous 3D models were built and tested using smoke and color lasers to analyze the airflow over the stadium, and variants, like spectator numbers and sweat production, were added. This helped to define the dimensions of the stadium’s upper openings, optimizing their shape to prevent the entry of hot air and provide shading.

After optimizing the architectural projects, the next step was to develop the refrigeration system itself, which took place through an important finding by Ghani. It was not necessary to cool the entire stadium. The system should focus on the pitch and reach about 2 meters above the highest seat.

As a result, a punctual cooling system was created and the cooling technology is estimated to be 40% more sustainable than existing techniques. Stadiums only need to be cooled down two hours before an event, which reduces energy consumption compared to other methods. In addition, there is a recycling system in the cold air, which is cooled twice before being expelled outside, reducing the absorption of hot outside air.

So far the stadiums has been in the spotlight and their cooling system is being tested by fans and players from all over the world.

【推荐3】The rainforests of Gabon are one of the last habitats for forest elephants, whose numbers in Central Africa have suffered a dramatic decline in recent decades because of hunting. Smaller than African plain elephants, forest elephants are mysterious beasts, feeding on grass and leaves and fruit. They walk softly, moving quietly among the trees, like ghosts in the night. They appear to plan their search for food, much like humans once planned their food gathering around seasons, returning to the same trees when the fruit is most likely to be ripe.

Just as the elephants depend on the forest to survive, many of Lope’s trees rely on elephants to spread their seeds through the animals’ waste. Some even produce fruit that cannot be digested by any other animals, suggesting an interdependence with origins deep in evolutionary history.

Despite being remote and relatively untouched by people, Lope National Park and its elephants appear to be in trouble. Researchers have discovered that Earth’s warming temperatures could be lowering the fruit yield of many species of trees at the park, which in turn seems to be causing forest elephants to go hungry. Because certain tree species depend on the animals to survive, the struggles of the elephant population could endanger the long-term sustainability(持续性) of the forest.

“Even in a place like Lope National Park, where we have very little human pressure and a very small population, wildlife cannot escape the impact of human activities—that being climate change,” says Robin Why tock, an environmental scientist at the University of Stirling in Scotland and one of the authors of a 2020 paper describing these findings in Science magazine.

【推荐2】Four People Pushing Anamorphic (变形) Art to New Limits

Adry del Rocio

Mexican street artist Adry del Rocio creates 3D murals (壁画). In a piece for Den Helder City in the Netherlands, a playful seal intertwines (缠绕) between impossible column structures that reminds people of the mind-bending imaginings of the classic modernist artist MC Escher. In 2019, she created the award-winning “Swimming in red” for the International Street Art Festival in Brande, Denmark. The killing of whales in the Faroe Islands is marked by her work, where these beautiful mammals jump and play out of a sea of crimson, their tails changing into flowers.

Jonty Hurwitz

Using a variety of materials, the London artist/scientist performs a number of computer calculations, enabling him to warp (扭曲), say, an endangered frog or horse or even, basketball players into unrecognizable objects.

James Nizam

James Nizam works with light to transform a space. In 2016’s “Frieze”, a single beam of sunlight enters a common room through a carefully made hole. The resulting flood of light into the space creates an almost dreamlike feel, with the shining beams creating captivating lines and divisions in what cannot now be described as an empty room. Nizam is also known for transforming rooms by removing walls and floorboards to create anamorphic effects like in “Orthodrome”.

John Pugh

In a career extending over 30 years, world-famous American artist John Pugh has been creating show-stopping trompe L’oeil murals ( French for “deceiving the eye”) on a grand scale, whether it be giant snakes crashing through solid walls or revealing hidden temples and buildings by “peeling away” completely flat surfaces.

【推荐3】Famous American performer Chita Rivera died on January 30 in New York. She was 91 years old. The famed dancer, singer and actor won many awards and honors in her long career on Broadway and beyond.

Rivera first gained wide notice in 1957 as Anita in the original production of the musical play West Side Story. She was still dancing on New York’s Broadway stages a half century later in 2015’s The Visit.

“I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t moving or telling a story to you or singing a song,” she said at the time. “That’s the spirit of my life, and I’m really so lucky to be able to do what I love, even at this time in my life.”

Rivera was born on January 23, 1933, in Washington, D.C. Her father was a musician. He died when Rivera was seven. Her mother was of Scottish and Italian ancestry (血统).

Rivera studied dance as a young girl and was accepted into a highly respected school for ballet. She was 17 when she won her first part in a musical.

She won two Tonys, the highest award for live theater in the United States. Her first came in1984 with the production of The Rink. She won again in 1993 for the play Kiss of the Spider Woman.

The second Tony was an especially sweet victory for the star. Just five years earlier, Rivera had been in a serious car accident that broke her right leg. It could have ended her career. After months of physical treatment to regain her dancing skills, she returned to the stage singing and dancing as energetically as ever. She said, “It never entered my mind that I wouldn’t dance again.”

When accepting a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2018, Rivera said, “I wouldn’t trade my life in the theater for anything, because theater is life.”