Our Roads of the Future Will Be Made of Bendable Concrete and Other Tech on 19-August-2016
#WelcomeBack! It’s the end of the week, and our
#FridayFeeling is to #TakeABreak once in a while! Before we’re off, we’ll
update the latest science and technology news for the day.
Our Roads of the
Future Will Be Made of Bendable Concrete
When we think of concrete used in the construction of roads,
we imagine frictionless roads that are smooth & stable to drive. We think
of never-ending curves, which are a dream to drive our roadsters and muscle
cars. Anything, but bendable! Yes! Scientists working at the NTU-JTC Industrial
Infrastructure Innovation Centre (I³C) have made ConFlexPave – a new type of
concrete mixed with polymer microfibers. It increases almost all properties
needed for the next-generation of construction, allowing it to bend, flex and
resist skids much better.
"We developed a new type of concrete that can greatly
reduce the thickness and weight of precast pavement slabs, hence enabling
speedy plug-and-play installation, where new concrete slabs prepared off-site
can easily replace worn out ones,” says Yang En-Hua, an Assistant Professor
working at School of Civil and Environmental Engineering in I³C.
Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Because we know (living in a
traffic-congested country such as India) exactly what happens when construction
projects cause delays of 2 hours or more (in some cases) during peak hours.
"Through collaborations with universities such as NTU
in research and development of disruptive technologies, JTC hopes to pioneer
cutting-edge industrial infrastructure solutions to address challenges faced by
Singapore and its companies such as manpower and resource constraints. We will
continue to open up more of our buildings and estates to test-bed and if
successful, implement such new solutions," Mr Koh added.
NASA Claims We Broke
Climate Records in 2016
NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has some
interesting information to share about the climate – we broke climate records
in the first half of 2016!
“Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the
warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates
to 1880. The six-month period from January to June was also the planet's
warmest half-year on record, with an average temperature 1.3 degrees Celsius
(2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the late nineteenth century,” NASA reports,
“Five of the first six months of 2016 also set records for the smallest
respective monthly Arctic sea ice extent since consistent satellite records
began in 1979.”
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