Federal R&D Award Trending – comparing a number of sources the author examines trends in federal R&D awards and spending. … even though spending appears to have gone down in 2012, the number of contracts saw a slight increase, implying that there was a smaller average dollar amount per …
A healthy grant to support healthy buildings | Official Google Blog – Google recently gave $3 million to the USGBC to support research into green building materials, especially in the workplace. Read more about it on BuildingGreen: In one of the biggest announcements to come out of Greenbuild 2012 in …
Bill Doyle: Treating cancer with electric fields – excellent 15-min TEDmed talk about a newly approved method for treating cancer by disrupting normal cell division. This method takes time, but it’s without side effects. A person can live their normal life while being treated.
The new issue of ArchitypeReview is out, Airports + Transportation. Go here to see all of the 16 projects on one page. Click through to a project and you get a gallery of images and description. This digital magazine always has a good selection of quality projects from around the …
Just discovered Talkitect | architecture, art, & design, a blog covering contemporary architecture and design. The posts aren’t that frequent but they’re pretty interesting. Some examples: Bambooline Berlin by Peter Ruge Architekten – “Bambooline Berlin explores the city’s urban development and proposes a new approach for the temporary, interim use of sustainable …
Beautiful Chaos at Kolkata’s Durga Puja – The Atlantic Cities – with photos of structures created for festival celebrations in the Indian city of Kolkata. Image credit: Michael Snyder Over the course of two hot, humid months at the tail end of the monsoon season, 20,000 new structures come …
These Are the Cities That Can Show Us How to Create Jobs – The Atlantic Cities – A recent analysis of competitiveness and job growth across U.S. metros conducted by Economic Modeling Specialists could not be more timely. It provides a detailed assessment of the metros that have generated the most robust job growth based on …
The Secret Life of Plants: Plant Communication – scientists may discover the physiology behind the old adage that talking to your plants makes them grow better. This article gives a brief overview of the different ways plants communicate – autosignaling (within themselves), plant-insect, and plant-plant communication. Though plants do not …
Nature’s Disco: See the Northern Lights – the 4:26-min video clip in this post is definitely worth a look, especially for those of us who’ve never seen the this amazing phenomenon in real life. Photo Credit: Moyan_Brenn/flickr Scientists predict this winter to be the best in 50 years to experience …
Safer Self-Healing Coating for Aerospace Aluminium – don’t know if this applies to building materials, but it sounds like a hugely welcome development in what has been a very hazardous process for workers.
The Top 10 Smartest European Cities – first of two posts from Co.Exist written by Boyd Cohen. The next one will be The Top 10 North American Cities, out next month. In an attempt to improve the rankings, I developed a metric called the Smart Cities Wheel, which contains six …
Rogue Inventor Saul Griffith Is Radicalizing R&D — With Inflatable Arms – post on Wired about Griffith, who runs a small independent R&D lab in San Francisco, Otherlab. He makes some interesting observations about research labs in general. But he’s also concerned with the way the industry works. Before World War …
Renewable energy to become world’s second-largest power generation source by 2015, says IEA – post on Renewable Energy Focus about a recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Outlook 2012. In 2011, subsidies for renewables (including for biofuels) amounted to $88 billion – over the period to 2035 …
Why Listening Is So Much More Than Hearing – NYTimes.com – great article on the importance of hearing, why listening matters, and the role of attention, especially in the digital world. Briefly explains a bit of the neuroscience behind both. Hearing, in short, is easy. You and every other …
BLOG : Design for Emotion – Posts on this blog include parts of Chapter One of the book of the same name. Design for Emotion is a guide to understanding and applying emotion and personality to create products, applications and websites that are more desirable, usable and useful.
Q&A: Robert Ivy, CEO, the American Institute of Architects | SmartPlanet – Ivy talks about how architecture effects public health. A huge area where design can affect public health is materials selection. Our choices of materials make an enormous difference in both individual and mass health. An unhealthy system can …
Exhibition in San Francisco – Grand Reductions: Ten diagrams that changed urban planning – “suggests the simple illustration’s power to encapsulate complex ideas.” You can see the ten in this post from The Atlantic Cities. “The diagram can cut both ways: It can either be a distillation in …
Green City, Clean Waters | Philadelphia Water Department – “Green City, Clean Waters is Philadelphia’s 25-year plan to protect and enhance our watersheds by managing stormwater with innovative green infrastructure.” Image is of stormwater wetland.