WHO NEEDS A FURNACE, WHEN YOU’VE GOT computers around? “Thanks to a novel on-chip water-cooling system developed by the company, the thermal energy from a cluster of computer processors can be efficiently recycled to provide hot water for an office, says Bruno Michel, manager of advanced thermal packaging at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory, in Switzerland. The goal, he says, is to improve the energy efficiency of large computing clusters and reduce their environmental impact.” Actually, you can see this on a smaller scale in many places — my study is noticeably warmer when all the computers are running. In the winter, that’s a plus. In the summer, not so much.