Social media enables people-centric climate action in the hard-to-decarbonise building sector.

The building and construction sector accounts for around 39% of global carbon dioxide emissions and remains a hard-to-abate sector. We use a data-driven analysis of global high-level climate action on emissions reduction in the building sector using 256,717 English-language tweets across a 13-year time frame (2009-2021). Using natural language processing and network analysis, we show that public sentiments and emotions on social media are reactive to these climate policy actions.

Lockdown impacts on residential electricity demand in India: A data-driven and non-intrusive load monitoring study using Gaussian mixture models.

This study evaluates the effect of complete nationwide lockdown in 2020 on residential electricity demand across 13 Indian cities and the role of digitalisation using a public smart meter dataset. We undertake a data-driven approach to explore the energy impacts of work-from-home norms across five dwelling typologies. Our methodology includes climate correction, dimensionality reduction and machine learning-based clustering using Gaussian Mixture Models of daily load curves.

A Review of Permeability and Flow Simulation for Liquid Composite Moulding of Plant Fibre Composites.

Liquid composite moulding (LCM) of plant fibre composites has gained much attention for the development of structural biobased composites. To produce quality composites, better understanding of the resin impregnation process and flow behaviour in plant fibre reinforcements is vital. By reviewing the literature, we aim to identify key plant fibre reinforcement-specific factors that influence, if not govern, the mould filling stage during LCM of plant fibre composites.

Mapping thermal conductivity across bamboo cell walls with scanning thermal microscopy.

Scanning thermal microscopy is a powerful tool for investigating biological materials and structures like bamboo and its cell walls. Alongside nanoscale topographical information, the technique reveals local variations in thermal conductivity of this elegant natural material. We observe that at the tissue scale, fibre cells in the scattered vascular tissue would offer preferential pathways for heat transport due to their higher conductivities in both anatomical directions, in comparison to parenchymatic cells in ground tissue.

Biomimetic Supramolecular Fibers Exhibit Water-Induced Supercontraction.

Spider silk is a fascinating material, combining high strength and elasticity that outperforms most synthetic fibers. Another intriguing feature of spider silk is its ability to "supercontract," shrinking up to 50% when exposed to water. This is likely on account of the entropy-driven recoiling of secondary structured proteins when water penetrates the spider silk.

Chemical composition of processed bamboo for structural applications.

Natural materials are a focus for development of low carbon products for a variety of applications. To utilise these materials, processing is required to meet acceptable industry standards. Laminated bamboo is a commercial product that is currently being explored for structural applications, however there is a gap in knowledge about the effects of commercial processing on the chemical composition.

The strength of plants: theory and experimental methods to measure the mechanical properties of stems.

From the stems of agricultural crops to the structural trunks of trees, studying the mechanical behaviour of plant stems is critical for both commerce and science. Plant scientists are also increasingly relying on mechanical test data for plant phenotyping. Yet there are neither standardized methods nor systematic reviews of current methods for the testing of herbaceous stems.

Bioinspired supramolecular fibers drawn from a multiphase self-assembled hydrogel.

Inspired by biological systems, we report a supramolecular polymer-colloidal hydrogel (SPCH) composed of 98 wt % water that can be readily drawn into uniform ([Formula: see text]6-[Formula: see text]m thick) "supramolecular fibers" at room temperature. Functionalized polymer-grafted silica nanoparticles, a semicrystalline hydroxyethyl cellulose derivative, and cucurbit[8]uril undergo aqueous self-assembly at multiple length scales to form the SPCH facilitated by host-guest interactions at the molecular level and nanofibril formation at colloidal-length scale. The fibers exhibit a unique combination of stiffness and high damping capacity (60-70%), the latter exceeding that of even biological silks and cellulose-based viscose rayon.