“Telescopes at Lowell Observatory in Arizona captured this image of galaxies on May 25, their images marred by the reflected light from more than 25 Starlink satellites as they passed overhead.” Victoria Girgis/Lowell Observatory (image source) NASA wants you to photograph Starlink satellites with your smartphone – article in Astronomy magazine …
This little creek in south St. Louis County is part of the vast watershed of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers (click here for an animated map of the entire watershed). The creek is normally a lazy trickle but with a bit of rain it rises rapidly. In these photos it’s just getting …
Trim Tab v 24 The Water Issue – Winter 2015 issue of the International Living Future Institute’s quarterly digital magazine focuses on water, on “people and projects that are rethinking how water is used in the built environment…” Among its many good articles is one called Bertschi School: The Water Petal about the science …
Cap Cloud over the Sierra Nevadas – today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is by Guido Montanes, one of the many professional photographers whose work is posted on APOD. You’ll find a brief explanation of this unusual cloud phenomenon in the photo’s caption. If you’re interested in astronomy, …
Opinion: Bright Nights, Big Problems – recent opinion piece in National Geographic on the growing rarity of true darkness, due primarily to our unthinking use of artificial light. Because of the rapid growth of light pollution over recent decades, most Americans under 40 have never known real …
Architecture: Steiner – editorial on WAN (World Architecture News) about wholeness in architecture, particularly in the work of the Austrian “scientist, philosopher, and writer Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)” who designed and built the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland that is familiar to students of architecture around the world. A link in the …
A Building Not Just Green, but Practically Self-Sustaining – the about-to-open Bullitt Center in Seattle hopes to be “the world’s greenest” office building. It’s aiming for certification with the Living Building Challenge, “the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard” and which requires 12 months of continuous occupancy to qualify. The article …
Quick, how many engineers or engineering firms can you name? If you’re having a little trouble, now’s your chance to become more aware of the huge contribution these inventive thinkers make to our built environment. Here are a couple of links with practical information on what engineers do and what …
Biomimicry used as a guiding force to design Lavasa Township – post on World Architecture News’ Metroblogs about HOK’s award-winning masterplan for 12,500-acre town of Lavasa, near Mumbai. The development is expected to [be] complete in the year 2020 and will include five planned urban villages that can accommodate …
Fireflies Inspire Brighter LEDs – using the jagged scales on a firefly’s abdomen as a guide, researchers from Belgium, France, and Canada have developed an overlay for LED’s that increases light output by 55%. Via ThomasNet’s Industry Market Trends. … the jagged-scale modification can be made post-production on conventional LEDs. …
China’s Wang Shu: From builder to Pritzker-winning architect – the first Chinese architect to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize talks about traditional Chinese architecture, the importance of nature, and applying those traditional principles and methods in his own projects. … if you look at Chinese traditional buildings, you …
Check out PhiMatrix, software that applies the principles of Phi, the Golden Ratio – PhiMatrix is a design and analysis software application for Windows and Mac. The PhiMatrix grid system quickly overlays any image in any software on your screen to identify or apply phi proportions in various …
The Importance of Soil and Its Conservation [Video] – this 5+ min video is packed with statistics about soil and how we use and thoughtlessly misuse this most valuable of resources. See more at Global Soil Forum, a European partnership that recently sponsored the first Global Soils Week. The Global Soil …
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 …
The bleeding edge of self-healing skin-like materials – BBC post about research being done by U of Illinois engineer Nancy Sottos on self-healing polymers. Inspired by human skin, Sottos creates plastics that “bleed” when cut and can heal themselves over and over again. Her work is paving the way for …
Post on the Blog of the Long now, India’s Living Bridges, is about traditional bridges grown from roots in Northeast India. Check out the 4:30-min clip and the link to more images on Atlas Obscura’s website (a site that’s definitely worth a look). The root bridges, some of which are …
Next time you need a break, take a look at APOD, NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. Most of the images are of objects in space – stars, planets, galaxies – but some, like yesterday’s Mammatus Clouds Over Saskatchewan, focus on ‘the heavens’ in a more general way. All …