Lifeboat Foundation

Fri, Jun 17 at 7 PM CDT.

This Friday, June 17th at 8:00 pm, join us as we hear from AAI member Dr. Clif Ashcraft. Clif has his own observatories in his backyard. Learn how he built them and what beautiful images he has taken over the years!

There are endless possibilities for the creative crafter. And for the more experienced DIY-ers, there’s an even bigger project that’s just waiting to be built for those daring enough to try: How about an entire guest house for your backyard? After an internet frenzy sold out this particular model, the DIY Allwood Solvalla Garden House is back in stock and better than ever.

If you’re not quite ready to move your entire life into a tiny space like this, never fear: You can convert it into a guest home, a studio, garden house, pool house, or truly anything your heart desires. Plus, you can purchase all the parts and instructions on Amazon.

At a mere 172 square feet, the tiny space is compact enough to actually fit but still has enough room to be useful, whether it’s used for storage or for pure fun. In the description, the plans say that this tiny structure can be built in way less than a day—in eight hours, to be exact—when two adults team up for the job.

3D printing can deliver massive savings in time taken to build the house exteriors, shaving off weeks from the process.

There has been a massive tidal wave of tech innovation over the last couple of years. Some apps and platforms offer basic services for the home or office. Others ignite your imagination.

Gil Perry, CEO and cofounder of D-ID, an Israeli-based tech company, has created something amazingly beautiful and touching. Leveraging artificial intelligence and sophisticated technology, the company has created a unique, animated, live portrait, which animates the photos of long-lost relatives or whoever you’d like to see, as if they are in the room with you. Its tech makes people come alive and look realistic and natural.

Continue reading “Israeli-Based Tech Startup Brings Your Old Family Photos To Life With Amazing Artificial Intelligence” »

Here are the safety precautions Wirecutter recommends taking ahead of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, from making sure you have the right gear to completing a few relatively simple home improvements.

How to plan and protect yourself in areas at risk of hurricanes.

‘This might be a housing bubble,’ says Dallas Fed economist—here’s an exclusive look at the latest housing market analysis.

A Korean company hopes to build a floating city Oceanix Busan. Seasteading is seen as a means to address climate-change-induced sea-level rise, as well as a sociology experiment.

But libertarian ideas are not the sole reasoning behind seasteading and floating cities. A prototype floating community is planned on the water next to Busan, South Korea. For the company that is creating it, Oceanix, it is about addressing the coastal community climate challenge of rising sea levels. Rather than building dikes and sea walls to hold back the ocean, Oceanix is offering a city that floats. So instead of increased sunshine day flooding along the US eastern seaboard that inundates Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Charleston, Norfolk, Hampton Roads and other Chesapeake Bay communities quite regularly these days, there would be cities that ride the surface of the ocean rather than be flooded by it.

It’s not like people haven’t been living in floating accommodation for decades. Houseboat communities here in Toronto have been around for a number of years. I visited one of these homes a few years ago and was surprised to see the quality of accommodation and the lifestyle it supported. Today, there are people living permanently on cruise ships that travel the globe. And in The Netherlands, boats and retired ships moored along its many canals have been turned into permanent homes often featured in HGTV’s House Hunters International. But it is in low-lying coastal areas like Bangladesh, The Maldives, and many Pacific island nations where the floating city is seen as a climate change solution for encroaching seas.

Continue reading “Oceanix Busan in South Korea Could Be The World’s First Floating City” »

IDRA has posted a video showcasing the assembly process of its 9,000-ton Giga Press, arguably one of the largest casting machines in the market. The 9,000-ton Giga Press is expected to be used in the production of the Tesla Cybertruck’s single-piece rear underbody.

IDRA has been teasing the 9,000-ton Giga Press for some time now, with the company posting several teasers of the gigantic machine on its official LinkedIn page over the past weeks. The company will be previewing the 9,000-ton Giga Press at an open house event from June 6–14, 2022, where attendees will be able to see the assembled monster up close.

The recent assembly video from IDRA is likely part of the company’s subtle promotional efforts for the 9,000-ton Giga Press. The sheer size of the machine’s components was highlighted in the clip, as even the contraption’s parts dwarfed IDRA’s staff. One thing was evident in the recently-posted video — the 9,000-ton Giga Press is a daunting machine.

Biodiversity is on the verge of being devastated due to the inclination towards deforestation these days. The adverse climatic conditions that our Earth is facing nowadays are also the result of this pressing concern. However, to mitigate this climatic distress caused by deforestation, a team of researchers at the MIT Institute has come up with a novel technique to artificially grow wood in a controlled environment in the lab, which can then be used for making furniture and other wooden houses, which are now being made from cutting trees, thereby posing a threat to our natural habitat. Apart from the amazing growth, we can also print “3D custom-designed wooden structures” out of the replicas, which can considerably reduce wood waste as well.

Prior to discussing the mechanism of wood production, an interesting thing to note is that we can easily change the shape and structure of these artificially produced woods according to our requirements. The researchers have demonstrated the whole process through an experiment in which a flowering plant known as “Common zinnia (Zinnia Elegans)” would be taken and the cells are then extracted from its leaves which can then be conserved in a liquid mixture for several days. After it becomes nutritionally embellished, a gel-based material would be utilized to further refine the mixture.

However, these cells would then give birth to new plant cells which will then be treated accordingly as per the lab conditions. Moreover, we can also reform the physical and mechanical properties of the cells by increasing or decreasing the hormonal concentrations as per the needs.