UI professor imitates the flexible camouflaging capabilities of cephalopods PAGE 8
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Working in an office with windows improves sleep, health PAGE 4
UI Professor creates material with camouflage capabilities PAGE 8
Professor Emeritus Harry Hilton named ASC Fellow PAGE 12
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Office windows improve sleep, overall health BY STEPHANIE H. KIM TECHNOGRAPH WRITER
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indows in offices can help workers sleep better and live healthier lives, according to a study co-authored by Dr. Mohamed Boubekri, associate professor in architecture. Results showed that workers who had office windows and exposure to daylight slept an average of 46 minutes more every night than those without windows, and they also experienced better quality of sleep. Workers in darker offices experienced lower vitality, social functioning and mental health. Additionally, workers in offices with windows received 173 percent more white light exposure during work hours. Boubekri collaborated with researchers from Northwestern’s department of
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7 neurology and the Hwa Hsia Institute of Technology’s department of architecture in Taiwan. T he resea rc hers per for med a n experiment that compared 22 employees who worked in offices with windows to 27 employees who worked in workplaces without windows or exposure to daylight. All participants in the experiment worked from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. A subset of 21 participants (10 workers in windowless environments, and 11 in workplaces with windows) wore wristbands that measured light exposure, activity and sleep-wake patterns. “Workers are a group at risk because they are typically indoors, often without access to natural or even artificial bright light for the entire day,” Ivy N. Cheung, a Ph.D candidate who works under co-author Phyllis Zee in Northwestern’s Interdepartmental Neuroscience program, wrote in an email. “Office hours occur at a time of day where light exposure has strong impacts.” Although the study’s findings align with the experimenters’ original hypothesis, Boubekri said that the results are groundbreaking because research about the impact of architecture on light exposure and health is relatively scarce. “Researchers were doing work in the area of light and health, but they did not link it to architecture,” he said. Moreover, Boubek r i wa nted to investigate the specific relationship between architecture and lighting and health, specifically focusing on the workplace.
“Doctors usually don’t link the workplace environment to health issues necessarily,” he said. “People have to work and have to be indoors from eight to five, and I wanted to know the implication of that situation on people’s health.” Apart from better health and quality of sleep among workers in lighter offices, Boubekri said, the researchers also found a significant increase in levels of physical activity with those who had office windows. “The only way to explain it was that maybe (workers in dark offices) were either depressed or fatigued and were not in a mood to go outside,” he said. “That’s probably the only plausible explanation.” For those in windowless offices, Cheung suggests periodic breaks to “get outside for light exposure during work hours.” “Taking a walk during a break or enjoying lunch outdoors are easy ways to increase daytime natural light exposure,” she said. As a result of this study, Boubekri and the researchers suggest that architects should place more emphasis on incorporating windows in the workplace to promote better health and well-being among workers. More specifically, Boubekri recommends placing workstations no more than 20 to 25 feet from walls with windows. Apart from quality of sleep and health, the study also raised “possible ramifications” in terms of looking at the Vitamin D deficiency that results from the lack of sunlight exposure, he added. “Vitamin D deficiency could be a reason for cancer, and some people believe it has to do with the lack of sunlight,” he said. “So when you put buildings into that equation,
“Doctors usually don’t link the workplace environment to health issues necessarily. People have to work and have to be indoors from eight to five, and I wanted to know the implication of that situation on people’s health.” — Mohamed Boubekri, associate professor of architecture
what does architecture do? It’s not just the climate where we live, but what kind of architecture facilities hinder our exposure to sunlight.” Because this was a pilot study, Boubekri said, he hopes to explore this topic more deeply in future projects. The study was supported by the Illinois Campus Research Board of the University and grants from the National Institutes of Health. It was published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine in June. Stephanie can be reached at skim@ technograph.com.
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UI professor develops flexible, adaptive camouflaging material
BY STEFFIE DRUCKER TECHNOGRAPH WRITER
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ature has inspired many an artist, musician and writer. And now, nature’s color-shifting creatures have inspired a scientist: John Rogers, a University materials science and engineering professor. Intrigued by the camoufl aging capabilities of animals like the cuttlefi sh and certain types of octopus and squid, Rogers and his team have developed a flexible material that also has the potential to change color in the blink of an eye. The project, funded by the Virginia-based Office of Naval Research, aimed to examine the engineering capabilities for building “adaptive camoufl age” similar to a mechanism used by marine cephalopods. “What (the Navy) was hoping to do was bring together a really diverse and interdisciplinary team (of scientists) to take a look at cephalopods and think about the foundational mechanisms that are governing their sophistication in adaptive camoufl age,” Rogers said. “And see if you could begin to tease out some engineering principles for building man-made systems that would offer that
type of capability.” Cephalopods’ skin consists of three layers that are responsible for imparting the creature’s color. The two bottommost layers of skin are reflective, while the top layer contains sacs of pigment that color the surface. These droplet-like sacs of pigment are surrounded by muscles radiating outward, which affect how the pigment appears. “The muscle tissue can pull that pigment sac into the geometry of a fl at pancake,” Rogers said. “Then it’s consuming a much larger area across the skin, (and) you can visually detect the pigment in the sac.” In addition to changing color, cephalopods’ skin changes texture to match their surroundings while using their camoufl age. “The skin is not just fl at and static. It sort of develops a surface architecture that mimics its environment,” he said. “It’s just really breathtaking.” Rogers said he and his team considered how they could replicate the sophistication of the animal’s internal system in a manmade system.
