Habitats – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Dec 26
2021

Powerless fridge shows potential of ‘frugal innovation’

Though innovation is often associated with Silicon Valley and high-tech start-ups, sometimes all that’s needed to make a big difference in people’s lives is a new spin on tradition, UNCTAD Deputy Secretary-General Isabelle Durant said on 2 July at the opening of a meeting in Geneva on the topic.

Mitticool, the clay refrigerator that requires no electricity, costs less than $50 and can keep food fresh for 2 to 3 days, is just one example of the power of “frugal innovation”, Ms. Durant said.

Inspiration came to the Indian inventor, Mansukhbhai Prajapati, after seeing his community suffer during the Gujarat earthquake of 2001, when a magnitude seven quake wrecked more than 8,000 villages, killing around 20,000 and leaving a million others without a home.

Dec 24
2021

Canadian Company Is Using Hemp to Build Affordable Housing in Colorado

A Canadian hemp company just bought nearly 1,000 acres of land in Colorado as part of a new plan to showcase how hemp can be used to help build affordable housing.

Although most of America’s new hemp industry is focused on producing CBD and other cannabinoids, some companies are still using this remarkable plant for more traditional uses.

Dec 23
2021

Scientists Found a Cradle of Life Under Antarctica

Nearly 100 species were found living in extreme cold and total darkness beneath the ice in one of the world’s “least-known” habitats.

Dec 23
2021

The Horrible Tragedies Caused By Bizarre 1950s Kids’ Toys | Hidden Killers | Absolute History

How far our safety regulations have come…

Dr Suzannah Lipscomb looks at the hidden dangers of the British post-war home. In the 1950s, people embraced modern design for the first time after years of austerity and self-denial. The modern home featured moulded plywood furniture, fibreglass, plastics and polyester — materials and technologies that were developed during World War II.

Content licensed from DRG. Any queries, please contact us at: [email protected]

Dec 23
2021

Woman moves into first 3D printed home in US, created by Habitat for Humanity

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (WTKR) — Habitat for Humanity made the first 3D printed home in the U.S. for a woman in Virginia.

“To have a home right before Christmas is really, really exciting,” homeowner April Stringfield said.

In July, crews broke ground on the 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom concrete home.

Dec 22
2021

Neurons in the Olfactory Cortex Link Smells to Places

Summary: Neurons in the primary olfactory cortex play a role in encoding spatial maps, a new study reports.

Source: champalimaud centre for the unknown.

Smell has the power to transport us across time and space. It could be the sweet fragrance of jasmine, or the musty scent of algae. Suddenly, you are back at your childhood home, or under the burning sun of a distant shore.

Dec 20
2021

World’s First 3D-Printed House Made Of Local Raw Earth — And it Closes the Roof With a Dome

A Bologna-based architecture firm has used clay and 3D printers to create sustainable domed housing with little waste.

Dec 20
2021

Iowa State University gets $1.4 million to buy 3D concrete printer for low-cost homebuilding

Iowa’s first 3D-printed home could be ready for its new owners by this time next year.

The Iowa Economic Development Authority on Friday approved $1.4 million for the Iowa State University College of Design to purchase a 3D printer capable of producing concrete houses. Its goal is to build a neighborhood of up to 34 3D-printed homes in Hamburg, a southwest Iowa town recovering from a massive flood two years ago.

The agency’s director, Debi Durham, said the college also will develop a curriculum for training contractors on 3D printing and new state building codes in order to allow wide use of the technique in Iowa.

Dec 19
2021

More than 21,000 evacuated as heavy rains continue to lash flood-hit Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR: More than 21,000 people affected by Malaysia’s worst flooding in years — most of them in Selangor — were sheltering in relief centres on Sunday (Dec 19).

Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced the government would allocate an initial sum of RM100 million for house and infrastructure repairs, and will provide financial aid to affected households.

In a Facebook post, the prime minister said he had “directed all ministries to double up efforts in helping flood operations especially in the severely affected areas as soon as possible”.

Dec 12
2021

Reddit-trained artificial intelligence warns researchers about… itself

But wait, should we believe it?

An artificial intelligence warning AI researchers about the dangers of AI sounds like the setup of a delightful B movie, but truth is often stranger than fiction.

A professor and a fellow at the University of Oxford came face to face with that reality when they invited an AI to participate in a debate at the Oxford Union on, you guessed it, the ethics of AI. Specifically, as Dr. Alex Connock and Professor Andrew Stephen explain in the Conversation, the prompt was “This house believes that AI will never be ethical.” The AI, it seems, agreed.

“AI will never be ethical,” argued the Megatron-Turing Natural Language Generation model, which was notably trained on Wikipedia, Reddit, and millions of English-language news articles published between 2016 and 2019. “It is a tool, and like any tool, it is used for good and bad.”