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It looks like ordinary cement. It feels like ordinary cement. But it has a hidden ability: this “supercool” cement can naturally keep buildings cooler without air-conditioning or electricity. Cement normally soaks up heat from the sun, and that in turn makes our buildings hotter. So we crank up the A/C. That’s a major problem for the climate: as the planet warms, and A/C use grows, the energy used for air-conditioning is expected to triple by the middle of the century. Air conditioners, ironically, are perpetuating extreme heat as they contribute to climate change. But they’re not the only way to keep buildings cool. By tweaking the chemistry of cement, scientists at Chinas Southeast University designed the material to reflect more incoming sunlight. Whatever heat is absorbed is beamed away into the atmosphere. In tests, the new cement can reduce indoor temperatures by nearly 10 degrees Fahrenheit. In some locations, the approach could help make it possible for buildings avoid air-conditioning completely. In other places, it can help cut energy use. In hot, dry climates or places with clear skies, super-cool cement can significantly lower building envelope temperatures, reducing or even eliminating the need for mechanical air-conditioning, says Guo Lu, the lead author of a new study about the work published in Science Advances. In more humid or variable climates, it can still substantially reduce energy consumption by easing the load on HVAC systems. How supercool cement is made To make the cement, the scientists engineered the mix so that it forms extra ettringitea mineral that normally is produced in cement in small amounts. The new process creates lots of ettringite crystals in different sizes, helping reflect away light and scatter it in different directions. By adding alumina-rich minerals and making other changes to the chemistry and microstructure, the scientists also made it possible for the material to reflect heat into the atmospheric window, letting it escape into space instead of heating up the surrounding neighborhood like an AC condenser. The material design means that the cement can be made at lower temperatures than standard Portland cement, so it’s better for the planet starting at the production level. We can significantly lower carbon emissions, says Fengyin Du, a postdoctoral researcher of building materials at Oregon State University who worked on the study as a student. The researchers calculated that the process cuts the carbon footprint of making cement by around 25%. Over the cements full lifetime of use in a building, as it saves energy, researchers say that the material could even become carbon negative. Thats a major achievement: cement is currently one of the worlds largest sources of emissions. Finally, because it takes less energy to make, it’s also cheaper than ordinary cement. That lower cost could help it scale. “It requires no extra additives or fillers, and production is fully compatible with existing cement infrastructure,” Lu says. “This allows for low-cost and large-scale deployment, making it highly feasible for widespread adoption in both new construction and retrofitting projectsespecially in regions facing heat stress.” The material can even perform better than typical cement, with faster setting times and higher strength because of its composition. Other researchers have developed coatings that also help buildings stay cooler, including the worlds whitest white paint and an iridescent, plant-based coating. But coatings are fragile and sometimes need to be reapplied. Because the cement inherently reflects light and heat, it’s much more durable. It also can be added as a coating itself, but one that’s long-lasting. The scientists worked with a cement company, Jiangxi Yinshan White Cement Co., to test pilot-scale production. Now, they’re scaling up to produce larger cement panels, the next step toward commercialization, proving that A/C isn’t the only way to keep buildings cool. “Radiative cooling is a passive, zero-energy strategybut that doesnt mean its less effective,” Lu says. “In fact, passive cooling is inherently stable, maintenance-free, and highly energy-efficient, making it particularly valuable in regions where electricity access is limited or energy costs are high.”
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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. When Matt Garman interned for Andy Jassy at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2005, the unit was still considered an internal startup and had yet to begin selling IT infrastructure services to other companies. Twenty years later, Jassy is president and CEO of Amazon, and Garman is CEO of AWS, which last year reported revenue of $107.6 millionnearly 17% of the e-commerce giants 2024 sales. With long tenures at one company growing increasingly rare, I asked Garman, who had worked at startups before joining AWS and had initially planned to return to a smaller company, what kept him at Amazon for so long. I found that I could actually have more freedom to build here at Amazon than I had at a startup, he says. Amazons ability to mint new products and services at scaleearly in Garmans time at AWS, the unit launched Simple Storage Services, or S3; Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2); and Amazon Simple DB in quick successionis attributable to its distinctive and peculiar culture. From the outset, founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos emphasized tenets such as customer obsession, frugality, bias for action, ownership, and hiring great talent. These evolved into a set of leadership principles that guide the company. MEETINGS WITH BEZOS For some, the environment can be incredibly energizing. Garman, for example, says he learned quickly that good ideas matter more than hierarchy. When I was an intern, I had a couple of meetings where I presented to Jeff Bezos, and he didnt care that I was an intern, he recalls. He cared that I had interesting or good ideas . . . and we debated those. That, to me, was impactful because . . . I didnt have to check with my boss or bosss boss. He wanted to get ideas directly from me. That kind of information gathering among senior leaders and employees drives the way Amazon operates. Youre making decisions based on the actual data and not high-level distillations of the data, Garman says. If you just get a polished or shiny version of the truth through several layers, youll make worse decisions because you wont know all of those specifics. But Amazons culture isnt for everyone. Leaders expect employees to be in the office consistently, five days per week, and Garman has said that workers who disagree with the policy should move on. We think that [in-person collaboration] is important to our customer; we think thats important to the future innovation and the culture of our company, he told The Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker earlier this year. It doesnt mean that thats the only decision you can make, but it is the decision that were making. And if its not for you, then thats okay, you can go and find another company if you want to. For those early-career employees who stay, theres always a chance that one of them will someday occupy Garmans seat. When asked whether a future