Lifeboat Foundation

The “reverse climate change machine” is an honorable mention in the Evolo Skyscraper Design Competition.

A one-stop skyscraping shop for urbane living and fighting climate change called the HEAL-BERG is among the selected entries in eVolo’s annual Skyscraper Competition, which invites the world’s designers to “challenge the way we understand vertical architecture.” The mammoth pearlescent structure would simultaneously cool Antarctic ocean water, scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and generate electricity with saltwater and wind turbines, creating what the designers call, a “reverse climate change machine.”

Luca Beltrame and Saba Nabavi Tafreshi created HEAL-BERG as a response to a potential future in which, “climate was changing at a rate exceeding most scientific forecasts; oceans warming, air pollution and climate change were caught in a discernible self-boosting loop. In the speculative world they’ve created, it’s 2039, 21.5 million people are being displaced annually due to climate change and, “the complex patterns representing the world were doomed to collapse.”

Continue reading “This Skyscraper Concept Would Heal Icebergs and Eat Carbon Dioxide” »

NASA is all about solving challenges, and the goal of having a prolonged presence in space, or a colony on Mars or some other world, is full of challenges, including the necessity of growing food. Scientists at Kennedy Advanced Life Support Research are working on the Prototype Lunar/Mars Greenhouse Project to try and meet that challenge.

The Prototype Lunar/Mars Greenhouse Project (PLMGP) is all about growing vegetables for astronauts during extended stays on the moon, on Mars, or anywhere they can’t be resupplied from Earth. Beyond growing food, the Project aims to understand how food-growing systems can also be a part of life-support systems.

We’re working with a team of scientists, engineers and small businesses at the University of Arizona to develop a closed-loop system. The approach uses plants to scrub carbon dioxide, while providing food and oxygen,” said Dr. Ray Wheeler, lead scientist in Kennedy Advanced Life Support Research.

Another article to go with this:

http://inhabitat.com/shanghai-is-planning-a-massive-100-hect…on-people/

As Shanghai continues to expand outward, replacing agriculture with urbanization, a US-based design firm is looking to reimagine the way that Shanghai grows food to feed its 24 million people.

Continue reading “Shanghai planning huge vertical farm, looking to change the way it feeds its 24 million residents” »

Beets are a common sweetening ingredient in the juices you’ll find at most health food stores, but a recent study found another reason to drink the bright red juice: It has anti-aging benefits.

Researchers at Wake Forest University knew that exercise has positive anti-aging effects on the brain, and were looking for ways to increase those benefits.

“What we showed in this brief training study of hypertensive older adults was that, as compared to exercise alone, adding a beet root juice supplement to exercise resulted in brain connectivity that closely resembles what you see in younger adults,” W. Jack Rejeski, co-author of the study, told EurekAlert.

Continue reading “Is Beet Juice the Secret to Staying Young?” »

The burger chain’s in-house designed kiosks could be taking your order in lieu of a human employee by the end of the year.

Pause for a second and look outside your window at a bird, a squirrel, or even an insect. These organisms all perform complex tasks that involve perceiving food and threats, navigating around trees, and following or hiding from other animals. There is not a robot or a drone on the planet that can do what these bugs and small animals can easily do.

Keeping up with the demand for meat worldwide could one day ruin the planet. But teams of scientists are hard at work growing animal-free burgers, chicken, turkey, and fish that are sustainable, healthy, and, some say, pretty delicious.

Off-grid housing that actually works for families is hard to come by, but that’s what ReGen Villages is striving towards with their concept for new self-sustaining communities.

The startup real estate company has a dream to create regenerative communities that not only produce their own food but also generate their own power, meaning what’s usually only possible for rural areas with renewable energy sources would be a reality for people that want these luxuries while having close neighbors.

This idea is more than just a dream, however, as the development company has its sights on their first site in Almere, Netherlands with the goal of opening it in 2018.

Continue reading “Living Off The Grid: This Utopian Village starts to produce its own food and energy in 2018” »

Arranging employees in an office is like creating a 13-dimensional matrix that triangulates human wants, corporate needs, and the cold hard laws of physics: Joe needs to be near Jane but Jane needs natural light, and Jim is sensitive to smells and can’t be near the kitchen but also needs to work with the product ideation and customer happiness team—oh, and Jane hates fans. Enter Autodesk’s Project Discover. Not only does the software apply the principles of generative design to a workspace, using algorithms to determine all possible paths to your #officegoals, but it was also the architect (so to speak) behind the firm’s newly opened space in Toronto.

That project, overseen by design firm The Living, first surveyed the 300 employees who would be moving in. What departments would you like to sit near? Are you a head-down worker or an interactive one? Project Discover generated 10,000 designs, exploring different combinations of high- and low-traffic areas, communal and private zones, and natural-light levels. Then it matched as many of the 300 workers as possible with their specific preferences, all while taking into account the constraints of the space itself. “Typically this kind of fine-resolution evaluation doesn’t make it into the design of an office space,” says Living founder David Benjamin. OK, humans—you got what you wanted. Now don’t screw it up.