10 They ended up creating a flexible device with multiple layers to imitate the creature’s skin. “Current camoufl age is based on simple, static printed patterns,” Rogers wrote in an email. “Nothing available today provides active adaptability like our devices, and certainly nothing even close to what is found in cephalopods.” The bottom layer of the team’s material is made up of photosensitive pixels that independently respond to the amount of light shining on it. A pixel will appear black if there is no light shining on it; however, if there is a certain amount of light beyond a specific threshold, the pixel changes to white. Roger Hanlon, a senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, assisted Rogers in the process and brought a biological perspective to the project. “The cephalopods change faster and with more diversity than any animal we know of,” Hanlon said. “My lab has been studying the functional morphology of the skin of these animals, and it’s that aspect that John Rogers and his team have looked at for inspiration in how to construct a man-made electronic display that can change color and
pattern and even flex its skin, somewhat like the animal does. “A very unique part of this paper is, number one, (Rogers) made it flexible. And making a flexible electronic display is not easy to begin with,” Hanlon said. “Second of all, they layered it somewhat along the lines of how the animal layers its skin.” Hanlon also noted the significance of including embedded light sensors in the device’s design. “What they came up with is really novel,” he said. “Instead of having one brain and having everything depend on one brain receiving information, collating it and sending it out, you now have little sensors out in the skin that can take some information and ... affect some motor change or a visible change in the skin.” While the team was inspired by the inner workings of these creatures, Rogers said they did not replicate them exactly in their devices. “It’s very much bio-inspired engineering as opposed to bio-mimicry,” Rogers said. “We’re not trying to copy the cephalopod, because although it does a lot of great stuff, it doesn’t work outside of a water environment, for instance. But there are some really interesting concepts there that we’re able to pull out
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and implement in kind of an abstract way in our devices.” While the word “camoufl age” brings military to mind, others have approached Rogers with ideas for more civilian and consumer applications for this new material. Anke Loh, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has reached out to Rogers to discuss the potential use of the camoufl age sheet in fashion. “Th is is appealing to her because it just creates some new possibilities for how you might do adaptive clothing,” he said. But Rogers also noted that consumers may not want their clothes to blend in with their surroundings, and suggested that a simple software tweak could make the pixels stand out from their surroundings instead. People in architecture have also noted its potential for use in various living environments. “There are a lot of different applications,” Rogers said. “Military camoufl age is kind of the obvious one, but it’s interesting how many different people have come up and had ideas of their own.” Steffie can be reached at sdrucke@technograph. com.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF ROGER HANLON
Materials Science and Engineering Professor John Rogers and his team tested the material by changing pixels to create the abbreviation of the University.
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AMONG THE BEST Harry Hilton, aerospace engineering professor emeritus, receives ASC Fellowship
Dr.
BY ELISEO ELIZARRARAZ | TECHNOGRAPH WRITER
Harry Hilton, professor emeritus in aerospace engineering, has recently been named a 2014 Fellow of the American Society for Composites. Hilton began teaching at the University in 1949, when the aerospace engineering program was still in its infancy — only five years old at the time. Since then, he has beeninternationally recognized as an authority on viscoelasticity and aero-viscoelasticity. Hilton taught and researched during the golden era of aerospace research, when the
public’s interest helped draw support for space programs in the 1950s and 1960s. According to the aerospace engineering department’s website, during the scope of his career, Hilton has been published more than 300 times in archival journals or conference proceedings. He has also taught every undergraduate aerospace engineering class at the University, apart from propulsion. And, although Hilton has been officially retired since 1990, his active involvement
14 in the scientific community is what landed him a nomination with ASC, an engineering and scientific professional organization that strives “to provide a communication forum for the engineering and scientific community in composite materials,” according to its mission statement. Dr. Robert M. Jones, professor emeritus at Virginia Tech, along with three other former ASC presidents, nominated Hilton for the fellowship and placed special emphasis on his contribution to engineering since his retirement. “Dr. Hilton has aided fundamental analysis capabilities for the aerospace industry,” Jones said. “(He) is to be admired for his superb contributions after his retire-
ment. Not many folks can match what he has accomplished in the past 20 years.” In addition to his involvement with ASC, Hilton is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and is actively involved in other organizations such as the Society of Experimental Mechanics, the Society of Engineering Science and the American Institute of Physics, among others. He is joining the ranks of 44 other ASC fellows, including his department colleague Dr. Scott R. White and will be honored for his 65 years of service to the University at a ceremony on Oct. 24. “I love teaching, and I don’t get paid for it. It’s purely a labor of love. I love doing the research and working
with graduate students and doing my own research, and I really continued the life that I led all the time (while) I was here,” he said. Ben Wexler, sophomore in Engineering, said he feels it’s important to recognize the accomplishments of professors like Hilton. “It is important to give people who have made serious and important contributions to a program notoriety,” Wexler said. “Such as in the case of Professor Hilton, a longstanding commitment with the aerospace program, or in the case of significant achievements, because they give the aerospace department a better reputation.” Eliseo can be reached at elizarr@technograph. com.
“Dr. Hilton has aided fundamental analysis capabilities for the aerospace industry. He is to be admired for his superb contributions after his retirement. Not many folks can match what he has accomplished in the past 20 years.” —Dr. Robert M. Jones, professor emeritus at Virginia Tech
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PHOTO COURTESY OF HARRY HILTON
Dr. Harry Hilton, professor emeritus in Aerospace Engineering, right, with former Ph.D student Alister Fraser in 1965.
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