AWS CEO might be a current intern, he lit up: “I think so. I think part of the benefit that we have is we give people so many opportunities to learn and grow in all stages of their career.” Leaning into AI Like most tech CEOs, Garman is especially occupied with Amazons artificial intelligence developments and investments, which range from its Trainium custom chips to applications like Rufus, an AI-powered shopping assistant that helps customers discover and evaluate products through natural conversation. When I asked Garman how he would advise other CEOs to approach AI, he was blunt: Its super important to lean into it and learn the technology. If you resist it and say, Im going to wait and be a late adopter, its probably going to be too late because theres a real flywheel effect of adopting some of this technology early. HOW PECULIAR IS YOUR CULTURE? What are your companys leadership principles or values, and how do they drive the way you operate? Send your ideas to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Ill feature some of the most compelling examples in a future newsletter. Read more: the path to the top Honeywell Internationals CEO was shaped by his time in the field Why former CFOs are finding success as CEOs Principal Financial Groups CEO rose from intern to chief executive
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E-Commerce
Last year, Transport for London tested AI-powered CCTV at Willesden Green tube station, running feeds through automated systems from October 2022 to September 2023. According to Wired, the goal was to detect fare evasion, aggressive gestures, and safety risks. Instead, the system generated more than 44,000 alertsnearly half of them false or misdirected. Children following parents through ticket barriers triggered fare-dodging alarms, and the algorithms struggled to distinguish folding bikes from standard ones. The impact was immediate: Staff faced 19,000-plus real-time alerts requiring manual review, not because problems existed, but because the AI could not distinguish between appearance and intent. Trained to watch motion and posture, not context, the system exposed a deeper flaw at the core of many AI tools today. As AI spreads into daily lifefrom shops to airportsits inability to interpret why we move, rather than simply how, risks turning ordinary human behavior into false alarms. The Limits of What Cameras Can See Most vision AI excels at spotting patterns: crossing a line, entering a zone, breaking routine. But nuance, ambiguity, and cultural variation trip them up. In dynamic or crowded environments, one of the biggest challenges is when people or objects block each other from view, says Tuan Le Anh, CEO of Vietnam-based Advanced Technology Innovations (ATIN). When people overlap or move quickly in low lighting, the system might merge them into one person or, worse, duplicate them. Its easy for cameras to miss key actions or misclassify whats going on entirely. That lack of context has real consequences. A person running could be exercising, fleeing danger, or chasing a bus, but AI sees only the act, not the reason. Most systems process brief visual fragments without factoring in time, crowd dynamics, or audio. They can say what is happeninglike someone runningbut not why, Le Anh notes. That lack of causal reasoning creates blind spots. In practice, this has led to retail cameras mistaking reaching motions for theft, public transit systems disproportionately flagging passengers of color, and healthcare monitors confusing routine gestures with signs of distresssometimes while missing genuine emergencies. Le Anh argues the solution lies in training AI to see the whole scene. When you combine multiple data sources and let the model learn from patterns over time, you get closer to something that understands intent, he says. Thats where this technology can stop making the same mistakes and start becoming truly useful. False Patterns, Real Consequences This problem reflects what Sagi Ben Moshe, CEO of Lumana, calls the pattern-matching trap. AI trained to classify pixels often latches on to surface details with no real meaning. One classic example came from military image-recognition projects, Ben Moshe tells Fast Company. They trained the system to detect tanks using photos that happened to be taken near trees. What happened is that the system learned to spot trees, not tanks. It worked great in testing, but failed in the field. Lumanafresh off a $40 million Series A funding round led by Wing Venture Capital and backed by Norwest and S Capitaldesigns video AI to avoid those pitfalls. Its continuous learning models track motion over time and in context. Theres a huge difference between seeing and understanding, Ben Moshe says. AI currently can detect a person, but it doesnt know if that person is distressed, distracted, or just waiting for a ride. And when systems act on that incomplete view, we risk misunderstanding becoming automated at scale. The risks are highest in schools, hospitals, and stadiumsplaces where safety depends on accurate classification, and false positives can cause escalation or missed threats. Lumanas approach integrates diverse data streams to reduce those errors. Why AI Needs Physics, Not Just Pixels Experts argue that real understanding requires more than 2D vision. AI must learn the same physical and spatial rules humans absorb as children: gravity, motion, cause, and effect. Todays AI vision systems are amazing at spotting patterns, but terrible at explaining why something is happening, Ben Moshe says. They dont have a built-in sense of physical logic. A toddler knows that if you push a ball, it rolls. An AI model doesnt, unless its seen millions of videos of balls rolling in similar ways. Industry efforts are moving in that direction. Lumana builds structured models of objects, forces, and scenes, while ATIN explores transformer-based vision and 3D scene graphs to capture depth and relational context. But high-resolution, real-time interpretation demands vast processing power. As Ben Moshe puts it, Not everyone can have an Nvidia H200 sitting in their building. Building AI That Understands As companies race to automate physical spaces, the stakes are clear: Unless AI learns context, we risk scaling human blind spots into automated ones. When you deploy AI that sees without understanding, you create systems that act with confidence but without context, Ben Moshe says. Thats a recipe for unfairness, distrust, and failure, especially in high-stakes environments. Ben Moshe and Le Anh agree: The future of AI wont hinge on sharper cameras or better labels, but on reasoninglinking movement to meaning and time to intent. If AI is to coexist with humans, it must first understand us and our world. Progress is happening, with models that integrate time, audio, and environmental cues. But real trust will depend on systems that are not only smarter but also transparent, interpretable, and aligned with human complexity. When that shift comes, AI wont just recognize a face or track motion, it will grasp the context behind it. And that opens the door to technology that doesnt just watch us, but works with us to create safer, fairer, more responsive public spaces.
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E-Commerce
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