How Santiago Calatrava's Buildings Marry Engineering With Biology

From fastcompany.com...

"Santiago Calatrava's buildings marry engineering with biology. And they may just be beautiful enough to make Americans care about infrastructure." Read more here.

Climate Change Authority Admits Mistake

From Technology Review published by MIT...

"One of the most alarming conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a widely respected organization established by the United Nations, is that glaciers in the Himalayas could be gone 25 years from now, eliminating a primary source of water for hundreds of millions of people. But a number of glaciologists have argued that this conclusion is wrong, and now the IPCC admits that the conclusion is largely unsubstantiated, based on news reports rather than published, peer-reviewed scientific studies."

Read more here

Can You Tell If These Buildings Are Designed By Women?

From fastcompany.com...

"Does being a woman predispose a designer to a certain type of architecture? Can you really tell by looking if a building is designed by a woman or a man? Take this quiz and see."

'Supersensored' Supertower

From Engineering News Record...

"There is at least one superlative associated with the world’s tallest structure that few know about: The 828-meter Burj Dubai, renamed Burj Khalifa on its opening day, Jan. 4, is likely the most monitored skyscraper in the world, from its foundation to the top of its pinnacle. Data collected from the building’s permanent sensors will be used to refine design and construction methods for future supertall towers..."

Click here to read the full article from ENR.

Revisiting a once wobbly bridge

Burj Kahlifa (Dubai) now open!

Facebook harnesses the crowd

From FastCompany.Com...

"Facebook's begun testing a system that's in vogue at the moment: Using its own users as a data-crunching system. Nothing terribly new there--except that Facebook's using its crowd to actually moderate the rest of the crowd and stamp out the nasty bits, which is a whole new ethically-intriguing level"

Read more here.

New Breed Of Antennas

Researchers at NC State have developed shape-shifting antennas. These can overcome the limitations of traditional antennas by changing "... how far they can be bent – and how often – before they break completely."

From the article: "While the alloy makes an effective antenna that could be used in a variety of existing electronic devices, its durability and flexibility also open the door to a host of new applications. For example, an antenna in a flexible silicone shell could be used to monitor civil construction, such as bridges. As the bridge expands and contracts, it would stretch the antenna – changing the frequency of the antenna, and providing civil engineers information wirelessly about the condition of the bridge."

Click here to read more

Trump's tower (in Chicago) now 6th tallest building

From the Chicago Tribune:

"The Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the global arbiter of height standards, has changed its criteria for measuring skyscrapers.

The old standard was that a skyscraper's height was determined by calculating the distance from the sidewalk outside the main entrance to the building's spire or structural top.

The new standard is that height is measured from "the lowest, significant, open-air, pedestrian entrance" to the top.

For the Trump tower, this means an extra 27 feet in height. Its bottom is now considered to be the entrance to the still-unoccupied shops along the along the Chicago riverwalk, not the main entrance on Wabash Ave."

Click here for the full article.

Falling Smoke Stack

This is a slow-motion video of the demolition of a smoke stack (probably from a power plant) on the campus of Drexel University. At the 0:35 second mark, once the stack impacts the ground, you can see a shock wave travel through the glass cladding on the building in the center of the video.



(It helps to view the video in a full screen mode)