The pessimist in me likes to think this article is sponsored by the air purifier lobby. Healthier I can understand, but smarter? How do they prove smartness?
But I suggest you DIY a purifier instead of spending a ton of money on one: https://dynomight.net/better-DIY-air-purifier.html
Just buy a box fan and slap a filter on it.
Are you aware of any data that supports this? It could be true for all I know but (contrary to my expectations as well) the experiments I've done don't really seem to support this. See the "taping" experiment here: https://dynomight.net/2020/12/15/some-real-data-on-a-DIY-box...
You might be referring to non-HEPA furnace air filters which (by design) have much better airflow, but typically don't capture the smallest particles, which have the largest health impact.
The experiments and data on that site (I assume it's yours?) don't give me nearly the same conclusions you do - Almost all decent filter setups will hit the same particulate equilibrium asymptote with the only real difference being the duration it takes to get there - a negligible plus or minus half an hour. Speed is not aim. It's the maintenance of the steady-state that is.
If the filter stays on, the air stays clean (barring total capacity issues - you can't filter a huge house with a single box fan).
So the only real roadblocks are human factors that would 1) make people skip making a filtering setup and 2) make people want to turn off the filter. This is where the real UX comes into play.
I'm not doubting this, but do you have any evidence? According to the specs, by definition a MERV 14 should leave at most 25% of all particles size 0.3 microns or larger in one pass, while a HEPA filter can leave at most 0.03%. It's plausible but not totally obvious to me to me that this means that a MERV 14 will leave at most a fraction 0.25^k after k passes (though it's plausible). If so, that would suggest you need around 6 passes through a MERV filter to get equivalent filtration to 1 pass through a HEPA filter. (Airflow might be 6 times as high.)
20x20x2 or 20x20x4 filters have much larger surface area, which is better.
Creating a cube with four 20x20x2 is the best in terms of energy use and air output.
And then you add a fan shroud for even more efficiency.
https://www.texairfilters.com/how-to-improve-the-efficiency-...
20x20x2 or 20x20x4 filters have much larger surface area, which is better.
Creating a cube with four 20x20x2 is the best in terms of energy use and air output.
And then you add a fan shroud for even more efficiency.
https://www.texairfilters.com/how-to-improve-the-efficiency-...
Well that makes the two of us. For an article on a website called science, there's lots of info about the person doing research, his background and his life story than the actual numbers on what they define as "smarter"
In one part they mention the study was done in 2015 (no link to article) on 24 people where these people did 61-101% better on some test.
But then when they did the study on 100+ people the improvement was just 26.4%
Wut??
But like others have mentioned there is evidence better quality air helps with performing better on cognitive tasks. This article is just really badly written.
I think this is the study
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/27662232/4892924...
>Results: On average, cognitive scores were 61% higher on the Green building day and 101% higher on the two Green building days than on the Conventional building day (p < 0.0001). VOCs and CO2 were independently associated with cognitive scores
"Science" is one of the two leading scientific journals in the world, along with Nature.
(Pardon the vagueness, I'll edit later if I can)
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-air-purifiers-f...
(Not that leaking gas would get meaningfully filtered by the average air purifier.)
This study found improvements due to the air purifiers:
https://www.edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai20-188...
> Indeed, with a benefit-to-cost ratio of 0.2σ increase in test scores per $1,000 of expenditure, air filter installation is one of the most cost-effective education policies available to policymakers today.
> Specifically, economically disadvantaged students disproportionately attend schools in highly-polluted regions. Given this, installing air filters in polluted regions should both raise student achievement and reduce the pervasive test score gaps that plague public education.
Cognitive testing (detailed above) was used to test "smartness." I am, however, similarly pessimistic.
If anything it was sponsored by HVAC. Heat recovery ventilation units are expensive. (Would have one if a new house. Harder to justify for retrofit.)
Well in a way it is, because that's what evolution had to work with. Maybe in some other multiverse atoms wouldn't be necessary, but that's just not the way it is in our reality.
>I'm aware what I'm about to say is a dumb non sequitur that doesn't really make sense,
Obviously it's not interesting and isn't actually saying anything, since carbon is so general and fundamental as a building block on Earth.
I was speaking thematically or poetically. We generally don't refer to ourselves as "atom-based lifeforms" or "quark-based lifeforms", but we often do refer to ourselves as "carbon-based lifeforms". I could elaborate, but hopefully that captures what I'm referring to, here. It's mostly a matter of wordplay, not matter.
People love being scared. Struggle against external threats gives meaningless lives a soothing story to tell to our egos.
Fish also can't breathe on land, despite much higher concentrations of oxygen. What does that mean?
Those studies are often mis-used as doom porn fodder, and are really only useful for occupational limits and employment liability, not some future forecasts for the next few centuries.
The only constant thing about climate is that its constantly changes, and large fluctuations have happened many times in the past, and mammals survived.
Some of the dinosaurs that survived (birds) even developed a whole different type of super efficient hemoglobin, and if CO2 keeps going up - so will we. Some people already retain large amounts of fetal hemoglobin, maybe that's the way?
At any rate, the best view on climate change I've read online: http://timtyler.org/end_the_ice_age/