humidity

This week at CES 2023, we’ve been seeing a lot of new smart home products that also work with Matter. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, since it is now available. And jumping on that news is SwitchBot, who has just introduced their new Matter Hub. Though, it does a bit more than just add support for Matter.It’s officially called the SwitchBot Hub 2, and it has Matter support. So it’s going to work with Google Home/Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple’s HomeKit/Siri and more. With the SwitchBot Hub 2 supporting Matter, that means…

Photo: Mario Tama (Getty Images)When you think of getting freshwater from the ocean, you might imagine costly and environmentally damaging desalination plants. But one team of researchers thinks there could be a simpler strategy: collecting the water vapor that naturally occurs over the ocean’s surface.Scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have proposed a device that would harvest water vapor from above the ocean, creating a supply of freshwater for arid communities. In a new paper, theyalso analyzed…

An MIT study shows that keeping indoor humidity at a sweet spot may reduce the spread of COVID-19.New research links very dry and very humid indoor environments with worse <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>COVID-19</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>First identified in 2019 in Wuhan, China, COVID-19, or Coronavirus disease 2019, (which was originally called &quot;2019 novel coronavirus&quot; or 2019-nCoV) is an…

About 50,000 people registered for the New York City Marathon this year. It was the first time the race was at full capacity since 2019 and the beginning of the pandemic. Yet not all of those who started the marathon made it to the end. More than 2,000 runners did not cross the finish line before the cut-off time. That number is about two times as many non-finishers as in 2019, when there were even more starters in the race.One factor that likely accounts for part of the difference: the weather. On race day in 2019, it…

Australian researchers have developed and tested a way to electrolyze hydrogen straight out of the air, anywhere on Earth, without requiring any other fresh water source. The Direct Air Electrolyzer (DAE) absorbs and converts atmospheric moisture – even down to a "bone-dry" 4% humidity.Such a machine could be particularly relevant to a country like Australia, which has ambitions as a clean energy exporter, along with enormous solar energy potential – but also widespread drought conditions and limited access to clean…

Since being plunged into a global pandemic, we're probably far more aware of being surrounded by microdroplets of water. In humid air or expelled by a cough, sneeze or talking, these droplets can carry tiny particles with them, from pollution to viruses like the flu.  Back in 2019, the basic chemistry of these motes of environmental water delivered a surprise: Researchers found ordinary, otherwise benign water droplets could somehow spontaneously form small but significant quantities of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2).Yes, the…

Over the hundreds of thousands of years of our existence on the planet, modern humans have managed to adapt to a huge range of climates—from the arid heat of the Sahara Desert to the icy chill of the Arctic. But we have our limits. If temperatures and humidity rise high enough, even a robustly healthy person sitting still in the shade with access to water will succumb to the heat. As heat waves grow hotter and more frequent, research has suggested some places will begin to see events that reach that limit of human…

Heat waves are becoming supercharged as the climate changes – lasting longer, becoming more frequent and getting just plain hotter. One question a lot of people are asking is: "When will it get too hot for normal daily activity as we know it, even for young, healthy adults?"  The answer goes beyond the temperature you see on the thermometer. It's also about humidity. Our research shows the combination of the two can get dangerous faster than scientists previously believed.Scientists and other observers have become…

Where technical solutions can’t be used, there are still administrative controls that could help, she adds—like frequent breaks for people working under heat wave conditions. The body has another protective mechanism—exhaustion—that tells you to rest when overheating, but workers may not always have the opportunity to stop working, she says. In such cases, Venugopal recommends that two people do a job on rotation if it requires heavy exertion or being outdoors.But the challenge lies in getting buy-in across India’s many…

Imagine getting stuck in an arid region, which is characterised by its lack of available water. In such regions, rainfall is scarce, temperatures are high and humidity is low, while there is a general paucity of vegetation. These deserts constitute about 35 percent of the land areas of the world. More than a third of the world's population lives in drylands. Water shortage is a serious problem for these people. However, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin believe that it is possible to extract water out of…